The Life of Prayer

Men ought always to pray, and not to faint. LUKE 18:1

Simpson built a movement, a college, a magazine and a missionary society, and he maintained throughout that none of it was the real work. The real work was prayer, and everything visible was the overflow.

Communion before petition

His first insistence was that prayer is fellowship before it is request. We generally reverse this. Prayer, for most of us, is the department of the Christian life where we bring needs, and its health is measured by whether the needs are met. On that basis a season of unanswered prayer feels like a failed relationship, because the relationship was constructed entirely around transactions. Simpson taught believers to begin by attending to God Himself — which is simply chapter one applied to the prayer closet. Petition follows, and belongs there, but it is not the foundation.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. MATTHEW 6:6

The instruction is about a Person and a door, not a list.

Abiding prayer

His governing text for the whole subject came from the vine discourse, and he would not let the first clause be detached from the second.

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. JOHN 15:7

The promise at the end is breathtaking, and it is conditioned twice. The one who abides in Christ, and in whom Christ’s words abide, will find his asking answered — because such a person’s wants have been progressively reshaped. He is not receiving a blank cheque; he has become someone who wants what God wants. Simpson drew from this that the way to improve one’s prayer life is largely indirect. Time spent in the Word alters what one asks for, and the alteration does more for the answered-prayer rate than any refinement of technique.

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. JAMES 4:3

Asking, and taking

Here is a distinction characteristic of Simpson, and it follows from the last chapter. He distinguished between the prayer of supplication — asking, and continuing to ask, for something not yet given — and the prayer of faith, in which the believer, having found a promise and become settled, takes what God has offered and moves from petition to thanksgiving.

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. MARK 11:24

Note the tense. Believe that ye receive — at the point of asking, before anything is visible. Simpson was careful to keep both kinds. He did not teach that persistent asking is a sign of weak faith; the Lord’s own parables commend the widow who would not stop. But he held that there comes a point, on some matters, when the believer has heard from God and may stop asking and start thanking — and that many Christians never arrive there because they have never settled what God has actually said.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. PHILIPPIANS 4:6

With thanksgiving — before the answer, not after it.

Praying in the Spirit

Simpson connected prayer directly to the indwelling Spirit, and this rescued the subject from being a matter of human exertion.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. EPHESIANS 6:18

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us. ROMANS 8:26

The admission in that verse — we know not what we should pray for — was, in Simpson’s view, one of the most liberating in Scripture. We are not required to diagnose situations correctly before we may pray about them. The Spirit within supplies what we lack, including the content. This also accounts for the burdens that come upon praying people: a name that will not leave the mind, a persistent concern for a country or a person. Simpson took these seriously as the Spirit’s prompting, while cautioning that they must never be treated as revelation or allowed to override Scripture.

Prayer and the nations

One further note, because it explains the shape of his ministry. Simpson’s prayer life was heavily occupied with places he would never see. He prayed for countries by name, for workers by name, and he taught his congregation to do the same. The Missionary Training Institute began in prayer meetings; so did the Alliance.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. PSALM 2:8

He regarded that as an invitation extended to the church, and he took it literally.

The most useful practical counsel he gave about prayer was also the least inspiring: keep an appointment. Feeling will not sustain it. A fixed time, kept whether or not anything is felt, outlasts every burst of enthusiasm — and it is generally in the unfelt sessions that the real work is done.

Hindrances

Simpson gave attention to the question every praying person eventually asks: when prayer seems to meet a ceiling, is there anything to look for? Scripture names several things, and he worked through them plainly rather than spiritualising the difficulty. Unconfessed sin. The most direct statement in the Psalms is also the bluntest.

If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. PSALM 66:18

The word is regard — not commit, but harbour and protect. The issue is not failure but tolerance. Unforgiveness. The Lord attached this directly to prayer, in a passage about mountains being moved.

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any. MARK 11:25

Domestic discord. Peter tells husbands to treat their wives with honour so that their prayers be not hindered (1 Peter 3:7). Simpson noted how few believers connect the state of their marriage with the state of their prayer life, and how explicitly Scripture does. Wrong motive — asking in order to spend it on ourselves (James 4:3). And unsettled doubt — the double-minded man who asks and does not expect (James 1:6–7). He added a necessary caution. This list is not to be used as a diagnostic tool on other people’s unanswered prayers, and not every silence has a cause we can locate. Some delays are the exercise of faith, and some are simply the wisdom of God, who occasionally answers no. The list is for personal examination, and it should be worked through honestly and then left alone.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Begin your next prayer time with ten minutes that contain no requests at all. 2. Fix an appointment and keep it on the days you do not feel like it, especially those. 3. Take one matter you have been asking about for months. Find what God has said about it, and consider whether it is time to move from asking to thanking. 4. Pray for one country and one worker by name this week. Keep it up for a month. 5. When you do not know how to pray about something, say so, and ask the Spirit to supply what you lack.

A PRAYER

Father, I have treated prayer as a place to bring needs, and when the needs were unmet I concluded that something had failed.

Teach me to come for You before I come for anything.

Let Your words abide in me until what I ask for has quietly changed. Where you have spoken, give me the boldness to stop asking and begin thanking.

And when I do not know what to pray, pray in me by Your Spirit — for people I have forgotten, and for nations I will never see. Amen.