McKim points out that “The first act of Paul after he was converted was to pray! Richard Baxter referred to this incident and wrote the following: ‘Prayer is the breath of the new creature.’” McKim comments and asks, “our breath should be devoted to prayer! Do you regard prayer as essential to your life as is breathing?”
“We sometimes use the phrase ‘the breath of life,’” writes Donald K. McKim. “This usually refers to ongoing life marked by and expressed in the act of breathing. Without the breath of life, only death is possible. So too in the life of faith. Our faith ‘breathes’ through prayer.”[1] His book, Everyday Prayer with the Puritans, offers Christians expert assistance in breathing better.
McKim instructs that, “The goal…is to present Puritans’ understandings of prayer and show how these can nourish our Christian faith today.”[2] Each page presents a themed day with a featured Scripture opening a lesson that applies select Puritan writings to prayer, followed by his own closing reflection or prayer point. He quotes William Gurnall: “Prayer is the very breath of faith; stop a man’s breath, and where is he then?…But for faith to live, and this breath of prayer to be quite cut off, is impossible.” McKim adds:
“In…Scripture, we see prayer as the expression of faith, just as breath is the expression of life…When our prayer life wanes and our ‘breath’ becomes sporadic, our spiritual lives are in danger. Physically, we cannot live without breathing. Spiritually, we cannot live in relationship with God without praying…Prior to your prayer and at points throughout, breathe in and out, remembering that prayer is the breath of life.”[3]
The book provides useful ideas and phrases for one’s daily prayer life, much like Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer, while also peppering in longer written prayers by Puritans on myriad subjects before each new section, reminiscent of those collected in The Valley of Vision. Yet McKim’s work is more like a daily devotional in format, similar to Spurgeon’s, Morning and Evening; and this makes it especially accessible.
The Motive for Spiritual Breathing
McKim points out that “The first act of Paul after he was converted was to pray! Richard Baxter referred to this incident and wrote the following: ‘Prayer is the breath of the new creature.’” McKim comments and asks, “our breath should be devoted to prayer! Do you regard prayer as essential to your life as is breathing?”[4] In addition, he asks: “What would your life be like if gratitude for prayer was your main motivating factor for living?”[5]
And prayer not only is to express gratitude to God, but also grief. McKim notes that “God hears the voice of our tears.”[6] He also counsels, “What is the work of God in the midst of our afflictions? Said [Vincent] Alsop, ‘Prayer under affliction, witnesses that we believe our God to be good and gracious in it: that he can support us under it, can do us much good by it, and deliver us from it.’”[7] As Arthur Hildersham wrote about Psalm 34:15, “No tender mother is so wakeful, and apt to hear her infant when it cries; as the Lord is to hear his children whensoever they cry unto him …”[8] On Psalm 94:18, “Edward Reynolds wrote that we are eased when we realize ‘prayer lightens affliction where it does not remove it.’ … Our prayers help us through afflictions.”[9] Even when words escape us while our hearts beat for hope. John Bunyan wrote, “When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart.” McKim agrees, “God knows your heart. God will hear your prayer, however it is expressed.”[10] William Gurnall, “wrote that in prayer, we have ‘the bosom of a gracious God’ to empty our ‘sorrowful heart into’ … Prayers offered in faith keep our heads ‘above the waves.’”[11]
For the day entitled, “Our Confused Prayers” based on Psalm 38:9-12, McKim encourages: “There are things deep within us, unformed in our minds, which are longings or sighs perhaps ‘too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26). In the jumble of all these, God hears. Richard Sibbes wrote, ‘My groanings are not hid from thee [Ps. 38.9]; God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.’”[12] Including during difficult, perplexing providences.
John Flavel instructs how, “Prayer honors Providence, and Providence honors Prayer.” For “you have had the very Petitions you asked of him. Providences have borne the very signatures of your Prayers upon them.”[13] Similarly, Thomas Taylor wrote that “God hath decreed as well how to do things, as what he will do: and therefore God’s decree takes not away prayer, but establishes it;” McKim, agrees: “ … our prayers are important because they are used by God to carry out the divine purposes. Prayer is part of the process of God’s fulfilling God’s will.”[14] What’s more, Anthony Burgess wrote, whoever “lives without prayer lives as if there were no God as if all things came by a natural necessity or uncertain chance, and not from a wise God.”[15] This is especially helpful when waiting on God’s timing.
On Psalm 40:11-17, McKim counsels, “Our trust is that God will answer our prayers in God’s time, which will be the best time. We know this, but we often have to remind ourselves of this.”[16] Thomas Watson reasons, “A friend may receive our letter, though he doth not presently send us an answer of it. … God may delay prayer, and yet not deny.”[17] Further, citing Malachi 3:16-18, Paul Baynes wrote that “God … bottles up our tears, files up our prayers, putting them on record before him.”[18] On Psalm 56:8, McKim writes, “Our prayers are not launched into empty space. They are heard and stand before God, who will answer in God’s time.”[19]
Yet there is a place for beseeching immediate answer. On Psalm 50:12-15, “The psalmist recorded a key text about God and prayer when God said, ‘Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me’ (Ps. 50:15) … David Dickson said, ‘What more absolute promise can be made to a believing supplicant?’ … God’s promises are reliable. God says, ‘Call on me!’”[20]
Further, “prayers are an expression of faith.”[21] It is how we reach out and receive. John Downame wrote, “ … God hath appointed prayer as the hand of the soul, to be thrust into his rich Treasury of all grace and goodness for a continual supply …”[22] McKim advises, “God invites our prayers so that we can unburden ourselves of thinking we can do it all or solve all problems … John Owen wrote that ‘if we would talk less, and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world; at least we should be better enabled to bear them and undergo our portion in them with the more satisfaction.’”[23]
The opposite also is true; on Psalm 55:22, McKim writes, “worry is like a rocking chair—you go back and forth and never get anywhere! … The antidote for worry is prayer,”[24] and “Without prayer, our lives lose their way … Prayer sweetens the mercy!”[25] Indeed, as Thomas Watson explains, “Prayer does to the heart, as Christ did to the sea … Prayer makes a gracious calm in the soul …”[26]