Prayer

I recently started going through a devotional called Everyday Prayer with the Puritans. The Puritans had a way of taking a verse or a concept in Scripture and uncovering as many layers as they possibly could. The result is a profound understanding of a subject in Scripture. The Puritans’ writings on prayer hold a deep trust that God understands, hears, and responds to His children’s prayers no matter the form they may take.

One Puritan theologian, David Dickson, writes of the prayers we speak aloud as an expression of earnestness and dependence upon God. The use of our voice in prayer is the expression of the faith we have in God and the great privilege we have to go directly to the throne of God. “Hear my prayer, O God; listen to the words of my mouth (Psalm 52:2).” We can trust that the Lord hears our prayers. However, there are moments in our lives when prayers may be difficult to speak. In such moments where sorrow runs so deep, we do not have the ability to express our prayers with words. On this, the Puritan Richard Sibbes writes, “My groanings are not hid from thee (Psalm 38:9), God can pick sense out of a confused prayer… Sometimes a Christian hath such confused thoughts, he can say nothing, but as a child cries, ‘O Father,’ not able to shew what it needs, as Moses at the Red Sea.” What a beautiful reminder of God as our Father and us as His children. We may not know the fullness of the difficult circumstance we find ourselves in. Even still, our immediate cries, sometimes without words, are understood by our Father in Heaven.  

In Romans 8:15-16, the Apostle Paul teaches that the Holy Spirit is our constant reminder that we are God’s children and that by the Holy Spirit we cry out “Abba, Father.” We can find comfort that as children of God we are never alone. In fact, we are invited by God to communicate directly with Him. “Prayer is the means by which our conversations with God occur and by which we speak to God and listen to God. Praise God!” (Donald K McKim, author of Everyday Prayer with the Puritans).