Week One: What is Prayer? Prayer Chapters: 3-5. Week Two: Learning Prayer Prayer Chapters: 6-9. Week Three: Deepening Prayer Prayer Chapters: 10-11

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1 Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God North Community: Session 2, Aug. 30, 2015 I. Introduction A. Our Recommended Text Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God - - by Timothy Keller (Dutton, 2014) B. Our Study of Prayer Week One: What is Prayer? Prayer Chapters: 3-5 Week Two: Learning Prayer Prayer Chapters: 6-9 Week Three: Deepening Prayer Prayer Chapters: Week Four: Doing Prayer Prayer Chapters II. Augustine on Prayer A. Before you know what to pray for, you must become a particular kind of person yourself. a. You must account yourself desolate in this world, however great the prosperity of your lot may be. 1 b. You must see how disordered your loves are, and see that our prayers for success, status, love and pleasure are part of the problem, not an agent of healing. 1 Keller, Timothy. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York, NY: Penguin, 2014). Pg

2 B. Pray with a renewed conviction of what life is truly about. a. Once you grasp your own frail heart and catch a glimpse that happiness can only be found in God, you can Pray for a happy life. (Augustine). What will yield a happy life? Psalm 27:4 One thing have I desired of the Lord, one thing will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord to behold the beauty of the Lord. b. In other words, if we have made God our greatest love, and if knowing and pleasing him is our highest pleasure, it transforms both what and how to pray for a happy life. c. Augustine uses Proverbs 30:7-9 as an example. This Proverb fights against the disordered nature of your heart s loves. It is to as, Lord, meet my material needs, and give me wealth, yes, but only as much as I can handle without it harming my ability to put you first I my life. Because Ultimately I don t need status and comfort - I need you as my Lord. 2 C. Once you have learned to pray in the full awareness of the disorderedness of your heart and where true joys are found, you can be guided in the specifics of HOW to pray by studying the Lord s Prayer. Adoration, petition, thanksgiving, confession. a. Fit your own prayers into the pattern and model of the Lord s Prayer. D. Prayer in the dark times a. Even after following the three rules, we still know not what to pray for as we ought in regard to tribulations. i. Even our own tribulations may do us good, and yet because the are hard and painful we pray that they may be removed form us. Should we pray for a change in circumstances or just strength to endure? ii. Augustine points to Jesus in Gethsemane: perfect balance between honest desire ( let this cup pass from me ) and submission to God ( nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. iii. Romans 8:26 promise that the Spirit will guide our hearts and prayers when we are groaning and confused, and that God WILL hear them in even their imperfect state. Conclusion: Pour out your heart s desire, but remember the wisdom and goodness of God as you do so. 2 Ibid., p

3 iv. Example: Anicia Proba was a widow by her early thirties and fled for her life when Rome was sacked in 410 AD. In a letter to her, he says, Should a widow not commit her widowhood, so to speak, to her God as her shield in continue al and most fervent prayer. - point: sufferings such as a widowhood may be a shield against the illusions of self- sufficiency and blindness that harden the heart; and, her sufferings opened the way for the rich, passionate prayer life that could bring peace in any circumstance. 3 III. Martin Luther s A Simple Way to Pray A. Martin Luther s example a. Veit Dietrich, one of Luther s friends, wrote, There is not a day on which he does not devote at least three hours, the very ones most suitable for work, to prayer. Once I was fortunate to overhear his prayer. Good God, what faith in his words! He speaks with the great reverence of one who speaks to his God, and with the trust and hope of one who speaks with his father and friend. 4 b. Luther writes a letter on prayer to his barber, Peter Beskendorf, who fell into trouble by stabbing his own brother in law to death while intoxicated. Partly through Luther s intervention, Peter was exiled rather than executed, and Luther gave Peter a rich and practical guideline on prayer for his years in exile. B. Prayer as a habit through regular discipline. (Duty) a. Proposal of two times a day. It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night. Guard yourselves against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour, first I must attend to this or that. b. Prayer is commanded. We are as strictly and solemnly commanded to pray as in the others not to kill, not to steal, etc. Thus we must pray whether we feel like it or not. C. Prayer through warming the affections (Delight) a. Lamentations 3:41 Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven b. Luther recommends a recitation to yourself of some part of the Scripture such as the Ten Commandments or the words of Christ. 3 Ibid., p Ibid., p. 89 3

4 c. This recitation is a form of meditation or contemplation of Scripture, but it is not mere Bible study. d. By this practice, I want your heart to be stirred and guided rightly warmed and inclined toward prayer. Luther. 5 D. Luther s instructions on the Skill of Mediation on the Word a. Metaphor of a four- part garland: I divide each biblical command into four parts, thereby fashioning a garland of four strands. That is, I think of each commandment as first, instruction, which is what it is really intended to be, and consider what the Lord God demands of me so earnestly. Second, I turn it into a thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth, a prayer. b. This type of prayer creates it s own type of spiritual energy. i. It forces you off the theoretical plane to consider what that Biblical truth you are pondering should actually do to you and I you. ii. E.g. How the passage should lead you to praise God, to repent and change your heart, and also what it should lead you to do in the world. iii. Practical practice in class E. Next step: Pray the Lord s prayer a. Move from meditation to the Lord s Prayer b. Personalize each petition c. This can take only a few minutes, or it may catch fire and go on! d. Benefit: it commands your full attention and focuses the mind and keeps it from wandering. F. Finally, pray from the heart. a. Lift up those things that are on your mind and heart and prayer list. b. And this full exercise should be done twice a day. 5 Ibid., p. 90 4

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