Appendix A: Twenty-Five Lessons from Hyde’s Prayer Life

The lessons below are not a system of prayer, and John Hyde would not have wanted them to become one. They gather the themes woven through this book so that readers can return to them. Each is drawn from his life as the sources record it, and each rests on Scripture, not on his example alone.

1. Prayer Begins at Home

Hyde’s life of prayer grew from a father who prayed daily for labourers in the harvest. Faithful, repeated prayer in an ordinary home is never wasted. Jesus’ instruction comes before any sending: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38, ASV). Those who pray it honestly should be ready for God to answer through their own children, or through themselves.

2. Some Questions Are Settled Only on Our Knees

When Hyde asked a classmate for arguments about the mission field, the classmate sent him to pray until the question was settled. There is a place for counsel. But some decisions wait on our willingness to hear God, not on more information. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10, ASV).

3. Receive Correction From Those Who Love You

Hyde crumpled the letter that told him he was not yet filled with the Spirit, then went back on his knees to find it. Pride throws away a hard word. Grace reads it again. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6, ASV).

4. Ask for the Holy Spirit

The remedy for Hyde’s spiritual unreadiness was not a technique but a request. “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13, ASV). He asked in anger, in misery, and at last in surrender. He was answered.

5. Do Not Preach a Saviour You Have Not Trusted

A stranger’s question at an open-air meeting exposed a besetting sin in Hyde’s life. He would not go on preaching until it was dealt with. “Take heed to thyself, and to thy teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16, ASV). The promise is not freedom from temptation but freedom from sin’s rule: “For sin shall not have dominion over you” (Romans 6:14, ASV).

6. Weakness Is Not a Disqualification

Hyde was deaf, slow of speech, and shy. God did not remove these things. He worked through them. “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ASV).

7. Unfruitful Years Are Not Wasted Years

Griswold described Hyde’s first decade in India as “steady, patient, but not especially fruitful.” The years of listening, Bible study, and hidden faithfulness were the soil of everything that followed. “Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9, ASV).

8. God Chooses the Despised

Hyde served in a movement that brought the poorest and most despised people of the Punjab to Christ. He embraced them, lived among them, and baptized them. “God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise” (1 Corinthians 1:27, ASV).

9. Prepare the Messenger as Well as the Message

Hyde’s nights of prayer began when he realised he had spent a night preparing a talk and none preparing himself. “The preparation of the Messenger is quite as important as the preparation of the message.” The apostles guarded both: “we will continue stedfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4, ASV).

10. Keep the Bible Open When You Pray

Jones remembered Hyde kneeling with his hands resting on an open Bible, “face to face with the Lord and resting on the promises.” Prayer fed by Scripture has somewhere to stand. Daniel prayed after reading Jeremiah (Daniel 9:2-3).

11. A Small Promise Kept Daily

The Punjab Prayer Union asked for half an hour a day, as soon after noon as possible, “till the awakening comes.” A modest discipline kept faithfully can outlast great resolutions. “Evening, and morning, and at noonday, will I complain, and moan; and he will hear my voice” (Psalm 55:17, ASV).

12. Pray Until

The prayer union’s pledge and Isaiah’s watchmen share one word: till. “Take ye no rest, and give him no rest, till he establish” (Isaiah 62:6-7, ASV). Jesus taught “that they ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1, ASV).

13. Put the Holy Spirit First

Hyde asked pastors whether the Holy Spirit was first in their pulpits, and then showed what he meant by having “no message” and giving the meeting to the Spirit. “He shall bear witness of me: and ye also bear witness” (John 15:26-27, ASV).

14. Someone Must Do the Hidden Work

“Go in and speak, that is your work. I shall go back to the Prayer Room to pray for you, that is my work.” Preaching and praying are two parts of one work. Every ministry needs someone doing the hidden part. “Thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee” (Matthew 6:6, ASV).

15. Enlarge Your Expectation

Hyde prayed “Wide, Lord, wide” over one verse, because God’s complaint in the psalm is that his people would not open their mouths. “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10, ASV).

16. The Burden Is Given, Not Manufactured

Hyde’s travail for souls was real and costly. But his friends insisted that the broken heart we need is Christ’s, not our own, “free for the taking in simple faith, never minding our feelings.” “The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26, ASV).

17. The One Still Matters

Nine people had been baptized, the road was dangerous, and the evangelists were angry. Hyde still asked, “What about that one?” The Good Shepherd goes after the lost one “until he find it” (Luke 15:4, ASV).

18. Numbers Serve Love, Not the Reverse

Hyde asked God for a definite number of souls a day. What kept this from becoming a quota was love for people, a strict definition of conversion, and the habit of searching his own heart when fruit was lacking. Joy in heaven is over “one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:7, ASV).

19. Do Not Accuse the Brethren, Even in Prayer

God stopped Hyde in the middle of a prayer that listed a pastor’s faults. Hyde confessed that he had been “an accuser of the brethren” and spent the rest of the time giving thanks. “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zechariah 2:8, ASV).

20. Look for What Is Lovely

“Father, show me what things are lovely and of good report in my brother’s life.” God’s people are in the workshop, not yet finished. “Whatsoever things are lovely … think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, ASV).

21. Put On the Garment of Praise

Hyde was not naturally joyful. He found that the obstacle to fruitfulness was usually “the want of praise” and learned to put on praise before he felt it. “The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3, ASV). “In everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, ASV).

22. Love Will Cost Something

Hyde gave away his clothes and blankets, wept at a train window, and rubbed a tired convert’s feet. He answered an angry fellow worker: “If the prodigal had come back to you, you would have taken a stick to him!” “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15, ASV).

23. The Cross Is Victory

Hyde was “fascinated by the Cross” and could speak of nothing else. He taught that Christ’s cry “It is finished” was a shout of triumph in the darkest hour, and that those united to Christ can shout it too. “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2, ASV).

24. Honour the Body’s Just Claims

Hyde’s way of praying cost him his health. His friends urged others to follow his spirit, not his form. The Lord who called his disciples to watch also told them, “Come ye yourselves apart … and rest a while” (Mark 6:31, ASV). God “giveth unto his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2, ASV).

25. Bear Burdens, Refuse Resentment, and Die Giving Thanks

Hyde carried a stranger’s burden at Shrewsbury. He was sung down and ignored without complaint. He said of unkindness, “This is my cross which He wants me to take up and carry for Him.” And he died saying, “Thank God for pain,” and, “It’s just victory, victory, victory.” “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2, ASV). “But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57, ASV).