What is Prayer?
John Bunyan (1628—1688) was an English writer and Puritan pastor best known, of course, as the author of Pilgrim's Progress.
On his deathbed, Bunyan said to those who gathered around him, “Weep not for me, but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the mediation of his blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner; where I hope we ere long shall meet, to sing the new song, and remain everlastingly happy, world without end.”
Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress sold more than 100,000 copies in its first decade in print and has since been reprinted in at least 1,500 editions and translated into more than two hundred languages.
In Prayer, Bunyan writes about the meaning of true prayer.
Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God hath promised, or according to the Word, for the good of the church, with submission, in faith, to the will of God.
When the affections are indeed engaged in prayer, then, then the whole man is engaged, and that in such sort, that the soul will spend itself to nothing, as it were, rather than it will go without that good desired, even communion and solace with Christ.
It is a sincere pouring out of the soul to God. Sincerity is such a grace as runs through all the graces of God in us, and through all the actings of a Christian, and hath the sway in them too, or else their actings are not any thing regarded of God, and so of and in prayer, of which particularly David speaks, when he mentions prayer. “I cried unto him,” the Lord, “with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear” my prayer (Psa 66:17-18). Part of the exercise of prayer is sincerity, without which God looks not upon it as prayer in a good sense (Psa 16:1-4). Then “ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jer 29:13)… And why must sincerity be one of the essentials of prayer which is accepted of God, but because sincerity carries the soul in all simplicity to open its heart to God, and to tell Him the case plainly, without equivocation; to condemn itself plainly, without dissembling; to cry to God heartily, without complimenting.
It is a sincere and sensible pouring out of the heart or soul. It is not, as many take it to be, even a few babbling, prating, complimentary expressions, but a sensible feeling there is in the heart. Prayer hath in it a sensibleness of diverse things; sometimes sense of sin, sometimes of mercy received, sometimes of the readiness of God to give mercy.
Prayer is a sincere, sensible, and an affectionate pouring out of the soul to God. Oh, the heat, strength, life, vigor, and affection, that is in right prayer!… When the affections are indeed engaged in prayer, then, then the whole man is engaged, and that in such sort, that the soul will spend itself to nothing, as it were, rather than it will go without that good desired, even communion and solace with Christ. And hence it is that the saints have spent their strengths, and lost their lives, rather than go without the blessing.
Christ is the way through whom the soul hath admittance to God, and without whom it is impossible that so much as one desire should come into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
4. Again, it is a pouring out of the heart or soul. There is in prayer an unbosoming of a man’s self, an opening of the heart to God, an affectionate pouring out of the soul in requests, sighs, and groans. “All my desire is before thee,” saith David, “and my groaning is not hid from thee” (Psa 38:9).
5. Again, it is a pouring out of the heart or soul to God. This showeth also the excellency of the spirit of prayer. It is the great God to which it retires. “When shall I come and appear before God?” And it argueth that the soul that thus prayeth indeed sees an emptiness in all things under heaven; that in God alone there is rest and satisfaction for the soul.
6. Again, It is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ. Christ is the way through whom the soul hath admittance to God, and without whom it is impossible that so much as one desire should come into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
That which is not petitioned through the teaching and assistance of the Spirit, it is not possible that it should be “according to the will of God.”
7. Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate, pouring out of the heart or soul to God through Christ, by the strength or assistance of the Spirit… For without a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart to God, it is but lip-labor; and if it be not through Christ, it falleth far short of ever sounding well in the ears of God. So also, if it be not in the strength and assistance of the Spirit, it is but like the sons of Aaron, offering with strange fire… That which is not petitioned through the teaching and assistance of the Spirit, it is not possible that it should be “according to the will of God.”
8. Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart, or soul, to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Spirit, for such things as God hath promised (Mat 6:6-8). Prayer it is, when it is within the compass of God’s Word; and it is blasphemy, or at best vain babbling, when the petition is beside the book.
9. For the good of the church. This clause reacheth in whatsoever tendeth either to the honor of God, Christ’s advancement, or His people’s benefit. For God and Christ and His people are so linked together that if the good of the one be prayed for, to wit, the church, the glory of God and advancement of Christ must needs be included. He then that prayeth for the peace and good of Zion, or the church, doth ask that in prayer which Christ hath purchased with His blood, and also that which the Father hath given to Him as the price thereof. Now he that prayeth for this must pray for abundance of grace for the church, for help against all its temptations; that God would let nothing be too hard for it; and that all things might work together for its good; that God would keep them “blameless and harmless, the sons of God,” to His glory, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation” (Phi 2:15).
10. And because, as I said, prayer doth submit to the will of God, and say, “Thy will be done,” as Christ hath taught us (Mat 6:10), therefore the people of the Lord in humility are to lay themselves and their prayers and all that they have at the foot of their God, to be disposed of by Him as He in His heavenly wisdom seeth best. Yet not doubting but God will answer the desire of His people that way that shall be most for their advantage and His glory. When the saints therefore do pray with submission to the will of God, it doth not argue that they are to doubt or question God’s love and kindness to them.