The Golden Key of Prayer

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. JEREMIAH 33:3

Visitors to the Metropolitan Tabernacle often wanted to know the secret of Spurgeon’s power. The story is told that he would take them down beneath the building to a room where hundreds of his people were on their knees praying for the service upstairs, and tell them that this was the power-house of the church. Whether or not every detail of the story is exact, its point is certainly his. He believed that the pulpit rested on the prayer meeting, and he preached on prayer more often and more searchingly than almost any other subject. A dozen of those sermons are gathered in the Ochorus library as Mighty Power in Prayer.

An approach of the soul

Spurgeon was careful to say what prayer is before he said how to do it. In his sermon The Throne of Grace he gives a definition that repays memorising: “True prayer is an approach of the soul by the Spirit of God to the throne of God.” It is not the saying of words, however beautiful. It is not merely having desires, however sincere. It is the movement of those desires towards God, by the help of His Spirit.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. HEBREWS 4:16

That definition rules out two opposite errors. It rules out formalism, the repetition of phrases that never reach heaven. Spurgeon could be scathing about prayer meetings where people recited long, borrowed sentences. He wished that believers would talk to God as a child talks to his father, ask Him for what they wanted, and sit down. And it rules out mere emotionalism. Strong feelings are not prayer until they are carried to God.

Call, and I will answer

In The Golden Key of Prayer, on Jeremiah 33:3, he takes up the question that silences most praying before it begins: will God actually hear? His answer is emphatic. God has promised, and He cannot lie. And beyond the promise stands the cross. If God gave His Son for us, will He refuse to listen to us? “You misread Calvary,” he says, “if you think that prayer is useless.”

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? ROMANS 8:32

He also presses the second half of the verse. God promises to show great and mighty things which we do not know. Spurgeon applied this to Christian understanding. Many truths of Scripture, he told students and Sunday-school teachers, will not open to study alone; they open to study soaked in prayer. Prayer is not a substitute for thinking, but it is the key to a door that thinking cannot unlock.

Filling the mouth with arguments

His most distinctive teaching on prayer is in Order and Argument in Prayer, on Job’s longing to find God, order his cause before Him, and fill his mouth with arguments. Spurgeon thought most praying was disorderly and argument-less. We ramble; we tell God vaguely what we would like; we do not plead.

I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. JOB 23:4

Why argue with God at all? Not, he says, because God is reluctant or needs persuading or informing. “The arguments to be used are for our own benefit, not for his.” Searching for reasons shows that we value what we ask for. It teaches us the ground on which blessings come, which is always grace and never merit. And it stirs up fervency. He recalls that the best prayers he ever heard in the Tabernacle prayer meetings were the ones fullest of argument, where a brother pleaded for a mercy for one reason, then another, then another, until the whole meeting was on fire.

What are the arguments? God’s own attributes — His justice, His mercy, His faithfulness. His promises, which is where the last chapter left us. His great name, and the glory it would gain. Our own need and misery. The past mercies He has already shown. And above all, the blood of Christ. These are the arguments Moses used, and David, and Daniel.

O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God. DANIEL 9:19

He adds that the one who fills his mouth with arguments will soon have it filled with praise. “The man who has his mouth full of arguments in prayer shall soon have his mouth full of benedictions in answer to prayer.” And even apart from the answer, he says, prayer is itself a blessing. To pray is to enter the treasure-house of God.

The church on its knees

Spurgeon did not think of prayer only as a private exercise. He thought the prayer meeting was the most important meeting of the church, and he said so constantly. In one of these sermons he calls it “an invaluable institution, ministering strength to all other meetings and agencies,” and he rebukes those who stay away on any small excuse. He believed that the blessing on the preaching came from the praying, and he was not being modest. He meant it as a plain statement of cause and effect.

These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication. ACTS 1:14

It is worth pausing on how rare that conviction has become. Most churches today put a great deal of energy into the Sunday service and comparatively little into the gathering for prayer. Spurgeon would have regarded that as a church cutting off its own supply.

The prayers of seekers

One more feature of his teaching deserves notice, because it set him against some Calvinists of his time. In his sermon The Ravens’ Cry he encourages the unconverted to pray. If God hears the young ravens when they cry, will He not hear a sinner crying for mercy? He recalls telling children in an ultra-Calvinist chapel that he had prayed for ordinary mercies long before his conversion and that God had heard him — and being surrounded afterwards by men calling it rank Arminianism. He was unmoved. To the anxious hearer puzzling over whether his cry is natural or spiritual, his counsel is simple: whichever it is, “still continue to seek the Lord!”

It is fair to add that Spurgeon’s language about prevailing prayer can sound, if lifted out of context, as though persistence could bend God’s will. He did not believe that. Prayer, for him, was the appointed means by which God accomplishes what He has purposed. We do not change His mind; we are changed, and His purposes are fulfilled through our asking.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Test your last prayer against Spurgeon’s definition. Was it an approach of the soul to God, or only words and wishes?

2. Choose one thing you are praying for. Write down at least four arguments from Scripture — God’s character, His promises, His glory, past mercies — and plead them.

3. If you have been praying in borrowed phrases, try this week to speak to God as a child speaks to a father: plainly, and then stop.

4. If your church has a prayer meeting you rarely attend, go to the next one. If it has none, ask whether you could help begin one.

5. Before studying Scripture this week, pray Jeremiah 33:3 and ask God to show you what you do not yet know.

A PRAYER

Father, You have said, Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and I have called so seldom and so vaguely.

I come now by Your Spirit to Your throne, which is a throne of grace. I bring no merit, only Your promises and the blood of Your Son.

Teach me to order my cause before You and to fill my mouth with arguments, not because You are unwilling, but because I need to learn how much I need You.

Make Your church a praying church, and begin with me. Amen.