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CHAPTER 2

“In Sweet Communion, Lord, with Thee”

In Psalm 73, Asaph says his faith would be overwhelmed by circumstances unless he took time to draw near to God. He wrote:

In sweet communion, Lord, with Thee,
I constantly abide;
My hand Thou holdest in Thy own
To keep me near Thy side.

To live apart from God is death,
’Tis good His face to seek;
My refuge is the living God,
His praise I long to speak.1 

Jonathan Edwards would have heartily agreed with Asaph. Edwards was part of the last generation of Puritan pastors in New England. As a scholar, a student of Christian experience, and a preacher of the gospel, Edwards rivaled or surpassed many of his seventeenth-century predecessors. As the offspring and heir of the Puritans, he also mobilized the great spiritual disciplines handed down from his spiritual forebears. Edwards recorded his personal experience of the glory of Christ in this passage from his “Personal Narrative”:

Once, as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception…which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud.2

In this chapter we will explore how Puritan pastors kept their eyes focused on the glory of the Lord through the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, and journaling. What we will discover about their devotional lives and how they may challenge us today should encourage twenty-first-century pastors to cultivate these spiritual disciplines more effectively.

The Priority of Prayer

One of the first things that might surprise today’s pastors is the amount of time Puritan pastors devoted to prayer.3 Many of them engaged in family and personal worship three times a day. John Norton (1606–1663), a colleague of John Cotton (1584–1652), described Cotton’s typical Sabbath schedule while at home:

He began his Sabbath [the previous] evening; [he] then performed family-duty after supper, being larger than ordinary in exposition, after which he catechized his children and servants, then returned to his study. The morning following, family-worship being ended, he retired into his study, until the bell called him away. Upon his return from meeting, he returned again into his study (the place of his labour and prayer) unto his private devotions; where (having a small repast carried him up for his dinner) he continued till the tolling of the bell. The public service being over, he withdrew for a space to his prementioned oratory for his sacred address unto God, as in the forenoon; then came down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a psalm, and towards bed-time betaking himself again to his study, he closed the day with prayer. Thus he spent the Sabbath continually.4

It wasn’t unusual for Puritan pastors to rise early in the morning so they could spend hours in personal devotions. John Howe eulogized Richard Fairclough as a man who would, “every day, for many years together, be up by three in the morning or sooner, and to be with God (which was his dear delight) when others slept.”5 Why did the Puritans devote themselves to prayer with such discipline and fervency?

The first reason was to cast their burdens on God. Puritan pastors unloaded their guilt and shame before the Lord but also anything else that troubled their hearts. Prayer was a means of catharsis for them. Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) wrote to Marion M’Naught in a letter dating around 1630, “I have many a grieved heart daily in my calling. I would be undone if I had not access to the King’s chamber of presence, to show him all the business. The devil rages, and is mad to see the water drawn from his own mill; but would to God we could be the Lord’s instruments to build the Son of God’s house.”6

Richard Baxter said in The Reformed Pastor that when his heart grew cold, his congregants could feel the difference:

I confess I must speak it by lamentable experience, that I publish to my flock the distempers of my own soul. When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused: and so I can often observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching they have grown cold too; and the next prayers which I have heard from them have been too like my preaching.7 

A second reason for these times of sustained prayer was to allow pastors to focus on supplication for their families and for their ministries. John Bunyan’s (1628–1688) picturesque language captures the pastor’s ongoing need to pray for God’s blessing upon his work: “Prayer is as the pitcher that fetcheth water from the brook, therewith to water the herbs: break the pitcher and it will fetch no water, and for want of water the garden withers.”8 Thomas Foxcroft elaborated on the pastor’s need for prayer by saying:

Hence it behooves ministers to be very much in the exercise of prayer. They who would become fit for and faithful in the ministry of the Word must give themselves to prayer continually. The prayer of the upright is the most likely method to procure the tongue of the learned, the diligent hand, and an able head. The more fervent and frequent one is at the throne of grace, the better prospect he has of excelling in strength, of growing mighty in the Scriptures, and being skillful in the Word of righteousness.9 

Shepard offered a sample of his prayer requests for strength and power for himself and the church in another journal entry:

In prayer I was cast down with the sight of our worthiness in this church to be utterly wasted. But the Lord filled my heart with a spirit of prayer not only to desire small things but with a holy boldness to desire great things for God’s people here and for myself, viz, that I might live to see all the breaches made up and the glory of the Lord upon us and that I might not die but live to show forth God’s glory to this and the children of the next generation. And so I arose from prayer with some confidence of answer (1) because I saw Christ put it into my heart to ask; (2) because I saw the cry of the humble (Ps. 34:18).10 

Another reason Puritan pastors made prayer and personal devotions a priority was so they might see the face of God and His glory. They shared David’s desire “to behold the beauty of the LORD” (Ps. 27:4) and to see His power and glory, “so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” (Ps. 63:2). Foxcroft described the effects of such communion with God on the minister of the Word: “To be often in the mount, having his conversation much in heaven, will admirably warm him in his work, will make his affections glow with a holy heat, and his mind sparkle with rays of glorious light, even as the face of Moses did when he had been with God in Sinai.”11

Thomas Watson, who died while in prayer, wrote about the blessing that prayer imparts to the man who prays: “A spiritual prayer is that which leaves a spiritual mood behind upon the heart. A Christian is better after prayer. He has gained more strength over sin, as a man by exercise gets strength. The heart after prayer keeps a tincture of holiness, as the vessel favours and relishes the wine that is put into it.”12 

Prayer for Puritan pastors was more than just a way to obtain gifts of grace for ministry; it was also a way to keep their hearts and minds focused upon the glory of the Lord. It was a way to put all things in proper perspective, viewing them in the light of eternity while enjoying the compelling beauty and excellence of Christ. The challenge for pastors today is to develop the kind of personal communion that the Puritans had with the Lord.

Enjoying Friendship with God

Pastors who are constantly bombarded with information and intrusions on their time and attention via cell phones, BlackBerries, the Internet, and iPods may think it’s impossible to find more time to commune with the Lord. But what is your primary calling as a pastor? Unless you are marketing spiritual novelties or religious trinkets, your business as a pastor is first and foremost to spend time with the Lord. We can be grateful to the Puritans for their examples of how to enjoy friendship with God. Thomas Goodwin (1600–1679) offered four directives for establishing and maintaining such a friendship with God:

• Take occasion to come into His presence intending to have communion with Him. This is truly friendly, for friendship is maintained and kept up by visits; and the more free and less occasioned these are by urgent business, or solemnity, or custom, the more friendly they are.

• A second way of…expressing friendship to God is this: when thou comest into His presence, be telling Him still how well thou lovest Him; labour to abound in expressions of that kind, than which (when founded in a reality in the Spirit) there is nothing more taking with the heart of any friend.

• Delight much in Him. Friendship well placed affords the highest delight.

• A fourth particular wherein the communion of friendship lies, is [the] unfolding [of] secrets [Ps. 25:14].13 

Goodwin’s list contains the four basic building blocks of having an intimate time with the Lord: purpose, praise, pleasure, and privileged communications.

Samuel Rutherford said that prayer need not always be offered in the pastor’s study or in a private prayer closet. He drew near to God on horseback. He wrote, “I have benefited by riding alone on a long journey, in giving that time to prayer…by abstinence, and giving days to God.”14 Cotton Mather (1663–1728) suggested that pastors set apart whole days for prayer and fasting:

That you may be good men, and be mightily inspired and assisted from heaven to do good, it is needful that you should be men of prayer…. In the pursuance of this intention, there appears more than a little need of it, that you should ever now and then keep whole days of prayer, in an holy retirement before the Lord; often set apart, whole days, for prayer with fasting, in secret, and perfume your studies with devotions extraordinary: and usually with a mixture of alms, to go up in the memorial before the Lord…. You may obtain, a certain afflatus [wind blowing] from Heaven upon your minds, and such an indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as will render you, grave, discreet, humble, generous, and men worthy to be greatly beloved. You may obtain those influences from above, that will dispel the enchantments, and conquer the temptations, which may else do a world of mischief in your neighborhood.15

Meditation on the Scriptures

Maintaining a consistent prayer time is an important prerequisite for intimate communion with the Lord. A right spirit and desire to be with the Lord and to delight in Him are also important if we would see the Lord of glory. The Puritans found that meditating on the words of Scripture was an effective way to keep the mind focused on God during prayer and to feed the soul for serving the Lord all day.

Today’s pastors have a plethora of devotional booklets, study Bibles, and websites to help them develop personal devotional time with the Lord. Many Puritans read published sermons and lectures for their personal benefit. Even so, the Christian today has both a duty and a need to be in the Word every day. Sadly, many pastors today are hard-pressed to find time to read the Bible and to meditate upon it in a personal way to hear God’s voice through its words. Puritan pastors, on the other hand, provided guides and other helps to assist their people in the profitable reading of the Bible. One guide was Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety, which offers directions on how to read the Bible through in a year. Another popular guide was John White’s A Way to the Tree of Life: Discoursed in Sundry Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Scriptures.16

Meditating on Scripture is a particularly helpful practice. Thomas Manton (1620–1677) defined meditation as “that duty or exercise of religion whereby the mind is applied to the serious and solemn contemplation of spiritual things, for practical uses and purposes.”17 Thomas Hooker (1586–1647) said, “Meditation is a serious intention of the mind whereby we come to search out the truth, and settle it effectually upon the heart.”18 

Without meditation on the Word, our prayers will become vague and dull and directed by the world rather than God’s Spirit. Bunyan understood that to pray we must have a vision of the throne of grace “by the sight that God gives, not by any excellency that there is in my natural understanding,” so that though we may begin in prayer with a heart that is “flat, dull, savorless, lifeless, and has no warmth in the duty,” nevertheless by God’s help “it mounts up with wings like an eagle when the throne is truly apprehended.”19 

The Puritans offered the following directives for meditating on Scripture:

1. Pray for the power to harness your mind. Focus by faith on the task of meditation. For example, use Psalm 119:18, 36–37 as a prayer: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law…. Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.”

2. Read a passage of Scripture, then select a verse or two or a particular doctrine upon which to meditate.20 

3. Memorize these verses to facilitate meditation, to strengthen faith, to help you witness to and counsel others, and to serve as a means of divine guidance.

4. Think on what you know about these verses or subjects and how you have experienced their truths by probing the book of Scripture, the book of conscience, and the book of nature.21 Develop particular applications to your own life. As Thomas Watson said, “Take every word as spoken to yourselves.”22

5. Stir up affections such as love, desire, hope, zeal, and joy to glorify God.23 Preach the truth to your own soul (Ps. 42:5; 103:1).

6. Rouse your mind to some specific duty and a holy resolve to do it by God’s grace.24 

7. Conclude with prayer, thanksgiving, and psalm-singing.25 

In meditation you may choose to focus on one verse of God’s Word or a key word in a verse. In his memoir, Edwards described how he meditated upon Matthew 18:3: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” He used his imagination to visualize himself as a little child: “It has often appeared to me delightful, to be united to Christ; to have him for my head, and to be a member of his body; also to have Christ for my teacher and prophet. I very often think with sweetness, and longings, and pantings of soul, of being a little child, taking hold of Christ, to be led by him through the wilderness of this world.”26 

Bible study should be mingled with meditation and prayer. The Puritans prayed for the Spirit’s illumination when they studied the Scriptures, whether for personal devotion or sermon preparation. When John Cotton was in his study, “he neither sat down unto, nor arose from his meditations without prayer: whilst his eyes were upon his book, his expectation was from God. He had learned to study, because he had learned to pray.”27 Cotton Mather suggested that the time of sermon preparation can be a spiritual experience that rivals (but does not replace) a time or day of prayer, if it is mingled with prayer:

And, what if while you are studying your sermons, you should at the close of every paragraph, make a pause, and endeavor with acknowledgements and [brief prayers] to Heaven, and with self-examinations, to feel some impressions of the truths in that paragraph on your own souls, before you go any further? By such a practice, the hours which you take, to make and write a sermon, will prove so many hours of devotion with you. The day in which you have made a sermon will even leave upon your mind, such a savor as a day of prayer uses to do.28 

Manton wrote, “Faith is lean and ready to starve unless it be fed with continual meditation on the promises.”29 The Puritans did not want to approach subjects such as the Trinity, Christology, or Scripture from a purely scholastic or intellectual light. They wanted to see the God of the Trinity, not just with the thoughts of the mind but in union with the heart. In conclusion, Thomas Shepard said, “I have seen a God by reason and never been amazed at God. I have seen God himself and have been ravished to behold him.”30 

Journaling: Crystallizing the Present for the Future

The third tool the Puritans used to keep their minds focused upon the Lord, both in daily devotional times and times of discouragement, was journaling or keeping a personal diary. Puritans such as Thomas Shepard and Cotton Mather were prolific journal writers. Some diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies were written by Puritan pastors, often just before they died, as a legacy for future generations.

Journaling was encouraged by the Puritans for several reasons. The first reason was self-examination. The Puritans were concerned about the condition of their own souls so they would record their personal failings and besetting sins. But they didn’t catalog their sins merely to create shame and guilt; rather, they did so to memorialize the grace and mercy of God shown to them as sinners. It was the ongoing testimony of God’s mercy in Christ that awakened in them a greater desire to walk in close fellowship with the Lord. Baxter exhorted his fellow pastors with these words:

O, Brethren, watch therefore over your own hearts; keep out lusts and passions and worldly inclinations; keep up the life of faith and love and zeal; be much at home, and be much with God. If it be not your daily business to study your own hearts, and to subdue corruption, and to walk with God—if you make not this a work to which you constantly attend, all will go wrong, and you will starve your hearers; or, if you have an affected fervency, you cannot expect a blessing to attend it from on high.31

A second reason the Puritans encouraged journal writing was to record the ordinary and extraordinary instances of God’s grace and mercy in day-to-day life. Increase Mather (1639–1723) kept a journal from the time he was a young man traveling in Europe until his death. One result of his constant journaling was the book he wrote titled Remarkable Providences in Colonial New England. Mather encouraged all pastors to record and publish “illustrious” examples of God’s providences to strengthen the faith of ministers and to encourage their posterity.32 The Puritans found it “angelic” to study the works of God both in nature and in the life of the church. Flavel wrote, “Give me leave to say, it is an angelic employment to stand upon it, and behold the consent of God’s attributes, the accomplishment of his ends, and our own happiness in the works of providence. For this is the very joy of the angels and saints in heaven, to see God’s ends wrought out, and his attributes glorified in the mercy and peace of the church (Rev. 14:1–3, 8).”33

Third, Puritan pastors also wrote journals to provide direction for life. Recording daily events and answers to prayer were helpful for determining God’s specific will for their lives. These pastors were also conscientious about time and the wise use of it, heeding Paul’s admonition in Ephesians 5:16, to be ever “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” The Puritans lived each day in the light of Christ’s return and the day of judgment. Recording daily events kept them accountable for their use of time and encouraged them to be faithful and diligent in their calling.

Finally, journaling also helped keep the memory of spiritual experiences with the Lord fresh and vivid. These records were constant reminders of how richly they had experienced the loving-kindness of the Lord. Some Puritans wrote poetry in their journals to recall their intimate experiences with the Lord. When these authors died, many of these diary entries and poems were destroyed because of their personal nature. Thankfully, the journals of Cotton Mather and Thomas Shepard survived. We will finish this chapter citing a diary entry from both men. The first is from Cotton Mather, who wrote about what he experienced at the end of a long day of public ministry of the Word:

This day after my public labours, retiring into my study, at the evening, I there cast myself prostrate in the dust, on my floor before the Lord. And there, a wonderful thought with an heavenly force, came into my mind; that God loved my Lord Jesus Christ infinitely, and had given worlds unto him, and made him the Lord of all; and that I had, thro’ the efficacy of his grace upon me, my heart exceedingly set upon the glorifying of my Lord Jesus Christ and was entirely devoted unto him. Hereupon, an unutterable joy fill’d my mind, from assurance, that God, for the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ, had great things to do for me; that he would even delight in me, and delight in using me, and use me in eminent services for Him, who is dearer to me, than all things.34 

The second diary entry is from Thomas Shepard:

Sept. 5. I was on Sabbath day night secretly swelling against God, that he did not bless my ministry. But then remembering my sins, how I deserved death eternally, I was soon quieted; and I blessed God exceedingly for my life, and that the Lord was not yet gone out hearing but that I might come to him privately, and in extraordinary duties, and pray. So I prayed earnestly for favor and love of Christ, and God in Christ and for a multitude of mercies. And I prayed so long, until my heart was made suitable unto mercy; so as I prized nothing else but God’s favor, so as my heart did find rest there, and was quiet with it, and did rest on it, and with it. For I considered, the heart of all ungodly men is ravished and runs out to creatures, and finds rest there only. And so I fell to blessing God, and praying for the fruits of God’s reconciled love; and among other things to bless my ministry. And in doing this a desire came in, viz., that the Lord would not bless my words, but his own word, because it is his own. Because I am sure he will bless his own children, and make them blessings; so I was sure the Lord would bless his own word, because it is his own.35 

If you would experience the same kind of encouragement in your own life and work, turn to God in prayer, meditate on God’s Word, and keep a journal, recording accounts of the Lord’s faithful dealings. By grace, you, too, will experience the sweetness of communion with the living God (Ps. 73:23–28).

1. The Psalter (1912), no. 203, stanzas 1, 5.

2. Jonathan Edwards, “Personal Narrative,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Sereno E. Dwight (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1865), 1:lxxxix.

3. For more on the Puritans and prayer, see Joel R. Beeke and Brian G. Najapfour, eds., Taking Hold of God: Reformed and Puritan Perspectives on Prayer (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011).

4. John Norton, Abel Being Dead, Yet Speaketh (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1978), 27.

5. John Howe, “A Funeral Service for Mr. Richard Fairclough,” in Works, 3:408.

6. Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2006), 17.

7. Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, 100.

8. John Bunyan, The Riches of Bunyan, ed. Jeremiah Chaplin (New York: American Tract Society, 1851), 309.

9. Foxcroft, The Gospel Ministry, 62.

10. Shepard, Works, 3:87.

11. Foxcroft, The Gospel Ministry, 62.

12. Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, 93.

13. Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006), 7:198–202.

14. Rutherford, Letters, 73.

15. Cotton Mather, Bonifacius: An Essay upon the Good (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 70–71.

16. Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 159.

17. Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton (London: James Nisbet, 1874), 17:270.

18. Thomas Hooker, The Application of Redemption by the Effectual Work of the Word, and Spirit of Christ, for the bringing home of lost Sinners to God. The Ninth and Tenth Books (London: Peter Cole, 1657), 210.

19. Bunyan, Riches of Bunyan, 305–6.

20. For a list of profitable subjects for meditation, see Stephen Charnock, The Works of Stephen Charnock (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1865), 5:307.

21. George Swinnock, The Works of George Swinnock (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 2:417.

22. Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in Heaven Taken by Storm, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1992), 113–29.

23. Richard Baxter, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (Ross-shire, U.K.: Christian Focus, 1998), 579–90, and Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (London: Banner of Truth, 1959), 24.

24. William Bates, The Works of the Rev. W. Bates D.D. (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle, 1990), 3:145, and Thomas White, A Method and Instructions for the Art of Divine Meditation (London: for Tho. Parkhurst, 1672), 53.

25. See Nathanael Ranew, Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation, or A Treatise Proving the Duty, and Demonstrating the Necessity, Excellency, Usefulness, Natures, Kinds, and Requisites of Divine Meditation (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995). For a fuller treatment of Puritan meditation, see Simon Chan, “The Puritan Meditative Tradition, 1599–1691: A Study in Asceticality” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1986); Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2006), 73–100.

26. Edwards, Works, 1:lxxxix.

27. Norton, Abel Being Dead, Yet Speaketh, 27.

28. Mather, Bonifacius, 72.

29. Manton, Works, 17:270.

30. Shepard, Works, 3:103.

31. Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, 101.

32. “In order to the promoting of a design of this nature, so as shall be indeed for God’s glory and the good of posterity, it is necessary that utmost care shall be taken that all and only remarkable providences be recorded and published. Such divine judgements, tempests, floods, earthquakes, thunders as are unusual, strange apparitions, or whatever else shall happen that is prodigious…remarkable judgments upon noted sinners, eminent deliverances, and answers of prayer, are to be reckoned among illustrious providences…. Inasmuch as we find in scripture, as well as in ecclesiastical history, that the ministers of God have been improved in the recording and declaring the works of the Lord, and since they are in divers respects under peculiar advantages thereunto, it is proposed, that each one in that capacity may diligently enquire into and record such illustrious providences as have happened…. Although it be true that this design cannot be brought unto perfection in one or two years, yet it is much to be desired that something may be done therein out of hand, as a specimen of a more large volume, that so this work may be set on foot, and posterity may be encouraged to go on therewith.” Increase Mather, Remarkable Providences (London: John Russell Smith, 1856), preface [n.p.].

33. John Flavel, “The Mystery of Providence,” in The Whole Works of the Rev. Mr. John Flavel (London: W. Baynes and Son, 1820), 5:440.

34. Cotton Mather, Diary (New York: F. Ungar, 1957), 1:255.

35. Shepard, Works, 424.