“PRAYER IS THE GYMNASIUM OF THE SOUL”
Prayer is one of the most difficult aspects of the Christian life. We get a glimpse of Paul’s recognition of this fact when he goes on to ask the Roman Christians to “strive together with me in prayers to God for me.” True intercessory prayer, Paul declares here, involves strain and arduous struggle, the commitment of energy and earnestness. The word underlying the phrase “strive together with me” only occurs here in the New Testament, though the similar idea is found in Colossians 2:1-3 and 4:12.
A struggle with what, though? Well, first of all, it is a struggle with the enemy of our souls, Satan, and his demonic hordes. Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 6:12: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Satan hates God’s people at prayer, for he knows that faithful, persevering prayer is a powerful weapon in the hands of almighty God.
As William Cowper (1731-1800), the eighteenth-century poet and hymnwriter, said:
Restraining pray’r, we cease to fight;
Pray’r makes the Christian’s armor bright;
And Satan trembles, when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
But there is also the struggle against the old nature. Listen to the Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628-1688) as he describes his own struggle in prayer:
May I but speak of my own experience, and from that tell you the difficulty of Praying to God as I ought; it is enough to make your poor, blind, carnal men, to entertain strange thoughts of me. For, as for my heart, when I go to pray, I find it so loth to go to God, and when it is with him, so loth to stay with him, that many times I am forced in my Prayers; first to beg God that he would take mine heart, and set it on himself in Christ, and when it is there, that he would keep it there (Psalm 86.11). Nay, many times I know not what to pray for, I am so blind, nor how to pray I am so ignorant; only (blessed be Grace) the Spirit helps our infirmities. Oh the starting-holes that the heart hath in time of Prayer! None knows how many by-wayes the heart hath, and back-lains, to slip away from the presence of God.
This passage aptly displays a couple of the most attractive features of Puritan writers like Bunyan: their transparency and their in-depth knowledge of the human heart. From personal experience Bunyan knew the allergic reaction of the sinful nature that still resides in the bosom of every believer to the presence of God. Instead of coming into God’s radiant presence to pray, it wants to run and hide, like Adam after he had sinned in the garden.
In other words, prayer demands discipline and hard work. Thus, prayer is a struggle. But Paul expects believers to persevere in prayer and know something of the victory of persevering, faithful prayer. Why does he expect this? Because Christians are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ.
It needs to be noted that for all who persevere in this struggle and discipline of prayer, there are times of exquisite delight when the struggle and duty slides over into pure joy. John Owen (1616-1683), one of John Bunyan’s good friends, thus once observed with regard to Ephesians 2:18 (“Through Christ we have access by one Spirit unto the Father”):
No tongue can express, no mind can reach, the heavenly placidness and soul-satisfying delight which are intimated in these words. To come to God as a Father, through Christ, by the help and assistance of the Holy Spirit, revealing him as a Father unto us, and enabling us to go to him as a Father, how full of sweetness and satisfaction it is!
This article is part of a book by Michael A.G. Haykin called The God who draws near: a primer on biblical spirituality (Evangelical Press, 2006).