“And it came to pass, that, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1) As we enter a New Year I, as this disciple, ask, Lord teach me to pray, cause me to feel my desperate need of communion with You and know the power of it: cause the sheep to know it’s preciousness as is the hearing of the gospel. It was Richard Baxter who said, “Prayer is the breath of the new creature.” John Bunyan said, “If thou art not a praying person, thou are not a Christian.” What is prayer? Is it a mere form of carefully selected words, a recital of beautiful verses of poetic literature? The Psalmist gives us very instructive words in Psalm 5:1-2, “Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray.” I believe prayer is instinctive, not inherent: as a baby knows how to cry and suck as soon as they’re born, one born of God cries out to Him in praise and in need. Any man can recite verses and quote forms, but only the new creation, the person created in Christ Jesus, the one to whom God has imparted the divine nature, can truly pray; it is the instinct of that nature. I also believe that all true prayer is praying in the Holy Ghost, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). Some of the most effective prayers that the saints have ever offered up are those that consist of no intelligible sound, but of groans, and sighs, and cries from the prostrate soul. In its nature prayer is a laborious undertaking: for that reason there is that reluctance in us to pray, a shrinking back. We are called upon by the Word to “Wrestle against principalities and powers of darkness”; the flesh doesn’t like that and therefore fights against it. Remember the disciples in Gethsemane? Christ asks them to watch with Him as He prayed. He went away and came back and found them sleeping. He said to them, “…What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:40-41). It is easy to preach, (a whole lot of flesh is in it); it is less easy to study for preaching; and much less easy to pray. We have a Great High Priest who can be touched with the feelings of our weaknesses, even Jesus Christ who ever lives to make intercession for us. Here is an encouragement to pray, to put ourselves in the labor of prayer regardless of how difficult and how insufficient we feel ourselves to be. ~~Terry Worthan, 1938-2022
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