Nothing but the Father's greatest desires

When our prayers are ascend to the Father through the intercession of the Son, the intercession of the Son represents nothing but the Father’s greatest desires in the first place, so guarantees the beautiful success of the Son’s prayers.

(Carl Trueman, 26:00, The Trinity and Preaching: Talk 1)

Is prayer grasping the gift, or asking for the gift?

One of my favourite blogs these days is Martin Yee, a Singaporean Lutheran. Here is something to put in your theological pipe from his recent digest of a Philip Cary article:

Augustine gives us the gist of the prayer for grace in a famous formulation that irked Pelagius: “Give what you command, and command what you will.” To bring the difference between Luther and Augustine into focus, we can contrast this prayer with a formulation in Luther’s treatise, The Freedom of a Christian (1520): “The promises of God give what the commandments of God demand”. This formulation both echoes Augustine’s prayer for grace and replaces it with something new. Instead of human words of prayer, it draws our attention to the divine word of promise, which Luther elsewhere calls by the name “Gospel.” The distinction he draws in this treatise between commandments and promises as the two types of the Word of God is clearly the same as the distinction he draws elsewhere between Law and Gospel. The crucial point about the Gospel promise is always that it gives what it promises to those who believe it. So for Luther faith does not mean praying for grace and righteousness, but obtaining them by taking hold of Christ in the Gospel.

Means and ends

Recently I posted on how the church is both a gathered and a scattered people. Another way of saying that is that the church is both a means and an end, as Lesslie Newbigin does brilliantly:

The Church is both a means and an end, because it is a foretaste. It is the community of the Holy Spirit who is the earnest of our inheritance. The Church can only witness to that inheritance because her life is a real foretaste of it, a real participation in the life of God Himself. Thus worship and fellowship, offering up praise and adoration to God, receiving His grace, rejoicing in Him, sharing one with another the fruits of the Spirit, and building up one another in love all essential to the life of the Church. Precisely because the Church is here and now a real foretaste of heaven, she can be the witness and instrument of the kingdom of heaven. It is precisely because she is not merely instrumental that she can be instrumental. This is not a merely theoretical matter, but one of real practical importance. There is a kind of missionary zeal which is forever seeking to win more proselytes but which does not spring from and lead back into a quality of life which seems intrinsically worth having in itself. If we answer the question, ‘Why should I become a Christian? simply by saying ‘In order ‘to make others Christians,’ we are involved in an infinite regress.

(The Household of God)

This chimes with what PT Forsyth says about prayer:

"Prayer is often represented as the great means of the Christian life. But it is no mere means, it is the great end of that life."

"A chief object of all prayer is to bring us to God. But we may attain His presence and come closer to Him by the way we ask Him for other things, concrete things or things of the Kingdom, than by direct prayer for union with Him."

(p. 16, The Soul of Prayer)

Luther's prayer to receive the Word

Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant us Your Holy Spirit who writes the preached word into our hearts so that we may receive and believe it, and be gladdened and comforted by it in eternity. Glorify Your Word in our hearts. Make it so bright and warm that we may find pleasure in it, and through Your inspiration think what is right. By Your power fulfill the Word, for the sake of Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord. Amen.

(TLWA, p. 38 and endpaper of the LSB)

A structure for quiet times

[This is an attempt to bring together things I've learnt over the last few months from Martin Luther, David Powlison, Gerald Bray and Tim Keller. I've put them into practice to varying degrees, but thought I'd write it all down to help me remember. I've also made myself a pretty A5 sheet, although now I've written it I think I'll remember the content anyway.

Written schemes are helpful to avoid mental blocks and to keep some 'balance' between listening/speaking, yourself/others, praise/request etc. But Luther has two good warnings to heed too: "if in the midst of such thoughts the Holy Spirit beigins to preach in your heart with rich, enlightening thoughts, honor him by letting go of the written scheme. Be still and listen to the one who can do better than you can"; and, "take care, not to undertake all of this or so much that one become weary in spirit."]

• LISTEN to the Bible as God instructs us. Ask questions:
• What does it say about God? What does it say about who he is and about what he does?
• What does it say about us? What are we meant to be and what has gone wrong?
• What happens next? What has God done about this and what does he expect of us in the light of what he has done?
• THANK God for what the Bible reveals about God's character, our situation, God's actions and how we should relate to him.
• CONFESS how you need God because of its:
• Sin's oppression (in your circumstances and in your heart)
• Your active collaboration in its rule
• ASK God to show mercy and act hear us and act in:
• You
• To change our circumstances
• To change us (wisdom and love)
• To display God’s glory
• Prayer list
• To change our circumstances
• To change us (wisdom and love)
• To display God’s glory
• Church and world
• To change our circumstances
• To change us (wisdom and love)
• To display God’s glory
• Meditate on CHRIST and praise him (in his past, present and future work) is the fulfilment of all you heard from the Word about God, and assures us of forgiveness, sanctification and the transformation of all things.

Turning scripture to prayer

You may be familiar with using the acronym ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication). I like that, although I feel adoration and thanksgiving should merge. I also believe that prayer should be in response to the word of God, and that should shape our prayers. Although I often just ream off a large number of requests, it is better to listen to God first.

Martin Luther has a good four-stage structure to his prayers in response to Scripture. He says we should treat the Bible in a fourfold way:

1. A school book which we listen to - Meditate on what the Bible is teaching and instructing you.
2. A song book from which we praise God - Give thanks for what the passage teaches.
3. A penitential book which prompts our confession - Repent and ask for forgiveness for not responding rightly to what the passage has taught you.
4. A prayer book which helps us to know what to ask for - Make supplications for yourself and the whole world to

Although, he also says we should hold to this structure loosely and "if in the midst of such thoughts the Holy Spirit begins to preach in your heart with rich, enlightening thoughts, honor him by letting go of the written scheme" (p. 16, A Practical Way to Pray).

Where do you go from busyness?

So its past 1am and I'm pretty tired. Its been a busy few weeks and I've got a busy week ahead, so don't expect too much blogging. However, I've been reflecting recently on how we should respond to busyness and thought I'd blog my late night incoherent thoughts.

I've heard many churches preach that busyness in this life is an evil which Christ came to save us from. Yet in my experience there are few busier people than Christians. Why this paradox? Is it because busy Christians are Marthas seeking self-justification, or is it because the Gospel demands we pour ourself out in service of others?

I think it is good to be busy. My dad once commented that there is nothing sadder than someone with too much time on their hands. He works with quite a lot of elderly people, and the purposeless existence many of them live when retired and stripped of responsibility to employers and children is quite depressing. While I feel the pull of our leisure culture, ultimately it displays a society of people turned in on themselves. No hope and no joy - just temporary escape.

However, we soon realise that juggling lots of balls, means you drop them more often. And then there is the huge pile of balls that you cannot physically juggle. There are needs and opportunities everywhere you look, but your ability is so limited. Busyness then can be a great barometer of your faith, and sadly it often shows me up as a sinner; just as much as the command not to covet.

When busyness forces you to realise you've reached the end of yourself you have two options: you can pray more or you can pray less. Which to choose? Faced with the demand of busyness do I treat prayer as dead-time which can be reallocated to more productive uses, or desperately pray all the more realising the true depth of my inability and trusting in the mighty power of a Father who cares for me?

Please pray for my prayers.

Incidentally, if you want a phrase to chew over at length try Hebrews 4:11: "strive to enter that rest". And I've said it before, but Tim Chester's book on Busyness should be read by everybody.

The Trinity and prayer - part 1 - To the Father...

I'm trying to write a little piece on the difference the doctrine of the Trinity makes to our prayers. This is a rough draft of part one. Part two will look at "through the Son", and part three on "by the Spirit". Any feedback would be gratefully received, whether it is to pick up on heresy, pastoral insensitivity, or even poor writing quality.

"through Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Ephesians 2:18)

If we don't know who, or what, we are talking to then there is little reason for us to pray. We may pray when things get particularly tough and we think that anything is worth a try, but its always going to feel like a gamble. We would be like the Athenians in Acts 17 who pray to an "unknown god". It wouldn't surprise us that the unknown god never got to have the biggest temple in Athens because worshippers could never love and trust a god.

But Christians are privileged to actually know who God is. We may never have seen God, but Jesus Christ "has made him known" to us (John 1:18). Because of Jesus we know God is not a impersonal force, or the whole material universe, or one of many competing deities. Instead God is "our Father", and that person is the God we are told by Jesus to pray to.

We can be tempted to think that the title "Father" is just a description of God - i.e. that because he acts like a father towards us we call him "our Father". But God has been God the Father from all eternity. Fundamentally, God is not God the Father, because he acts like a father towards us, but because that is who he actually is. He has always been God the Father because he has always had a Son, Jesus Christ. And that is important because it means that when we say that we pray to God the Father we are not saying that we pray to a god who is like a father just like those of many other religions do. Instead it means we are praying to a particular person, to the exclusion of all others. As Paul so often says, we pray to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ". There is only one god, who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just like there is only one Father of Dave Kirkman. By addressing "our Father" in prayer, we don't just know the character of the God we pray to, but we know exactly who it is that we are talking about.

That we pray to "our Father" should shape our prayers in a number of ways. Firstly, we should pray in community because we are told to pray to "our Father". When alone, we should remember it is not just about me before God, but we should pray as part of the church. The Lord's prayer is full of the plural ("our", "us", "we") because we are not saved as individuals but as part of a whole body. We pray as the community and family that we are, concerned for each other's welfare and encouraged by the faith of our brothers and sisters praying with us.

Secondly, we should pray knowing that we have a Father who knows our needs and longs to do us good. After recounting Jesus' teaching of the Lord's prayer Matthew reminds us that God looks after the lilies and the birds and tells us that we have no reason to be anxious about anything because our Father knows all that we need. And after the Lord's prayer in Luke, we are told that even evil people like us give good things to our children so we can be confident that God will give us the Holy Spirit if we ask him. But God does not shower gifts on his children from afar, our relationship is one of intimacy so that we can call him Abba, Father, and approach him without fear.

Thirdly, we should pray respectfully. Fathers in the ancient world were august figures who demanded respect from their children. This should particularly be our attitude towards God because he is not only "our Father", but also "in heaven". He is creator and we are his creatures, but even that should encourage us to pray. Children ask their parents for things not just because they know they love them, but because they know that they can do what they cannot. As a child I asked my parents for bike not only because I thought they loved me enough to buy me one, but because I had no money and they did.

A Bible study on prayer and the Trinity

[This a supposed to be a fairly short bible study on a rather big subject. The plan is to split into three or four groups and allocate one set of questions to each, and then get them to join back together to share. Any thoughts on the questions or bible passages would be helpful.]

"Prayer is talking to God" (Goldsworthy)

"through Christ we both have access to the Father by one Spirit" (Ephesians 2:18)

Praying to the Father... (Luke 11:1-13)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean to say that we pray to the Father?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what else do non-Christians, and Christians, pray to?
• Who cares? If we pray to the Father, what difference should that make to our prayers?

...through the Son... (Hebrews 4:14-16; 7:24-25; 10:19-23)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean to say that we pray through the Son?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what else do non-Christians, and Christians, pray through?
• Who cares? If we pray through the Son, what difference should that make to our prayers?

...by (or 'in') the Spirit (Romans 8:11-30; cf. Ephesians 6:17-18, Jude 19-20)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean to say that we pray by/in the Holy Spirit?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what else do non-Christians, and Christians, pray by/in?
• Who cares? If we pray by/in the Holy Spirit, what difference should that make to our prayers?

[ The Trinity talks (John 16:13-14, 17:6-21; cf. Genesis 1:26, Romans 8:26, 34)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean for the three persons of the Trinity to talk to each other?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what do Christians and non-Christians think of as talking, and how else can we think of God?
• Who cares? If the Trinity talks, what difference should that make to our prayers? ]

Laying yourself out in prayer

[Our offering of ourselves]

The first thing we realize from the Psalms is that in prayer anything goes. Virtually everything human is appropriate as material for prayer:

• reflections and observations,
• fear and anger,
• guilt and sin,
• questions and doubts,
• needs and desires,
• praise and gratitude,
• suffering and death.

Nothing human is excluded. The Psalms are an extended refutation that prayer is being "nice" before God. Not at all - it is an offering of ourselves, just as we are.

[God's offering of himself]

The second thing is that prayer is access to everything that God is for us:

• holiness,
• justice,
• mercy,
• forgiveness,
• sovereignty,
• blessing,
• vindication,
• salvation,
• love,
• majesty,
• and glory.

The Psalms are a detailed demonstration that prayer brings us into the welcoming presence of God as he generously offers himself, just as he is, to us.

(formatting mine, p. 617, Eugene Peterson, "Prayer" in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible)

Praying to the Son?

Listening to: The Unthanks on Myspace

Should you address prayers to the Son, or just the Father?

I'm not entirely sure, but think the best answer is summed up nicely by Tim Chester:

"The unity of the Trinity means we can address prayer to the Son and the Spirit - the Son and the Spirit are truly God and so can truly receive prayer. But the norm in the New Testament is to address prayer to the Father through the Son by, or with the aid of, the Holy Spirit." (p. 39, The Message of Prayer)

In relation to this discussion I found the following references in the Gospel of John, intriguing.

"Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it." (14:13-14)

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser... Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me... If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you...I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you." (15:1-16)

"you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy... So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full." (16:20-24)

Most exciting was to see that the parable of the true vine is so much about prayer.

Praying in Jesus' name

"In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God." (John 16:26-27)

We often talk about Christ's intercession and rightly rejoice in that. We also rejoice that we can come into God's presence covered by Christ's righteousness and cleansed by his blood.

But it's amazing to understand what this does not mean. It does not entirely mean, as a wonderful friend recently prayed, that we thank God that when we pray God does not see us but only sees his Son. Don Carson comments:

Jesus wants his followers to understand that the phrase in my name does not mean that they are thereby distanced from God. It does not mean that they are restricted to asking Jesus for things... Far from it: the Father himself loves you, and needs no prompting from the Son.

John Calvin comments:

This is a remarkable passage, by which we are taught that we have the heart of God as soon as we place before Him the name of His Son.

I think that's fairly wonderful.

We get the best of both worlds. We get to come to the Father ourselves and be heard by him because of his love for us AND Jesus himself, as he does a few verses later in John 17, prays for us. So that we are not alone, and don't need to fear that if we forget to confess one particular sin, or pray for our neighbour's salvation that God's good plan for his people will fail.

Praying for prayer?

Two gems from the ever quotable PT Forsyth:

"Prayer is often represented as the great means of the Christian life. But it is no mere means, it is the great end of that life."

"A chief object of all prayer is to bring us to God. But we may attain His presence and come closer to Him by the way we ask Him for other things, concrete things or things of the Kingdom, than by direct prayer for union with Him."

(p. 16, The Soul of Prayer)

Really outward-looking prayer

Tim Chester, in his excellent BST volume on Prayer, comments on 1 Timothy 2:1-8:

In the UK the traditional midweek church meeting often provided a focus for missionary prayer. But the house groups that have in many cases replaced it can all too easily become insular and self-regarding. Paul's call is for our churches and small groups to become hotbeds of missionary activity - outward-looking and inclusive with a vision for the nations.

(p. 219, The Message of Prayer)

It strikes me that it is one thing to move a house group, which because of our distorted human hearts, is self-serving to serving others by praying for the salvation of friends and family. It is another thing to get a house group praying for the world!

Tim Chester's fellow traveller, Steve Timmis, challenged me several months ago with his pointed comments on the Resurgence blog:

Is your church doing mission for its own glory or God's? Want a cunning test to help you answer? Check out how much energy and passion (evidenced by money, prayer, interest) is invested in situations in other parts of the world for which you will get no credit.

Two theses on prayer

Once upon at time theologians used to present a list of theses to be publically disputed as a way of doing theology (see trusty Wikipedia). Luther's theses presented at the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518 are a wonderful example.

I've just read PT Forsyth's The Soul of Prayer, and although its not his greatest book, the last chapter made it worth persisting. In it he effectively argued two theses:

1. "Prayer may really change the will of God, or, if not His will, His intention."
2. "It may, like other human energies of godly sort, take the form of resisting the will of God. Resisting His will may be doing His will."

They taste like Luther theses to me. Meaty stuff.

I was won over to his cause, but they would be fun and important topics to have a disputation over. If you want to read more, read the last chapter of The Soul of Prayer: "The Insistency of Prayer". Its only 12 pages, and I think it would be spiritually beneficial to everyone.

I see law and Gospel everywhere!

Cole Sear: I see dead people law and Gospel.

Malcolm Crowe: In your dreams?

[Cole shakes his head no]

Malcolm Crowe: While you're awake?

[Cole nods...]

Malcolm Crowe: How often do you see them?

Cole Sear: All the time. They're everywhere.

It is starting to feel that way....

This evening at church the preacher argued that there were two essential attitudes for prayer:

1. helplessness
2. faith

Law and Gospel, I thought. You can view everything through that lens!

Is there such a thing as wordless prayer?

These are some snippets from a email conversation I've been having on contemplative, or wordless, prayer. It may all seem a bit disjointed and rushed. That is largely due to lack of time. But I hope they still make some kind of sense.

I must confess that wordless contemplative prayer is something I don't really 'get'. This may be down to my personality which has some trouble contemplating and meditating about anything. Although, it is also because I think prayer is about communication and specifically about petition.

It is unusual be in someone's presence and not talk to them, and it is unusual to be in the presence of someone who loves to give of his riches when you are deeply poor and not ask them for things.

Karl Barth says of pray that "in the first instance, it is simply asking". "It is the fact that [a person] comes before God with his petition which makes him a praying man" (CD III/3, p.268, cited on p. 49, Tim Chester, The Message of Prayer). Tim Chester, who shaped my thinking on this a great deal, comments:

"I have been frustrated by members of my congregation who could not be exhorted to focus on the praise of God or on confession without moving on to petition. It is an attitude of which I now repent. We too easily think of those who move into contemplative modes of praying or those who make worship or confession the focus of their praying as those who are advanced prayers. It is not so. We must recognize that it is the 'unsophisticated', simple prayers who truly express trust in divine Majesty., who truly acknowledge their own need before God, and who have truly grasped the freedom of the Father-child relationship. Many books on prayer exhort us to search for deeper experiences in prayer or more sophisticated modes of prayer that breed a sense of inadequacy in some and of superiority in others. The Bible invites us to find the model of prayer in the simple petitioning of a child before a father. This leads to freedom and peace."

(ibid)

Nevertheless, I think there is a place for stillness and silence which can help in calming your spirit. But I think that is not what I would call prayer, and can only really happen knowing that you have brought your cares and worries to a Father who has the says he will deal with them and has the ability to do so. If it is not in that context it contains the danger of being an act of escaping reality and burying your head in the sand. Much better is a faithful resting in the Father's promise to hear prayers offered in the name of his Son.

[...]

I do most of my thinking out-loud, in conversation, or while reading. That is the way I work, for good or ill. So I love this sort of discussion, but it does make me less receptive to the idea of wordless prayer. That may not necessarily be a good thing though. 'That is my personality' is not a good reason for very much, so it is good to be challenged.

You are right that a lot of our communication is not by words. Although I think they are more important than the commonly repeated statistics would suggest. But whether or not that is true, can we then just apply our experience of human relationships to our relationship with God? If I am communicating by telephone I can't communicate visibly, and if by letter then words are my only option. We walk by faith and not by sight in our relationship with God, and faith comes by hearing. I think it is fair to say that words are fundamental to our relating to God. That may even be why Jesus is called 'The Word'. I don't think that is a permanent state of affairs because we will see him eventually, but that is the way things are now.

That may sound an awfully restricted view of our relationship with God. N may well argue that it is. But I would tend to think that it is good news.

If God is invisible and intangible to us people waiting between his ascension and his second coming then the only avenue that he can communicate to us except through external words (spoken or visible, e.g. sacraments) is through internal words or feelings. If God is communicating to me through those internalised words and feelings then I'm in big trouble. I am creature committed to self-deception. Much of the time my inner thoughts tell me that God approves of me being thoughtless, cruel and selfish. My internal god (because in practice it is a separate deity) serves to make me more and more complacent in my sin, instead of forming me into the likeness of his Son. Other times my inner thoughts may remind me of how deeply ingrained is sin in my life. It tells me that there is no hope of me forming a relationship with God because I'm unworthy. It tells me that I'll never change because I never really have in the past.

In contrast the external word of God tells me I'm more sinful than we could ever know, but more loved than I could imagine. It tells me that, no matter what I feel, I deserved to be hung on a tree but I am now an adopted son of the Father in Christ who died for me.

There are two different ways we can relate to God. One is outward looking and the other is inward looking. One listens to external words and responds in kind, the other listens to internal words (which is really our own voice) and responds in kind. But, doesn't God live in me? Of course we are told that if we are Christians he does. We are told that the Holy Spirit dwells in us and that Christ lives is in us. But it is notable that it doesn't say that the same of the Father, and in almost every New Testament instance of prayer it is the Father whom we address.

So that is a bit more of a broad-brush picture of where I'm coming from. I can see how it could be criticised that it is quite a restricted conception of our relationship with God, but I think that it adds more colour and shape to our understanding. It is more solid and reliable, and I need my relationship with God to be as solid and reliable as his promises are when times get tough.

But as I've said earlier, I think there is a place for wordless quiet in our lives. I just think that it is secondary to, and dependant on, words.

How I cut 7 words out of the Lord's prayer

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.

I don't know how I have been so blind before.