Jonathan Edwards’s Thoughts On Prayer

By John D. Hannah

[John D. Hannah is Research Professor of Theological Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

To Jonathan Edwards, prayer was an act of coming into the presence of the most beautiful of all persons, the creator of the universe, who has condescended to hear the praises and cries of his people. Though a duty, it was to Edwards a delight, whether in the secrecy of his study, the twilight or the morn when he gathered his family together, or in the corporate worship of the assembly of saints. Why? The answer is that, using his words, “God never begrutches his people anything they desire, or are capable of, as being good to ’em” and, even more so, he welcomes them into his presence to behold and to be ravished by his beauty.

***

The discipline of prayer, an act of privilege and obedience, is a conundrum. For example, the posture of prayer exists in stark contrast to the consequences of prayer. Often the supplicants bow with eyes closed, legs folded at the knees, and hands clasped in silence, unaware of circumstances that exist around them, defenseless in the presence of an adversary should one lurk close by, and yet they have strength and delight beyond measure. Through prayer one experiences deep fellowship with God that is indescribable in human terms (being more real, intimate, and fulfilling than any other human act because of its durative pleasures), providing comfort in pain and, often, release from sorrows. In short, prayer is far more than the eight Greek words for it in the New Testament; it is far more than asking things of God; it is the avenue of rich, profoundly deep fellowship with God, and it is a satisfying foundation of experiencing the presence of God.

Prayer is something of a conundrum nonetheless. How does God answer prayers that require him to act before anyone asks, setting into sequence a course of events that took place months and years prior? If God has perfect knowledge of all things, controls all things, determines all things, why was prayer so deeply integral in our Lord’s life that he taught it as crucial in the lives of his followers? How can it be that we do not have because we do not ask, since we do not receive simply because we ask? Our prayers never match the mercies that God extends to us daily, with or without our supplication or recognition.

An analogy relative to the incomprehensibility of prayer may be an ant walking across a great painting such as Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” (1503-1506), Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (1633), or Monet’s “Water Lilies” (1906). Crawling across a canvas, the ant might observe an array of brilliant colors, even pause recognizing changing hues, but the overall picture would remain as obscure as the value of what the ant traverses. This is because a lack of perspective prevents proper assessment and appreciation. That is how it is with prayer. It is important to the Christian’s life, integral to spiritual health, and a command of God; it is an act of submission that defies our understanding, yet it is vital. Limiting activity to understanding would leave us little to do, far less to contemplate, and make us spiritually anorexic; it would deprive us of a depth of spiritual experience, delightful participation in the advance of Christ’s interests, and blessings otherwise unobtainable.

In the late 1940s Perry Miller, the renowned American studies scholar at Yale University, rediscovered and reinvented Jonathan Edwards as progressive optimism waned, the human condition stung and stunned by two world wars and rendered insecure on the brink of the Atomic Age. At the same time neo-orthodox scholars found his sobriety over the human condition a lens for a more realistic approach to religious affirmation and the reconstruction of Christianity. Secular atheists, like Miller, found in the brilliance of Edwards’s mind, though in Miller’s judgment misused in defending out-of-date ideas, hope for the rational restructuring of society. Simultaneously, fundamentalist Christianity, licking its wounds from societal dislocation, retreated from the marketplace of ideas. Reinhold Niebuhr and Perry Miller inaugurated the rebirth of Edwardsian studies that brought the eighteenth-century cleric recognition as “America’s Theologian.”[1]

Over the last half-century and more, Edwards has become the object of enormous scholarly effort and popular recasting that has reshaped and revitalized segments of American Evangelicalism. A plethora of books, dissertations, articles, seminars, and conferences bears witness that Edwards continues to be a resource for those interested in mining the riches of the past in order to find solace, guidance, and wisdom for the present and even hope for the future.

It is ironic when one approaches the literary corpus of Edwards himself, published and unpublished, and the huge reservoir of available secondary literature, that little interest has been evidenced in certain areas of his thinking. Until recently, for example, there was a scarcity of probing Edwards as a biblicist. Stephen J. Stein made the point that scholars had neglected the religious foundations of Edwards in their emphasis on the rational structure of his thought processes. This has largely been corrected through the efforts of Stein, Robert Brown,[2] Douglas Sweeney,[3] and the Yale publication of Edwards’s works, particularly Notes on Scripture and The Blank Bible, though evangelical scholarship has always recognized the importance of the Bible to Edwards.

Another area that has not been explored intensely has been his understanding of prayer. This gap becomes more arresting when one considers that he was for some thirty years a cleric, then a missionary, and briefly president of a religious institution. Additionally, he was recognized by contemporaries as a man devoted to a life of prayer, publicly and privately. His first biographer, Samuel Hopkins, a student of Edwards who lived for some time in his home, described his piety in glowing terms:

Edwards made a secret of his private devotion, and therefore it cannot be particularly known: though there is much evidence, that he was punctual, constant and frequent in secret prayer, and often kept days of fasting and prayer in secret; and set apart time for serious, devout meditations on spiritual and eternal things, as part of his religious exercise in secret. It appears in his diary that in his youth he determined to attend to secret prayer more than twice a day, when circumstances would allow. He was, so far as can be known, much on his knees in secret, and in devout reading of God’s Word, & meditation upon it. And his constant, solemn converse with God in these exercises of secret religion made his face, as it were, to shine before others.[4]

A clue to the neglect by scholars of the matter of this spiritual discipline appears to be found in the private nature of much of Edwards’s devotional life; the sources are rather meager, being confined to a few sermons delivered on the topic, ancillary comments in others, the Miscellanies, and private correspondence. A cursory glance at scholarly occupation with Edwards and prayer sustains the thesis that paucity of data may be the culprit. For example, Patricia Tracy, who wrote a still-valued work on Edwards as an eighteenth-century pastor, does not mention the topic of prayer in his ministry.[5] Conrad Cherry in the subject index of The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal mentions the subject only once.[6] More startling is that in the recent work of Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, a work that will be a standard synopsis of Edwards’s thought for some time, there are no index headings on the subject.[7] George Marsden in Jonathan Edwards: A Life references the subject eleven times. Marsden includes this description of Edwards’s spiritual life:

He began each day with private prayers followed by family prayers, by candlelight in the winter. Each meal was accompanied by household devotions, and at the end of each day Sarah joined him in his study for prayers. Jonathan kept secret the rest of his daily devotional routine, following Jesus’ command to pray in secret. Throughout the day, his goal was to remain constantly with a sense of living in the presence of God, as difficult as that might be. Often he added secret days of fasting and additional prayers.[8]

In the realm of more popular works, John Piper and Justin Taylor published A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards but devoted less than two pages to the subject of prayer.[9] Additionally, three recent works have provided insight into Edwards’s prayer life. Kyle Strobel’s survey of Edwards’s spirituality includes two chapters on “Spiritual Disciplines as a Means of Grace” and “Jonathan Edwards’s Spiritual Practices.”[10] Though brief, Brian G. Najapfour’s Jonathan Edwards: His Doctrine of and Devotion to Prayer appears to be the first work singularly devoted to the subject.[11] The most thorough work available is Peter Beck’s dissertation-turned-publication titled The Voice of Faith: Jonathan Edwards’ Theology of Prayer.[12] An article by Glenn Kreider on Edwards and prayer using as a lens the sermon “The Most High a Prayer Answering God” is an excellent introduction to the topic;[13] his insights are reflected in this article.

Jonathan Edwards’s Approach To Prayer: The Beauty Of God Experienced Through Redemption

Edwards’s understanding of prayer, as is true of his approach to theology as a whole,[14] is rooted seminally in the character of God and manifested through the experience of redemption, which is the implantation of the life of God into the soul. Since the redemptive knowledge of God is infused in the transforming revelation of his character made possible through the accomplishments of Christ, the experience of the divine disclosure implies the revelation of God’s nature. Thus, it seems, the manner of unpacking the nature of God is to understand the nature of salvation. Since the knowledge of God obtained in redemption is the ground of the redemptive experience, the two should be observably similar. Knowledge of God should be knowledge obtained in the wonder of redemption.

Though not without intellectual substance, the experience of redemption is essentially a change of emotional attachment from a self-oriented pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain to a new orientation, priorities, and object. It is a radical and affectionate shift from a horizontal self-oriented perspective to a vertical God-oriented one that changes the perception of the horizontal life. It is the infusion of the life of God, the Holy Spirit. What Christ purchased at Calvary was eternal life, the life of God; what God the Father grants is that life that Christ purchased; what Christ purchased for us is the life of God, the Holy Spirit. God the Father is life; God the Son is the life of God revealed and purchased; God the Spirit is the life possessed! Redemption, the indwelling of the Spirit, creates what Edwards describes as “relish,” a “taste of the divine,” or a “supernatural sense” that “makes a great change in a man.”[15] Elsewhere, he describes this as “the soul’s relish of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature, inclining the heart of man as the chief good.”[16]

Edwards’s account of his conversion experience bears this out. In recounting his spiritual story to Aaron Burr, he commented on the turning point that came with reading 1 Timothy 1:17. “As I read these words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the divine being, a new sense. . . . a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ. . . . a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. . . . The appearance of everything was altered, there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory.”[17] Describing conversion in the Miscellanies, he makes the point that it is the very life of God in the innermost being. “ ’Tis of a sweet, pleasant, charming, lovely, amiable, delightful, serene, calm, and still nature. ’Tis almost too high a beauty for any creatures to be adorned with; it makes the soul a little, sweet, and delightful image of the blessed Jehovah.”[18]

Hence, according to Edwards, the wonder of redemption brings with it the knowledge of God (an effect sharing to some degree in the nature of its cause). What then is the knowledge of God that accompanies salvation intuitively? It is the perception of the utter beauty of God. Says Edwards, “God is God, and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above ’em, chiefly by his divine beauty, which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty.”[19] He describes beauty using such terms as proportion, equity, symmetry, excellency, and correspondence.[20] In essence, it seems that he is suggesting that God is the “Being of Being” because he is the original pattern of all things. By “excellency, proportion, and equity” Edwards seems to be elucidating the divine attributes of God. God is perfectly all his attributes with perfect balance; there is no lack that would result in disproportion or disharmony. God is perfect love, wisdom, knowledge, and so forth, and the perfect harmony of those attributes is beauty. Edwards writes, “When the Spirit enters into the soul love enters. God is love. And all who dwell in Him by the Spirit will have loving dwelling in him.”[21]

The point of this excursus on the nature of redemption and the character of God is that prayer addresses one who is altogether lovely and beautiful (Ps. 50:1-2[22]). To enter joyously into God’s presence through prayer is to be in the sanctuary of the “Being of ALL Beings.” The ground of this delightful exercise is that the saint experiences the very beauty of God through the regenerating and indwelling work of the Spirit. As Edwards puts it, “The spirit of a true convert is a spirit of love to God, and that naturally inclines the soul to those duties wherein it is conversant with God, and makes it a delight in approaching him.”[23] Prayer is a delightful experience because it is an affectionate response to the life that God has placed in one’s soul. (To know him is to love him because God is love. To love is to communicate with the object loved.) Prayer is the consequence of union with Christ.

In the narrative of his conversion, Edwards makes such a connection to prayer. “I thought how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be swallowed up in him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray that I might enjoy him. . . . and was almost constantly in ejaculatory prayer, wherever I was. Prayer seems to be nature to me, by which the inward burnings of my heart has vent.”[24] Though Edwards appears to have been studious in prayer as a child, building a booth in a swamp with friends and having secret places in the woods where he would retire in solitude,[25] the new sense of the divine caused him to comment, “Those former delights, never reached the heart, and did not rise from any sight of the divine excellency of the things of God; or any taste of the soul-satisfying, and life-giving good, there is in them.”[26] Prayer, then, is the act of coming into the presence of one who is altogether beautiful in his character and actions, a reality made real by the very life of God having been placed in the soul of every saint.

Jonathan Edwards And The Prayer-Answering God

Because God is perfectly congruent in his divine nature, the multiplicity of attributes, he is altogether beautiful. According to Edwards, God’s action in creation or his benevolence toward creation cannot be of external necessity, but of internal, purely voluntary choice (if the divine being is necessitated, he is not sovereign, self-existent, needing nothing). Edwards’s assumption behind the actions of God is that the cause is within the Godhead, not external to it. Thus, being and doing are interrelated so that God acts because his own nature compels it. God cannot be powerful and holy without exuding these characteristics; God acts primarily out of his own intrinsic interests to be glorified. “If it be fit that God’s power and wisdom, etc., should be exercised and expressed in some effects, and not lie eternally dormant, then it seems proper that these exercises should appear, and not be totally hidden and unknown.”[27]

God’s love for himself is the cause of creation and the clue to its meaning and purpose. He created the world and all that is in it, including human beings, to reveal his own attributes. There is, suggests Edwards, an original property in God’s very being to reveal himself. God delights in viewing perfections of himself alone (his wisdom, goodness, justice, power). He therefore acted for the benefit of himself ultimately and primarily. The central thesis at this crucial point is that certain attributes of God require the medium of expression to be known. Edwards explains it this way: “A disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his own infinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world.”[28]

God reveals his goodness because he is good; God reveals his power because he is powerful. In regard to the topic of this article, it may simply be stated that God is a prayer-answering God because he is glorified by answering prayers. Says Edwards, “This is the necessary consequence of his delighting in the glory of his nature, that he delights in the emanation and effulgence of it.”[29]

In May 1738, Edwards delivered a sermon on the intrinsic nature of God and the external benevolence of God to his Northampton parishioners. The thesis of the sermon is that “God never begrutches his people anything they desire, or are capable of, as being good to ’em.”[30] Edwards argues that there are three basic motives for refusing a request in a human relationship: first, one’s unwillingness to grant happiness equal to one’s own (envy); second, an unwillingness based on the perception of the unworthiness of the one making the request (contempt); or third, resentment for an offense by the requestor (grievance).[31] God, says Edwards, sees nothing as too good for his children; he holds his children with no inferior perceptions though they are small; and, while God has a basis for justly withholding their requests because of their unworthiness, he is beautiful in all his ways and without animosity toward his children.

In fact, God delights to give to his children because of his desire to bring them into conformity with his happiness. This is evident to Edwards because God spared not his own son to procure it (“nothing was too much for Christ to suffer for his people”[32]). Says Edwards, “Man’s exceeding guilt is so far from being an hindrance, that God makes use of it as his opportunity the more glorious to fulfill his design of magnifying the riches of his grace. . . . If they are beheld as they are in themselves, anything would be esteemed too good for them; they would be looked upon as unworthy of any good at all. But God don’t behold ’em so, but he beholds ’em in Christ.”[33]

In January of 1736 Edwards preached a fast-day sermon based on Psalm 65:2 with the thesis being “ ’Tis the character of the Most High God, that he is a God that answers prayer.”[34] To encourage his parishioners, Edwards states, “Though he is infinitely above all, and stands in no need of creatures; yet he is graciously pleased to take a merciful notice of poor worms of the dust.”[35] What he means by saying that God answers prayer is twofold. First, God is pleased to accept petitions, and, second, he is pleased to act in agreement with prayers by answering them, as in the case of Hannah (1 Sam. 1).[36] To sustain the argument, Edwards sets forth a litany of verses. His points are five: First, access to the throne of God is always available to his children. “He sits on a throne of grace; and there is no veil to hide this throne, and keep us from it. The veil is rent from top to bottom; the way is open at all times, and we may go to God as often as we please.”[37] Later in the sermon, Edwards elucidates access to God by raising and answering the question, Why is God ready to hear our prayers? His answer is that God is not only infinite in mercy and grace, but that we have a great mediator whose sacrifice for us has atoned for our sins, purchasing the privilege of access, which access Christ enforces through his intercession.[38]

Second, God does not languish in hearing, but answers readily.

Third, he answers with liberality. Fourth, the past dealings of God demonstrate that he answers bountifully. Fifth, God’s reluctance appears to be overcome when we pray. Edwards said, “It [prayer] has a great power in it, such a prayer-hearing God is Most High, that he graciously manifests himself as conquered by it.”[39] As evidence, he cited Jacob’s wrestling with God (Gen. 32:28) and the intercession of Moses in the golden calf episode (Exod. 32:9-14).

In another fast-day sermon, preached in November 1740, Edwards pressed the rationale for prayer further. In his message, primarily to encourage his parishioners to pray for renewal of the awakening, Edwards states that God is a prayer-answering God: “There is scarce anything that is more frequently asserted of God in Scripture than this, that he stands ready to hear prayer.”[40] This fundamental reality is rooted in the character and the purposes of God—his infinite goodness and his quest for self-glorification.[41]

Jonathan Edwards, Prayer Not Answered

Many mysteries in prayer, undisclosed sacred secrets, appear to be resolved only in trust that the incomprehensibly all wise and sufficient God is also benevolent and does according to his promises for his children. Believing that reason is an ally of truth, Edwards frequently demonstrated the rational coherency of biblical truth and answered objections and questions on various subjects throughout his writings, prayer being no exception.

It is not uncommon to ask these types of questions. Why does God ask people to pray if it is not to inform him about something that he does not know? Says Edwards, “The end of prayer is not to inform God of our circumstances, our needs, or our desires, for God is perfectly acquainted with them without our information.”[42] Why does he ask us to pray when, in fact, he often moves to answer us before we pray by arranging a series of circumstances in place to bring about the answer before we ask? Why should we pray if God is willing to provide for us, and does, without our asking since many times his children do not know what to ask for? Edwards’s answer is twofold. First, God asks us to acknowledge our dependence on him, and prayer is an evidence of our daily dependency. It is in this manner that God is glorified through us when we acknowledge our profound need for his mercy and grace in all things. Second, asking prepares us for a proper response to his answers. If we do not ask and God supplies anyway, his covenant faithfulness is demonstrated, yet there is a relationship between asking and thankfulness for answers, between awareness and gratitude. If we do not humble ourselves, recognizing that God alone is the provider of all that we need, his provision will frequently pass without recognition and thankfulness, depriving God of just glory. Edwards writes, “Fervent prayer many times tends to prepare the heart. Hereby is excited a sense of our need, and of the value of the mercy which we seek, and at the same time earnest desires for it; whereby the mind is more prepared to prize it, to rejoice in it when bestowed, and thankful for it.”[43]

Further, is it an argument against praying that God does not answer us as we have asked? Edwards offers three replies to this question. First, it may be that the answer we desire is not what he deems as best for us so that, in effect, he replies in silence as a resounding “no.” “It may be God sees those particular things you have asked, are not best for you; and then your not having them bestowed, is no argument that God begrutches you anything as being too good for you, for God will not withhold it as good, nor as anything that would be good at all to you, but evil.”[44]

A second reason that Edwards stated for what might be perceived as the silence of God is that the timing is not right, that days, months, even years are no argument that God will not answer our requests. Delay from the human perspective may simply be a timing issue for God who orchestrates all things with perfect congruity and symmetry. Abraham waited twenty-five years for the promise of an heir; the promise of deliverance from Egyptian bondage took 430 years; the request to build a dwelling place for God was fulfilled in Solomon, not David; and the promise of a coming redeemer to lift the burden from God’s ancient people spanned centuries. Indeed, the cause of the delay may be a divine favor to you for your greater good (“For you ought know, the dispensation you are now under, though very sorrowful for the present, may in the end be for your humbling, and be more abundantly fitted for comfort, and fitted for greater comfort, so that the spiritual comfort may be both sweeter and more profitable.”[45]). Edwards notes, “This is no argument that God never will hear [your prayers], because he has not heard you. [This is] no argument that God has no time, because his time has not yet come; and that you have become disappointed.”[46]

Third, it could be, says Edwards, that unanswered prayer is rooted in false motives for praying; that is, prayer that is either selfish in nature, spoken out of insincerity, or simply rooted in temporal, passing exigencies that are devoid of the interests of God in the expansion of his kingdom. The latter point seems to have been the context for a fast-day sermon delivered in November 1740, “Praying for the Spirit.” The winter had proved unusually harsh, with extreme cold, the freezing of the Connecticut River, flooding, and a measles epidemic.[47] Edwards became concerned about his parishioners’ preoccupation with temporal things to the neglect of greater things: “Hence how much are those to blame that seek those things that are mean and worthless more than those blessings that are spiritual and divine.”[48] Though he detected that his people sought spiritual blessings, such as the renewal of the awakening, their concern in their prayers was more for temporal things. When God’s people become more concerned for their temporal wellbeing and social interests than the extension of the kingdom of God, he may answer neither request, said Edwards.

It is in this context that the following spring, April 1741, Edwards called for prayer for a province-wide day of fasting. Clearly Edwards connected the nature of more excellent prayer interests with the advent of the millennial glories promised to the church in the Latter Day. Again, his fear was that personal interests, such as the thrill of renewal of individuals would degenerate into selfish concerns rather than focus on cosmic, eternal concerns. His argument is twofold. First, God has promised to do great things. These Edwards understood from Isaiah 62:6-7 to be greater than the renewal within Northampton and the Connecticut River Valley churches. Second, such prayer is important because the greater extension of the kingdom would be to the greater manifestation of the divine glory of God, bringing about the highest of joy to God’s people, fulfilling the purpose of Christ’s atonement, and ending the misery experienced in the world in its current state.[49] Edwards wrote, “They [his parishioners] insist much in their prayers for personal favors, spiritual blessing to be bestowed upon themselves. . . . If we regard God’s glory in our prayers, God’s glory and the glory of our redeemer is much more concerned for the state of the church abroad in the world than it is only in the state of our own souls and the souls of our near neighbors.”[50]

Jonathan Edwards: A Call To Prayer

Though Edwards was reticent to disclose his private devotional life, the witness of those who knew him, his personal biographical allusions, his sermons, and his published and unpublished writings provide ample proof of a man deeply devoted to a life of prayer. Prayer was far more than asking of God either for immediate necessities, the needs of others, or the progress of the gospel worldwide; it was an intimacy with God, the highest of beings. Writing to promote a concert of prayer, Edwards noted, “The Spirit of God is the chief blessing, that are the subject of Christian prayer; for it is the sum of all Christian blessings; which are those we need infinitely more than all others, and are those wherein our true and eternal happiness consists.”[51]

Edwards does offer practical advice when it comes to one’s prayer life. For example, days should begin and end in this manner. Quoting Matthew Henry, he copied these words: “When we are bid to pray always, and to pray without ceasing, ’tis that at least, every morning and every evening we offer up solemn prayers and praises to God.”[52] Edwards advised, “Be more prayerful, more frequent and more earnest in your approaches to the throne of grace; and besides your set times of prayer, let your [heart] be frequently lifted up to God when you are about your daily affairs.”[53]

Further, he described how to enter into prayer, that true prayer must be heartfelt, derived from the innermost recesses of our being. “That duty which is not done in sincerity, is not done at all in the sight of God.”[54] Edwards concluded an early sermon with this rousing flair of rhetoric. “When you praise him in prayers, let it not be with coldness and indifferency, when you praise him in your closet, let your whole soul be active therein; when you praise him in singing, don’t barely make a noise, without any stirring of the affection in the heart, without any internal melody.”[55]

It seems that Edwards’s most significant points about prayer in the life of the child of God are these: First, prayer is intimacy of fellowship, an act of worship, in which we are allowed, even commanded, to enter the presence of the most magnificent and beautiful of persons. In some ways, to daily come into the presence of God is a duplication of the wonder of the day that we initially met him and a foretaste of a future day when we shall enter his presence forever. While monarchs might impress us in their regal garb, stately manners, and grand surroundings, prayer is the action of entrance into the throne room of the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Edwards described the intimacy of fellowship in the presence of God in his well-known description of Sarah Pierpont, then thirteen years of age and his future wife: “This great being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delights. . . . She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially in those times when this great God has manifested himself to her mind. . . . She loves to be alone, and to wander in the fields and on the mountains, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.”[56]

Second, prayer is the divinely instituted means for bringing glory to God by recognizing that he alone is the source of all blessings and that in doing so we humble ourselves before him declaring our utter dependency on him. The creation and redemption of mankind is not the final or ultimate end or reason for his action. According to Edwards, God’s purposes for all his actions find their reason with God himself, not outside himself: “So that perfection of God which we call faithfulness, or his inclination to fulfill his promises to his creatures, could not properly be what moved him to create the world, nor could such a fulfillment of his promises to his creatures be his last end in giving the creatures being.”[57] Therefore, if this thesis is valid that the final end of God’s action terminates in himself, for his own glory, prayer must be seen from this perspective. Prayer is that endeavor whereby we seek God to so act that his glory might be more fully manifested.

Third, prayer is also the means through which God allows mere creatures to enter into what he is accomplishing in the world in the building of his kingdom. Prayer is God’s gift to us so that we might participate with him in his work, praise him for his work, and more deeply become aware of the nature of his work.

Fourth, prayer is also that act of bringing before God our needs and desires as our truest source of help, comfort, and provision. In this regard our prayers should not merely be for our advantage or self-improvement, or even for the temporal state of others, but, should God will to answer in the affirmative, to glorify God. Edwards seems to have manifested a fear that the duty of prayer can degenerate into a selfish endeavor. While seeking God’s healing hand, protective mercies, demonstrable guidance, and daily physical provisions is appropriate, being clearly warranted by Scripture, there is the possibility of forgetting that God’s ultimate end stems from his own quest for exaltation, not the creature’s comfort, though this is frequently a secondary consequence.

Fifth, when God incites in his people a desire to pray, it is evidence that he desires to work through them to accomplish his will. When God seeks to do something in the affairs of mankind, he stirs the hearts of his people to pray, prayer being not the cause of divine action but the fruit of divine action. Reflecting upon the 1735 awakening in the Northampton Church and throughout the Connecticut Valley, Edwards made an important point. “Let none say it was because there was more of a spirit of prayer . . . for if there was more a spirit of prayer, God did not bestow this mercy on us, because we had a spirit of prayer for it; but, on the contrary, he stirred up a spirit of prayer, because he has a design of bestowing this mercy. The spirit of prayer is the fruit of this grace of God to us, and not the cause.”[58] Prayer is the normal means that God uses to accomplish his purposes so that we do not overestimate our role, realizing that it is only as God acts that anything is accomplished, and that, recognizing our ineptitude, we assign all cause to the Lord, so bringing him glory. Edwards would urge us to pray that God would stir us to pray and when we do pray, it is because he has done so and we should be grateful!

“Secret closet prayer . . . is a great duty of a Christian . . . .
He is never so pleased as when his heart is engaged in such duties.”[59]

“True Christian prayer is faith and reliance of the soul breathed forth in words.”[60]

“Don’t think that anything that lies in your power is too much to do for God.”[61]

Notes

1. This is the title of a study of Edwards’s theology by Robert L. Jensen that remains a helpful introduction to Edwards’s thought (America’s Theologian: The Theology of Jonathan Edwards [New York: Oxford Press, 1988]).
2. Robert E. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002).
3. Douglas Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2009).
4. Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1765), 39.
5. Patricia J. Tracy, Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in Eighteenth Century Northampton (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980).
6. Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1966), 266.
7. Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford Press, 2012).
8. George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 133.
9. John Piper and Justin Taylor, A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 114-15.
10. Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013), 86-92 and 160-63 respectively.
11. Brian G. Najapfour, Jonathan Edwards: His Doctrine of and Devotion to Prayer (Caledonia, MI: Biblical Spirituality Press, 2013).
12. Peter Beck, The Voice of Faith: Jonathan Edwards’ Theology of Prayer (Guelph, Ontario, Canada: Joshua Press, 2010). Beck’s doctoral dissertation was written at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
13. Glenn R. Kreider, “Jonathan Edwards’s Theology of Prayer,” Bibliotheca Sacra 160 (October–December 2003): 434-56.
14. McClymond and McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 93.
15. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise on Religious Affections, vol. 2 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 272, 275.
16. Alexander B. Grosart, ed., Treatise on Grace:Unpublished Writings of JonathanEdwards (1865; reprint, Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1992), 36.
17. Jonathan Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, vol. 16 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. George S. Glaghorn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 792-93.
18. Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies,” a-500, vol. 13 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 163 (#a).
19. Edwards, Religious Affections, 2:298.
20. Jonathan Edwards, “The Mind,” in Scientific and Philosophical Writings, vol. 6 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Wallace E. Anderson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 332-38.
21. Jonathan Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits,” in Ethical Writings, vol. 8 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 132.
22. Edwards uses this text to argue for the deity of Christ, identifying “the mighty God, even Jehovah” with “the perfection of beauty.” God is altogether beautiful because of the harmony of proportion of all his attributes (The “Miscellanies,” 1153-1360, vol. 23 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Douglas A. Sweeney [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004], 615 [#1358]).
23. Jonathan Edwards, “Hypocrites Deficient in the Duty of Prayer,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Hickman Edition (1833; reprint, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 2:73.
24. Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, 16:792-94.
25. Ibid., 791.
26. Ibid., 795.
27. Jonathan Edwards, “Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in Ethical Writings, vol. 8 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 431.
28. Ibid., 435.
29. Ibid., 447.
30. Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, vol. 19 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. M. X. Lesser (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 772.
31. Ibid., 773.
32. Ibid., 778.
33. Ibid., 777-78.
34. Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, 803. Unfortunately, this sermon was excluded by the editors from the corpus of sermons covering this time period. It is found in the Second Worcester Edition of Edwards’s works (4:561-72) and the Hickman Edition, a revision of the Dwight Edition, 2:113-17.
35. Jonathan Edwards, “The Most High a Prayer-Hearing God,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Hickman Edition (1833; reprint, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 2:114.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 2:116.
39. Ibid., 2:115.
40. Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1739-1742, vol. 22 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, with Kyle P. Farley (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 215.
41. Ibid.
42. Jonathan Edwards, “God’s Manner Is First to Prepare Men’s Hearts and Then to Answer Their Prayers,” in The Glory and Honor of God: Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Michael D. McMullen (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2007), 2:86.
43. Edwards, “The Most High a Prayer-Hearing God,” 2:116.
44. Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, 785-86.
45. Ibid., 786. See also Edwards, “The Most High a Prayer-Hearing God,” 2:117; and Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, 427. “When God seems for a while to turn a deaf ear to a person’s cries, it is oftentimes only for a trial of their resolution and steadfastness in seeking, before he bestows it upon them.”
46. Edwards, “The Most High a Prayer-Hearing God,” 2:117.
47. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch with Kyle P. Farley, eds., Introduction to “Praying for the Spirit,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1739-1742, 211-12.
48. Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1739-1742, 216.
49. Ibid., 369-70.
50. Ibid., 375.
51. Jonathan Edwards, An Humble Attempt, vol. 5 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen J. Stein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 347.
52. Jonathan Edwards, The Miscellanies, 932-1152, vol. 20 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 492 (#1115).
53. Jonathan Edwards, in Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729, vol. 10, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 576.
54. Edwards, “The Terms of Prayer,” 19:786.
55. Jonathan Edwards, “Glorious Grace,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729, 399.
56. Jonathan Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, 745-46.
57. Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings, vol. 8 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 412.
58. Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, 467.
59. Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723, 639.
60. Edwards, “Hypocrites Deficient in the Duty of Prayer,” 2:73.
61. Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, 791.