In Psalm 73, Asaph says his faith would be overwhelmed by circumstances unless he took time to draw near to God. He wrote:

In sweet communion, Lord, with Thee,
I constantly abide;
My hand Thou holdest in Thy own
To keep me near Thy side.

To live apart from God is death,
’Tis good His face to seek;
My refuge is the living God,
His praise I long to speak.¹

Jonathan Edwards would have heartily agreed with Asaph. Edwards was part of the last generation of Puritan pas­tors in New England. As a scholar, a student of Christian experience, and a preacher of the gospel, Edwards rivaled or surpassed many of his seventeenth-century predecessors. As the offspring and heir of the Puritans, he also mobi­lized the great spiritual disciplines handed down from his spiritual forebears. Edwards recorded his personal experi­ence of the glory of Christ in this passage from his “Per­sonal Narrative”:

Once, as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception ... which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud.²

In this article we will explore how Puritan pastors kept their eyes focused on the glory of the Lord through the spiri­tual discipline of prayer. What we will discover about their devotional lives and how they may challenge us today should encourage us to cultivate prayer more effectively.

The Priority of Prayer⤒🔗

One of the first things that might surprise us is the amount of time Puritan pastors devoted to prayer.³ Many of them engaged in family and personal worship three times a day. John Norton (1606-1663), a colleague of John Cotton (1584-1652), described Cotton’s typical Sabbath schedule while at home:

He began his Sabbath (the previous) evening; (he) then performed family-duty after supper, being larger than ordinary in exposition, after which he catechized his children and servants, then returned to his study. The morning following, family-worship being ended, he retired into his study, until the bell called him away. Upon his return from meeting, he returned again into his study (the place of his labour and prayer) unto his private devotions; where (having a small repast carried him up for his dinner) he continued till the tolling of the bell. The public service being over, he withdrew for a space to his prementioned oratory for his sacred address unto God, as in the forenoon; then came down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a psalm, and towards bed-time betaking himself again to his study, he closed the day with prayer. Thus he spent the Sabbath continually.⁴

It wasn’t unusual for Puritan pastors to rise early in the morn­ing so they could spend hours in personal devotions. John Howe eulogized Richard Fairclough as a man who would, “every day, for many years together, be up by three in the morning or sooner, and to be with God (which was his dear delight) when others slept.”⁵ Why did the Puritans devote themselves to prayer with such discipline and fervency?

The first reason was to cast their burdens on God. Puri­tan pastors unloaded their guilt and shame before the Lord but also anything else that troubled their hearts. Prayer was a means of catharsis for them. Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) wrote to Marion M’Naught in a letter dating around 1630,

“I have many a grieved heart daily in my calling. I would be undone if I had not access to the King’s chamber of presence, to show him all the business. The devil rages, and is mad to see the water drawn from his own mill; but would to God we could be the Lord’s instruments to build the Son of God’s house.”⁶

Richard Baxter said in The Reformed Pastor that when his heart grew cold, his congregants could feel the difference:

I confess I must speak it by lamentable experience, that I publish to my flock the distempers of my own soul. When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused: and so I can often observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching they have grown cold too; and the next prayers which I have heard from them have been too like my preaching.⁷

A second reason for these times of sustained prayer was to allow pastors to focus on supplication for their families and for their ministries. John Bunyan’s (1628-1688) pictur­esque language captures the pastor’s ongoing need to pray for God’s blessing upon his work: “Prayer is as the pitcher that fetcheth water from the brook, therewith to water the herbs: break the pitcher and it will fetch no water, and for want of water the garden withers.”⁸ Thomas Foxcroft elabo­rated on the pastor’s need for prayer by saying:

Hence it behooves ministers to be very much in the exercise of prayer. They who would become fit for and faithful in the ministry of the Word must give them­selves to prayer continually. The prayer of the upright is the most likely method to procure the tongue of the learned, the diligent hand, and an able head. The more fervent and frequent one is at the throne of grace, the better prospect he has of excelling in strength, of grow­ing mighty in the Scriptures, and being skillful in the Word of righteousness.⁹

Shepard offered a sample of his prayer requests for strength and power for himself and the church in another journal entry:

In prayer I was cast down with the sight of our worthi­ness in this church to be utterly wasted. But the Lord filled my heart with a spirit of prayer not only to desire small things but with a holy boldness to desire great things for God’s people here and for myself, viz., that I might live to see all the breaches made up and the glory of the Lord upon us and that I might not die but live to show forth God’s glory to this and the children of the next generation. And so I arose from prayer with some confidence of answer (1) because I saw Christ put it into my heart to ask; (2) because I saw the cry of the humble (Ps. 34:18).¹⁰

Another reason Puritan pastors made prayer and per­sonal devotions a priority was so they might see the face of God and His glory. They shared David’s desire “to behold the beauty of the LORD” (Ps. 27:4) and to see His power and glory, “so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” (Ps. 63:2). Foxcroft described the effects of such communion with God on the minister of the Word: “To be often in the mount, having his conversation much in heaven, will admirably warm him in his work, will make his affections glow with a holy heat, and his mind sparkle with rays of glorious light, even as the face of Moses did when he had been with God in Sinai.”¹¹

Thomas Watson, who died while in prayer, wrote about the blessing that prayer imparts to the man who prays:

A spiritual prayer is that which leaves a spiritual mood behind upon the heart. A Christian is better after prayer. He has gained more strength over sin, as a man by exercise gets strength. The heart after prayer keeps a tincture of holiness, as the vessel favours and relishes the wine that is put into it.¹²

Prayer for Puritan pastors was more than just a way to obtain gifts of grace for ministry; it was also a way to keep their hearts and minds focused upon the glory of the Lord. It was a way to put all things in proper perspective, viewing them in the light of eternity while enjoying the compelling beauty and excellence of Christ. The challenge for pastors today is to develop the kind of personal communion that the Puritans had with the Lord.

Enjoying Friendship with God←⤒🔗

We who are constantly bombarded with information and intrusions on our time and attention via cell phones, Black-Berries, the Internet, and iPods may think it’s impossible to find more time to commune with the Lord. But what is your primary calling as a Christian? Your business as a Christian is first and foremost to spend time with the Lord. We can be grateful to the Puritans for their examples of how to enjoy friendship with God. Thomas Goodwin (1600-1679) offered four directives for establishing and maintaining such a friendship with God:

• Take occasion to come into His presence intending to have communion with Him. This is truly friendly, for friendship is maintained and kept up by visits; and the more free and less occasioned these are by urgent business, or solemnity, or custom, the more friendly they are.
   
• A second way of ... expressing friendship to God is this: when thou comest into His presence, be telling Him still how well thou lovest Him; labour to abound in expressions of that kind, than which (when founded in a reality in the Spirit) there is nothing more taking with the heart of any friend.
   
• Delight much in Him. Friendship well placed affords the highest delight.
   
• A fourth particular wherein the communion of friend­ship lies, is (the) unfolding (of) secrets (Ps. 25:14).¹³

Goodwin’s list contains the four basic building blocks of having an intimate time with the Lord: purpose, praise, pleasure, and privileged communications.

Samuel Rutherford said that prayer need not always be offered in a private prayer closet. He drew near to God on horseback. He wrote, “I have benefited by riding alone on a long journey, in giving that time to prayer ... by abstinence, and giving days to God.”¹⁴ Cotton Mather (1663-1728) suggested that pastors set apart whole days for prayer and fasting:

That you may be good men, and be mightily inspired and assisted from heaven to do good, it is needful that you should be men of prayer ... In the pursuance of this intention, there appears more than a little need of it, that you should ever now and then keep whole days of prayer, in an holy retirement before the Lord; often set apart, whole days, for prayer with fasting, in secret, and perfume your studies with devotions extraordinary: and usually with a mixture of alms, to go up in the memorial before the Lord ... You may obtain, a certain afflatus (wind blowing) from Heaven upon your minds, and such an indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as will render you, grave, discreet, humble, generous, and men worthy to be greatly beloved. You may obtain those influences from above, that will dispel the enchantments, and conquer the temptations, which may else do a world of mischief in your neighborhood.¹⁵

Let it be our prayer that God may use these Puritan pastors to assist us to pray, so that we may be exercised in taking heaven by storm through the Spirit-worked discipline of wrestling with God Almighty.