The Lost Art of Meditation and Prayer

Transcript (edited for readability).

And one of the most wonderful ways in which we can minister to each other in the communion of saints is by praying with and for each other. Now, the topic for this morning is the lost art of meditation and prayer.

A while ago, and not terribly long ago, Dr. Dean Wenthe, who is, as you know, the president of the seminary at St. Louis — no, not St. Louis, that's a bad start, but — Fort Wayne — commissioned a retired pastor of the Missouri Synod, Pastor Senkbeil, to do a survey of pastors, I think it was in that area, in the Indiana District or somewhere there. Something like sixty to seventy pastors were surveyed. And the point of the survey was to find out what the needs of the pastors and their families were, and in what way a seminary could help them in their needs. What surprised Pastor Senkbeil, when he got the results of the survey, was that the second highest need was for a more faithful, disciplined personal life of prayer and devotion.

All of us, I think I could say without fear of contradiction, would love to be people of prayer. We know that we need to be more devoted to our Lord. We know that's important. And yet, if there's one area in our lives where we fail — not just in a little way, but we fail spectacularly — it's in our devotional life. Isn't that true? If you want to embarrass a pastor, ask them about their prayer life, not about their sex life. They'll be quite happy to talk about that. But the prayer life is something quite different. It's embarrassing because we fail so spectacularly. And if there's one area where we need help more than any other, it's in this.

And one of the reasons for our failure is not just that we aren't disciplined enough — but this is the nub of the matter — one of the reasons we fail is that we make hard work of it. We see it basically as achievement, performance, something that we do, that we have to do. It's our duty to do it.

Some years ago, at the seminary, I went to lunch. We have some boarders at the seminary who are tertiary students, who are doing all sorts of different courses at the university, which is just down the hill from us. A student who was doing some postgraduate work in engineering brought a most amazing toy. It was there on the table, and nobody could work out what it was, and he told us that it was a solar torch. A solar torch. Now, here we are — there's an Irish invention, if there ever was one. You see, he was doing state-of-the-art research on solar technology. He had invented a little solar torch. There was a solar cell at the top, and then there was a torch. The torch would only shine when you took it outside in the sunshine. Bring it inside, under the shade, and it would go dark. He'd also invented a solar windmill, a solar fan rather.

A solar torch. Now, if you don't remember anything else that I say to you this morning, keep that picture in your mind. We were invented by God to be like that solar cell, that solar torch. We can only shine as long as we are in the light. Get that? We can shine only as long as we remain in the light. We receive from the sun — not the "you," but the "O." We receive everything, and only as we receive can we give and do.

I want to give you a brief introduction to the lost art of meditation and prayer. And the basic point that I want to make is that both of these are a gift from God. They're not primarily a matter of discipline, of hard work, but it's a matter of receiving a gift from God. I want to speak about the gift of meditation and the gift of prayer. These are big topics, and I'm frustrated because I'll only be able to say so little. But if I can whet your appetite, you can always go back to my book, Grace upon Grace, and I can fill you in that way.

Now, first of all, I want to speak to you about the gift of meditation. Now, I don't know if you're like me, but I hear the word "meditation," and I immediately think of some Indian guru who sits down there in one of those impossible yoga positions and doesn't move for six or seven days. It's sad that meditation, for most people in our society, doesn't immediately connect them with Christianity. It should, but it connects them with Eastern religions. And for most people, you say "meditation," and they immediately say, "That's not for me. I'm not that kind of person." Now, there's a few people, and they're a little bit weird, who find it congenial. But "I'm a practical person, and that's not for me."

Well, I want to just talk a bit, first of all, about what is meditation. What's meditation? Meditation is a kind of hearing. At least, that's one very important aspect of it. You remember the story of Solomon. He was catapulted onto the throne in a rather dubious set of circumstances. I won't go into the whole story. He's a very young guy, one of the youngest sons of David. Remember his mother? He had a mother, Bathsheba. And there was all sorts of intrigue. This young guy, totally ill-equipped to face the challenges of kingship — and he was desperate. So he went to Gibeon, where the altar of the Lord was, and he offered hundreds of sacrifices, and he spent the night in vigil and in prayer. And God appeared to Solomon and gave Solomon an offer that he gave to nobody else in the Old Testament. He said, "Solomon, ask what you want from me. Ask whatever you wish, and I will give it to you." Blank check. Whatever you want.

Now just imagine Jesus coming to you and saying, "You've got one wish. What do you want?" You can imagine what went through Solomon's mind — resources, all the possible things that would make him a good king. And he asked for something that so pleased God, that God was so pleased with, that God gave him everything else thrown in as well. Do you know what Solomon asked for? He asked for a hearing heart — not hearing ears, but a hearing heart — so that he could govern the people of God together with God, and so that he could distinguish good from evil. A hearing heart. Now that's meditation. All ears, totally receptive to the voice of God. A hearing heart — not just hearing with your head, not just hearing with your ears, not just intellectual hearing, but hearing with the whole self, all ears, for God.

Now, meditation is not something that's extraordinary, and I'd like to make that quite clear. All of you already — every human being — meditates. It's a natural human activity. It's like speaking or thinking or feeling or imagining. Meditation is a natural human activity. It's part of the way God designed us. Let me illustrate various kinds of meditation that are very, very common, and natural, and spontaneous. You don't have to decide to do it. It just happens.

I notice that, as I'm speaking here, some of you drift off. How many of you daydream when you're given half a chance? Only one? Okay, most of you do it. Daydreaming is a spontaneous form of meditation. And it's far more profound, and it's far more useful, than we allow. Now, if I could reinvent our education system, I would make daydreaming a compulsory subject. Now, how does it happen? Oh, you guys are slow. Just think of how it happens. And if you think about daydreaming, you've got all the essential elements of meditation. It happens when you are relaxed, when you're not doing anything, but you're also concentrating. So you're concentrating by listening to a boring speaker like me, and you're relaxed, and all of a sudden something triggers, and instead of you thinking thoughts, thoughts come and go. You get a train of thoughts that runs through your mind. Like daydreaming, meditation is a mental event that comes to you in a state of relaxation. Now, that's an important word, "relaxation," and I'd like to reclaim it spiritually, not just physically.

The second kind of meditation that's very, very common, that some of you are experts at — I won't ask you to put your hands up, but how many of you here are worrywarts? No, no, keep your hand down. Worrying is a particular kind of meditation. Now, if I tell my wife, who tends to worry a little bit, not to worry, she gets very angry with me, because nobody decides to worry. You don't say, "Okay, worrying time." Worrying happens of its own accord. Now, worry gives you some other very essential components of meditation. You don't worry about everybody and everything, but you worry about the people that you love, the people that you're close to. So there's an emotional component there. So you need to be emotionally connected to somebody. And then what happens in worrying is that it connects your emotions and it affects your imagination. You know, when you worry, you run the worst possible scenarios through. You don't decide to do it. It just happens. So you imagine the worst things. Or you get pictures of all the bad things that could happen. So when the bad things actually happen, they're never as bad as you imagined they would be, or as you worried they'd be. So, like worrying, meditation has to do with our emotions, and particularly love. And it touches our imagination.

The third kind of meditation, that some of you do who are very musical, is that almost all the time you have tunes that run in your head. It'd be interesting to say, how many of you have that kind of phenomenon, that you've got this music, this tune that runs in your head? Okay? Now, do you decide to play that tune in your head? You don't decide to do it. It plays itself. And it keeps on playing itself, and you can't switch it off. It's given. It's stuck there, and it runs itself. It sings itself. It plays itself in your mind. It's given to you. And sometimes the only way of getting rid of it is to put another piece of music in the head — particularly if you're like me, and when I get it, it's usually some terrible song or some terrible tune.

The fourth kind of meditation, that shows another aspect of meditation, is when you read a love letter. Now, you read a love letter quite differently to the way you read a business letter. If I read a business letter, I go get the information, or read an email. Okay, that's that. But when you read a love letter, you don't just read the contents, but you imagine the person speaking to you. And you take the love letter as a personal address to you, as a means of communication from the person you love to you. I still remember when Claire and I were going out. We had a long courtship, nearly five years. I'd go home and work on the farm, and we'd write letters to each other. That was the time before you could email and text each other. I would treasure her letters in two ways. I used to sew bags of grain shut. Now, I'd take the letter with me and put it in my pocket all day. Now, I never read the letter, but I had it there with me, because that letter connected me to her. And there were certain phrases from the letter that would keep on running in my mind, and I would milk them for all they were worth. You can imagine what kind of phrases they were.

Another very common kind of meditation — if you want to understand how meditation works, have a look at a good television advertisement. The people who construct television commercials know a great deal about meditation, because what the commercial does is to trigger a train of meditation, which gets you to do something physically, which is to buy the product. It has a physical effect by appealing to your desires.

Now, drawing that together: meditation is a relaxed kind of concentration. Bit of a paradox here. You're relaxed, and yet you concentrate on one thing. It's a passive rather than an active way of thinking, in a broad sense. So you switch from active mode to receptive mode. It's a bit like having a two-way radio — you have transmission, and then you switch over to receive. Now, meditation is that kind of switch. It's not switching the mind off, but it's switching the mind over from transmission, from doing, to receiving mode. It's a state of receptivity. If you like, it's a bit like coming to the traffic lights: you stop, you look, and you listen; but then, instead of proceeding, you stop, you look, you listen, and then you just — ah — you stay there. Now, I could speak a lot about this, but we don't have time; and if any of you want to pursue it further, I can give you some simple techniques by which you can switch over. By the way, this is totally natural. With the work that's been done on mapping the brain, you go from that active mode of thinking to that receptive mode of thinking by going from beta waves to alpha waves. You can see it happening on a brain scan.

Okay, now, the classic example of a person who is a model of meditation is the Virgin Mary. Remember, how did she become pregnant? She heard the voice of the angel. She became pregnant, not through her body, but through her ears. She heard the word of the Lord to her, and by hearing she became pregnant. Remember what she said? "Let it be according to your word." That's meditation. Let it be. Receiving what's being said to you. She, then, is the example of meditation. Luke makes this quite clear. Remember, immediately after the events of Christmas, Luke, in his chapter two, verse nineteen, says Mary treasured all these things and did what? She pondered them in her heart. She meditated on them in her heart. She kept it there. Instead of replaying the events, the events, the words, everything that happened, kept on replaying themselves in her heart.

Now, meditation is primarily not just an intellectual, mental activity; it involves the whole heart, and particularly it involves your desires. Your desires. So the most important aspect of meditation is not the intellectual side, but the imaginative and the affective side of our personality. We naturally, spontaneously meditate on whatever we desire and love. If you want to understand yourself and how you meditate, just think where your mind goes when you've got nothing else to do. Let's say you're sitting waiting for a bus. Where does your mind go?

This is what Luther says, as he comments on Psalm 1, which has always been used to teach meditation. Remember, Psalm 1, verse 2, says that the righteous person meditates on the law of the Lord. The righteous person, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Notice the connection between three things: delight, the law of the Lord, and meditation. And this is what he says: "Let delight first be sent into the heart as the root, and then meditation will come of its own accord. For this is the reason that the ungodly do not meditate on the law of the Lord, the teaching of the Lord. Yet they meditate on other things, on things in which their delight is rooted, things that they themselves desire and love, such as gold, honor, positions, promotion, and sex." Whatever you delight in, that you meditate on; that triggers, that controls your meditation. Now, that works negatively too. Whatever you fear, and whatever you hate, you meditate spontaneously on. Just think of the person who's your enemy, or of the terrible things that somebody's done to you, and the way that grabs hold of you, and the way you replay things in your mind.

Now, this is the first point I want to make: meditation is something that happens spontaneously; all of us do it naturally. It's not in itself a Christian activity; it's not in itself a religious activity. Now, the important thing is that what happens in meditation doesn't depend on the method of meditation, but on what you meditate on. So the effect of meditation is not determined by what technique you use, but by what the object of your meditation is.

Now, the nature of Christian meditation. Christian meditation is, if you like, determined by three things. Number one, its focus is on Christ and his word. So when I meditate, I meditate exactly in the same way that the psychologist down the street teaches his clients to do, or the guru in the workshop teaches. But the difference between them and me is what I meditate on.

Remember the story of Mary and Martha. Since the beginning of the church, that's been used to teach what meditation is about. Now, here's a trick question. You know this story; I don't have to repeat it. Which of the two was meditating — Mary, or Martha? Both of them were meditating. And both of them started off in the right place. Martha was meditating on her Lord as she started preparing the meal. So her meditation was not the same as Mary's, but she was one of those active people who meditate by doing. She prepared the meal. And as she prepared the meal, she had in mind that she wanted to please her Lord. So she started off meditating on the right thing, and then she got distracted, and she meditated on Mary. And Mary really got up her nose, because she had to do all the work, and Mary had all the glory sitting at the feet of Jesus. So Jesus chides her for being distracted. Many of us get it wrong. Jesus didn't tell Martha, "Look, you've got to be like Mary and sit at my feet." No, the problem with Martha was that she was distracted in preparing the meal, and so she ceased to meditate on her Lord. Now, Mary, who is the example of meditation, sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to his word. That's what meditation is: sitting at the feet of Jesus, focusing on Jesus, and listening to what he says.

So Christian meditation is listening to Jesus — listening to Jesus as he speaks to you personally, and by listening, receiving what he gives to you through his word. But most of all, meditation is just being with Jesus. If you like, sitting at the feet of Jesus and just being there with him. That's enough.

It presupposes three very, very important realities. All this is emphasized by Luther in his teaching on meditation. Number one, Christian meditation presupposes the presence of the risen Lord with us. Now, if Jesus is with us, it means that he's there to speak to us; it means that he's there giving us gifts by speaking to us. It means that when we meditate on him, we don't imagine somebody who lived two thousand years ago, or who is up there in heaven, or who will return at the end of the world. We are imagining what actually is — Jesus present with us. So, the presence of the risen Lord Jesus.

Secondly, it presupposes that Jesus gives his Holy Spirit through his word, and that he does things to us. He acts on us. He changes us, transforms us, through the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus breathes into us by speaking the Spirit to us through his word. So as we listen to his word, we receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus, and that word does things for us; it empowers us; it transforms us.

The third very important reality of meditation — and this is, as far as I can gather, a unique emphasis of Luther in his teaching on meditation — Luther says, unless you have a good conscience, the conscience that comes from being justified before God, unless you're right with God, you won't want to meditate on the word of God, because everything he says will be accusation and condemnation. So a good conscience is the presupposition for meditation. Only those who are righteous, justified, with a good conscience, meditate fruitfully on the word of Jesus.

Now, Jesus teaches us about meditation very, very clearly in one little incident that I'd like to remind you of. You remember that one day Jesus is teaching the crowds, and there's a woman there who just adores him and wishes she had a son like Jesus. And so she quite spontaneously calls out — because she's a very earthy kind of a woman, a real woman's woman — she says, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that suckled you." Very often this is euphemized away a bit. "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that suckled you." Powerful imagery. Very powerful. And Jesus — he doesn't rebuke her, but he says, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it." Retain it. Hold it. Fix on it. What's going on here? Jesus acknowledges that his mother Mary is blessed because she was his mother. But Mary is doubly blessed, because she not only bore Jesus in her womb and breastfed him, but she was the first of all the disciples, and she became spiritually pregnant with Jesus, if you like, as a disciple. She heard the word of the Lord, and she retained him in her heart.

You see, God gives us his word in order to give us new life and to nourish the life that he gives. A very common picture that you'll find in medieval art is of a Bible, usually bigger than this, because they didn't have the narrow print. And then you have a funny protuberance coming from the Bible, like that. And then you have somebody attaching their lips to that protuberance. That protuberance is a breast. Now, what are the medieval teachers saying? That meditation is breastfeeding from the word. The word of God is our spiritual womb, that gives us new life. But the word of God also is our spiritual breast, from which we, as children of God, draw our nourishment. So what's meditation? It's breastfeeding. Spiritual breastfeeding.

What's the purpose of meditation? Now, I'd better move on, because I've got a lot to cover. What's the purpose of meditation? What determines Christian meditation is the object — that we meditate on Jesus and his word, and that we receive life and nourishment, the Holy Spirit, through his word. What's the purpose of meditation? It's to let God's word speak to us personally, not generally, but for Jesus to speak directly to us — and not just to speak to us at one level of our being, if you like, to our intellect, but to speak to us, surely intellectually, but also imaginatively and emotionally, and physically, and spiritually. So his word addresses us in every possible way, at all levels of our being, and allows the word and the Holy Spirit to do their work in us. So that word does things to us, empowers us, equips us.

We meditate on the word of God in order to receive the Holy Spirit. The Pentecostals speak a lot about being filled with the Spirit, and they think it only happens once in your life, when you speak in tongues. And we get very much on the defensive here, and we forget our Christian teaching, that we receive the Holy Spirit not just once, but daily, over and over again. Whenever we hear the word of God, we receive the Holy Spirit; we are filled with the Spirit. So when you got up this morning, if you wanted to be filled with the Spirit, what do you do? You meditate on the inspired, the inspiring word of God, and you're filled with the Spirit.

So the purpose of meditation is to receive the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, and to allow the Holy Spirit to do its work in you, to illumine, to enlighten your heart, to fill you with light and energy. And the result of the illumination of this Spirit is that the Holy Spirit changes your way of thinking, so that you think with Jesus and you think like Jesus. If you like, you step out of your own shoes and think together with Jesus. You feel together with Jesus. You see things, and particularly people, with the eyes of Jesus. You desire what Jesus desires, and you work with him. So, if you like, it's connecting you with Jesus, empowering you to be like Jesus.

Let me give you, then — and I'd better move on — just three basic, very helpful kinds of meditation. First of all, starting off very simply. Now, remember, the important thing in meditation is not to do a lot of it, but to concentrate on one thing. And so, part of our Christian tradition, right from the very beginning, was for people to focus on one particular scriptural text — one word of the Bible — and to carry it with them throughout the day or throughout the week. Now, in the German Lutheran tradition, every Sunday you have what the Germans call a Wochenspruch. That's, if you like, the text for the week, that's included in the service. Now, the traditional purpose of that Wochenspruch was that you'd memorize it on Sunday, and then what would you do the rest of the week? You'd let it work in you. You'd mull over it, you'd dwell on it, and you'd milk it for all it's worth. The Wochenspruch. Another tradition is the tradition of the Moravian Brethren, who have a watchword for the day, a little passage of scripture, just one verse that you take in the morning and memorize so that you can carry it with you. And it then runs in your mind for the rest of the day. So, to focus on just one word of scripture.

The second traditional way of meditation is to read out a section of the Bible — whatever it is, whether it's a psalm or a gospel story — slowly, and preferably out loud to yourself, and you read it in a way that you're looking for it to speak to you and address you. And Luther and all the classical teachers on meditation say, when you come to that point where it strikes you like lightning, you stop, and you just let it do its work on you. You dwell on it. And if it doesn't happen, then you just go to the very end of the reading; but the important thing is that you allow scripture to speak to you personally. And quite often the significant thing doesn't happen when you're doing it, but all of a sudden, later on in the day, something comes back to you that was seeded in that morning reading of scripture.

The third wonderful way of meditation is the way that's recommended by Luther, in his little tract on what to look for and expect as you read the gospels. This is what Luther says. Notice that in his day you couldn't have everything in one book like here, so you'd have a gospel book: "When you open the book containing the gospels and read or hear how Christ comes here or there, or how someone is brought to him, you should therein perceive the message, or the gospel, through which he is coming to you, or you are being brought to him. For the preaching of the gospel is nothing else than Christ coming to us, or we being brought to him. When you see how he works, and how he helps everyone to whom he comes and who is brought to him, then rest assured that faith is accomplishing this in you, and that he is offering your soul exactly the same kind of help and favor through the gospel. If you pause there, if you stop there, stand still, and let him do you good — that is, if you believe that he benefits and helps you — then you really have it. Then Christ is yours, presented to you as a gift."

Now, if I had time, I'd like to give you the background to what Luther's mapping here, and the traditional teaching on meditation, and the unique twist that Luther gives to it. But I don't have time. So I'll just map it out. Number one, the first stage, Luther says, is when you come to a gospel story, the first thing is you picture it in your mind. You picture what's happening there — who comes to Jesus, or who is being brought to Jesus, and what Jesus says and does to that person or those people. So you paint the picture in your imagination. Notice, the starting point is your imagination. You imagine, you visualize the scene. And the second thing you do is that you identify yourself with the key person or persons in the story. Take Mary or Martha. Jesus comes there. Who do you identify with? Who are you meant to identify with? Both of them. You identify yourself first with Martha, and then you identify yourself with Mary. And then the third thing is very, very important — the third stage is, if you like, the act of faith, or the reception of faith. You take what Jesus says and does to that person as being said and done to you. You get it? So what Jesus said to Mary, he says to you. What Jesus said to Martha, he says to you. What Jesus did to the blind man, he does to you. Because Jesus is here, and Jesus is working through his word, and he's doing the same thing for you as he did then. The important thing, then, is to receive Jesus, and to receive the gift that he wants to give to you through his word in that story. Now, that's a very simple form of meditation, that anybody can do, from a child through to the most learned professor of theology, with equal fruitfulness.

Okay — meditation as a gift. There's much more that can be said, but the important thing is that, in meditation, we come there not in order to do something for Jesus, or to do something even for ourselves, but meditation is a matter of receiving. If I can put it another way: as soon as I get up in the morning, the danger for me is that my mind — it's a bit like a computer — I switch it on, and then for the rest of the day, the story of my life is me, doing things and thinking things. And I see everybody and everything from my point of view. Nothing exists except me. Now, when I live that way, I'm missing out on most of the things that are happening around me, because of my particular angle, where I focus on what I'm doing. Now, in meditation, we switch over from active mode to receptive mode. And I go into that position where I don't see myself as the center of everything, but I see other people, and Jesus behind everybody and everything, so that my whole day, even what I'm doing, is a matter of receiving, rather than of performing, achieving, doing things. And that changes the whole of your day. I find that if I don't start off the day in meditation, my whole day feels off center. Somehow I'm here, and everything else is out there.

Lastly, I think it's very, very significant that we have so many pastors' wives here, because, just as Mary is the classical model of meditation, I think women find meditation much more easy than men, because of the way God constructed them. So, in a sense, what meditation does for us men is teach us to be more feminine — in a good sense, in a spiritual sense. Receptive, in other words.

Now, the gift of prayer. Oh, gosh. Let's go. This is a real race now. The gift of meditation, the gift of prayer. In fact, meditation and prayer are so closely related that, for most of the tradition of the church, they are distinguished but never separated. So most of the time, when Luther speaks about meditation, he talks about prayer. Meditation and prayer go hand in hand. And that's what I want to map out now.

All of us have difficulty praying. Praying is the one activity that goes against the grain. If there's one thing the old Adam hates to do — if there's one thing the old John Kleinig hates to do — it is to admit that he needs help, and even worse than that, to ask help from somebody. I like helping people, but I don't like being helped, and I don't like asking for help, and I don't like admitting that I need help. That goes against the grain for me, and for most people.

Now, the starting point for the Christian teaching on prayer, which makes Christian prayer different to prayer in any other religion, is the fact that prayer doesn't start with us, but it starts with Jesus. The whole of the life of Jesus was one long prayer for us and for all humanity. Jesus became a human being, lived a human life, died a human death, was raised, and is exalted at the right hand of God the Father. His ministry is incomplete. In fact, only at the exaltation of Jesus does his ministry actually reach its culmination. And as you know, from Hebrews, Hebrews says Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, together with him. Why? Because he always lives to intercede for them. What counts is not your praying, but the praying of Jesus for you, and the praying of Jesus together with you. He prays for you. Before you were born, he prayed for you. Before you became a Christian, he prayed for you. He prayed you into faith. The only reason why you are still pastors, or why you're still married, or why you're still a Christian, is because Jesus has been praying for you. Whether you're asleep or awake, Jesus is praying for you. He intercedes for you. And then, if you like, he hands over his prayer to you and includes you in his praying. He prays for you, and what he does then is invite you to join with him in his praying.

Jesus and his words are the foundation for our prayer life. Remember the farewell discourse of Jesus — Jesus talking about the vine and the branches, and how the branches can't bear fruit unless they are attached to the vine. And then he has something wonderful to say about praying. He says, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."

Now, what does Jesus do to help us in our prayer life? Number one, he prays for us. Number two, he connects himself to us, like a branch to a vine, so that everything he has comes to us, and everything that we have he takes on himself. And, number three, he gives us his words as aids to praying. People quite often ask me, "What's the best book on prayer?" And I'd say, "Theoretically or practically?" And people say, "Practically." Okay — I get out my Bible and say, "This is your handbook on prayer." You see, Jesus gives us his word not only to teach and to preach, but also to pray. His commands, his promises, are given for us so that we can cash them in, claim them, use them in prayer. And the important thing, then, in our prayer life is that we listen to the words of Jesus before we respond in prayer. He gives us his words; we listen to his words; we receive his promises; and then in prayer we take him at his word, and we cash in on his promises.

One of the most helpful and comprehensive passages which teach prayer is found in Luke chapter 11, verses one to thirteen. This is an absolutely astonishing piece of teaching, and some of you may have preached it, because it was in the three-year lectionary a couple of Sundays ago. Now, notice the problem. A disciple comes to Jesus. He's been praying, and he says, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." That's our problem. We're no good at praying. We come to Jesus: help us. How does Jesus help us to be people of prayer? And Jesus answers that question in four surprising ways.

Let me just read it to refresh your memory. Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he'd finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." Let me just pause there. What do you think this guy was looking for? How did John teach his disciples? John taught his disciples the method of praying — how you go about praying — and the theology of prayer. Now, I would expect Jesus to say, "Okay, when you pray, you do this, or you don't do that, and this is why you do it," et cetera. "Now, imagine God's your Father," and so on. But look at the way Jesus answers this question. He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come; give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation." Let me just stop there, because I assume you know this. What's the first thing that Jesus does in answer to the request, "Lord, teach us to pray"? He gives his disciples a prayer. And not just any prayer, but his own prayer. Who is the only one who can address God as Father? Jesus.

Now, just listen to this as the prayer of Jesus for us and for the whole world. "Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come; give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation." Can you see here? Jesus gives us his own prayer. And he says, "When you pray, join in with me." And then he does something wonderful. You stand in my shoes, just as I stand in your shoes. Jesus doesn't have to pray for forgiveness. Jesus doesn't have to pray for daily bread. Jesus doesn't have to pray to be delivered from temptation — but we do. So notice that when Jesus prays, he identifies himself with us and our needs; he stands in our shoes. And then, when we join him in prayer, he says, "Now I invite you to stand in my shoes, and to act as if my Father is your Father, my relationship with God is your relationship with God, and my cause is your cause." To identify ourselves with him. To address God as our Father, as if we were Jesus. So the first unexpected response is the gift of his own prayer. We pray to the Father in the name of Jesus. Now, that doesn't just mean because of Jesus, but in the shoes of Jesus, together with Jesus, so that his praying is our praying and our praying is his praying. Now, that is simply the most helpful and remarkable thing you can imagine. I was going to tell a story, but I'll keep it to the end in case I get time.

Secondly — now, my word, I can identify with this next situation, because it's been the story of my ministry. Number one, then, how does Jesus help us in praying? He gives us his own prayer, so that we can pray together with him, standing, as it were, in his shoes. Secondly, then, "he said to them, 'Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him." And he answers from within, "Do not bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence' — or, another way of translating it, 'because of his shamelessness,' or 'audacity' — 'he will get up and give him whatever he needs.'"

Now, I don't know if you're like me, and if the story of your life's been like mine in ministry. Again and again, I'm frustrated because people come to me for help as the last resort. And now they come to me — somebody's dying of cancer, or a broken marriage, or a problem with kids — as if I can fix it up. And I feel like saying, "Look, I've got nothing to set before you. I've got nothing to give," and these people come and make demands of me. Now, how does God teach you to pray? It's by putting unexpected visitors in your life — people who make unreasonable demands of you. And that happens every day in your ministry. That happens every day in your marriage. That happens every day with your kids. It happens every day in dealing with people and their needs. Now, why is it that God puts people across your pathway that make demands of you that you can't fulfill? Well, you're like this person in the story. He has this unexpected visitor; he hasn't got a scrap of bread in the cupboard, but he's got a friend next door. And since the need of the person is so great, he swallows his pride, goes, knocks at the door at midnight, and won't go away until he gets the food for the unexpected visitor. So he borrows from that friend next door for the visitor who's come. How many midnight visitors have you had lately in your life? Now, the problem is that very often we tend to dismiss them, because they are midnight visitors — it's midnight, it disrupts your sleep, it disrupts your life, it's out of the routine, it's not part of your work detail. Why does God put these people across your path? It is to teach you to pray. You see, very often we find it difficult to pray for ourselves, but we learn the art of praying — the art of praying as borrowing, as receiving — best of all, not for ourselves, but for the needs of others. That's the second way Jesus teaches us to pray: by sending us midnight visitors. And ministry, by the way, has everything to do with midnight visitors.

Thirdly: "I say to you, ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door is opened." Now, just an exegetical detail here: you get what scholars call the passive imperative — "ask, and it will be given to you." Notice that "it will be given to you" is a circumlocution for saying, "ask, and God will give it to you." "Seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you." Which door? The door to God's house. So ask; knock at the door of God's house, and God will open the door for you. Now, a lot of us think that praying is informing God about what we need, or what others need. Or maybe it's a bit more like our kids — they decide they want something, and then they work us, they pester us, so that they can extract favors from us. Now, God is not reluctant to give. We don't have to twist his arm to receive gifts. We don't have to inform him about our needs. Well, then why do we pray? We pray in order to receive. Praying and receiving go together. Christian prayer is receptive prayer, the prayer of the empty hands, which receive the gifts that God wants to give to us in faith.

Now, notice an unexpected twist here. See if you can pick it. "Ask, and it will be given to you." What will be given to you? What you ask for. "Seek," or "search, and you will find" — what? What you're looking for, from God. "Knock, and the door will be opened to you." Now, notice, "the door will be opened for you." Notice that it doesn't say "the door will be opened." What's the difference between "the door will be opened" and "the door will be opened for you"? Okay, we have it every day. We have people coming down the street, knocking at the door. In most cases, you know, we've got a screen door, and then we've got the front door. We open the main door, and we keep the screen door shut, and we talk to people through the screen door — or sometimes then we go out and receive what they want to give us. Now, when you pray, you not only receive what you're looking for, but you receive more than you're looking for, because when you pray, what happens? You receive not only gifts from God, but you receive God's hospitality. He opens the door to you. He opens his house to you, and he says, "Come right in. Good to see you. Let's spend some time together." You have the gift of intimacy with him.

So what's the third thing that Jesus gives us to help us with our praying? He gives us his command to pray and his promises to hear us. Those wonderful promises — and we could spend hours just unpacking everything that's contained there. He gives us his promises. By the way, Luther keeps hammering this again and again and again: Why do we pray? Because God commanded us to pray. What's the point of praying? To receive what he promises us.

Lastly, as if that's not enough: "Is there anyone among you who, if a child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?" The answer is, no one. "Or if a child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?" No one. Even the worst parent doesn't do that. Now, notice the unexpected thing. One of the very important rules for scripture reading, and meditation particularly, is to look for the unexpected thing, because Jesus never goes down the way we expect him to go. Now look at the last part: "If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give?" What would you expect him to say? "Good gifts" would fit in here. So, if you know how to give good gifts to your children, since you're a child of God, and God is good, you can expect him to give you good gifts. But then Jesus says, "How much more will he give the Holy Spirit to you?" Notice the unexpected thing. And what on earth has this got to do with the request of the disciple, "Lord, teach us to pray"?

Here we have one of the most important parts of the Christian teaching on prayer. Jesus doesn't just give us his own prayer. He doesn't just give us midnight visitors. He doesn't just give us his commands and promises, so that we can pray with boldness and confidence — but he gives us the Holy Spirit. Now, above all else, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prayer. How do you receive the Holy Spirit? By speaking in tongues? Maybe you can, but there's no assurance. How do you receive the Holy Spirit? According to this, you receive the Holy Spirit by asking God the Father to give you the Spirit. And you do that every day when you pray the Lord's Prayer. Remember, "your kingdom come" — Luther says — has to do with the Holy Spirit. Every time you pray "your kingdom come," you're saying, "Your kingdom come, by giving us your Holy Spirit."

Now, the Holy Spirit empowers us to do what we can't do by ourselves, which is to pray. Remember, Paul says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don't know how to pray, but the Spirit intercedes within us with sighs too deep for words. So we not only have Jesus praying for us to God the Father, we have the Holy Spirit, who prays in us, who intercedes within us. And our prayer is merely going along with the Holy Spirit. Just imagine — the Holy Spirit is in each one of you, and whether you're aware of it or not, the Holy Spirit is praying in your heart day and night. And the reason why you are urged to pray, and why you can pray, is because the Holy Spirit is inspiring you, empowering you to pray. Now, the trick of it is to go along with the Holy Spirit, and to follow the Spirit's guidance and direction and prompting in your own life.

I've only had time to unpack some of the practical things of that. But can I give you just one practical application of that? Let's see how — yes, I have time. How many of you suffer from insomnia? You have wakeful periods at night; you can't go back to sleep. Okay, not very many. That's pretty good. What happens as you get older is that you have more and more insomnia. And as you get older, it's harder to pray. When you go to bed at night, which is a normal time, you're just too tired, and it's just too hard. So what's given to you is a period of deep sleep. And then what God does is wake you up so that you can have a time of meditation and prayer. And sometimes you'll find that you'll wake up and you're singing a song, or you're praying for somebody, or you wake up and there's a burden of somebody on your heart, or many different phenomena. Now, take notice of that, because you can see the intercession of the Spirit, I think, most clearly at nighttime, in those periods of insomnia. I could spend a whole session on the importance of that, and learning from that spiritually.

So let me draw things together. Christian meditation and Christian prayer go hand in hand. In meditation, we listen to what Jesus says to us; when we pray, we respond to what Jesus says to us, or we join in with what Jesus is doing in his praying for us. So Jesus is the one who teaches us the art of meditation, and Jesus is the one who teaches us to pray. He's the only expert in meditation and prayer. You won't learn the lost art of meditation and prayer from anybody except Jesus. And the basic resource that you have for meditation and prayer is this: the more you steep yourself in the word of God, the more prayer will be given to you, and meditation will be given to you, as a gift from God.

Three summary things. First of all, a lovely little passage from the great Lutheran philosopher-theologian, Kierkegaard. He said, someone prayed, and at first he thought prayer was talking — that's what I thought when I was young. But he became more and more quiet, until in the end he realized that prayer was listening. Being all ears to God. Basically, when you come to the final count, there's no difference between meditation and prayer; you slip from one to the other without noticing.

Secondly, if what I've said is true, you can understand why praying is so hard. Because if there's one thing that the devil will try and stop you from doing at all costs — you Christian couples, you pastoral couples, if there's one thing that the devil will try and stop you from doing, in your marriage, in your family, in your home, it is to stop you meditating and praying. Because as long as you don't meditate and pray, you operate from your own spirit, your own power, your own resources, and he can counteract what you're doing; he can sabotage what you're doing. But as soon as you meditate on the word of God, as soon as you start praying, you're drawing on supernatural power, power that he cannot resist or overcome. So what is the one thing that he's going to try and stop you from doing at all costs? It is praying. Watch out for sabotage, and watch out for his attack.

Which leads me, then, to the last point. A very important part of our Christian life is an understanding that we are involved in a battle, in spiritual warfare. And there's a lot that's very, very fashionable out there, and a lot of the stuff you get in evangelical bookshops is just twaddle — rather ill-informed. But spiritual warfare is part of your life. You can't be in the ministry, you can't be in a clerical marriage, without being involved in the battle, in spiritual warfare. And the basic weapons you have in spiritual warfare are meditation and prayer together with each other.

Listen to what Abba Agathon, who is one of the great fathers, the desert fathers, had to say about this. The brethren asked him, "Among all good works, which is the virtue, the good thing, that requires the greatest effort?" He answered, "Forgive me, but I think there is no labor greater than that of prayer to God. For every time we want to pray, our enemies the demons want to prevent us. For they know that it is only by turning us from prayer that they can hinder our journey. Whatever good work we undertake, if we persevere in it, we will find rest; but prayer is warfare to the last breath." It doesn't get easier. When you get older, in fact, it gets harder. And the fact that it gets harder means that you're on the right track.