With Christ in the School of Prayer

There are classes you take and soon forget. Then there are classes that somehow become part of you.

With Christ in the School of Prayer was an elective I took in Bible College. The title came from the book by Andrew Murray, but when I look back now, I realize we were learning far more than the contents of a book.

Our professor was Laura Belle Barnard, a pioneer Free Will Baptist missionary to India. We studied Andrew Murray, George Müller, and John Hyde—“Praying Hyde.” We learned about the different expressions of prayer: adoration, intercession, supplication, thanksgiving, confession, and others.

But Miss Barnard didn’t just teach us about prayer.

She prayed.

There were times when prayer consumed the entire class period. There were tears. There was fervency. And there was silence.

She knew how to pray.

I don’t know how else to describe it except to say that sometimes when we walked out of that classroom, we felt as though we had been in the presence of God.

Miss Barnard also told us stories from her years in India. She spoke about opposition and experiences she understood as encounters with evil spirits. She told us about the challenges of being a woman serving in a country where women were not ordinarily permitted to teach or preach. There was another tension as well. She served within a denomination that itself placed limitations upon women in ministry.

And yet there she stood in front of us.

A missionary.

A teacher.

A preacher.

And a prayer warrior.

Maybe some things cannot be contained by the boundaries we human beings construct.

I have never forgotten that class, and I have never forgotten Laura Belle Barnard.

Years have passed since I sat in that classroom. My understanding of God, Scripture, prayer, the Church, and even myself has changed considerably along the way. Yet recently, while reading The Way of a Pilgrim, I have found myself thinking about that classroom again.

The pilgrim is searching for the meaning of Paul’s words, “Pray without ceasing.”

He learns the Jesus Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

And suddenly I find myself back in Miss Barnard’s classroom.

Andrew Murray taught me about learning to pray.

George Müller taught me something about trusting God and continuing to pray when an answer seemed a long time coming.

Praying Hyde taught me about intercession.

But Laura Belle Barnard showed me something that couldn’t quite be learned from a textbook.

She showed me what a life of prayer could look like.

Perhaps I didn’t understand everything I was seeing then. Maybe we seldom do while we are living through the experiences that eventually shape us.

But I remember the tears.

I remember the fervency.

I remember the silence.

And I remember walking out of that classroom believing that somehow we had been in God’s presence.

Perhaps I am still enrolled in that school.

With Christ in the School of Prayer.