With Christ in the School of Prayer: A 31-Day Study

by Andrew Murray

But when we learn to regard it as the highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of all other work, we shall see that we need nothing more than to study and practice the art of praying.

The Father waits to hear every prayer of faith – to give us whatsoever we will and whatsoever we ask in Jesus’ name. We have become so accustomed to limiting

Lord, teach us to pray. Yes, to pray. This is what we need to be taught. Though in its beginnings, prayer is so simple that the feeblest child can pray, yet at the same time it is the highest and holiest work that man can accomplish.

True prayer takes hold of God’s strength and avails much – to which the gates of heaven are opened wide.

We have God’s Word with its clear and sure promises, but sin has darkened our mind so that we don’t know how to apply the Word.

It must be to the glory of God, in full surrender to His will, in full assurance of faith, in the name of Jesus, and with a perseverance that, if need be, refuses to be denied.

Amid the painful consciousness of ignorance and unworthiness, in the struggle between believing and doubting, the heavenly art of effectual prayer is learned.

Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach – only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach well, but much was spoken of praying well. To know how to speak to God is more than knowing how to speak to man. The first thing is not power with men but power with God. Jesus loves to teach us how to pray.

One still finds the three classes of worshippers among Christians. Some are ignorant and hardly know what they ask; they pray earnestly but receive little. Others have more correct knowledge and try to pray with all their mind and heart; they often pray most earnestly but do not achieve the full blessedness of worship in spirit and truth. It is into the third group that we must ask our Lord Jesus to take us; we must be taught by Him how to worship in spirit and truth. This alone is spiritual worship; this makes us worshippers such as the Father seeks.

The man who desires to truly worship God will find, and know, and possess, and enjoy God; he must be in harmony with Him and have the capacity for receiving Him. Because God is a Spirit, we must worship in spirit. As God is, so His worshippers must be.

After Christ had redeemed us, and in Him we had received the position of children, the Father sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). The worship in spirit is the worship of the Father in the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of sonship. This is the reason Jesus uses the name of Father here. We never find one of the Old Testament saints personally appropriate the position of child or call God his Father. The worship of the Father is only possible with those to whom the Spirit of the Son has been given.

In the Old Testament, all was shadow and promise; Jesus brought fulfillment to the promise and made it reality – the substance of things waited for (Hebrews 11:1).

So, worship in spirit is worship in truth – actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony between the Father, who is a Spirit, and the child praying in the spirit.

Let there be the deep confession of our inability to bring God the worship that is pleasing to Him, the childlike teachableness that waits for Him to instruct us, and the simple faith that yields itself to the breathing of the Spirit.

That inner chamber, that solitary place, is Jesus’ schoolroom. That spot may be anywhere; it may change from day to day if we have to change our abode, but there must be a secret place for the quiet time in which the pupil can place himself in the Master’s presence to be by Him and prepare to worship the Father. Alone in that place, Jesus most surely comes to us to teach us to pray.

Three times He used the name of Father: Pray to thy Father, thy Father who sees in secret shall reward thee, and your Father knows what things ye have need of (Matthew 6:6, 8). The first thing in closet prayer is that we must meet our Father.

And thy Father who sees in secret shall reward thee. Here Jesus assures us that secret prayer cannot be fruitless; its blessing will show itself in our life. But in secret and alone with God, we have to entrust our life before men to Him; He will reward us openly;

The blessing of the closet does not depend on the strong or the fervent feeling with which I pray, but upon the love and the power of the Father to whom I entrust my needs.

Our Father who art in the heavens! To appreciate this word of adoration correctly, I must remember that none of the saints in Scripture had ever ventured to address God as their Father.

The lesson is of more importance than we think. In true worship the Father must be first; He must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that He may be glorified, the richer the blessing will be that prayer will bring to me. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father.

We may indeed in full confidence say, “Father, I live for Your honor and Your work; I know You care for me.” Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things; the whole earthly life is given to the Father’s loving care.

Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward relationship of God’s child, so forgiving expresses the earthward. In each prayer to the Father, I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love.

Next to the revelation of the Father’s love, there is in the whole course of the school of prayer not a more important lesson than this: Everyone that asks receives. In the three words the Lord uses – ask, seek, and knock – a difference in meaning has been sought.

There may be cases in which the answer is a refusal because the request is not according to God’s Word, as when Moses asked to enter Canaan. But still, there was an answer. God did not leave His servant in uncertainty as to His will.

The Lord would remind us that the prayer of a child owes its influence entirely to his relationship with his parent. The prayer can exert that influence only when the child is really living in that relationship – in the home, in the love, and in the service of the Father.

So the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is this: Live as a child of God; then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child, you will most assuredly be heard.

The Lord does not demand of us a perfect fulfillment of the law. No, He desires only the childlike and wholehearted surrender to live as a child with Him in obedience and truth. Nothing more, but also, nothing less.

This is the one chief thought on which Jesus dwells here and which He would have all His scholars understand. He would have us see that the secret of effectual prayer is to have the heart filled with the Father-love of God.

The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father’s gifts and the one He delights most to bestow. The Holy Spirit is therefore the gift we ought first and foremost to seek.

The best gift a good and wise father can bestow on a child on earth is his own spirit. This is the great object of a father in education – to reproduce in his child his own disposition and character. If the child is to know and understand his father, if he is to enter into all his will and plans as he grows up, and if he is to have his highest joy in the father and the father in him, he must be of one mind and spirit with him. So, it is impossible to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on His child than this – His own Spirit. God is what He is through His Spirit; the Spirit is the very life of God. Just think what it means – God giving His own Spirit to His child on earth.

As the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the whole life and love of the Father and the Son are in Him. Coming down into us, He lifts us up into their fellowship. As Spirit of the Father, He sheds abroad the Father’s love with which He loved the Son in our hearts and teaches us to live in it. As Spirit of the Son, He breathes in us the childlike liberty, devotion, and obedience in which the Son lived upon earth.

Let’s confine ourselves to the chief thought: Prayer is an appeal to the friendship of God.

There is a twofold use of prayer: the one is to obtain strength and blessing for our own life; the other is intercession – the higher, true glory of prayer for which Christ has taken us into His fellowship and teaching.

But then we must be living as His friends. I am still a child even when a wanderer, but friendship depends upon the conduct. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you (John 15:14). Dost thou not see how the faith worked together with his works, and the faith was complete by the works? And that the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the Friend of God (James 2:22-23).

Oh, why is it that we do not obey the injunction of the Master more heartily and cry more earnestly for laborers? There are two reasons for this. One is that we miss the compassion of Jesus that gave rise to this request for prayer.

The other reason for the neglect of the command – the lack of faith – will then make itself felt, but will be overcome as our pity pleads for help.

But before He provided for the need, He asked him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? He wanted to hear from the blind man’s own lips not only the general petition for mercy but also the distinct expression of his desire. Until he spoke it out loud, he was not healed. The Lord still puts the same question to many who cannot get the aid they ask for until the question has been answered. Our prayers must not be a vague appeal to His mercy or an indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct expression of definite need.

But if, as in silence of soul we bow before the Lord, we asked such questions as these: What is really my desire? Do I desire it in faith, expecting to receive? Am I now ready to place it and leave it in the Father’s bosom? Is it a settled thing between God and me that I am to have the answer? We should learn to pray so that God would see and we would know what we really expect. This, among other reasons, is why the Lord warns us against the vain repetitions of the Gentiles, who are heard for much praying.

True humility is always in company with strong faith, which only seeks to know what is according to the will of God and then boldly claims the fulfillment of the promise: Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

If we only carry out the one thing that He asks of us as we pray – Believe that ye receive it – He will do the thing He has promised: It shall come upon you. The keynote of Solomon’s prayer – Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who has with his hand fulfilled that which he spoke with his mouth to my father David – is the keynote of all true prayer (2 Chronicles 6:4). This is the joyful adoration of a God whose

Believe that ye receive it, and it shall come upon you. Between the receive in heaven and the shall come of earth is believe: believing praise and prayer are the link.

The value of the promise depends on the promiser; faith in the promise depends on my knowledge of the promiser. It is for this reason, before Jesus gave that wonderful prayer promise, He first said, Have faith in God.

Therefore, Jesus added, Howbeit this lineage of demons does not go out but by prayer and fasting. The faith that can overcome stubborn resistance such as you have seen in this evil spirit, Jesus tells them, is not possible except for men living in very close fellowship with God and in very special separation from the world – in prayer and fasting. And so He teaches us two lessons of deep importance about prayer. The one is that faith needs a life of prayer in which to grow and keep strong. The other is that prayer needs fasting for its full and perfect development.

This brings us back to the lesson we learned when Jesus first said, Have faith in God. It is God, the living God, into whom our faith must strike its roots deep and broad; then it will be strong enough to remove mountains and cast out demons. If ye have faith . . . nothing shall be impossible to you. Oh, if we give ourselves up to the work God has for us in the world, and come into contact with the mountains and the demons to be cast away and cast out, we would soon comprehend the need for much faith and much prayer.

And prayer needs fasting for its full growth; this is the second lesson. Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting is the other with which we let loose and cast away the visible.

Our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm our resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything – to sacrifice ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God. He who accepted the fasting and sacrifice of the Son knows to value and accept and reward with spiritual power the soul that is thus ready to give up all for Christ and His kingdom.

Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting is the letting go of all that is of the seen and temporal.

Have faith in God, taught us that in prayer everything depends upon our relationship with God being upright; these words that follow remind us that our relationship with fellow men must be blameless too. Love for God and love for our neighbor are inseparable; the prayer from a heart that is not right with either God or men cannot prevail.

The first lesson taught is that of a forgiving disposition. We pray, So shall also my Heavenly Father do unto you. Scripture says, Forgiving one another even as God has forgiven you in Christ (Ephesians 4:32). God’s full and free forgiveness is to be the rule of ours with men.

There is a second, more general lesson: our daily life in the world is the test of our communication with God in prayer.