Everyday Prayer with the Puritans
McKim points out that “The first act of Paul after he was converted was to pray! Richard Baxter referred to this incident and wrote the following: ‘Prayer is the breath of the new creature.’” McKim comments and asks, “our breath should be devoted to prayer! Do you regard prayer as essential to your life as is breathing?”
“We sometimes use the phrase ‘the breath of life,’” writes Donald K. McKim. “This usually refers to ongoing life marked by and expressed in the act of breathing. Without the breath of life, only death is possible. So too in the life of faith. Our faith ‘breathes’ through prayer.”[1] His book, Everyday Prayer with the Puritans, offers Christians expert assistance in breathing better.
McKim instructs that, “The goal…is to present Puritans’ understandings of prayer and show how these can nourish our Christian faith today.”[2] Each page presents a themed day with a featured Scripture opening a lesson that applies select Puritan writings to prayer, followed by his own closing reflection or prayer point. He quotes William Gurnall: “Prayer is the very breath of faith; stop a man’s breath, and where is he then?…But for faith to live, and this breath of prayer to be quite cut off, is impossible.” McKim adds:
“In…Scripture, we see prayer as the expression of faith, just as breath is the expression of life…When our prayer life wanes and our ‘breath’ becomes sporadic, our spiritual lives are in danger. Physically, we cannot live without breathing. Spiritually, we cannot live in relationship with God without praying…Prior to your prayer and at points throughout, breathe in and out, remembering that prayer is the breath of life.”[3]
The book provides useful ideas and phrases for one’s daily prayer life, much like Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer, while also peppering in longer written prayers by Puritans on myriad subjects before each new section, reminiscent of those collected in The Valley of Vision. Yet McKim’s work is more like a daily devotional in format, similar to Spurgeon’s, Morning and Evening; and this makes it especially accessible.
The Motive for Spiritual Breathing
McKim points out that “The first act of Paul after he was converted was to pray! Richard Baxter referred to this incident and wrote the following: ‘Prayer is the breath of the new creature.’” McKim comments and asks, “our breath should be devoted to prayer! Do you regard prayer as essential to your life as is breathing?”[4] In addition, he asks: “What would your life be like if gratitude for prayer was your main motivating factor for living?”[5]
And prayer not only is to express gratitude to God, but also grief. McKim notes that “God hears the voice of our tears.”[6] He also counsels, “What is the work of God in the midst of our afflictions? Said [Vincent] Alsop, ‘Prayer under affliction, witnesses that we believe our God to be good and gracious in it: that he can support us under it, can do us much good by it, and deliver us from it.’”[7] As Arthur Hildersham wrote about Psalm 34:15, “No tender mother is so wakeful, and apt to hear her infant when it cries; as the Lord is to hear his children whensoever they cry unto him …”[8] On Psalm 94:18, “Edward Reynolds wrote that we are eased when we realize ‘prayer lightens affliction where it does not remove it.’ … Our prayers help us through afflictions.”[9] Even when words escape us while our hearts beat for hope. John Bunyan wrote, “When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart.” McKim agrees, “God knows your heart. God will hear your prayer, however it is expressed.”[10] William Gurnall, “wrote that in prayer, we have ‘the bosom of a gracious God’ to empty our ‘sorrowful heart into’ … Prayers offered in faith keep our heads ‘above the waves.’”[11]
For the day entitled, “Our Confused Prayers” based on Psalm 38:9-12, McKim encourages: “There are things deep within us, unformed in our minds, which are longings or sighs perhaps ‘too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26). In the jumble of all these, God hears. Richard Sibbes wrote, ‘My groanings are not hid from thee [Ps. 38.9]; God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.’”[12] Including during difficult, perplexing providences.
John Flavel instructs how, “Prayer honors Providence, and Providence honors Prayer.” For “you have had the very Petitions you asked of him. Providences have borne the very signatures of your Prayers upon them.”[13] Similarly, Thomas Taylor wrote that “God hath decreed as well how to do things, as what he will do: and therefore God’s decree takes not away prayer, but establishes it;” McKim, agrees: “ … our prayers are important because they are used by God to carry out the divine purposes. Prayer is part of the process of God’s fulfilling God’s will.”[14] What’s more, Anthony Burgess wrote, whoever “lives without prayer lives as if there were no God as if all things came by a natural necessity or uncertain chance, and not from a wise God.”[15] This is especially helpful when waiting on God’s timing.
On Psalm 40:11-17, McKim counsels, “Our trust is that God will answer our prayers in God’s time, which will be the best time. We know this, but we often have to remind ourselves of this.”[16] Thomas Watson reasons, “A friend may receive our letter, though he doth not presently send us an answer of it. … God may delay prayer, and yet not deny.”[17] Further, citing Malachi 3:16-18, Paul Baynes wrote that “God … bottles up our tears, files up our prayers, putting them on record before him.”[18] On Psalm 56:8, McKim writes, “Our prayers are not launched into empty space. They are heard and stand before God, who will answer in God’s time.”[19]
Yet there is a place for beseeching immediate answer. On Psalm 50:12-15, “The psalmist recorded a key text about God and prayer when God said, ‘Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me’ (Ps. 50:15) … David Dickson said, ‘What more absolute promise can be made to a believing supplicant?’ … God’s promises are reliable. God says, ‘Call on me!’”[20]
Further, “prayers are an expression of faith.”[21] It is how we reach out and receive. John Downame wrote, “ … God hath appointed prayer as the hand of the soul, to be thrust into his rich Treasury of all grace and goodness for a continual supply …”[22] McKim advises, “God invites our prayers so that we can unburden ourselves of thinking we can do it all or solve all problems … John Owen wrote that ‘if we would talk less, and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world; at least we should be better enabled to bear them and undergo our portion in them with the more satisfaction.’”[23]
The opposite also is true; on Psalm 55:22, McKim writes, “worry is like a rocking chair—you go back and forth and never get anywhere! … The antidote for worry is prayer,”[24] and “Without prayer, our lives lose their way … Prayer sweetens the mercy!”[25] Indeed, as Thomas Watson explains, “Prayer does to the heart, as Christ did to the sea … Prayer makes a gracious calm in the soul …”[26]
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Mourning Has Broken
Genesis, however, may not be the first book of the Bible written even though it is the first book in the canon. That distinction, some scholars believe, belongs to the book of Job. While Genesis provides us with the account of the fall, Job plunges us into the deep end of sin, senselessness, and suffering brought on by the fall.
Job weaves together many themes that give us bearings for life in a fallen world. Foremost, we are shown the vast divide between the Creator and the creature. The book of Job does not primarily present us with a theology of suffering as it does theology proper, a study of God. God’s goodness is seen in His abundance of blessings, His wisdom in the hidden disposition of His providential working, and His sovereign might in the prominent name ascribed Him in the book (Shaddai).
When God eventually speaks to Job, it is not to answer his questions but to display His glory and in so doing to put Job in his place. Job responds by acknowledging and embracing his position in respect to God: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:2–3).
Against the backdrop of this Creator-creature distinction, suffering and misery take center stage as Job reels under the onslaught of adversity and crippling weight of affliction. Job gives voice to many questions and struggles we have as we encounter trials of various kinds in our own lives.
There’s something else we learn, something endemic to life in a fallen world, and that is the prominence and pain of grief. When we meet loss, we grieve. In case of severe loss, our grief becomes like a black hole swallowing up life and light around us. The book of Job tells us something about grief and how to deal with it in its inevitability and invasiveness.
Acquainted with Grief
Who of us is not acquainted with grief? Our spouse of forty years succumbs to cancer, and we are crushed. Part of us dies with them. We grieve the loss of their presence, their conversation, their touch, their ear, the life forged by loving partnership over the years. Memories both haunt us and heal us, bringing tears to our eyes and a smile to our face. We lift our eyes to ongoing life without them and we wonder how we can press on.
We are introduced early on in the book of Job to his ten children, seven sons and three daughters. They would rotate hosting family gatherings. Job was continually attentive to them and concerned for their spiritual welfare. We also learn of the vast possessions of Job. He was a man of position and prestige. The picture given us is of one enjoying life in relationship with God and man.
Then came the avalanche of adversity. -
Does it Matter What I Do with My Hands in Worship?
Taylor argues we’re commanded to worship, designed to worship, and should delight to worship God with our bodies (5). The remainder of the book supports these three claims from historical, biblical, theological, scientific, artistic, and ethical angles. Taylor then addresses both prescriptive and spontaneous applications for the body in congregational worship.
As a Christian, have you ever considered how your body participates in—even facilitates—your worship?
W. David O. Taylor’s new book A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship thoroughly analyzes the importance of the physical body for corporate worship. Embodied worship isn’t strictly a spiritual experience—the physical body is required to praise God rightly and fully. We don’t need our bodies out of the way to truly worship; we need our bodies to lead the way.
I’ve been a believer nearly all of my life, and the question still nags me in corporate worship: What do I do with my hands? Maybe it’s fear of man, or maybe I’m too hesitant to be vulnerable, but I’m always conscious of my physical movements. Taylor’s book helps us consider what to do with our bodies when we gather for worship.Do our physical bodies really matter in corporate worship? Isn’t our soul the most important part of us? Aren’t our bodies, at best, negligible to worship and, at worst, a hindrance? The answer to this last question is categorically no, as Christians have attested throughout history and across the global church. The purpose of the body instead is to offer to God in worship what only it can offer—and what must be offered to God.
What we do with our postures, gestures, and movements in worship matters. How our senses of sight, scent, sound, taste, and touch are involved in worship matters. How our spontaneous and prescriptive activities form us in worship matters. All of it matters to faithful and fulsome worship for the sake of a body that is fully alive in the praise of God.
Intentionality of the Body
Taylor’s thesis is twofold. First, he argues there’s “nothing neutral whatsoever about the bodies we bring to worship” (4). He focuses his argument on organized corporate gatherings—your Sunday church service. (He’s not referring to worship as an attitude, lifestyle, or personal experience.) On Sunday, we bring bodies with particularities, limitations, and five senses that ought to be engaged. Since our bodies fundamentally shape our experience in the world, Taylor hopes readers will embrace their bodies as the wonderful means of “communion with God in the praises and prayers of the people of God” (27).
Second, Taylor argues we’re commanded to worship, designed to worship, and should delight to worship God with our bodies (5).
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Devotion to the Deserted Place
Jesus was not enamored by human recognition. His one desire was to do the will of the Father. And He knew He could not do God’s will if He did not know God’s will. He knew He would have no Divine energy without Divine connection.
But the news about Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness (“deserted place”) and pray. Luke 5:15-16)
Everything about Jesus’s lifestyle should be studied and sacred to us. For He not only came to show us the Father but also to show us what a man, rightly related to the Father, must be and do.
Jesus was drawing crowds, which is explainable. But what is not explainable or normal for most men is his practice to “often slip away to the deserted place and pray.” Most leaders of such fame would milk the crowd moments. He would tell us of his busyness and admit he had little time to get away. But not Jesus.
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