With Christ in the School of Prayer

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray. LUKE 11:1

If Andrew Murray is remembered for one book, it is With Christ in the School of Prayer, published in 1885. It is arranged as thirty-one lessons, one for each day of a month, and each takes a saying of Jesus about prayer and presses it home. The first lessons were also issued separately as a small book, Lord, Teach Us To Pray, and both are in the Ochorus library. Twenty years later he gave the school its schoolroom in a book of its own, The Inner Chamber. Read together, the two show what Murray meant by prayer: a pupil, a Teacher, and a shut door. Everything he taught about abiding, humility and waiting on God comes to a point here.

The only Teacher

The School of Prayer opens with the disciples’ request. They had watched Jesus pray. They had begun to see the connection between His astonishing public life and His hidden life with the Father. And so they asked, not for a lecture on prayer, but to be taught to do it.

Murray invites his readers to enrol in the same school. Christ, he says, is the only Teacher. Books, methods and examples may help, but only He can teach us to pray, and He does it by His Spirit, as we practise. The book is not a manual to be read through once. It is a set of lessons to be learned slowly, on our knees.

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 with groanings which cannot be uttered. ROMANS 8:26

In the first lesson Murray gives one of his most quoted descriptions of prayer. “Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that the feeblest child can pray,” he writes, “yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which man can rise.” That double truth rescues prayer from two opposite errors. Some think prayer is too simple to need learning — you just talk to God. Others think it is too lofty for ordinary believers, a speciality of saints and mystics. Murray says it is both simple and high, and that is exactly why we need a Teacher. A child can begin; no one ever finishes.

The schoolroom

Murray’s phrase for the place of secret prayer was the inner chamber, taken from the older rendering of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the School of Prayer he calls it Jesus’ schoolroom: the place where the pupil puts himself daily in the Master’s presence. The first thing the Lord teaches His disciples about prayer, he says, is that they must have a secret place — some solitary spot where each one can be alone with God.

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

Christ had already taught at Samaria that true worship is not tied to places. And yet, Murray says, He wants each disciple to choose a fixed spot where He can meet him daily. That spot may be anywhere, and it may change as our circumstances change, but there must be one, with a quiet time in which we place ourselves before the Master.

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. MARK 1:35

The Inner Chamber begins with a reading called The Morning Hour. Believers of every generation, Murray notes, have regarded the beginning of the day as the fitting time to seek God, whether they called it the morning watch, the quiet hour or the quiet time. He did not lay down a fixed length. What mattered was not the minutes but the purpose.

Not an end in itself

That purpose is the most important thing Murray says about the inner chamber. “The morning watch must not be regarded as an end in itself,” he writes. It is not sufficient that it gives a pleasant time of prayer and Bible study and a measure of refreshment. It is a means to an end. “And that end is to secure the presence of Christ for the whole day.”

This transforms the morning hour. It is no longer a devotional duty to be completed and ticked off. It is the time in which the believer, in Murray’s image, fastens the link for the day between himself and Christ. If the link is made firm in the morning, the day can be lived in His presence. If it is not, the day is lived without Him, however busy with religious activity it may be. Murray pictured it as a handing over: not only an asking for comfort, light or strength, but the giving away of life for one day into the keeping of a mighty and faithful God.

I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. PSALM 16:8

He also named a danger that every earnest Christian should hear. You are in danger, he says in The Inner Chamber, “of substituting Prayer and Bible Study for living fellowship with God.” We can be so absorbed in our requests, or so interested in our Bible study, that the Word of God itself becomes a substitute for God Himself. We go out into the day having read and prayed, but without having met Him. Of more importance than all our requests, Murray insists, is the childlike assurance that the Father sees us, that we have met Him, and that with His eye on us and ours on Him we are enjoying real communion.

Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. JAMES 4:8

Our Father

This is why Jesus names the Father three times in those few verses of Matthew 6. The inner chamber is not a study or an office. It is the place where a child meets his Father, and the lessons in the School of Prayer on the Lord’s Prayer and on the Father’s giving are among the warmest in the book. Murray notes that in the Old Testament the saints had scarcely ever ventured to address God as their own Father. Jesus puts the word on the lips of His disciples from the first.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. MATTHEW 6:9

In the lesson titled The Infinite Fatherliness of God, Murray takes Jesus’ argument from earthly fathers. If sinful fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will the Father in heaven? The power of the promise, he says, lies in the relationship. And he draws a searching conclusion: “Live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child you will most assuredly be heard.”

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? MATTHEW 7:11

Prayer, in other words, is not a technique detached from life. It flows out of a relationship, and its power depends on living in that relationship — in the Father’s house, in His love, in His will. What is done in secret, Murray adds in The Inner Chamber, is rewarded openly: the life lived before others will bear the marks of the hour spent before God, in peace, in patience, in power, in love.

God means prayer to have an answer

The preface to the School of Prayer contains the conviction that drives it. Murray writes that we have grown so used to limiting the promises of God that we cannot read the plainest words of Jesus without adding qualifying clauses. If there is one thing the church needs to learn, he says, “it is that God means prayer to have an answer.”

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. MATTHEW 7:7

This was not naïve. Murray’s lessons deal carefully with the conditions attached to Jesus’ promises: praying in His name, abiding in Him, obedience, love, faith, perseverance. But he refused to let the conditions swallow the promises. God hears. God answers. The believer who prays expecting nothing has not understood the Teacher.

And the later lessons rise from the disciple’s prayer to Christ’s own, with lessons on Christ the Intercessor, Christ the High Priest and Christ the Sacrifice. Our praying, Murray says, is taken up into His. Our prayers are weak, distracted and often confused. But they do not rise alone. The great High Priest carries them.

Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. HEBREWS 7:25

Where care is needed

Two cautions belong here. The first concerns the morning watch. It was a strong emphasis of the student and holiness movements of Murray’s day, and some of the language surrounding it could make it sound like a condition of blessing that must be kept at all costs. For many people — parents of small children, shift workers, carers, the chronically ill — a fixed early hour is simply not possible, and they can be made to feel second-class. Murray’s own principle answers this. The spot may change, and the length is not fixed; what matters is the purpose. The inner chamber is wherever and whenever a believer shuts the door, even briefly, to meet the Father. God is not measuring the minutes. He is looking for the child.

The second concerns the promises. Murray urged his readers to take them simply and literally, and his impatience with qualifying clauses is a healthy rebuke to unbelief. But Scripture itself supplies some qualifications, and they are not unbelief. John writes that we are heard when we ask according to God’s will. Paul asked three times and was refused. Jesus Himself prayed, not as I will, but as thou wilt. A reader who takes Murray’s boldness without Scripture’s balance may conclude, when a prayer is not answered as he hoped, that his faith has failed. Murray’s whole book points the other way: to the Father’s love and wisdom, which gives good things — sometimes the thing asked, sometimes something better.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. 1 JOHN 5:14

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask Christ, in your own words, to enrol you afresh in His school of prayer, and read one lesson of With Christ in the School of Prayer each day for a month.

2. Identify your inner chamber: a place and time where you can be alone with God. If you do not have one, choose one today; if a fixed hour is impossible, find the moment you can have and refuse the guilt of the one you cannot.

3. Tomorrow, before asking for anything, spend a moment making sure you have actually met the Father.

4. Ask whether your Bible reading has become a substitute for fellowship with God. If so, read less and linger more.

5. End your morning prayer by giving the day away: This day is Yours; go with me.

6. Ask whether you pray expecting an answer. Choose one specific request and pray it expectantly, remembering that Christ ever lives to intercede.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, as Your disciples asked, so I ask: Lord, teach me to pray. I have treated prayer as too simple to learn and too high to attempt. Take me into Your school.

Father, You see in secret, and You wait for me behind the shut door. Teach me to keep the inner chamber, not as a duty but as a meeting, and keep me from putting prayer or study in the place of Yourself.

Let me live as Your child, so that I may pray as a child and be heard.

I give You this day. Take up my weak prayers into the intercession of Your Son, and teach me to expect the answer You mean to give. Amen.