Humble and Broken

"It is not long discourses nor eloquent tongues, that are the things which are pleasing in the ears of the Lord, but a humble, broken, and contrite heart (Ps 51:17, Is 57:15)" -John Bunyan on Prayer

 

Humble: humble prayer is prayer that brought with submission to the Father, knowing that we are far inferior and in desperate need of Him. 

Broken: A broken heart in prayer is a heart that realizes how incomplete it is.  A heart that knows it can only be fixed by the Lord.  All of us are broken, but a broken heart in prayer is one that realizes its state. 

Contrite: A contrite heart feels the weight and agony of its sins.  It is heart that sees sin and God rightly, desiring to be cleansed of all iniquity.  A contrite heart is a desperate heart.  A heart that is in need of a savior and calls out to God in agony to forgive.

 

Is this how you come to the Lord?       

Prayer and Labour

"Right prayer is accompanied with a continual labour after that which is prayed for" -John Bunyan on Prayer

 

Are you just praying or are you laboring after what you are praying for.  This is a question we must ask and dwell on. 

When God doesn't Answer

"When I have been in my fits of agonies of spirit, I have been strongly persuaded to leave off, and to seek the Lord no longer; but being made to understand what great sinners the Lord has had mercy upon, and how large his promises were still to sinners; and that it was not the whole, but the sick, not the righteous, but the sinner, not the full, but the empty, that he extended his grace and mercy unto--this made me, through the assistance of his Holy Spirit, to cleave to him, to hang upon him, and yet to cry, though for the present he made no answer." - John Bunyan on Prayer

 

Labor in prayer!  Do not stop praying when it is diffictult and hard.  We don't pray becasue we want the genie to answer, we pray because we have a deep longing for God and His will.  Remember this as you pray.  And remember that our ultimate hope in prayer is to get more of God, not more of his gifts.  Let Him be central, not what we want answered.  He is a jealous God who wants all of us, and may choose to be silent or not answer to reveal that we want certain prayer answered more than we want God himself.    

 

Trust Him, rest in Him, and do not stop pursing Him in prayer. 

Which are you?

From John Bunyan on Prayer:

 

"Suppose there should come two men begging to your door; the one is a poor, lame, wounded, and almost starved creature, the other is a healthy strong person; these two use the same words in their begging; the one says he is almost starved, so does the other: but the man that is indeed the poor, lame, or maimed person, he speaks with more sense, feeling, and understanding of the misery that is mentioned in their begging, than the other can do; and it is discovered more by his manner of speaking, his bemoaning himself.  his pain and poverty makes him speak more in a spirit of lamentation than the other, and he is pitied sooner than the other, by all those that have the least dram of natural affection or pity.  Just thus it is with God: there are some who out of custom and formality go and pray; there are others who go in bitterness of their spirits: the one prays out of bare notion and naked knowledge; the other has his words forced from him by the anguish of his soul.  Surely that is the man that God will look at, 'even to him that is poor, and of contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word' (Is. 66.2)."

 

So the question I ask: Is our praying merely a formality?  Or is it out of a deep longing of the soul?  Which man are you? 

Romans 8:26-27

"None knows how many by-ways the heart has, and back-lanes, to slip away from the presence of God.  How much pride also, if enabled with expressions!  How much hypocrisy, if before others!  And how little conscience is there made of prayer between God and the soul in secret, unless the Spirit of supplication be there to help!  When the Spirit gets into the heart, then there is prayer indeed, and not till then." -John Bunyan

 

It is so easy for our prayers to be prideful, hypocritical. or even meaningless words we say but don't feel.  Prayer does not happen apart from the Spirit interceding.  You might think you are praying or look like you are praying, but apart from the Spirit, there is no prayer.  Read Romans 8:26-27 when you get a chance today.  Think of what it will take for you to be and stay Spirit led in prayer.  We need to take this scripture seriously, and truly depend on the Sprit as we commune with the Lord. 

 

Emptiness under Heaven

"The soul that thus prays indeed, sees an emptiness in all things under heaven; that in God alone there is rest and satisfaction for the soul." -John Bunyan

 

This makes me realize that much of the problem in my payer life is an attachment to the things of this world.  The more "of this world" I am, the more I become self dependent instead of dependent on God.  True prayer is completely dependent on God and hopeful for heaven, and not putting hope in the world we live in now.  It is in God alone where our souls will be satisfied.  Sounds impossible to do, but with prayer it can happen.   

Prayer

Our desires for this church are completely dependent on God being gracious and merciful on us and on those he calls.  Nothing we desire can be done by merely human effort.  Because of this, we MUST be a people who seek the Lord in prayer.    

 

John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, wrote some classic books on prayer, which I will now start reading through.  Prayer is difficult, and maybe learning from this great man of God will stir my heart to pray as I ought.  With that, I am going to be inviting you into what I am reading through this blog.  My hope is that we can all take these coming weeks to be challenged in our prayer life, and motivated to grow in this area.  My prayer now for all of us is that we take seriously prayer, and take seriously wanting to grow in it.       

 

If any of you are interested in the book I will be reading and quoting from, it is called "Prayer" and is from the Puritan Paperback series.  This book contains 2 books by Bunyan, "Praying in the Spirit," and "The Throne of Grace."