Six times in the book of Hebrews, the author urges us to draw near to God. In Hebrews 4:16, the author encourages us about what awaits us as we approach the presence of God. He says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
God offers us himself fully to us not just in the accomplishment of our salvation, but also daily in prayer. God not only grants us the fountain of life, but also the streams of his mercy. But, with my muddled mind and divided attention, how do I draw near to his throne of grace with confidence?
My Co-Lead pastor, Greg Lavine, and I lead discipleship groups that run concurrently through the school year. We take a group of men or women through a year of study that includes theological and spiritual formation. Currently we are in a stretch focused on the practice of prayer. In one of the weeks we use two books of compiled Puritan prayers: Valley of Vision and Piercing Heaven. The idea of utilizing Puritan prayers might sound as exciting as watching someone else fill out their tax returns, but I have found these books vibrant guides.
Why would we use someone else’s prayers to help us pray? Wouldn’t that make our prayer life stilted and formal? Wouldn’t praying the words of someone who died several hundred years ago create distance between God and us? These concerns haven’t been realized in my own prayer life.
As I read the prayers of those among the cloud of witnesses, I find myself nudged out of the ruts of my typical extemporaneous prayers. When I pray along with the meditations of the Puritans, my prayers tend to focus more on spiritual realities. These brothers help me see the glory of Christ and my sin more clearly.
If you decide to utilize these prayers for yourself, I encourage you to use them in a particular way. First, don’t dash through the prayers. I find my prayer life most enriched by the prayers when I don’t try to rush through a bunch of them, but rather slowly pray through one or two. Second, I would encourage you to use the prayers like a set of hangers rather than a suit. In other words, don’t just put on the prayers of another as your own, instead use them as a frame to hang your own prayers on. Let the prayers spur your own deeply personal prayers.
What a grace to have the prayers of such wise and godly men. Let’s use them to spur us on, not just to be looked at through the glass at a museum.
Here is one such prayer from Piercing Heaven that I hope whets your appetite. It is a prayer of Joseph Alleine, a 17th-century English pastor. Would you pause now and spend time making this prayer your own?
Come In Your All-Sufficiency
Lord, if you have given me Christ, will you not also with him provide everything I need?
Have you given me the fountain, but deny me the stream?
When I beg for pardon of sin, when I beg for power against sin, when I beg for holiness—is all this not granted me in your gift of Christ?
If Christ is mine, is not his blood also mine to secure my pardon? Or his Spirit mine to put down my sins?
If these are all mine, will you withhold them from me?
Will guilt weigh me down, sins live in me, or lusts rule over me—when you have already granted me power for it all to be removed?
Come, Lord. I have too often said, “Depart from me.” But If you will not say “Depart” to me, I hope to never again say “Depart” to you.
My misery says “Come.” My wants say “Come.” My guilt and my sins say “Come.” And my soul says “Come.” Come, then, and pardon. Come and convert. Come and teach. Come and sanctify. Come and save me.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
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