The Hidden Life of Prayer

As Christians we are to people of prayer.

In his little gem of a book The Hidden Life of Prayer, David M’Intyre talks about what the prayer life of a believer looks like and gives practical helps and tools to deepen in our intimacy and communion with God.

In this episode, Nathan gives seven takeaways that he gained from the book and gives an important warning at the end about reading books on prayer.

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Author Overview: David M’Intyre

• Born in 1859 in Monikie (Angus) Scotland
• Was a minister, but in 1891 (till 1915) he became the colleague and successor to Andrew Bonar at Finnieston Church … Bonar died 15 months later on Dec 30, 1892.
  • “He never was a sparkling orator or popular star. Indeed, he never attempted such flights. … His forte lay in the devotional exposition of the living Word. His springs were ever fresh and deep.”
• Two years later he married Andrew Bonar’s third daughter: Jane Christian Bonar
• Hidden Life of Prayer written in 1891
• In 1913 he became the principal of the Glasglow Bible Training Institute. In order to focus on the school, he ended the pastorate (becoming minister emeritus) in 1915
• “Of all men he was most sympathetic. Often and often his phrase was: ‘I am sorry about that.’ His students loved him.”
• “The only time the present chronicler ever saw his placid nature agitated was once when he was threatened to be relieved of all his work, and begged to consider his retirement.”
• “His parish was the Bible, and he walked the length and breadth with reverent and scholarly stride.”
• He died at age 79 on March 8, 1938
• “Preeminently David Martin M’Intyre was a man of prayer. He lived in the presence of God.” – what an incredible statement/testimony to make of someone. Do I want this said about my life?

Chapters

1. The Life of Prayer
2. The Equipment
3. The Direction of the Mind
4. The Engagement: Worship
5. The Engagement: Confession
6. The Engagement: Request*
7. The Hidden Riches of the Secret Place*
8. The Open Recompense

Quick Summary

In The Hidden Life of Prayer, David M’Intyre uses the “Lord’s Prayer” (Matt 6) as a basis to give a sweeping picture of what a Christian’s prayer life should look like. One of the key things that stood out to me in the book was the abundance of quotations about and illustrations of prayer of believers (especially within about 100 years of M’Intyre’s life … mid-1700s to when the book was written in early 1900s).

Seven Key Takeaways

1. Prayer is hard work (chapter 1)

• Prayer is arduous (requiring extreme effort) and a laborious undertaking
• John Bunyan – “A man that truly prays one prayer shall after that never be able to express with his mouth or pen the unutterable desires, sense, affection, and longing that went to God in that prayer.”
• Do we know what it is to “labor,” to “wrestle,” to “agonize” in prayer?

2. Prayer requires intentionality – location, time, focus (chapter 2)

• Jesus FOUND time to pray.
• “And this one who sought retirement with so much solitude was the Son of God, having no sin to confess, no shortcoming to deplore, no unbelief to subdue, no languor of love to overcome. … Now, if it was part of the sacred discipline of the Incarnate Son that He should observe frequent seasons of retirement, how much more is it incumbent on us, broken as we are and disabled by manifold sin, to be diligent in the exercise of private prayer!”

3. Is prayer my obsession (continual pray without ceasing)?

• “The soil in which the prayer of faith takes root is a life of unbroken communion with God”
• “One sometimes hears it said, ‘I confess that I do not spend much time in the secret chamber, but I try to cultivate the habit of continual prayer.’ And it is implied that this is more and better than that. The two things ought not to be set in opposition. Each is necessary to a well-ordered Christian life; and each was perfectly maintained in the practice of the Lord Jesus.” // p16
• Hewitson – “We must have fellowship at all times either with the spirit of the world or with the Spirit of God. … Prayer will be fatiguing to flesh and blood if uttered aloud and sustained long. Oral prayer, and prayer mentally ordered in words though not uttered aloud, no believer can engage in without ceasing; but there is an undercurrent of prayer that may run continually under the stream of our thoughts, and never weary us.” // Hewitson’s Life, 100–101.
• Jonathan Edwards – “Prayer seemed to be natural to me, as the breath by which the inward burnings of my heart had vent.” // Memoirs, chapter 1.
• Andrew Bonar – “I see that unless I keep up short prayer every day throughout the whole day, at intervals, I lose the spirit of prayer. I would never lose sight any hour of the Lamb in the midst of the throne, and if I have this sight I shall be able to pray.” // Diary, October 7, 1860.
• Richard Allestree – “Whoever is diligent in public prayers, and yet negligent in private, it is much to be feared he rather seeks to approve himself to men than to God.” // The Whole Duty of Man (Lond, 1741), 119.

4. Am I expectant in my praying?

• Dr. A.B. Davidson defines waiting on God as “To wait is not merely to remain impassive. It is to expect—to look for with patience, and also with submission. It is to long for, but not impatiently; to look for, but not to fret at the delay; to watch for, but not restlessly; to feel that if He does not come we will acquiesce, and yet to refuse to let the mind acquiese in the feeling that He will not come.” // Waiting upon God, 14.
• Richard Sibbs – “We should watch daily, continue instant in prayer; strengthened our supplications with arguments from God’s Word and promises; and mark how our prayers speed. When we shoot an arrow we look to its fall; when we send a ship to sea we look for its return; and when we sow we look for an harvest. … It is atheism to pray and not to wait in hope. A sincere Christian will pray, wait, strengthen his heart with the promises and never leave praying and looking up till God gives him a gracious answer.”
• Several examples given of George Müller’s expectancy in prayer

5. Six reasons why we must pray (chapter 6)

1. We are instructed to do so
2. When we pray, we recognize our continual need of God’s grace and gives us opportunity to walk in humble dependence upon Him
3. The Lord desires greater and deeper communion with us
4. When God delays in answering our prayers, it prepares our hearts and forces us to hold tight to the truth of His presence until we come to a true and spiritual understanding of God’s will for us in the area of which we are praying
5. We are called (and privileged) to be fellow-laborers together with God—He ever lives to make intercession, and He invites us into the labor of prayer together
6. When we truly pray … self (with all of its concerns and needs) is temporarily forgotten … and the concerns, needs, and interests of Jesus fills our focus and souls

6. Benefits of Prayer (chapter 7)

1. Holiness – “the harmonious perfection, the ‘wholeness’ of the soul”
2. Intimacy with Christ
   • “Communion with God discovers the excellence of His character, and by beholding Him the soul is transformed. Holiness is conformity to Christ, and this is secured by a growing intiacy with Him.” // p63
3. Peace
4. We are taught to rule our lives according to God’s will
   • “Prayer is the avowal of our creature-dependence.” // p64
5. Greater usefulness (because our wills have been bent in submission to His)

7. Pray till you pray

• Dr. Moody Stuart’s rules on prayer: a) pray till you pray; b) pray till you are conscious of being heard; c) pray till you receive an answer. // preface

Favorite Quotes on Prayer (from the book)

• Andrew Bonar – “For nearly ten days past have been much hindered in prayer, and feel my strength weakened thereby. I must at once return, through the Lord’s strength, to not less than three hours a day spent in prayer and meditation upon the Word.” // preface
• Père la Combe – “He who has a pure heart will never cease to pray, and he who will be constant in prayer shall know what it is to have a pure heart.”
• John Bunyan – “If thou art not a praying person, thou art not a Christian.”
• Richard Baxter – “Prayer is the breath of the new creature.”
• George Herbert – “Prayer [is] … the soul’s blood.”
• Andrew Bonar – “O brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper—and sleep too—than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.”
• Thomas Hooker (of Hartford) – “Prayer is the principle work of a minister, and it is by this that he must carry on the rest.”
• Molinos – “Thou oughtest to go to prayer, that thou mayest deliver thyself wholly up into the hands of God, with perfect resignation, exerting an act of faith, believing that thou art in the Divine Presence, afterward settling in that holy repose, with quietness, silence, and tranquility; and endeavoring for a whole day, a whole year, and thy whole life, to continue that first act of contemplation, by faith and love.”
• John Livingstone – “Satan strikes either at the root of faith or at the root of diligence.”
• Archbishop Leighton – “The sum is: remember always the presence of God; rejoice always in the will of God; and direct all the glory to God.”
• Fénelon – “How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak!”
• A Wise Old Writer (unknown??) – “A child of God will confess sin in particular; an unsound Christian will confess by wholesale; hw will acknowledge he is a sinner in general; wheras David doth, as it were, point with his finger to the sore: ‘I have done this evil’ (Ps 51:4); he doth not say, ‘I have done evil,’ but ‘this evil.’ He points to his blood-guiltiness.”
• John Own – “Think of the guilt of sin, that you may be humbled. Think of the power of sin, that you may seek strength against it. Think not of the matter of sin … lest you be more and more entangled.”
• John Laidlaw – “The main lesson about prayer is just this: Do it! Do it! Do it! You want to be taught to pray. My answer is: pray and never faint, and then you shall never fail. There is no possibility. You cannot fail … A sense of real want is the very root of prayer.”
• Martin Luther – “None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience.”
• Bengel – “‘The Church of God in Corinth,’ a blessed and astounding paradox!”

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Question: What insight stood out to you? How are you going to practically apply it into your prayer life this week?