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Recently I have been considering the difficulties that we as Christians face in keeping our concentration when engaging in private prayer. I was prompted by the title of the book by J I Packer and C Nystrom, “Praying: Finding our Way from Duty to Delight.”
I’m sure all of us can identify with the initial joy and thrill of our prayer times when we started out on our Christian pilgrimage, following our salvation. The enthusiasm, when we were so taken up with the forgiveness of our sin, and the privilege of being able to talk to God, not as some remote Being, but as our heavenly Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, was something very special.
Difficulties arise when our prayer life becomes beset by drudgery, loss of concentration and the ability to keep our relationship with God fresh and meaningful, and we often conclude that this experience is peculiar to us. However, history tells us that in the past many of the godliest servants of the Lord faced these difficulties.
Thomas Goodwin said that before beginning to pray he would “take a turn up and down” in his past life, in order to make vivid to himself the depth of the mercy by which, as a new creation in Christ, he now lived. This is a reminder to us that there is a spiritual exercise in prayer which needs to be practised and maintained.
John Newton was in the practice of rising every morning at 5.00am and spending at least the first two hours of the day in Bible reading and prayer - “the one is the fountain of living water, and the other the bucket with which to draw” - though he often found the pulling up of the bucket a difficult task. This was made so because of his loss of concentration. To overcome this he would often read the passage of scripture aloud and place himself in it as a participant in the scene; at other times his passionate use of biblical phrases formed the basis of his communion with the Lord.
If we are to prevent prayer becoming a mere duty we need to meditate upon spiritual things. John Owen, “To be spiritually minded is … to have our minds really exercised with delight about heavenly things … especially with Christ Himself as at the right hand of God.”
Because the term meditation is often associated with Eastern and New Age religions, Christians are apt to fight shy of it, yet we must not allow this to rob us of what is a foundational part of our prayer life as Christians - namely, calling to remembrance, in God’s presence, Who He is, His grace and our life in Him. In doing so meditation in prayer becomes spiritual nourishment and motivation to us.
Richard Baxter believed in practicing this form of meditation saying that, “the hope of glory should be a regular theme.” His view was that Christians should use their understanding for the warming of their affections, and fire their hearts by the help of their heads.
The Word of God must be central in our meditative prayer. “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth; but you shall meditate therein day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Joshua 1:8.
Learning from Godly people of a past era can guide and encourage us in our prayer life, so that instead of it becoming a cumbersome duty, it becomes a delight. In a world where cold methodology is paramount, the Christian needs to return to God’s formula for prayer to be more effective in today’s world.
