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After we have spent twenty or twenty-five minutes to enjoy the Lord by dealing with His word, we need a time simply to pray. During this time we should not be preoccupied with what we have read. We should keep nothing in mind and simply seek His face, open ourselves, behold Him, look to Him, and speak something about Him, about His goodness and beauty, to adore and worship Him.
At first, some may begin their prayer by saying, “Lord, I confess that I do not know how to enjoy You or praise You in this way.” This may be good, but it is only the beginning of the practice of prayer. After we practice this kind of prayer some more, we should not say that we do not know how. Rather, when we come to the Lord, we should express something very positively from our inner realization. We may realize that the Lord is sweet, so we can pray, “O Lord, You are so sweet!” We may also realize that the Lord is so available, so we can say, “Lord, I adore You! You are so available. O Lord, I adore You and praise You for Your availability.” In this way we can speak something positively with assurance and confirmation.
To say that we do not know how to praise the Lord is an excuse. Eventually the Lord will not allow us this excuse. He may say, “You do know how to praise Me.” We have realized many things concerning the Lord, so we should simply express something in prayer from our inner realization. The adoration, worship, praise, and thanks that we render to the Lord are the expressions of our inner realization. We may say to a brother, for example, “O brother, you are so kind.” This is a kind of praise to that brother, which is the expression of our realization about him. In the same way, within our being we realize something of the Lord. This inner realization is expressed sometimes as adoration, sometimes as praise, and sometimes as the thanks we render to the Lord. Sometimes we need to say, “O Lord, I love Your presence. I love to behold Your beauty. I am here to open to You. O Lord, open Yourself more to me.”
We are at the beginning of this kind of practice. After a certain period of practice, we will get away from compositions and explanations in our prayer. The more we practice to pray in this way, the more we will be simple in our expressions. The basic principle is simply to express our inner realization of the Lord.
A brother may pray, “Lord, You have made it clear to me that You live and dwell in my spirit.” This kind of prayer may merely be a kind of explanation or definition. Instead, we should express something of our inner realization. We may say, “O Lord, what a grace! What a grace, Lord, that You are here. What a grace that You are with me, and what a grace that You are in my spirit! O Lord, so sweet!” This is the expression of the realization that the Lord lives in us.
In the first one or two weeks of our practice to pray in this way, we may define and compose our words very neatly. After a certain period of practice, however, we will be more simple. Our prayers will be expressions, not definitions or explanations. Our prayers may simply be short sentences or even simple phrases. We may say, “O Lord, how good that You are with me all the time.” In this way we can forget about our natural mind and exercise our spirit. When we pray, we have to concentrate all our strength in our spirit to speak something: “O Lord, what a mercy! What a grace! Oh, how good it is! O Lord! Hallelujah! I just cannot express it. It is too good.” This is to say something from the spirit, not to compose a prayer. If we pray with broken sentences and do not compose our prayers, we will have the release of the spirit. Our spirit will be released and uplifted. Please try this.
This is the way even to speak a message. When a young brother first begins to minister, he often prepares an introduction and each part of the message in a proper composition. As he advances, however, he leaves this kind of formality behind and speaks to people in a more effective and releasing way.
Some may pray with too much composition because they are accustomed to praying publicly in the meetings. However, even when praying in the meetings, we should learn to express rather than to explain. Rather than praying in an explaining way, “Lord, it is a privilege for us to be before You at this time,” we may simply express, “O Lord, what a precious time! How precious that we can be here.” This is an expression, not an explanation. Our present way of prayer proves that in the past we have become accustomed to an old way. Now we must practice to pray in a new way, with short and even broken sentences. Our explanations and definitions must become expressions of our inner realization. We should not care about thinking, considerations, and compositions. We simply should take care of our inner realization.
If we see a building on fire, we would not say to our neighbor, “My dear friend, you must know that there is a fire close by.” No one would compose in such a way. Rather, we would cry, “Fire!” This is an expression, not an explanation. We must learn to pray in the way of expressing something from our inner realization. Within ourselves we realize something of the Lord, so we simply express it. Many of the Psalms in the Old Testament are spoken in this way. They do not explain things; rather, they express something. How much more should this be the case with us today! Too many of us have learned the wrong way to pray. That is the religious, natural way. We have to change our way. If the dear brothers among us would take this word to practice to pray from our inner realization, our prayer will be much improved.
The more we practice, the more we will be delivered from the way of composition. If we reduce our composing, we will have more expression, and when we have more expression, we will have the riches not of composition but of the items of the Lord. We may say, “O Lord, You are my food, my drink, and my breath. Oh, my fresh air! My strength and my enlightening.” The Lord as food, drink, and breath are His riches. Then we will continue, “You are my satisfaction. Oh, the preciousness and freshness of this air! O Lord, how refreshing! It is beyond words to express.” This kind of prayer is rich in essence, not in composition, sentences, clauses, and words. The more we pray in this way, the more we will absorb the Lord.
We need to practice this kind of prayer again and again. We must learn not to compose but to express something from within our spirit to contact the Lord with simple utterances, the shorter the better. If we do this, we will sense the riches of Christ, and we will have the application and practicality of the experience of Christ in our daily walk. We enjoy Him all the time, so when we come to Him, we have a certain realization, a certain sense. We may have enjoyed the Lord much throughout the whole afternoon. Then in the evening we may have five minutes to pray before dinner. There is no need to close our door or even to kneel down. Wherever we are, we can simply express something to the Lord: “O Lord, what a strengthening throughout my whole afternoon! I adore You, Lord. You are my strength.” The more we pray in this way, the more we will be strengthened, the more we will enjoy Him, and the more we will absorb Him.
The Psalms were written in the way of expressions to the Lord. However, so many New Testament Christians cannot compare with the Old Testament psalmists. Christians have the indwelling Spirit, but they do not use their spirit to pray with simple expressions. It is not that we should pray with Old Testament terms, such as, “So panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Psa. 42:1, KJV). Rather, it is that the principle of the psalmists is right: “O God, my soul pants for You!” We all must learn to change our way of praying. I believe that if we do this, the brothers and sisters will be more living, and the meetings will also be more living.
Even if we pray with a good spirit, we may still have too much composition in our prayer. This is because we all “graduated from the same school” where we majored in the same field of old prayers. We need to drop the composition in our prayers. We must learn to pray by exercising our spirit to express something, not by exercising our mind to compose something. This is the proper principle of prayer. Any muscle that we use is always strengthened and enlarged. It is the same with our spirit. The more we use our spirit, the more it will be enlarged and strengthened.
In prayer we must learn to concentrate our spirit and forget our natural mind. We should not compose anything but simply express something from within according to our realization and sense. We need to have an inward sense of the Lord. We can sense Him not only as our food, our drink, and our portion but as many other items. Sometimes we may say, “O Lord, I am experiencing Your sovereignty. Throughout this whole day, what sovereignty I have experienced!” This is the expression of our experience of the Lord at that time. We all have to learn this way. Then I believe our meetings will be very enriched by our prayers of this kind.
After a certain amount of practice, we will change the way of our prayer. We will spontaneously say, “Lord, Your presence is precious, so sweet!” If we sense that we are in the mind, we should not explain this to the Lord, saying, “In the past I have been too much in the mind. How much I am in the mind! Help me to realize that I have to exercise my spirit. But Lord, I do not know how to do this.” This is a good prayer, but it is too much in the mind with composing, explaining, and reasoning. If we were in an earthquake, there would be no time to explain anything. We would just cry, “Earthquake!” In the same way, we can simply cry: “Lord, deliver me from the mind. O Lord, from the mind! Deliver me! What a mercy, Lord! What a grace! You are here in my spirit. O Lord, help me to exercise my spirit. Oh, the spirit! Lord, the spirit! O Lord, help me to exercise!” This is real prayer. It is an expression, not an explanation. After praying in this way for five minutes, we will be in the heavens. Go to practice this. You will see the difference. Your prayer will be absolutely different.
To pray in the way of composing, we do not need any boldness. We may be weak in our spirit and self-conscious. To pray in the way of expressing our realization, however, requires boldness, strength in the spirit, and deliverance from self-consciousness. The stronger our spirit is, the shorter the sentences and clauses of our prayer will be. The more living our prayer is, the shorter the wording will be and the less natural reasoning there will be in our utterance. We must learn to pray in this new way. Then when we come to the meeting, we can pray in the same way, in the way not of explaining but of expressing. Learn to pray in this way.
I say again, we need more practice. We should practice this way of prayer not only in our private times but in the meetings. Of course, the need in the meeting will not always be the same. Sometimes we need a long prayer like Psalm 119, the longest psalm, with one hundred seventy-six verses in twenty-two stanzas of eight verses each. However, most of the time our prayer in the meetings should be living, strong, and short to express something of our realization of the Lord. Short prayers that are not wordy are richer in their effect. To speak a wordy prayer means that we are praying in the mind. When we pray in the spirit, our words are cut short. We need to practice these two matters: to contact the Lord by dealing with the word, and to pray in this new way to enjoy Him.
