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©2010 Ken Miller Christ Chapel Bible Church, Fort Worth, TX 76107

  

  

      

WEEK ELEVEN – Action Plan #5: Prayer – Part 1

• A View From Below For most of us, there is a huge gap between prayer in theory and prayer in practice

“The one thing we most urgently need in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God. We need to know God better. One of the foundational steps in knowing God, and one of the basic demonstrations that we do know God, is prayer – spiritual, persistent, biblically minded prayer.” – D.A. Carson

- We have a warped perspective - For most of us prayer is about US - We pray from our point of view - We think God exists to answer our requests - We take passages out of context: You do not have because you do not ask. – James 42 NASB

If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. – Matthew 21:22 NLT

You havenʼt done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy. – John 16:24 NLT

Keep on asking, and you will be given what you

ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened. – Matthew 7:7 NLT

- Is there anything wrong with asking? NO! - But is asking the extent of our praying? - Is getting from God all we really want of God?

 ©2010 Ken Miller Christ Chapel Bible Church, Fort Worth, TX 76107

“…when I have the guts to come clean, to be entirely honest, what I really want, more than anything, is to be in control. I want God to move at the pace I set. I much prefer prayer to be like driving through the pickup lane at a fast-food restaurant. I want to place my order, drive around to the window, and pick up whatever Iʼm in the mood for at that moment. I want to be handed, in a convenient package, exactly what I ordered.” – Fil Anderson, Running On Empty

- Prayer is not about getting from God - Prayer is about getting to know God - A relationship built on nothing more than getting is

little more than prostitution - A relationship built on knowing and being known is

the essence of prayer • A View From Above

So we have continued praying for you ever since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you a complete understanding of what he wants to do in your lives, and we ask him to make you wise with spiritual wisdom. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and you will continually do good, kind things for others. All the while, you will learn to know God better and better. We also pray that you will be strengthened with his glorious power so that you will have all the patience and endurance you need. May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father, who has enabled you to share the inheritance that belongs to Godʼs holy people, who live in the light. – Colossians 1:9-12 NLT - Prayer is one of the primary ways we can come to

know God - But we must learn to listen - We must slow down long enough to hear

“Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the

earth.” – Psalms 46:10 NASB - The Latin imperative for “cease striving” or “be still”

is vaco

vaco -are – to be free from anything, be without; to be free from work, be at leisure]; with dat. [to have time for]

vacatio -onis f. – freedom , immunity, exemption

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 ©2010 Ken Miller Christ Chapel Bible Church, Fort Worth, TX 76107

“God wants us to take a holiday (vacation) to stop being god for a while, and let Him be God. God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing all those important things we have to do in our capacity as god, and leave it to Him to be God.” – Simon Tugwell

- Prayer is a time to be still, to vacation, to find

freedom from our relentless pursuit of self-rule

“Prayer is an expression of who we are…we are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.” – Thomas Merton

As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and stand before him? – Psalms 42:1-2 NLT

O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water. – Psalms 63:1 NLT I remember the days of old. I ponder all your great works. I think about what you have done. I reach out for you. I thirst for you as parched land thirsts for rain. – Psalm 143:5-6 NLT - A thirst for God - Do you have it? - Or do you thirst for what you can get from God? - Is He enough or do you need more? - We tend to pray out of need, not desire

“I had spent most of my life thinking of prayer as an intellectual exercise, a practice of speaking to or thinking about God rather than being with God. This is the traditional evangelical view – approaching prayer as a rationalistic exercise. It led to untold sessions of empty and meaningless monologue. I would say my prayers and then hurry to the next item on my agenda, never giving God a change to reply. Back then, prayer was a soapbox that afforded me an opportunity to get some things off my chest with God as my captive audience. But I completely missed the rich opportunity to listen for Godʼs voice, which was far more important than my self-serving laundry lists of requests and complaints. I shamelessly disregarded the wisdom

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of many of the saints who understood that listening, rather than speaking to God, is the ultimate act of my reasoning and will. Why do we so highly regard our own deepest thoughts and feelings and so casually disregard Godʼs?” – Fil Anderson, Running On Empty

- Learning to see from Godʼs perspective - We tend to view the world through our eyes - We have an earthly, temporal perspective - We canʼt see what God sees Elisha – 2 Kings 6 - The king of Aram is raiding the land of Israel - Elisha, the prophet, is warning the king of Israel

about their actions before they take them - The king of Aram sent troops to capture Elisha - Elishaʼs servant wakes up to some disturbing

news:

When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. "Ah, my lord, what will we do now?" he cried out to Elisha. – 2 Kings 6:15 NLT

- Elisha responds calmly "Donʼt be afraid! For there are more on our side than on theirs!" – 2 Kings 6:16 NLT - Then he prayed: "O LORD, open his eyes and let him see!" The LORD opened his servantʼs eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.” – 2 Kings 6:17 NLT - This man had his eyes opened! - He was given a divine perspective - What A. W. Tozer calls the “gaze of the soul” - He saw reality for the very first time - He gained a whole new outlook on life • In the presence of God - Prayer helps correct myopia (nearsightedness) - It brings us into the presence of God - It calls to mind a perspective I daily forget - It reminds me that God is God, and not me

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers––the moon and the stars you have set in place – what are mortals that you should think of us, mere

 ©2010 Ken Miller Christ Chapel Bible Church, Fort Worth, TX 76107

humans that you should care for us? For you made us only a little lower than God, and you crowned us with glory and honor. You put us in charge of everything you made, giving us authority over all things––the sheep and the cattle and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents. O LORD, our Lord, the majesty of your name fills the earth! – Psalms 8:3-9 NLT

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©2010 Ken Miller Christ Chapel Bible Church  

      There is no action more lacking in the lives of believers than the one we will cover this week. No, itʼs not tithing, serving, worshiping, or reading the Bible. Itʼs prayer. It is the one action that should characterize the life of every Christ-follower. But we have turned prayer into a periodic, needs-driven, powerless activity that has little resemblance to the prayer lives of the New Testament saints. So whatʼs wrong? Whatʼs missing? Why donʼt we pray more? Why do we fear prayer and, at times, avoid it at all costs? Those are just a few of the questions we hope to wrestle with as we discuss this important topic. So my prayer is that we will all come open-minded and ready to hear what God may have to say to about this area of our lives.

1. READ PART FOUR OF “THE ME I WANT TO BE” BY JOHN ORTBERG I never cease to be amazed at Godʼs timing. I had no idea we would be covering prayer at this particular time in the series, and I had not even heard of John Ortbergʼs new book when planning this series. But it just so happens that the week we start on the topic of prayer, the section we will be reading in this book is called “Redeeming My Time” and contains a chapter called, “Let Your Talking Flow Into Praying.” Coincidence? Probably not.

2. FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

We have a number of really good articles this week. Spend some time reading through each of them. • Learning the Ancient Rhythms of Prayer by Paul Boers • The Rise and Fall of the Daily Office by Paul Boers • Prayer by A. W. Tozer • Prayer and the Gospel by Dr. Tim Keller • The Art or Prayer by Matt Chandler 3. MEDITATE ON THE LORDʼS PRAYER Read Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4. Spend some time thinking about this prayer given to us by the Lord Himself. Think about its content. What does He encourage us to pray for? What is missing from the prayer? How is it similar or different from the way you normally pray? Allow God to speak to you regarding your own prayer life. Personalize this prayer. Make it your own.

4. LISTEN TO OUR RESOURCE CDs This week we have two CDs for you to listen to. One is by Matt Chandler and the other by Mark Driscoll. Both will challenge you. 5. JOIN US ON THE QUEST We are in the book of Exodus. For a reading schedule go online to: http://www.ccbcfamily.org/ministries/quest/ot-scriptures

WEEK 11

©2010 Ken Miller Christ Chapel Bible Church  

Learning the Ancient Rhythms of Prayer Why charismatics and evangelicals, among others, are flocking to communities famous for set prayers and worshiping by the clock Paul Boers The place was overcrowded and noisy, and the food was unimpressive. Meals and meetings were held outside or in tents, depending on the weather. Visitors slept (and many snored loudly) in tents and overcrowded barracks. One had to stand in long lines (often up to 30 minutes) for everything, especially food. It hardly seemed like a setting for meaningful prayer, but my visit to Taizé turned out to be one of the most spiritually meaningful weeks of my life. And not just for me. During the hot July week when I visited, Taizé welcomed more than 4,500 pilgrims, mostly young adults, from many denominations and from 60 nations (including a thousand from Eastern Europe). Summer weeks typically see between 2,500 and 6,000 visitors, with a total of 100,000 each year—although Taizé is off the beaten path (in France’s Burgundy region, midway between Lyons and Geneva). What attracts so many to this place? When George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, brought 1,000 youth in 1992, he was struck at how evangelicals, Catholics, and charismatics all felt at home. But the primary reason people flock to Taizé is the prayer and worship. “When you ask at the end of a week what they most appreciated. … seven, eight, nine times out of ten they’ll say it’s prayer, that they found something there,” says Taizé Brother Jean-Marie, a native New Yorker. Yet it’s a unique form of prayer that attracts; Taizé leaders call it “common prayer” and other Christian leaders call it the “the daily office,” from the Latin officium meaning “duty” or “responsibility.” This type of prayer brings people of all Christian traditions not only to France but also to increasingly popular prayer communities in England and Scotland, communities that structure their life together around the daily office. I recently had the opportunity to visit such communities at Lindisfarne, Iona, Taizé, and Northumbria, and I discovered that people of all denominations and no denomination have a continuing and lively interest in a Christianity that relies on the ancient tradition of common prayer. Chant phenomenon The term daily office refers to a variety of services of set prayers and readings that are said together through the day; in some places, this can add up to seven services a day. It is also variously called the liturgy of the hours, morning and evening prayer, or common prayer. As a practice it goes back not only to the early church but even to the Old Testament.

This pre-Reformation form of spirituality is now attracting attention in many quarters, including publishing houses. Note especially the unexpected success of Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk (Riverhead, 1996) and of the recording Chant by cloistered Benedictine monks in Spain. Intriguing literary variations on the office crowd bookstore shelves: Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy have translated Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetic Book of Hours (Riverhead, 1996) and Phil Cousineau has edited a contemplative book called The Soul Aflame: A Modern Book of Hours (Raincoast Books, 2000). Bestselling author Gail Godwin’s novel about an Episcopal priest not only reflects regularly on the office but also refers to it in the title, Evensong (Ballantine, 1999). Suzanne Guthrie reflects on the office in Praying the Hours (Cowley, 2000). Even my own Mennonite tradition is republishing old prayer books in spiffy volumes: Prayer Book for Earnest Christians (Herald, 1997) and Golden Apples in Silver Bowls (Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, 1999), both edited by Leonard Gross. More than half a dozen noteworthy office books have been published within the last year alone, including Robert Benson’s Venite: A Book of Daily Prayer (Tarcher/Putnam, 2000) and Robert Webber’s The Prymer: The Prayer Book of the Medieval Era Adapted for Contemporary Use (Paraclete, 2000). Of all the new books, the most noteworthy is a three-volume office, The Divine Hours, edited by Phyllis Tickle (Doubleday, 2000). I understand the attraction. As a pastor and Christian, I have been especially concerned about the inadequacy of most Christian prayer for a culture in which many are formed by a weekly average of 28 hours of television. Too often, people who pray do so only briefly, without discipline or organization. They pray “on the fly,” winging phrases toward God while commuting, or squeezing in an occasional devotional. Such prayers are ad hoc and self-directed: made up along the way, according to mood, and not paying attention to the Christian year. Rather than having help, support, or direction from others with maturity or experience, many Christians decide on their own what to do. As a result, they find themselves increasingly disconnected and isolated from other believers. They are subjective; guided by their feelings of the moment, they freely abandon prayer modes (confession, praise, intercession). In the end, these Christians find themselves increasingly disconnected from God. This is part of my own prayer biography. In adolescence, I was reasonably disciplined in prayer until my sister, my only sibling, died of leukemia at age 17. This set off a huge faith crisis. At times I had nothing to say to God or did not know how to voice my prayers. About two decades ago, on a whim, I bought a discontinued book by a famous Catholic priest. As a convinced evangelical Anabaptist, I was skeptical. But I was also curious. As it turned out, this book became the starting point in my recovery of a fuller prayer life through the daily office.

I’ve not been alone in this discovery, as my visits to a number of prayer communities quickly showed. “The holiest place in all of England” My first stop was the island of Lindisfarne (locals prefer “Holy Isle”). Its small village includes several churches and three retreat houses—Lindisfarne is possibly one of the few places in Great Britain where retreat houses almost equal the number of pubs. Lindisfarne has been an important pilgrimage destination for centuries. From it sprang much of the early evangelization of England. Numerous Celtic Christian saints are associated with it, as is the gloriously illustrated Celtic manuscript, the eighth-century Lindisfarne Gospels. Alcuin, the medieval scholar and archbishop, once told Charlemagne it was “the holiest place in all of England.” Today 140,000 people visit St. Mary Virgin Church (now Anglican) each year. As the island’s oldest building, its architecture reflects Saxon and Norman influences, parts of it preceding the 12th century. Behind it lie the ruins of an 11th-century Benedictine monastery. St. Mary’s also attracts visitors because its pastor, David Adam, is the popular author of more than a dozen books of Celtic Christian poem-prayers, including an office, The Rhythm of Life (Morehouse, 1996), which Adam wrote because so many people, including Anglicans, are unfamiliar with the office. Its short prayers and Scriptures can be memorized quickly, so those who use it can be nourished at all times and places. This office is getting around. Anglicans in the South American Andes are translating it into Spanish. Non-Anglicans elsewhere also use it, including a U.S. Navajo group and a group of Lapps in northern Finland. Adam says an office is like lined paper: “If you haven’t got lines on the paper, you can’t achieve much by yourself,” he says. “That is true of most people: if they’re left without an office, without prayers they learn and recite, they tend to pray very little.” The office helps us pray when prayer is hard. He says that during spiritually dry or discouraging periods, “you’ve actually got this resource within you which you can call on. Even if you may have to say it quite coolly, you can still say it. I compare it to my wife’s cooking: even when she’s not that fond of me, she still cooks for me.” Regarding the modern aversion to repetition, he says, “It’s really hard to get people to see that what you’re dealing with is something of tremendous depth, and the words are just plumbing the depth. It’s. … like turning a drill. It might appear boring, but the more you are turning the deeper you get. It’s literally boring. But if you only turn it once you don’t get very far. “I suppose most folks who don’t like repetition never say ‘I love you’ to their wife more than once in their life,” Adam says, laughing.

But Adam recognizes obstacles: “Offices were written for people who had a more leisurely start to their day. Nowadays most people set an alarm, jump up, and travel miles and are in a hurry. The office says. … ‘Slow down, take your time. Make some space.’“ Another problem is finding times and places to meet with others. The office requires community: “Any office by yourself for long is difficult. Even if you share the office once or twice a week, you can manage it the rest of the time by yourself—as long as you have this sharing,” Adam says. Adam has a pastoral and missionary concern for island neighbors and the visitors who come from all over the world. He meets many and offers counsel, support, and advice. Adam’s ministry confirmed something I saw in each community: people are drawn to prayer and a community rooted in the office. Prayer echoing off stone walls Iona is a small Hebridean island off Scotland’s west coast. Columba, an Irish monk, landed there in the sixth century, setting up a monastery that evangelized much of Scotland, England, and Europe. A burial place of many Irish and Scottish kings, the monastery is known for a beautifully illustrated Celtic manuscript, The Book of Kells. The sense of history is reinforced by the ancient gravestones and standing stone crosses (one is more than 1,000 years old) found on the island. Samuel Johnson once wrote that a person “is little to be envied whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.” It is a stunning place with stark hills, huge boulders, snow-white beaches, and many-hued waters. In the 1930s, Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) clergyman George MacLeod gathered seminary students and tradesmen to rebuild the ruined medieval Abbey. This project, which was designed to help ministers understand working folk and to train working folk in theology, was the beginning of Iona Community. Now with more than 200 members from many denominations, and growing steadily, the community has a strong commitment to peace and justice and is known for its worship resources. Its island conference centers are so popular that reservations must be made months in advance. The abbey sees more than 100,000 tourists per year (sometimes up to 1,200 a day). This is especially impressive since it is no mean feat to get there: from Glasgow, one must take a train, two ferries, and a bus that crosses the Isle of Mull on a one-lane road. People joke that it is easier and quicker to get to Spain. I stayed a week at the abbey. Guests, staff, and volunteers from around the world represented many denominations. In addition to daily morning and evening prayers, there was strong emphasis on community and chore-sharing. (Each day I proceeded from morning prayers to clean toilets while humming hymns.) Worship and work are integrated. Morning worship never ends with a benediction—as work is part of worship—and the evening service never begins with a call to worship, since it is an extension of work.

Worship was lively and inspiring. We said the Lord’s Prayer rhythmically, phrase by phrase, each line echoing against the stone walls like the waves beating on rocks a few hundred feet away. Our singing included praise choruses, hymns, African-American spirituals, monastic chants, and international Christian music—all with the magnificent acoustics of the rebuilt medieval church. Iona encouraged prayer in many ways. The main church has a special corner for intercession and healing, and Iona offers a healing service once a week. The abbey had other chapels dedicated to prayer. In the main church, a little shrine calls to mind “all victims of violence in the world and those who stand with them.” One transept, behind a screen donated by Queen Elizabeth, is filled with displays about a host of social and political movements, including human rights (Amnesty International), international debt relief (Jubilee 2000), and opposition to land mines. Iona believes that worship needs to be incarnational, engaged with daily life, and historical, rooted in Christian traditions. Daily prayer—even if not in a shared space—is important for holding the dispersed community together. “Whatever our mood, whatever our circumstances, there’s a given,” says Norman Shanks, Iona’s leader. “If you like, it is a gift.” That gift gradually transforms Christians, he adds, helping us at all times to be still, silent, and open to God and others. Brian Woodcock, a United Reformed pastor and Iona’s warden (administrator), is concerned for those with little church connection and finds it important to emphasize the Bible in every service. Youth often comment that the services are not “boring” like some church worship. Often people who do react to the repetitiveness early in the week welcome the rhythm by week’s end. A perennial problem for retreat places is that “mountaintop experiences” do not connect with life. Woodcock says worship needs to help people remember that “if we come away in order to find God, in the end it isn’t God that we’re finding.” Withdrawal must always have the purpose of changing our perspective and helping us engage where we live, work, and minister. Several times I heard a wry quote: “People come seeking peace and quiet, and we try to send them away seeking peace and justice.” Shanks said that Iona involves “renewing, reconciling, living, and exporting the gospel in engagement, not withdrawing to the margins of a ghetto or a supposedly peaceful place.” As visitors are told before afternoon prayers: “The gospel commands us to seek peace founded on justice.” The most difficult thing about prayer is its challenge. “If one takes the actual words quite seriously, some of it is quite hard,” Shanks says. “The God reflected is a God whose love is compassionate and steadfast but also tough. The morning office promises, ‘We will not offer to God offerings that cost us nothing.’“ Refugee camp around a church

At Taizé, the only impressive building is the church. A Methodist minister told me that Taizé looks “like a refugee camp built around a church.” (“Refugee camp” is appropriate since it seems that people came to Taizé seeking refuge from a secular and materialist culture.) For one older woman, the camping, food lines, and crowds brought flashbacks of her internment in a World War II concentration camp. Each day is organized around three worship services—morning, noon, and evening—each lasting an hour. People sit or kneel in a darkened room, facing ceiling-to-floor banners, hundreds of flickering candles, and icons. Music is led by an unseen song leader and a volunteer choir. Each service is a series of Taizé chants, short Bible readings (especially Psalms and Gospel readings), prayers (translated into four to six languages), and a prolonged silence of five to ten minutes (no mean feat with thousands of youth). This is a far cry from the beachball pyrotechnics at our denominational youth events. The emphasis is on simplicity (especially necessary given different language groups and church traditions) and evoking mystery and reverence. The singing was so beautiful that for the first time in my life I was attracted to the idea of singing in heaven for all eternity. When the evening service ended at 9:20, many opted to sing and pray for hours more, often past midnight. People still lingered at 1:30 a.m. after the weekly Friday-night vigil. In addition, the day includes hour-long Bible studies (also translated into many languages), chores, and common labor—not your typical holiday jaunt. Many people return year after year. Months after my visit, some of those who have kept in touch with me continue to speak about how the week was a turning point and marked a deeper commitment to prayerful service. Roger Schutz-Marsauche (now Brother Roger) founded Taizé during World War II. Coming out of a Reformed background, he hoped to create a small, prayerful community to reconcile Christians. As more and more visitors came, the brothers responded to the spiritual hunger. In response to the influx of youth, the community simplified its traditional monastic worship, using short texts, prayers, and repetitive chants. Of all the communities I visited, Taizé is the most radical in its willingness to revise its daily office; indeed, Taizé leaders no longer use the term office and prefer common prayer. “The concern. … is that people can understand something of the Christian mystery,” says Brother Emile. “I’ve often thought about a professor who spoke about how he had changed. He said, ‘I used to teach with the conviction that if my students didn’t understand what I was saying, they would come and ask questions. Now I see that’s not how it is. No, if they don’t understand, they go away.’ He says, ‘It’s when they do understand something they start to ask questions.’ “That’s one of the concerns here,” Brother Emile says, “that people can quite quickly understand something of what’s at the heart of the Christian mystery. If they understand

that, then they’ll want to go further, start to ask questions: How can I deepen the faith? How can I get to know the Scripture more? That has guided a lot of what we do here.” Where the great streams converge The least famous place I visited was where I felt most at home, at the Northumbrian Community. Its symbolic center is Hetton Hall, an old, rambling house in remote, rural northern England, built around an 13th-century tower. The publishing giant Harper got hold of Northumbria’s office several years ago, and sought permission to publish it. Celtic Daily Prayer (Harper, 1994) has sold well and people have come from as far away as Tasmania and Russia to visit because of it. Northumbria is surprised at the wide response. While I was there, middle-aged and elderly women were attending an art retreat led by “Christian Goths.” Recent guests and volunteers include people from the United States, Canada, France, and Australia. The community property includes a prayer chapel and two poustinias (outdoor prayer cells). The community prays together four times daily: morning, noon, evening, and before going to bed. Singing includes hymns and choruses. The services have a set structure but include times for spontaneous sharing and intercessions. Conversations included references to Youth With a Mission, Youth for Christ, Baptist churches, the Vineyard movement, spiritual warfare, and Spring Harvest (a major annual evangelical festival). At the same time, there are icons everywhere and crossing oneself is a regular part of prayer. The community is enriched by all Christian traditions. Richard Foster “believes our community is a living embodiment of his book, Streams of Living Water,” says Trevor Miller, one of the community’s two leaders. Members spoke of their “new monasticism.” Like the other communities, they feel a call to minister to those who feel estranged from the established church. Northumbria members put strong emphasis on intercession. I was a beneficiary. While at Northumbria, I learned that a good friend in Canada—a 45-year old husband, father, and psychiatrist—had been hit by a car and was on life support. Community members prayed for him, his family, and me. A middle-aged mother of teenagers said she appreciated the emphasis on “grace and struggle” since “triumphant and victorious living” rhetoric was no longer helpful for her. A Baptist member found liturgical worship foreign, but saw that it affirmed God’s presence in new ways and involved “other truths I need to hear.” She appreciated the connection with other Christian traditions. David Ward, a charismatic evangelical pastor, wrote for a Northumbria newsletter about his discovery that the daily office gives more depth to his prayer life and functions as a school of prayer. Community member Rob Brown told me that even nonliturgical people find “anchors” in the office: “For people in deep struggles, to have something that happens every day at the

same time, it’s like a skeleton that keeps them from falling to pieces.” Ceaseless praise The daily office is not easy and it will not solve all problems. As Brother Emile says, “No matter how beautiful a prayer is, there’s always going to be a need for perseverance, for commitment, for being faithful. There will be times when we don’t feel the beauty. Then we pray the question rather than what we feel.” But even and especially then, Emile notes, we need to pray together: “People are not going to be able to persevere alone in personal prayer. In regular common prayer, you join together and take your part. Discouragement is too easy today. But in common prayer you support one another. We are never all at the same place. … This week I support you and next week I need your support.” The point is not a new works righteousness or meaningless formality. Rather, this practice can provide a way of prayer that will help some—perhaps many—pray. St. Benedict wrote of singing Psalms “in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices.” The daily office can integrate life and prayer in just this way. Or, to paraphrase a great old hymn, this might just be the way for God to “take our moments and our days; [and to] let them flow in ceaseless praise.” Arthur Paul Boers is pastor of the Bloomingdale (Ontario) Mennonite Church. His latest book is Never Call Them Jerks: Healthy Responses to Difficult Behavior (Alban). His research was made possible in part by a grant from the Louisville Institute (a Lilly Endowment program) Reprinted from ChristianityToday.com  

The Rise and Fall of the Daily Office Structured daily prayers can be traced back to the times of David and Daniel Paul Boers The practice of daily, set prayer goes back to the Old Testament. The Psalms speak of prayer in the morning (5:3), early hours (130:6), evening (141:2), and day and night (92:2). Psalm 119:164a says, “Seven times a day I praise you.” Scripture also mentions thrice-daily prayers (Ps. 55:17, Dan. 6:10). Jews said the Shema (a Scripture-based prayer praising God’s greatness) two or three times a day. Emulating Jewish prayer, early Christians prayed often. The Gospels and Acts report that Jesus and the disciples prayed alone, in synagogues, and in the Temple. We find shared daily prayer as early as Acts 1:14 and 2:42-47. Prayers had set times (Acts 3:1) and set content (though parts were also extemporaneous). A persistent New Testament phrase inspired all prayer: “pray without ceasing” (5:16-18; cf. Mt. 7:7-12; Lk. 11:5-13,18:1; Col. 4:2; Eph. 6:18; 1 Thess. 1:2). The early church encouraged morning and evening prayer (which included the Lord’s Prayer and praying the Psalms). The Didache (perhaps as early as A.D. 60) dictated that the Lord’s Prayer be said three times a day, in imitation of Jewish prayers. “We should do in order everything that the Lord commanded us to do at set times,” Clement of Rome said in about A.D. 96. “He has ordered oblations and services to be accomplished, and not by chance and in disorderly fashion but at set times and hours.” Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215) and Origen (A.D. 185-254) refer to prayer three times a day. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Hippolytus (all third century) refer to more times of prayer. By the fourth century, many churches had daily public morning and evening prayers. Regular attendance was expected. Ambrose of Milan (339-397) wanted all Christians to attend each morning. Christians who longed to fulfill Paul’s injunction of unceasing prayer sometimes moved to the wilderness, becoming monks. Morning and evening prayers were not enough, so they added more offices, spending hours in prayer daily. Eventually eight daily services developed, including one in the middle of the night. In the Middle Ages, the daily office took on a life of its own—with disastrous consequences. Due to monastic influence, even public services grew long and complex and were conducted in Latin, which was no longer the vernacular for most Europeans. “Professionals” increasingly conducted services on behalf of the congregation. Long and frequent services, possible for monks, were impossible for others. At the same time, people searched for alternatives: They said the paternoster (Lord’s Prayer) or the rosary or went through the Stations of the Cross. In the 14th century, the devotio moderna movement (characterized by Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ) emphasized interior spirituality. What this led to, unfortunately, was a further separating of public worship from personal spirituality.

Early Reformers like Luther and Calvin did not reject the daily office but only tried to pare it down so that it could become useful for all God’s people. The readings, prayers, and music were simplified and put in the vernacular. The custom of two Sunday services, morning and evening, is a vestige of a more simplified morning and evening office. Though Anglicans did and still have daily services in their Book of Common Prayer, such services fared poorly with most Protestants, who increasingly reacted against anything that smacked of Roman Catholicism. With the Industrial Revolution and urbanization, people lost rural rhythms that permitted regular corporate prayer. Individualism continued to spread, as did a voluntaristic approach to faith. Growing literacy and mass production of literature also made private devotional material more widely available. By the 20th century, few Protestants saw any need to pray together each day. Arthur Paul Boers is pastor of the Bloomingdale (Ontario) Mennonite Church. His latest book is Never Call Them Jerks: Healthy Responses to Difficult Behavior (Alban). His research was made possible in part by a grant from the Louisville Institute (a Lilly Endowment program)  

Prayer: Not Asking for Anything By A. W. Tozer I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live. —Psalm 116:1-2 I think that some of the greatest prayer is prayer where you don't say one single word or ask for anything. Now God does answer and He does give us what we ask for. That's plain; nobody can deny that unless he denies the Scriptures. But that's only one aspect of prayer, and it's not even the important aspect. Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already." God's already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn't pay Him for what He's done for me. We go to God as we send a boy to a grocery store with a long written list, "God, give me this, give me this, and give me this," and our gracious God often does give us what we want. But I think God is disappointed because we make Him to be no more than a source of what we want. Even our Lord Jesus is presented too often much as "Someone who will meet your need." That's the throbbing heart of modern evangelism. You're in need and Jesus will meet your need. He's the Need-meeter. Well, He is that indeed; but, ah, He's infinitely more than that.

Worship: The Missing Jewel, 24-25. This article appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Eternal Perspectives.   

Prayer: Teach Me to Listen By A.W. Tozer  Now the Lord came and stood and called as at other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel answered, "Speak, for Your servant hears." —1 Samuel 3:10   Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Give me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, "Speak, for thy servant heareth." Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart. Let me get used to the sound of Thy voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy speaking voice. Amen.

The Pursuit of God, 82-83. This article appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Eternal Perspectives.  

Prayer: Take Time to Listen By A.W. Tozer  The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments. —Psalm 119:130‐131   The Quakers had many fine ideas about life, and there is a story from them that illustrates the point I am trying to make. It concerns a conversation between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and a Quaker woman he had met. Maybe Coleridge was boasting a bit, but he told the woman how he had arranged the use of time so he would have no wasted hours. He said he memorized Greek while dressing and during breakfast. He went on with his list of other mental activities—making notes, reading, writing, formulating thoughts and ideas—until bedtime. The Quaker listened unimpressed. When Coleridge was finished with his explanation, she asked him a simple, searching question: "My friend, when dost thee think?" God is having a difficult time getting through to us because we are a fast-paced generation. We seem to have no time for contemplation. We have no time to answer God when He calls.

Jesus, Author of our Faith, 46. This article appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Eternal Perspectives.

A. W. Tozer on Prayer By A.W. Tozer  A Closed Mouth and Silent Heart My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue. — Psalm 39:3 Prayer among evangelical Christians is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. Almost every book on prayer deals with the "get" element mainly. How to get things we want from God occupies most of the space. Now, we gladly admit that we may ask for and receive specific gifts and benefits in answer to prayer, but we must never forget that the highest kind of prayer is never the making of requests. Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful by comparison. Holy men of soberer and quieter times than ours knew well the power of silence. David said, "I was dumb with silence. I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was

stirred. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue." There is a tip here for God's modern prophets. The heart seldom gets hot while the mouth is open. A closed mouth before God and silent heart are indispensable for the reception of certain kinds of truth. No man is qualified to speak who has not first listened.

The Set of the Sail, pp. 14-15  

Prayer: The First Lesson to Learn By A.W. Tozer  Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. ‐‐Matthew 26:41   To pray successfully is the first lesson the preacher must learn if he is to preach fruitfully; yet prayer is the hardest thing he will ever be called upon to do and, being human, it is the one act he will be tempted to do less frequently than any other. He must set his heart to conquer by prayer, and that will mean that he must first conquer his own flesh, for it is the flesh that hinders prayer always. Almost anything associated with the ministry may be learned with an average amount of intelligent application. It is not hard to preach or manage church affairs or pay a social call; weddings and funerals may be conducted smoothly with a little help from Emily Post and the Minister's Manual. Sermon making can be learned as easily as shoemaking--introduction, conclusion and all. And so with the whole work of the ministry as it is carried on in the average church today. But prayer--that is another matter. There Mrs. Post is helpless and the Minister's Manual can offer no assistance. There the lonely man of God must wrestle it out alone, sometimes in fasting and tears and weariness untold. There every man must be an original, for true prayer cannot be imitated nor can it be learned from someone else.

God Tells the Man Who Cares, 69. "Lord, I pray that this month might really be a time that would change my life. I don't want to just learn more about the importance of prayer. I pray that Your Spirit might change me, that I might become more and more genuinely a man of prayer. Amen."

Prayer: Overcome Distractions By A.W. Tozer  But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. — Matthew 6:6 

 Among the enemies to devotion none is so harmful as distractions. Whatever excites the curiosity, scatters the thoughts, disquiets the heart, absorbs the interests or shifts our life focus from the kingdom of God within us to the world around us—that is a distraction; and the world is full of them. Our science-based civilization has given us many benefits but it has multiplied our distractions and so taken away far more than it has given.... The remedy for distractions is the same now as it was in earlier and simpler times, viz., prayer, meditation and the cultivation of the inner life. The psalmist said "Be still, and know," and Christ told us to enter into our closet, shut the door and pray unto the Father. It still works.... Distractions must be conquered or they will conquer us. So let us cultivate simplicity; let us want fewer things; let us walk in the Spirit; let us fill our minds with the Word of God and our hearts with praise. In that way we can live in peace even in such a distraught world as this. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."

The Set of the Sail, pp. 129-132

Prayer Changes the Man   And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it. — John 14:13‐14  In all our praying, however, it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind. Prayer is not an assault upon the reluctance of God, nor an effort to secure a suspension of His will for us or for those for whom we pray. Prayer is not intended to overcome God and "move His arm." God will never be other than Himself, no matter how many people pray, nor how long nor how earnestly. God's love desires the best for all of us, and He desires to give us the best at any cost. He will open rivers in desert places, still turbulent waves, quiet the wind, bring water from the rock, send an angel to release an apostle from prison, feed an orphanage, open a land long closed to the gospel. All these things and a thousand others He has done and will do in answer to prayer, but only because it had been His will to do it from the beginning. No one persuades Him.

What the praying man does is to bring his will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do. Thus prayer changes the man and enables God to change things in answer to man's prayer.

The Price of Neglect, pp. 51-52

 

Prayer and the Gospel Dr. Tim Keller Principles One of the most basic things that the gospel does is change prayer from mere petition to fellowship and the praise of his glory. Galatians 4:6-7 teaches us that when we believe the gospel, we not only become God’s children legally, but we receive the Spirit in order to experience our sonship. The Spirit leads us to call out passionately to God as our tender and loving Father. The Spirit calls out ‘Abba’ (4:7). In the very next verse Paul refers to this experience as “knowing God” (4:8). We do not just know and believe that God is holy and loving, but we actually experience contact with his holiness and his love in personal communion with him. No one had a deeper insight into the gospel and prayer than Jonathan Edwards. Edwards concluded the most essential difference between a Christian and a moralist is that a Christian obeys God out of the sheer delight in who he is. The gospel means that we are not obeying God to get anything but to give him pleasure because we see his worth and beauty. Therefore, the Christian is able to draw power out of contemplation of God. Without the gospel, this is impossible. We can only come and ask for things- petition. Without the gospel, we may conceive of a holy God who is intimidating and who can be approached with petitions if we are very good. Or we may conceive of a God who is mainly loving and regards all positively. To approach the first “God” is fearsome; to approach the second is no big deal. Thus without the gospel, there is no possibility of passion and delight to praise and approach God. Pathologies There are two fairly common distortions of prayer that arise from a lack of orientation to the gospel in our prayer lives. We touched on them above. Here is a more practical description. 1. On the one hand, our prayer can have “light without heat.” There can be long lists of things that we pray for, and long lists of Bible verses we read, and long lists of things we thank him for. Yet there is no fire. Why? If we lose focus on the glory of God in the gospel as the solution to all our problems, then we devolve into a set of “grocery list” prayers, made rather desperately. When we are done, we only feel more anxious than before. The presence of God is not sensed because God is really just being used – he is not being worshipped. Instead, we should always remember that the first thing we need is a new perspective on our needs and problems. We should always intertwine with repentance over our unbelief and indifference to God’s grace. On the one hand, we must “pray into” ourselves that the thing we are asking for is not our Savior or God or glory! But, (on the other hand) after we repent and refine our desire, we should “pray into” ourselves that God is our Father

and wants to give us good things, so we can ask in confidence. Also, intertwined with our petitions should be praise and marveling that we are able to approach God, and be welcomed in Christ. This is gospel-centered prayer, rather than anxious petitioning. Our desires are always idolatrous to some degree, and when we pray without dealing with that first, we find our prayers only make us more anxious. Instead, we should always say, in effect, “Lord, let me see your glory as I haven’t before, let me be so ravished with your grace that worry and self-pity and anger and indifference melt away!” Then, when we turn to ask God for admission to grad school or healing of an illness, those issues will be put in proper perspective. We will say, “Lord, I ask for this because I think it will glorify you – so help me get it, or support me without it.” If the overall focus of the prayer is on God’s glory and the gospel, our individual petitions will be made with great peace and confidence. 2. On the other hand, our prayer can have “heat without light.” Unlike the “light without heat” prayer, focused on anxious personal petitions, there is a kind of prayer which is its direct opposite – “heat without light.” This is prayer with lots of “fire” and emotion. It focuses on boldly claiming things in Jesus’ name. A lot of military and conflict imagery is usually used. Often the prayers themselves are said (either in your head or out loud) in a very unnatural, dramatic kind of voice and language. Now, if (as stated above) prayer focuses on the gospel and glory of God, and if by the Spirit’s help, that glory becomes real to us as we contemplate it, there will be passion, and maybe strong and dramatic emotion. But “heat without light” prayer always begins with a lot of drama and feeling automatically. I think that many people who pray like that are actually reacting against the very limp kind of prayer meetings that result from anxious personal petition. But they respond by simply trying to directly inject emotion and drama into prayer. This kind of prayer is also not gospel-centered. Just as the anxious-petitioning is often legalistic and fails to base itself on God’s grace, so the bold-claiming is sometimes legalistic and fails to base itself on God’s grace. There is a sense that “if I pray long and without any doubts at all then God will surely hear me.” Many people believe that they must suppress all psychological doubts and work up tremendous confidence if they are to get answered. In addition, often personal problems are treated abstractly. People may say: “Lord, I ask you to come against the strongholds of worry in my life.” Or “Lord, I claim the victory over bitterness,” instead of realizing that it is faith in the gospel that will heal our worry and bitterness. Ironically, this is the same thing that the “anxious petitioner” does. There is no understanding of how to “bathe” the needs and petitions in contemplating the glory of God in the gospel until the perspective on the very petition is combined with joyful yet profound repentance, e.g. “Lord, I am experiencing such fear – but you are the stronghold of my life. Magnify your name in my sight. Let your love and glory ravish me till my fear subsides. You said you will never forsake me, and it is sheer unbelief that brings me to deny it. Forgive and heal me.”

So, ironically, we see that “heat without light” prayer and “light without heat” prayer both stem from the same root. They come from works-righteousness, a conviction that we can earn God’s favor, and a loss of orientation with respect to our free justification and adoption. Practice How can we very practically move toward a gospel-centered prayer life that aims primarily at knowing God? Meditation and communion. This essential discipline is meditation on the truth. Meditation is a “crossing” of two other disciplines: Bible study and prayer. Meditation is both yet it is not just moving one to another – it is a blending of them. Most of us first study our Bible, and then move to the prayer list, but the prayer is detached from the Bible you just studied. But meditation is praying the truth (just studied) deep into your soul till it catches “fire.” By “fire” we mean – until it makes all sorts of personal connections – with YOU personally, so it shapes the thinking, it moves the feelings, and it changes the actions. Meditation is working out the truth personally. The closest analogy to meditating on the truth is the way a person eagerly reads a love letter. You tear it open and you weigh every word. You never simply say, “I know that” but “what does this mean? What did he or she really mean by that?” You aren’t reading it quickly just for information – you want to know what lies deep in the clauses and phrases. And more important, you want the letter to sink in and form you. Augustine saw meditation, “the soul’s ascent into God,” as having three parts: retentio, contemplatio, dilectio. First, retentio means the distillation of the truths of Scripture and holding them centrally in the mind. This means study and concentration on a passage of scripture to simply understand it, so you see its thrust. “Retentio” is thus learning what a passage says. The many books on Bible study and interpretation can help us here. Second, contemplatio, means “gazing at God through this truth.” It is to pose and answer questions such as:

• what does this tell me about God; what does it reveal about him? • how can I praise him for and through this? • how can I humble myself before him for and through this? • if he is really like this, what difference does this particular truth make to how I

live today? • what wrong behavior, harmful emotions, false attitudes result in me when I forget

he is like this? • how would my neighborhood, my family, my church, my friends be different if they

saw it deeply? • does my life demonstrate that I am remembering and acting out of this?

• Lord, what are you trying to tell me about you, and why do you want me to know it now, today?

Above all, the purpose of contemplatio is to move from a kind of objective analytical view of things to a personal dealing with God as he is. It is to deal with God directly, to stretch every nerve to turn this “knowing about” into knowing – to move from knowing a fact about him to actually “seeing” him with the heart – to adore, to marvel, to rest in, or to be troubled by, to be humbled by him. It is one thing to study a piece of music and another to play it. It is one thing to work on a diamond, cutting and polishing it; it is another to stand back and let it take your breath away. Third, dilectio means delighting and relishing the God you are looking at. You begin to actually praise and confess and aspire toward him on the basis of the digested and meditated truth. If you have moved from learning to personal meditation, then, depending on your spiritual sharpness, the circumstances of your life at that time, and God’s sovereign Spirit, you begin to experience him. Sometimes it is mild, sometimes strong, and sometimes you are very dry. But whenever you are meditating (“contemplatio”) and you suddenly find new ideas coming to you and flowing in, then write them down and move to direct praising and confessing and delighting. That is (as Luther would say) the “Holy Spirit preaching to you.”  

© 2009 The Village Church The Path (Part 2) – The Art of Prayer Matt Chandler – October 03, 2009 Before we get started today, there is a question I would like you to respond to by a show of hands. How many of you who have been believers for a period of time, whether that be one year or 20 years, would say that, although you know that prayer is to be a part of our lives and that we are to be men and women of prayer, would have to honestly say that deep, intimate prayer life with the God of the universe on any consistent basis has been very difficult for you? So let the record show that it’s a bulk of us. If you’re listening to the podcast, through three services, anywhere between 85-90% of the room raised their hands. Now there’s an old saying about assuming, “Don’t assume because it will make a fool of you.” One of the things we hear over and over again is that there are so many of you in the last four or five years who have come to know Jesus Christ who actually grew up in church. So you grew up somewhat bitter at your upbringing because what you heard was, “Do this and don’t do this.” So now you’re in your mid to late 20’s and you’re hearing and responding to the gospel, and that’s created some animosity towards your upbringing that you now view as legalistic or cold. So we’ve learned that this is epidemic here in the Bible Belt. Now what happened was not that an evil group of men said, “We’re going to get them. We’re going to preach and teach very legalistically and we’re going to try to drown out their hearts.” That’s not what happened. What happened was men unfortunately assumed the gospel. They assumed that you knew it, and they preached sanctification or the process of growing in holiness as though it were justification, what you needed in order to be a Christian. And when that happened, you began to hear over and over again, “Don’t do this and don’t do this,” because they assumed that it was the invisible foundation that you already possessed. So they didn’t think they had to constantly sing about the blood of Jesus Christ or the cross of Jesus Christ. So they didn’t continually point you to the cross, they didn’t continually come back to, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and even the faith to believe is not yours. It was given to you so that no man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8). They don’t come back to that over and over again because they think you either know it or they don’t think they should have to say it all the time, despite the fact that Paul preaches the gospel to believers just as much as he preaches it to nonbelievers in the Scriptures. So one of the reasons we wanted to do the series that we’re in right now on progressive sanctification is we felt like there were some areas we were assuming. So we ferociously preach the gospel here. In fact, you’re never going to come here where you don’t sing about and hear about the shed blood and broken body and how it is what gets us right standing before God by no act of our own. You’re going to hear that every weekend, week in and week out. There’s never going to be a weekend where we don’t get back to that. It is our fervent belief that no text of the Bible can be fully preached without Jesus being taught in the text. So you’re just going to constantly hear that. I think what we have assumed is that, in the classic spiritual disciplines, you understand what those are and you walk in those things. So we started this ten week series on progressive

sanctification to kind of teach you some things that we assumed you already knew. So we started out with the Bible and just very clearly said that you can’t pick and choose the parts of the Bible that you like and don’t like. If you do that, you do not have a relationship with God; you have what Tim Keller in Manhattan calls “a Stepford god.” You have a god that you created and you made up, and you do not have a relationship with him because he cannot confront you, he cannot engage you and he cannot correct you. So we talked about the importance of the Bible, we talked about the importance of confession and repentance as a continuing ethic, not a one time thing but the longer we’re Christians, the more we’ll confess and repent and then we talked last week about the role of remembrance in the life of a believer. And so this week, I want to tackle prayer, but I don’t want to do it by talking pragmatically about it. I don’t want to go, “A – adoration, C – confession. . .” And every Baptist in this room right now just perked up. Because it’s not that we don’t know that we should pray and I don’t believe that it’s that we don’t know how to pray, but it’s a heart issue and a misunderstanding of the nature and character of God that leads us to be people who know we should pray but don’t really do it all that much. The first problem with prayer is that there’s quite a bit of tension over the matter in the Scriptures. Let me show you what I mean. Turn to Ephesians 1, we’ll pick it up in verse 3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” Before the foundation of the earth was laid, He chose you to be holy and blameless before Him because of Jesus Christ. So if you were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight because of the cross of Jesus Christ, what role do you have in being holy and blameless before God? It’s pretty simple. None. It was decided before you were. Let’s keep going. “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will,. . .” So this great mystery that, before time began, God predestined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters, to present us as holy and blameless in His sight by no merit of our own but by His free gift of grace, that mystery, did we figure it out or was it made known to us? It was made known to us. We were the passive element. He made it known to us. On more than one occasion, I have had the great opportunity and honor to sit at the table with multiple people who are not believers and to share what our faith is, to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and have seen one person at that table have their heart, mind and affections stirred up and want to know more about it, one guy get offended and one guy be indifferent. So what happened since it was the same presentation? The Holy Spirit is quickening one of them. Let’s keep going. Verse 9, “. . .making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all

things according to the counsel of his will,. . .” So God is sovereign over all things and is working all things in accordance with His will. So it’s very clear in this text that salvation belongs to our God and that He, before the foundation of the earth was laid, has predestined adopted sons and daughters. Last night, we got home my boy and I went upstairs, opened up the Bible, read the Bible and said our little prayers. Then I went and tucked Audrey in her bed. And once she was in there, I got on my knees beside her bed and I asked God to save her, I asked God to open up her heart and her mind to the beauty of the gospel and I asked God to protect her from my sin. And then I got up, walked into my son’s room, tucked him in, made sure he was snug in there and then I asked God to save him, I asked God to open up his heart and open up his mind to the beauty and reality of the Scriptures, the beauty and reality of God as Creator and to, by His grace, lavish His mercy on my son. And then I prayed that God would protect him from my sins. And then I walked downstairs, and did the same thing over little Norah. Why? In fact, it gets much more complex than this. Do you know that proverbs 16:33 says that the outcome of the roll of the dice is set by the Lord? So that means that in great weekend you had in Vegas or that bad weekend you had in Vegas, the roll of the dice are called by the Lord. In fact, it goes much deeper than that. I wrote down tons of these. Here’s Proverbs 16:9, “The heart of man plans his way,but the LORD establishes his steps.” Psalms 115, “Why should the nations say, "Where is their God?" Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” Do you know that, according to Jesus in Matthew 6:26, that a bird flies or falls out of the sky by the word of God’s mouth and that a flower in the field blooms or does not bloom at the command of the sovereign God? Let me give you some others. Jeremiah 10:23 says, “I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.” Psalm 135 says, “Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” In fact, it is the biblical understanding that God does all things that even has those men and women saying, “God brought about the rain” despite the fact scientifically they understand how rain works. So if you read Ecclesiastes 1, you would see that he says life is like the water cycle; it constantly rains and pours into the ocean but it never gets filled. “Nothing ever changes” is what he was saying. So in the book of Ecclesiastes, they clearly understand how the water cycle works, and yet it does not stop them from saying, “Yet if it rains, God lets it rain.” It is their understanding and it is the biblical understanding that God is sovereign over everything, that He reigns and rules over everything. And if this is true (and it is biblically true), why pray? If God has already decided, why pray? If God’s decided whether or not He’s going to save Reid or save Audrey, why does it matter if I pray or not? If the Lord directs the path, why does it matter if I pray or not? If the outcome that God desires is going to happen, why pray? Now there’s this other thing that happens in the Scriptures that creates a great bit of tension. In the Scriptures, God is portrayed as clearly sovereign, but then God’s people constantly ask Him for things. They ask Him for things personally, they ask Him for things for others, they ask Him to change their circumstances, they ask Him to do this, to do that, to not do this and here’s the thing – God listens. Let me show you one of these.

Go to Exodus 32, we’re going to pick it up in verse 9. “And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you."” Let me translate this to you. God, upon seeing the disobedience of Israel after He brought them out of Egypt, comes to Moses and says, “Get behind a rock. I’m killing every one of these fools, and then I’ll be back and I’ll start over with you.” And He even tells him, “Keep quiet about it. Don’t talk to Me about this.” So God thunders away at Moses, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m killing every one of them, and I’ll be back and we’ll start over with you.” This is a command of the Lord that has just gone out. Now watch what Moses does. “But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, 'With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.'" And the LORD relented from the disaster.” So God sovereignly goes, “You, hide and don’t talk to me. I’m killing everyone.” Moses implores Him, “Don’t do this.” He implores, he begs, he prays and what does God do? He listens and He relents. The sovereign God over all, who knows all, sees all, the future, past and present isn’t just something He knows but it’s a place that He is, God who is outside of time says, “I’m going to destroy them all” when He knows good and well that He’s not going to destroy them? Okay. Let me give you some more examples. “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.” Is not an implication of this text that if you did ask, you would have? “You do not have because you do not ask. I would give you, but you’re not asking.” Luke 11:9-10, “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” This is every bit of the inerrant word of God as the text on His sovereignty is. This is just as much a part of the Bible. Because I know my five pointers right now are like, “Chandler!” Okay, breathe. This is just as much the Bible as your Romans 9 passage is. Let’s keep reading. 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” “If my people pray, I will heal their land.” Well hasn’t He already sovereignly decided what He was going to do with the land to begin with? So why the “If my people would pray, I will hear and I will heal?” Do you see the tension? Let me give you one more. This is from a text we were in a couple of week ago. 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If we will pray and confess our sins, He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So is God sovereign over all things or can we move Him by our prayers? Yes. Now the

problem is we have a hard time believing both of these to be true and we want to pick one and play it against the other. You’ll see what I call textual tennis occur among seminary guys all the time. They will get what proves their point, they will grab Romans 9 and hit that at the opposition. Then the other guy will go, “nuh uh,” and send Luke 11 over the net. And they will play textual tennis for the rest of their lives. Now there are some issues which C.S. Lewis would call second tier issues, which we call the open hand of theology, that you’ll play tennis with for the rest of your life until Jesus shows up and goes, “Both of you are stupid,” or “just you were.” And we have unity around secondary issues. Now we teach you what our official stances are in those secondary issues, but there’s freedom, which means we can partner a great deal and disagree on secondary issues. There are some issues that are never going to be resolved, and then there are some that can be. This one that we’re talking about today can be resolved. Let me explain it this way. This would be the easiest way because we’ve already been in Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1 is very clear that salvation belongs to God and no man can be converted without Christ opening his heart, was it not? I don’t know that it gets any clearer than Ephesians 1. The only way you believe and have the ability to believe is if God opens your heart and your mind to understand the gospel and gets you out of darkness into light. That’s the only way you believe. If that’s true, then why preach? If preaching does not open the hearts and minds of people but only the Holy Spirit does, then why share your faith with your neighbor? Why share your faith with your friends? Why share your faith with your family members? Why do I spend a crazy amount of hours every week studying and preparing the Scriptures to teach in such a way that you can grasp and have an opportunity to believe? Because God’s appointed means to achieving His appointed purpose is the proclamation of the Word. Which means God said, “The means by which I’m going to accomplish this is the preaching, teaching and proclamation of the Word. So I’m going to save men through the preaching and teaching of the Bible and through interpersonal relationships where the gospel is taught and lived out.” So we preach because the means by which God is going to draw men to Himself is through the proclamation and preaching of the Word. The same is true about prayer. So prayer becomes the means by which the purposes of God are accomplished. So in this way, prayer changes things. One of the problems in this theological quandary of sovereignty and what prayer does is when you pick one of those, you end up making one of two errors. The reformed guys, of which I’m solidly in, since God is sovereign over everything, they kind of relegate it to this dusty corner of their lives, and the intellect rules and prayer is just a small part of their lives. Over here, the error is that God becomes a genie in a lamp that you just rub and He does what you tell Him. Both of those are erroneous. This isn’t the only problem though. Another problem goes back to the first week of this series, and that’s that we don’t know the Scriptures so we don’t know what God has promised us in the Scriptures concerning prayer. Let me show you just a couple of these. Luke 11:13 says this, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"” I love the setup of this verse, and I should have read the whole thing. He says,

“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent?” “Dad, I’m hungry?” “Here, have a snake.” “. . .or if he asks for an egg, [which one of you fathers] will give him a scorpion?” It’s a rhetorical question. There’s not a guy in the crowd who raised his hand. Everyone would have gone, “No one would do that. So He’s going, “If you are like that and you’re evil, then how am I going to respond to those whom I love? Ask for the Holy Spirit; It will be yours.” That’s not the only one. Turn to Matthew 21:22. “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Now there starts to be this little caveat in here that would stop you from being able to pretend to be Aladdin. He said that if you pray and ask for anything, you’ll receive it if you have faith. That’s not the faith that that prayer would come about, but that’s rather faith in the cross of Jesus Christ. Which means that for prayer to be effective, we must have a heart that belongs to the Lord. Which means you’re going to pray less and less and less selfishly and more and more and more in regards to the kingdom. Let’s keep going. John 15:7, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” So now we’ve got another caveat, don’t we? “If My word is in you and your are in Me, then ask whatever you want, and then it will be done.” Now go to James 1, starting in verse 5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” Listen to what the Bible just said for those of you who are believers. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask, and he will receive. Okay, I know that I am to love my wife like Christ loved the church and that He loved her and gave Himself up for her. But what does that exactly look like? And then what does that look like if she were to ever be wrong. . .hypothetically of course? How do you lead and love your wife like Christ loved the church? So the Evangelical Christian response to this right now is for me to recommend a book that can do that for you, that can tell you how to do that practically . The Bible says that our response should be, “Give me wisdom.” I am worried about my kids, and here’s how I worry about them. Do you remember that scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Cameron begins to kick his dad’s Ferrari? He says, “I hate this car. I hate this car. You love this car,” and he kicks it until it goes off into the ravine. Because of what’s happened here and because most of the preachers’ kids that I meet are really kind of jacked up, I have this fear the pressure of being my children puts on them. How do I get off of them the pressure that even some of you unbeknownst to you have put on them? How do I tell them, “Don’t you worry about embarrassing me. When you stumble in sin, we’ll deal with that, and we’ll never deal with it because you are Matt and Lauren Chandler’s child. We’ll deal with it because it’s sinful and needs to be dealt with?” How do I free them from that? I don’t know the answer to that question. I specifically don’t know it as they get older. So I’m asking. How much of our money do we give away? How much do we keep? Where’s the line on that? I know I’m going to have to die, stand in front of God and give an account. How do I do that? I pray. You pray and ask for wisdom. And listen, the Bible just said that He’ll give it. And we already read that

He’s not a wicked Father. “God, what should I do?” “I don’t know. Figure it out, and I’ll judge you on it later.” That’s not the God we serve. “I don’t know, but you had better get it right. Hell is over here.” That’s not the God of the Bible. “Help me, lead me, guide me,” and He answers.” It’s a profound truth in the Scriptures. But that’s not the only reason we don’t pray. I think a lack of confession as a continuing ethic will kill your prayer life. If you’re not constantly aware of your shortcomings and confessing them to the Lord and others, you will go into hiding, including hiding from the Lord. Nothing will sap your prayer life like walking in secret sin. You’ll run from Him and not to Him. It is a certainty. And then the last reason we don’t pray is because we’re proud people, and not in a good way. I don’t know if you knew this but “God helps them who help themselves” is not in the Bible. That is not in Proverbs. It’s a silly, rugged American, individualized statement that is anti everything the Bible teaches. So you don’t pray because you think you don’t need him. You don’t pray because you think you’ve got this. You don’t pray because you’ll make it happen and you’ll get it done because you don’t think you need Him. Now, here’s the interesting thing. The reason I believe this is true is because the Bible teaches it. Psalm 138:6, “He regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.” It’s also because I’ve witnessed about a billion times when your illusion of control is stripped from you, you become great prayers. Like when you lose your job and nine months later still don’t have one and now you don’t know how you’re paying the rent, all of a sudden you’re like Elijah. When you find out that you or someone you know is sick and recovery is going to be extremely painful or maybe not possible, all of a sudden you become a prayer. When the illusion of control that so many of you are operating under disappears and how the universe is actually ordered becomes clear to you, you pray. Now, there’s seven reasons why you should pray. Prayer shows and exemplifies our dependence on God. Prayer is a simple act of humility. “I cannot; You can. I do not know; You know. . .” Prayer is just as simple, daily act of humility on our part. Prayer gets us into fellowship with God. God speaks to us through His Holy Spirit and through His Word; we speak to God through prayer. This is called interaction. This is called relationship. In prayer, God allows us to be involved in activities that are eternally important. According to God’s Word, when we pray, we’re involved in something, much, much bigger than ourselves. One of the things that my wife and I are constantly praying about are the Africans that we work with down in Dallas and the countries they represent, and in so doing, we’re a part of something eternally and globally larger than we are. Prayer changes things in the way that we outlined already. So in the circumstances of your life, what needs to be changed? Is marriage difficult? Is money gone? Do you have a wayward child? Pray. I’m praying for so many things that I cannot control or that I need God to do. When I got to this church seven years ago, I was 28 years old and had never pastored before. Very quickly I hired a bunch of other 20 year olds. And so everybody was like, “That wasn’t smart.” Yeah, we had like an $8,000 budget. What did you want me to do? Here’s the great thing about 20 year olds. I can go find a super sharp, brilliant 20 year old who is picking ups some megapastor’s

laundry and I can put him on staff at an executive level and pay him $8 grand a year and they’d be happy to take it. And that’s what we did. So that means that we’ve had to grow our pastors, walk with them, encourage them and give them a lot of time, resources and energy to developing them. And it also means we make some monumental mistakes early on that we’re still trying to correct. I’m praying. I’m praying for your heart because so many of you here are simple consumers and are not a part of the body of Christ. You are church attenders. You go to church, but you belong to nowhere. I’m praying that God would change your heart. Some of you have been taught down here that church is about you. I’m begging God to change your mind and heart about that. Prayer is a means of confession. It’s in prayer that we confess our shortcomings to sin. Prayer is a means to fighting sin. You see, prayer is a spirit-driven activity, which means when we’re praying, we’re disconnecting from the sinful fallenness of this world and we’re connecting to what is holy, right and good. And finally, we’re commanded to pray. God has ordained that He would accomplish His purposes through prayer. And so He has commanded to the individual life of a believer to pray and therefore fulfill His purposes. Now on to the pragmatic side. I think that when you start to try to give pragmatics to prayer, you really rob it of its power. Because I think it’s a little bit more unique to the individual than we make it. Here is what I know about it pragmatically. There will be a private expression. In fact, Jesus warns against those who would only pray in public. There will be a private expression, and there will be a public expression. So at some level, we have private times of prayer. Now I don’t know what that looks like for you. For some of us (myself included), that means early mornings. I pray best early in the morning. But I’m not telling you that the best time to pray is early in the morning. Some of you get up in the morning at 5:30, start to pray and you’re back asleep by 5:45. That’s what happens to me at night. If I lay in bed at night, it’s like, “God, I just thank you for zzzzzzz. . .” And then I don’t even know how far I got, and I don’t know who I prayed for. So I’m a morning person. That’s when I pray. You’ve got to figure out when you do that. Is it at lunch? Do you take a walk around the park? Is it early in the morning? Is it at night? Part of that will be where you are in life. Another thing that I know helps me is I have to write. If I take my little moleskin journal, open it up and write out what I’m praying for, then I can just commune with the Lord forever. And it doesn’t even have to be complete sentences. It can be something like, “Lauren: grace, mercy, further intimacy for us. Audrey: salvation, godly little girlfriends. Reid: a clear understanding of what it means to be a man.” If I put that down and I get on my knees beside the couch and go, “Father, I just want to pray for the Village. . .oh, I think we’re putting the carpet down today in the sanctuary and then they’ll bolt those chairs down. Do you know what? I need to call and give them a tour first. . .No no no! Okay, Father, I just pray for Atlanta Catalyst this week. . .Catalyst? I wonder if I have a chance to hook up with Brad and then get a cup of coffee because I want to talk about. . .No!” But if I’ve got that piece of paper, I’m there. Now some of you would be the exact opposite. You’d be like, “I want to pray for my sister,” and then you’d end up drawing a picture of her. So for some of you, a journal would be a miserable idea. But I know that there’s a private aspect of it, and I know you’ve got to figure it out. And I know part of the joy of this is figuring those kind of things out. How do you pray?

And then there’s the public aspect to it. My family prays together. I don’t just have individual time with my children in prayer. Although we do have those times, they’re not wrought into how we do life. We pray as a family. We do our family reading together and then we pray. The kids get to say what they’re grateful for, and then I lead us in prayer. We do that publicly. We also know that God does profound, beautiful things when His people gather corporately to pray. This is another area I’m praying we get stronger at. We’re not strong at this. I’ll give you an example. This weekend, at the Highland Village campus, there will be between three to four thousand adults. This Wednesday night, we’ll corporately pray as a church, and no more than a hundred of you will show up. Now listen to me. I get life, trust me. I mean, I board a plane for Atlanta this week, I was out last week, I travel quite a bit myself. I get that. But more than a hundred of us can show up for sure. I often say there’s nothing more powerful that we do than to gather together corporately and humble ourselves before the Lord. I’m not pulling that out of the air; I’m pulling it out of what we see in the Scriptures. When His people draw near to Him to say, “You are great and good, and we need You,” God does powerful things. Now I’ll end with this. Some of you don’t pray because you’re stuck in religion and aren’t believers yet. Here’s what I mean by that. You still think that your shortcomings, your historic failures and your past somehow disqualify you from approaching the throne of grace with confidence. You misunderstand your own faith. We come before the throne of God not with confidence in our moral uprightness, but in the confidence that came with the impartation, the imputation of grace onto us so that the righteousness of Christ was given to us and our sins were nailed to the cross with Him. It’s the great exchange. We come with that confidence, not our own. You misunderstand our message. Our message is not, “Christ so loved us that we cleaned ourselves up.” That’s an anti-message to the gospel. The gospel is, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) You’re praying because you’re going, “I’m unworthy.” You are unworthy, and yet He has made a way. You misunderstand our faith. So may God make us a place of prayer. Might we pray long and might we pray well. Might we pray in private, and might we pray in public. And may we, with our 40 years, see God do tremendous things as we pray according to His purposes. Let’s pray. “Father, I thank You for our time together. I ask that, in Your mercy, You would stir up our hearts and minds and that we would be men and women of prayer, whether that be in our homes, our families, our home groups, our own individual times. I pray that we would learn to commune deeply and intimately with You. Help us as we seek out the pragmatics of this. May You give us wisdom. It’s for Your beautiful name I pray. Amen.”