meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged,
warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of
God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into
experimental communion with the Lord. I began, therefore, to meditate
on the New Testament early in the morning. The first thing I did,
after having asked in a few words for the Lordâs blessing upon his
precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching
as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the
sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching
on what I had meditated on, but for the sake of obtaining food for my
own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably thus, that
after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to
thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though
I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet
it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.â
The study of the Word and prayer go together, and where we find the
one truly practised, the other is sure to be seen in close alliance.
But we do not pray always. That is the trouble with so many of us. We
need to pray much more than we do and much .longer than we do.
Robert Murray McCheyne, gifted and saintly, of whom it was said, that
âWhether viewed as a son, a brother, a friend, or a pastor, he was the
most faultless and attractive exhibition of the true Christian they
had ever seen embodied in a living form,â knew what it was to spend
much time upon his knees, and he never wearied in urging upon others
the joy and the value of holy intercession. âGodâs children should
pray,â he said. âThey should cry day and night to Him, God hears every
one of your cries in the busy hour of the daytime and in the lonely
watches of the night.â In every way, by preaching, by exhortation when
present and by letters when absent, McCheyne emphasised the vital duty
of prayer, importunate and unceasing prayer.
In his diary we find this: âIn the morning was engaged in preparing
the head, then the heart. This has been frequently my error, and I
have always felt the evil of it, especially in prayer. Reform it then,
O Lord.â While on his trip to the Holy Land he wrote: âFor much of our
safety I feel indebted to the prayers of my people. If the veil of the
worldâs machinery were lifted off how much we would find done in
answer to the prayers of Godâs children.â In an ordination sermon he
said to the preacher: âGive yourself to prayers and the ministry of
the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from
your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray. Remember Lutherâs
maxim, âTo have prayed well is to have studied well.â Get your texts
from God, your thoughts, your words. Carry the names of the little
flock upon your breast like the High Priest. Wrestle for the
unconverted. Luther spent his last three hours in prayer; John Welch
prayed seven or eight hours a day. He used to keep a plaid on his bed
that he might wrap himself in when he rose during the night. Sometimes
his wife found him on the ground lying weeping. When she complained,
he would say, âO, woman, I have the souls of three thousand to answer
for, and I know not how it is with many of them.ââ The people he
exhorted and charged: âPray for your pastor. Pray for his body, that