My summer can only be described as a summer of prayer. I’ve spent more time praying in the last three months than I have in my entire life, including all those weeks at church camp years ago. I’m excited to say that He has been with me as I prayed with friends. He has answered our prayers. I can’t help but expect that He will keep doing so.

I’m not saying I’m proficient at prayer, but I am longing to learn. That’s why I started reading an old book I bought last fall.

With Christ in the School of Prayer
by Andrew Murray

I intended to read this classic quickly, but now I see that it contains 31 lessons, a month long course on the topic of prayer. I’ll read a chapter a day. I hope that you’ll read it with me. You can read it online or even download some mp3s here.

Here are a few quotes from the first chapter:

Lesson 1: The Only Teacher

“And as we see Him pray, and remember that there is none who can pray like Him, and none who can teach like Him, we feel the petition of the disciples, ‘Lord, teach us to pray,’ is just what we need.”

“And as we think how all He is and has, how He Himself is our very own, how He is Himself our life, we feel assured that we have but to ask, and He will be delighted to take us up into closer fellowship with Himself, and teach us to pray even as He prays. “

“It is to prayer that God has given the right to take hold of Him and His strength. It is on prayer that the promises wait for their fulfillment the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation.”

“By His Holy Spirit, He has access to our heart, and teaches us to pray by showing us the sin that hinders the prayer, or giving us the assurance than we please God. He teaches, by giving not only thoughts of what to ask or how to ask, but by breathing within us the very spirit of prayer, by living within us as the Great Intercessor.”

Lord, Teach Me to Pray.
–
Note: Wondering why prayer is important? Read what Murray wrote about the sin of prayerlessness. Ouch.

“In a meeting of ministers there is probably no single sin which each one of us ought to acknowledge with deeper shame -’Guilty, verily guilty’ – than the sin of prayerlessness.”
-The sin and cause of prayerlessness
The Prayer Life by Andrew Murray

Bonus: Here’s my post about Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray.