This week I’d like to share some worthwhile resources. We know that the Holy Spirit guides us in prayer (Rom. 8.26; Gal. 4.6; Jn. 14.16), and we know that Scripture warns against praying mindlessly (Mt. 6.7) and growing lax in our prayer life (Lk. 18.1-8). However, what are we to do during the times when our hearts are weary or our words hard-to-form?

There are notable prayers in Scripture that can guide our hearts and lips, like Hannah's prayer of praise (1 Sam. 2.1-10) or David's prayer for deliverance (Psalm 3) or Jonah's prayer of salvation (Jon. 2.2-9) or the very prayer Jesus taught His disciples (Mt. 6.9-13). We can only assume that part of God's design for us is to read and return to Him the prayers of others, as our own.

I often look to the collection of prayers compiled by Arthur Bennett, The Valley of Vision. I know that many of you already use this collection and I encourage you to share this book with others. I have a couple of favorite prayers, but Bennett does not tell the author of individual prayers, and it is not always easy to find them.

I was excited when, late last year, Robert Elmer published a new collection of Puritan prayers, Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans. In this volume, prayers are arranged topically just like The Valley of Vision, but Elmer tells us the individual author of each prayer, along with a short biography of each.

What is so helpful about The Valley of Vision and Piercing Heaven is that the editors go through great pains to gather prayers that are actually very hard to find. In Piercing Heaven, Elmer adds this prayer that he pulled from Robert Hawker’s 400 page collection of devotions, The Poor Man’s Evening Portion, which I had never read:
“Should I go to you, Lamb of God, who died for me, with doubts and fears that you will not claim me or even notice who was bought with your blood? 

No! Precious Jesus, I will never dishonor you that way, since you have given me the spirit of adoption, not the spirit of bondage. I will never lose sight of you or this endearing part of your character. Your love, and not what we deserve, is what rules your grace to your people.”

As happy as I am for Robert Elmer’s addition, there are other collections of prayers worth mentioning. Many have come to respect two collections of prayers by Barbara Duguid and Iain Duguid, Prone to Wander and Streams of Mercy, that match prayers with confessions of sin and assurance, as well as a relevant hymn. I highly recommend these volumes.

Not many people know about the collection of prayers by Elizabethan playwright, Thomas Dekker. Dekker lived and worked in London, remaining even during the plague seasons of 1608 and 1609 while Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and others returned to the country. Dekker's world was bleak and difficult, himself spending seven years in debtors' prison even though his play, The Shoemaker's Holiday, and satire, The Gull's Hornbook, were successful. He appears to have lived the life of a rogue not unlike the other literary artists of his day, but annotated collection of his prayer book, Four Birds of Noah's Ark, was published in 2017.

Finally, there are also three helpful collections of prayers written by Andrew Case: Prayers of an Excellent Wife, and Water of the Word: Intercession for Her, and Setting Their Hope in God: Biblical Intercession for Your Children.

Each of these collections are helpful in different ways. What I especially like about the new collection by Robert Elmer is that I begin to gravitate towards an author whose sentiments capture me, a prayerful tone that I keep returning to. There is a sense of camaraderie that forms, something similar to noticing the same poet’s work in a large anthology. This closing prayer comes from, again, Robert Hawker:
Lord, I fall down under a deep sense of my vileness and your glory, my emptiness and your all-sufficiency.                                                                           
Blessed Master! Be my all in all, and let my poor soul feast on your fullness. Amen.

~Pastor Jones