Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

I have just finished the sixth Chapter of Taking Hold of God: Reformed and Puritan Perspectives on Prayer. This chapter was all about John Bunyan’s perspective on prayer and how the Holy Spirit affects our prayer life. Below is the final subheading of the chapter, note the words in blue, followed by a link to his treatise on prayer and the link to the chapter from the book I have been reading.

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The Significance of I Will Pray with the Spirit

Bunyan’s treatise on prayer helped to secure what has become a dominant attitude, at least among evangelical Christians, toward written and read prayers: extreme wariness. More significantly, Bunyan’s treatise can also be seen as a declaration that without the Spirit, not only our prayer life but also our entire Christian walk is hollow, stale, and lifeless. It is often forgotten that Bunyan was a vital participant in what Ronald Reeve has described as the Puritan “rediscovery of the Holy Spirit as the mainspring of all Christian activity.” The claim by some contemporary authors and theologians that no post-Reformation movement until this century has really given the Spirit His due is shown to be quite false by the interest that the Puritans had in the person and work of the Spirit.

Bunyan, like most of his fellow Puritans, had an intense desire for the experience of the Spirit, for he knew that the Spirit of Christ alone could lead him to God. Thus, at the conclusion of the treatise, Bunyan expressed the hope that “Christians … pray for the Spirit, that is, for more of it, though God hath endued them with it already.… The Lord in mercy turn the hearts of the people to seek more after the Spirit of Prayer, and in the strength of that, pour out their souls before the Lord.”

When John Bunyan lay dying in August of 1688, a number of his deathbed sayings were recorded. Among them was one dealing with prayer. “The Spirit of Prayer,” he told those gathered to hear his final words, “is more precious than treasure of gold and silver.” It was Bunyan’s conviction of the work of the Spirit in prayer and preaching that led him in the first place to embrace an ecclesial position outside of the Church of England. Clearly, as this dying statement shows, it was this conviction that had sustained him to the end of his life.32

Michael A. G. Haykin, “John Bunyan on Praying with the Holy Spirit,” in Taking Hold of God: Reformed and Puritan Perspectives on Prayer, ed. Joel R. Beeke and Brian G. Najapfour (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 118–119.

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I Will Pray with the Spirit

A N D
With the Understanding Also-
O R,
A Discourse Touching Prayer;
Wherein is discovered,
I. What Prayer Is.
II. What It Is To Pray With The Spirit.
III. What It Is To Pray With The Spirit
A N D
With the U N D E R S T A N D I N G also…
spiritually enlightened to see the promises and to be encouraged.

By J O H N. B U N Y A N 1628-1688

WRITTEN IN PRISON, 1662.
PUBLISHED, 1663.

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The Holy Spirit and Prayer in John Bunyan