Prayer, Piety, And The Puritans

An integral part of piety, of leading a pious life, is prayer. Piety and prayer are closely related because prayer is the primary means of maintaining communion with God. The Puritans had five important guidelines about praying:

1. Give priority to prayer: Prayer is the first and most important thing you are called to do. “Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan” (John Bunyan).
2. Give yourself, not just your time, to prayer: Remember that prayer is not an appendix to your life and work, it is your life and work. Prayer is the thermometer of the soul.
3. Give room to prayer: Have a specific space where you habitually meet with God (chair, room, closet, etc.). Block out specific times for prayer in your daily life (morning and evening). Between those scheduled times, commit yourself to pray in response to the least impulse to do so.
4. Give The Word in prayer: Bring God His own Word praying with Scripture. God is tender of His own handwriting. Take His promises, turn them inside out, and send them back up to God by prayer, pleading with Him to do as He has said. Pray through Scripture. Pray over each thought in a specific Scripture verse.
5. Give theocentricity to prayer: Prayer is a gift from the Father to us, a theocentric (Note 1) chain, worked within us by the Holy Spirit who, in turn, enables it to ascend to the Son, who sanctifies it and presents it acceptable to the Father. Pour out your heart to your heavenly Father. Plead on the basis of Christ’s intercessions. Plead to God with the groanings of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:26).

The Puritans knew that God-honoring piety requires well-planned, hard, sweat-inducing prayer and work. Careful planning as to how we are going to live for the Lord is necessary if we want to achieve much of any abiding value for Him. Yet the Puritans were not self-reliant. They were God-reliant. They understood that daily living for a Christian must go something like this:

1. Look ahead and see what you have to do.
2. Go to the Lord in prayer and say, “Lord, I do not have what it takes to do this; I need divine help.”
3. Rely on the Lord to answer the prayer you have offered, and proceed expectantly to the task that lies before you.
4. After completing the task, return to the Lord to thank Him for the help He gave.
5. Ask His forgiveness for all your failures and sins in the process, and ask for grace to fulfill your task more faithfully next time.
6. Repeat.

Note 1: Theocentric: God-centeredness; the quality of not only being attentive to God, but of making Him the principle focus of a course of action or a system of thought.