I have read prayers from the Puritan prayer book "The Valley of Vision" several times while I have preached, and continue to pray through it in the mornings and in devotional time with Emily. It is a powerful example of prayers that are God-centered, Christ-saturated, Spirit-reliant, and doctrinally rich. So often my prayers are very shallow and merely a recitation of things that I want from the Lord or that I want the Lord to do for me. It is not unbiblical or sinful to ask the Lord for things, but if that is the greatest extent of my prayer life then I really don't have a biblically-informed prayer life at all, or a prayer life that is connecting with the Lord and providing revitalization for my soul in any way.
The Valley of Vision was written by the Puritans. Don Sweeting, President of Reformed Theological Seminary writes "The Valley of Vision is a book of prayers drawn from a largely forgotten deposit of Puritan devotional literature. Its writers were both serious Christians and serious pray-ers. No names are attached to the individual prayers, but the introduction tells us that the prayers come from those in the Puritan tradition such as Thomas Shepherd, Thomas Watson, Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, David Brainerd, and Charles Spurgeon."
The Valley of Vision will help you develop more God-soaked and Christ-exalting prayers, and create a greater desire to pray upwards and outwards to a majestically glorious God who desires our prayers. Many have said that prayer is the real work of the Christian life, but how few of us (me included) truly do pray and how many of us who pray truly pray out of an overflow of deep love for the gospel and desire to be more filled with the fullness of Jesus Christ?
Prayers spring from need. A vital and growing prayer life flows from a heart that is dependent on God for all things. God calls us to pray because we are a people of great need (and prayer acknowledges that need)--in need of His grace, His life, His joy. God invites us to pray to Him that we might receive from Him...Himself. We are called to pray without ceasing by the Apostle Paul. This doesn't mean we spend all of our time with our eyes closed, but that we cultivate lives which are lived with humility before God and dependence on God--and that from our prayers our lives start to take on a gospel-centered shape.
Prayer is shaping our lives to be in line with the heart of Jesus.
I will be posting prayers from The Valley of Vision on the blog, and pray that they help you depend more readily on prayer for all of your life, for the greater glory of God in the world, for your deeper joy, and for a growing heart and mind that is caught up in things above---that you might be encouraged to live more faithfully to the One who prayed regularly for you, that in seeking--we would find Him--ever available.
The first prayer below is entitled The Valley of Vision
The Valley of Vision
Lord, High and Holy, Meek and Lowly,
Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory.
Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,
thy life in my death,
thy joy in my sorrow,
thy grace in my sin,
thy riches in my poverty,
thy glory in my valley.
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