Ministries
Resources
Luke 11:1-4:
1And 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, as John also taught his disciples.
2And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
3Give us day by day our daily bread.
4And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
If the temper of your soul were pure you would never feel yourself nearer unto God than in your prayer; and while at prayer you would never be able to be far away from God.
To pray, and not be near unto God, rightly interpreted, exclude one another.
And yet, how much prayer is not made every day in every city and in every village, yes, one might say in every home, time and again, during which the soul for not so much as a single moment comes under the overwhelming impression of standing before the Face of God.
Sin weakens our inner life in all sorts of ways. Hence the spring of the life of our soul can not force itself upward, as we ourselves so ardently would wish. In fact, at times, we can not pray. Yet we would not neglect it. And so we fold our hands, and stammer our prayer; but when the "amen" has been said we feel discouraged by the lack of elevation and animation that marred our prayer.
Apart from leading others in prayer, every one must and every one can pray. And yet to pray well is an exceedingly difficult art, or rather it is a holy exercise which demands the utmost clearness, urgency and readiness of soul, and which may never become mere art, else it ceases to be prayer.
Even the disciples felt this, and when they had been witnesses again of that holy act, when Jesus, having gone a short distance from them, had separated Himself in prayer to the Father, it so quickened the sense of their own inability to pray aright, that, when Jesus came back to them one of them said: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1).
Now a hyper-spiritual child of God, in our days, would readily have turned off such a request with a rebuke. Every one, indeed, must pray of himself. What merit can a memorized prayer have before God?
But Jesus was not so hyper-spiritual. He, indeed, always prayed of Himself. But He understood, nevertheless, how difficult real prayer must be to us who have sinned, and though His disciples were one day to become the teachers and leaders of the Church of all ages, He appreciated their request that He should teach them how they should pray, and so in His heavenly language He gave them the Our Father to pray.
He did not say: "Pray after this manner." He gave them the Our Father, not as an example of how to pray. No, the Lord expressly said "When ye pray, say."
John, too, had evidently given his disciples such a form of prayer. And so Jesus, too, gave His disciples a prayer in a fixed form, a prayer evidently intended and appointed to be prayed by them in unison. For the form is in the plural: Our Father, our daily bread, our trespasses.
In all ages, the church of Christ, in all her forms, has remained true to the Our Father. And our forefathers have not only adopted written prayers in our Liturgy, but have ordered again and again the use of the Our Father in public worship by the congregation of believers.
But since the eighteenth century, this has been discarded. Especially from Scotland the influence came that pushed everything aside that favored a fixed form, and in public worship permitted nothing but extemporary prayer by the leader.
The aim was high; but was it not too high, and has not the over-spiritual all too grievously injured the spiritual?
Undoubtedly it is highest perfection when, superior to every sort of support, from the free urgency of spirit, the soul may lift itself up to God, and, upon the wings of the Spirit, in holy consecrated language spread itself before Him. There are such glorious moments in the prayer-life. And it is plain that in such moments even the Our Father is not sufficiently concrete to lead the soul in its utterance before God.
But ask yourself once seriously, how many among the great and the small in the congregation have risen to this sacred height, and if there are such, how many are the moments of a long day, when they are in such a pure and holy mood ?
Count with reality. Think not only of yourself, but have compassion upon the poor sheep in the congregation and in your own home, whose spiritual standing is still low and who yet must needs pray, and to whom it is no less glorious than it is to you, if in prayer they can come a little nearer to their God, and may experience something of His holy Presence.
How much higher the Apostles of Jesus stood above us, and yet, even for them, Jesus deemed such a form of prayer so little aimless or superfluous that He Himself gave them such a one.
It is true that even written prayer leads to abuse. But would you suppose that Jesus has neither foreseen nor known to what abuse the Our Father would lead? And yet He gave it to His disciples.
Nothing is so holy that our infirmity and our sin will not turn it to abuse. Baptism is abused, and the Holy Communion is abused, and the Scripture is abused. Shall, therefore, all this be condemned?
And so with respect to prayer we here stand before such a painful choice.
Say that the Spirit's prayer from one's own soul alone is acceptable to God, and forsooth, there is no more abuse, but then you will also have thousands of families wherein prayer is no more said at all and remembrance of it is gradually lost.
But, on the other hand, restore the use in the written form, and then of necessity you get the muttering with the lips, from which the soul is absent. Not with all, thank God, but with many. And thus many a prayer is profaned.
Standing before this choice many incline to say: "Let the others not pray, provided there are a few who pray aright, and, in any case, prevent the work of the lips in which there is no heart."
And yet we may not speak thus. What Jesus spake to His disciples excludes this. Let us be more humble. Let us confess that even the congregation of the Lord stands at too low a level to appreciate so highly spiritual a standpoint; and that, if prayer shall continue, if it shall be a power in the whole Church, in every home, in behalf of every member in that home, great and small alike, both must be maintained, the Spirit's prayer from one's own soul as well as the written prayer which all can pray, because all have been instructed in its use.
Our offering of praise in hymn and psalm would likewise be of a far higher order, if every one of us were a born poet, and if we never sang a hymn from any book, but always a song from our own inspiration and spiritual urge.
Yet this we do not do. It is impossible. We are no poets. And public worship would be impossible if the same hymn could not be sung together.
This too leads to abuse. Hymn upon hymn is sung in the congregation which more than one sings with his lips, while in its words his soul has no part.
But who would for this reason banish the worship of song from God's house?
This would be a reaching out after hyper-spirituality of life which would bring death into our public worship.
But there is a still more deeply significant reason.
Do you not know from experience, that when your soul wills to be near unto God, nothing at times is more helpful in this behalf than to repeat by yourself some favorite verse from the Psalter that you have always remembered, and which by its consecrated language of itself loosens you from your ordinary world of thought and lifts your soul up to God? At times when you would pray, and prayer would not come, has not the saying of the Our Father frequently been the grateful means of bringing you into the mood for prayer? Scripture, too, is a formula, and ever remains the same, and yet, has not the very reading of Scripture, before you entered upon prayer, constantly been the means by which you have been enabled not only to pray, but to pray in that consecrated language which carries the soul with it?
A twofold cause operates here.
First the language. There is a distinct language also for our prayer and singing of praise. That language does not spring up of itself from every individual soul. There have been those who have received the gift for this particular purpose. And is it not natural that they who may sing after David, or pray in the words of Paul, should feel that this helps and elevates them and brings them further than of themselves they ever could have come?
But there is still something else. Words of prayer and uplifts of praise, which from youth on have gone with us through life, impart to the utterance of our inner life a steadiness which inwardly strengthens and hallows us. And when, in addition to this, we have the glorious sense that these words of prayer and these uplifts of praise are not alone familiar to us, but now and in earlier ages were the language of God's children, then it is as though some portion of the precious ointment of Aaron has been poured out upon it all, the sweet odor of which refreshes the heart.
The seeking and urging still remains underneath all this to experience the blessed nearness of God. Thus the Our Father, quietly, reverently and seriously repeated opens the gate of heaven to our soul. Psalm language of itself carries the soul upward. Everything that lends to our wandering, oftentimes so impotent soul the support of the consecrated word, tunes us to higher harmony. And, likewise, everything that causes us, in and during prayer and singing praises, to experience the communion of all God's saints and the fellowship with our own more godly past, establishes a protecting power over against the power of the world that aims to keep us far distant from our God.
The benediction at the close of public worship, every preacher can likewise compose for himself; but yet, as a rule, this is not done; that in this benediction a fixed form has been retained, is a gain for which we may well give thanks.
Now the preacher may put nothing into it of himself so that you can forget him; but just because thereby he steps into the background and does not come to the fore, the benediction affects you as a gentle dew of grace which comes to you from God.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
© 2025 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
