Notes

INTRODUCTION—WHY WRITE A BOOK ON PRAYER?

1. Jonathan Edwards is one example. Edwards’s treatments of the nature of spiritual experience are unequaled. His work Religious Affections and his sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” for example, describe in detail the “sense on the heart” that is the essence of a spiritual encounter with God. Yet Edwards speaks very little about methodology, that is, about how to meditate and pray.

2. Austin Phelps, The Still Hour: Or Communion with God (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1974), 9.

3. Donald Bloesch, The Struggle of Prayer (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1988). Bloesch closely follows the typology and argument of Friedrich Heiler, who wrote of “mystical” versus “prophetic” prayer. We will look at Heiler’s work and this distinction in more detail in chapter 3.

4. Bloesch, Struggle of Prayer, 131.

5. Ibid., 154.

6. Ibid., 97–117. As a convinced Protestant, I concur with Donald Bloesch here. Protestants believe in the “sufficiency” of the Bible. That is, they believe that God’s Spirit speaks to us in his Word. Timothy Ward writes of “Scripture . . . as the means by which God extends his action, and therefore himself, into the world in order to act communicatively in relation to us.” Timothy Ward, Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 113. Ward contrasts this view of the Bible’s “sufficiency” with the Roman Catholic view. The Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin taught that the Spirit spoke “through Scripture itself” rather than through “the increasingly authoritative ecclesiastical center in Rome” (109). A strong, Reformation view of the sufficiency of Scripture has a major shaping influence on the practice of prayer. The Reformers denied both the Catholic teaching that the Spirit speaks through the Church (interpreting the Scripture) rather than through the Bible itself, as well as the Anabaptist claim that the Spirit gave individuals new revelations beyond the Scripture. See the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 1.6, for a summary of this view. Both of these alternatives ruin the idea of prayer as part of a dialogue with God through the Word. The Catholic view undermines the idea that God speaks directly to us through the Word. The Anabaptist view does as well. In the Anabaptist (later Quaker) view, we mainly hear God speaking to us in our hearts.

7. See John Piper’s treatment of this theme in Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 1987).

8. Bloesch notes the “persistent mystical element” in Martin Luther’s teaching on prayer in Struggle of Prayer, 118.

9. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer (Ignatius Press, 1986), 28, cited in Bloesch, Struggle of Prayer, 118–19. See a further discussion on Balthasar’s views later in this volume.

CHAPTER ONE—THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER

10. Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal (New York: Farrar, Straus, 2013), 3.

11. Ibid., 4.

12. Ibid., 20.

13. Ibid., 8.

14. Ibid., 20.

15. Ibid., 4.

16. Ibid., 23.

17. Mary Billard, “Robert Hammond: Leaving the High Life,” The New York Times, November 27, 2013.

18. http://goindia.about.com/od/spiritualplaces/tp/Top-10-Rishikesh-Ashrams.htm.

19. David Hochman, “Mindfulness: Getting Its Share of Attention,” The New York Times, November 1, 2013.

20. See the Christianity Today cover article from February 2008 by Chris Armstrong, “The Future Lies in the Past: Why Evangelicals Are Connecting with the Early Church as They Move into the 21st Century,” and the sidebar “Monastic Evangelicals” by Chris Armstrong, posted February 8, 2008. Find at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/february/22.22.html.

21. Within the Catholic Church, there has been sustained criticism of “Centering Prayer” as being too indebted to the thought of Eastern religions rather than to Christian understandings of the divine. See the 1989 document “Aspects of Christian Meditation” as well as “Christian Reflection on the New Age.” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19891015_meditazione-cristiana_en.html and http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html. For a Protestant critique of the recent evangelical interest in ancient and medieval spirituality, see D. A. Carson, “Spiritual Disciplines,” in Themelios 36, no. 3 (November 2011). Also see Carson’s older article “When Is Spirituality Spiritual?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37, no. 3 (September 1994).

22. See D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Sons of God: An Exposition of Chapter 8:5–17 (Romans series) (Peabody, MA: Zondervan, 1974), 275–399. Lloyd-Jones had the (frankly idiosyncratic) view that the “witness of the Spirit” described in Romans 8:15–16, the “sealing of the Spirit” described in Ephesians 1:13 (cf. Lloyd-Jones, God’s Ultimate Purpose: An Exposition of Ephesians 1:1–23 [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1978], 243–48), and the “baptism of the Spirit” described in the book of Acts (cf. Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable: Power and Renewal in the Holy Spirit [Marietta, GA: Shaw, 2000]) were all the same experience. He saw this baptism of the Spirit as subsequent to conversion and something that only certain Christians receive as an empowering gift. Lloyd-Jones understood “revivals” as times in which this baptism of the Spirit was poured out on an unusual number of people. Like most other admirers of Lloyd-Jones, I do not accept that all these biblical terms are identical. Nor do I think they all point to a single experience. Lloyd-Jones’s understanding of this biblical material was shaped by a particularly powerful experience he had when on holiday in Wales in 1949 and was struggling with exhaustion and spiritual darkness. (See “Wales and the Summer of 1949” in Iain H. Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939–1981 [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1990], 201–21.) However, Lloyd-Jones is on more sure exegetical ground when he describes the Romans 8:16 “witness of the Spirit” as an experience of high assurance that can come to us in prayer. I believe he is right on this matter, and his exposition of it is illuminating and inspiring. Also, his description of the experience of God’s love in his exposition of the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 3:13–21 is remarkable for its richness and description.

23. Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Marietta, GA: Baker, 1998), 427. Notice Schreiner’s respectful disagreement with Lloyd-Jones that the witness of the Spirit is a special experience available only to some Christians (427n18).

24. William H. Goold, ed., The Works of John Owen, vol. 9 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1967), 237.

25. John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 169–70. Italics for emphasis are mine.

26. See Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Marietta, GA: Baker Academic, 2005), 91. This biblical verse was one of Lloyd-Jones’s favorite, and he gave this title to his book on the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

27. For more on how to “pray the Psalms” or use the Psalms in prayer, see the last chapter in this volume.

28. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Peabody, MA: Zondervan, 1971), 169–70.

29. P. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer (reprint of the 1916 edition; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 9.

CHAPTER TWO—THE GREATNESS OF PRAYER

30. As we have already noted several times, the “inner life with God” here does not mean only our private, individual prayer life. Life with God is cultivated by both public and private worship and prayer. John Calvin and the other Reformers were clear that public prayer and devotion in the gathered Christian assembly was to be the formative foundation that taught us how to pray and behave toward God privately. Michael Horton, describing Calvin’s understanding of the Christian life, writes: “The public ministry shapes private devotion, not vice versa.” See Michael S. Horton, Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 154.

31. Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 270.

32. John Owen, cited in I. D. E. Thomas, A Puritan Golden Treasury, (Banner of Truth, 1977), 192.

33. Phelps, The Still Hour, 9. The italics and emphasis are his.

34. For the prayer life of the Patriarchs, see Genesis 20:17; 25:21; 32:9; and 15:2ff. Isaac finds a wife through the prayers of Abraham’s servant (Gen 24:12, 15, 45). For Moses’s deployment of prayer against Pharaoh, see Exodus 8:8–9, 28–30; 9:28–29; 10:17–18.

35. Samuel was famed for his prayers and prayer life. See 1 Samuel 1:10–16; 2:1ff.

36. 1 Kings 8:22–53; 2 Chronicles 6:14–42.

37. 1 Kings 8:30, 33, 35, 38, 42, 44, 45, 49.

38. The book of Jonah is largely a record of prayers—the petition of the frightened sailors (Jonah 1), the confession of Jonah in the belly of the great fish (Jonah 2), and then the shocking complaint of Jonah against (what he felt) was the irresponsible, extravagant mercy of God (Jonah 4:2). Elijah, through prayer, called down fire from heaven before the people in the most spectacular display (1 Kings 18:36) and almost immediately, depressed and depleted, received God’s tender mercy and help through prayer (1 Kings 19:4ff). Elijah’s successor, Elisha, saved a boy’s life and saved a city from a siege—both through prayer (2 Kings 4:33; 6:18). When King Hezekiah received a high-handed letter from the Assyrian king threatening to annihilate Jerusalem, Hezekiah took the letter and “spread it out before the Lord” and prayed. God delivered the city (2 Kings 19:14–20). Hezekiah was later delivered from illness through prayer. The book of Habakkuk is nothing but a dialogue of prayer by the prophet with God (Hab 3:1). Habakkuk waited in prayer for God’s answers to his questions (Hab 2:1–3).

39. This is the view of J. Thomson in his article “Prayer” in The New Bible Dictionary, ed. J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973), 1020. See Isaiah 6:5ff; 37:1–4; Jeremiah 11:20–23; 12:1–6.

40. Daniel’s thrice-daily prayer practice is found in Daniel 6:7–12. His prayer of repentance, asking that they be released from exile, is found in Daniel 9:1–18; the response is found in vv. 21–23.

41. Nehemiah seeks the favor of the emperor to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem through prayer (Neh 1:1–11; 2:4). He used prayer also for protection until the work on the wall was done (Neh 4:9; 6:9). Later, Ezra protects people returning to Judah from exile in Babylon through prayer (Ez 8:23). Both Ezra (Ez 9:1ff) and Nehemiah repent and seek forgiveness for the sins of the people.

42. Christ taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6:5–15; 21:22; Mark 11:24–25; Luke 11:1–13; 18:1–8. He laid hands on children to pray for them (Matt 19:13). He raised Lazarus from the dead, calling on his Father in prayer (John 11:41–42). He saved Peter from spiritual hardening, through prayer (Luke 22:32). He said the temple should be a “house of prayer” (Matt 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46). He taught that some demons could be cast out only through prayer (Mark 9:29). He prayed often and regularly (Matt 14:23; Mark 1:35; 6:46; Luke 5:16; 9:18), and sometimes all night (Luke 6:12). The prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is recorded in Matthew 26:36–45; Mark 14:32–40; Luke 22:39–46. His prayer—that he would not have to suffer the cross—was denied. He died praying—crying out in agony (Mark 15:35), praying for his enemies (Luke 23:34), and giving himself to God (Luke 23:46).

43. Prayer brings the power of the Spirit in Acts 4:24, 31. Leaders are selected and appointed with prayer in Acts 6:6; 13:3; and 14:23. The apostles—the teachers and leaders of the early church—believed that they needed to give as much attention to praying as they did to teaching the Word (Acts 6:4). All Christians were expected to have a fervent prayer life (Rom 12:2; 15:30; Col 4:2), praying in all sorts of ways for all kinds of things (Eph 6:18). It was expected that spouses might even part from each other for times of sustained prayer (1 Cor 7:5). The Spirit gives us the confidence and desire to pray to God as Father (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:14–16) and enables us to pray even when we don’t know what to say (Rom 8:26). All desires must be given to God in prayer—the only alternative is anxiety (Phil 4:6). All people around you should be prayed for (1 Tim 2:1), and the sick should especially be prayed for (James 5:13–16). God hears prayers and answers them (James 5:17–18). Every gift you receive should be “consecrated” through prayer—you should thank God for it lest your heart become hard through an illusion of self-sufficiency (1 Tim 4:5). Prayer should pervade your whole life—we should “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17), seeking the glory of God consciously in everything we do (1 Cor 10:31). The prayers and praise of our lips is now the most pleasing sacrifice we can offer God (Heb 13:15; cf. Rev 5:8).

44. Charles Summers, cited in Helen Wilcox, ed., The English Poems of George Herbert (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 177.

CHAPTER THREE—WHAT IS PRAYER?

45. Philip and Carol Zaleski, Prayer: A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 4–5. In December 2013, hundreds assembled at Bodh Gaya in India, considered the birthplace of Buddhism, to seek world peace through prayer. “Karmapa Begins Prayer for World Peace at Bodh Gaya,” The Times of India, December 14, 2013.

46. See, for example, “Reincarnation” at the official website of the Dalai Lama, which says that people can choose their place and time of birth as well as their future parents through the virtue of their prayers. http://www.dalailama.com/biography/reincarnation.

47. Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 6–8, 23. Using songs and trances to channel energy from the spiritual world into the physical is called shamanism. This religious view is extremely old and seems to have been pervasive around the world. The Kalevala, a compilation of ancient Finnish epic poetry, gives classic accounts of shamanistic activity. Creation, healing, and combat happen through songs with magical, powerful effects.

48. Cited in Bernard Spilka and Kevin L. Ladd, The Psychology of Prayer: A Scientific Approach (New York: Guilford, 2012), 3.

49. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/26/world_god.shtml. This percentage of atheists and agnostics who pray was also reported in the General Social Survey, cited by Spilka and Ladd, Psychology of Prayer, 37.

50. “‘Nones’ on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation,” Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, October 9, 2012.

51. See “Religion among the Millenials,” Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, February 17, 2010, accessed at http://www.pewforum.org/2010/02/17/religion-among-the-millennials.

52. Giuseppe Giordan, “Toward a Sociology of Prayer,” in Religion, Spirituality and Everyday Practice, ed. Giuseppe Giordan and William H. Swatos Jr. (New York: Springer, 2011), 77. Giordan goes on to assert that prayer is a “global experience,” an effort to establish a relationship between limited, weak human beings with something more powerful (78). Psychologists Bernard Spilka and Kevin Ladd, authors of the most extensive scientific psychological study of religion to date, say that likewise “prayer is . . . critical to the way most people conduct their lives.” See Spilka and Ladd, Psychology of Prayer, 4. The most significant contemporary survey of prayer, by Philip and Carol Zaleski, scholars who have taught at Harvard, Smith College, and Tufts University, also concludes that “wherever one finds humans, one finds humans at prayer” and that even if prayer is outlawed, “it goes underground where it continues to wend its course into the depths of the soul.” Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 4. A classic older study, Prayer, by the German scholar Friedrich Heiler, draws the same conclusion, noting prayer’s “astonishing multiplicity of forms” throughout the world. Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 353.

53. There have sometimes been claims of remote tribes who live without any religion. Daniel L. Everett, author of Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes (London: Profile Books, 2010), wrote of the Piraha people (a small tribe of fewer than five hundred, in the Amazonian rain forest of Brazil), who “believed the world was as it had always been, and that there was no supreme deity” and they were content to live “without God, religion, or any political authority.” Despite these claims, the Piraha did believe very firmly in spirits and wore certain articles of clothing to protect themselves. See http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist.

54. Heiler, Prayer: A Study, 5.

55. Quoted in Bloesch, Struggle of Prayer, vii.

56. Most of these kinds of prayer are described and discussed at some length in the Zaleskis’ Prayer: A History. One empirical study in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion posited at least twenty-one types of Christian prayer alone. Kevin L. Ladd and Bernard Spilka, “Inward, Outward, and Upward: Cognitive Aspects of Prayer,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41, 475–84; and “Inward, Outward, and Upward: Scale Reliability and Validation,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45, 233–51. Ladd and Spilka were seeking to use objective scales and factor-analysis to verify the categories posed by Richard J. Foster in Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: Harper, 1992).

57. Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 27. Their treatment of the early theorists of prayer is found on pp. 24–28.

58. Ibid., 27.

59. Unlike his contemporary Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung did not see religion as a sign of repressed sexuality and psychological immaturity. Instead, he believed that religious experiences could be helpful in growing into wholeness and psychological health. Jung taught that all human beings had a personal unconscious, formed through experience, but also shared a “collective unconscious,” an awareness of symbols and themes that all human beings are born with and share together, and that are not the result of personal experience. See Robert H. Hopcke, A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 10th anniversary edition (Boston: Shambhala, 1999), 13–20, 68.

60. The collective unconscious is possible because Jung believed, as did Eastern thinkers, that “the world [is] a unified field in which subject and object are fundamentally one, two different manifestations of the same basic reality” (Hopcke, C. G. Jung, 72). The process of growth into maturity is therefore a process of bringing one’s individual consciousness into contact with the symbols of the collective unconscious so that a kind of balance is achieved. People need to be “individuated” with their own self-image, and yet they also must come to see themselves as part of the interdependent whole of reality and thereby escape egocentricity and the illusion that they are not part of the whole of reality (Hopcke, C. G. Jung, 14–15).

61. See Hopcke, C. G. Jung, 68. “[For Jung] religion was religious experience, the direct contact with the divine, that which he called the numinosum, a term he borrowed from Rudolf Otto, manifested in dreams, visions, and mystical experiences. Second, religion consisted of religious practice, the doctrines and dogmas as well as the rituals and enactments, which Jung saw as necessary to protect people from the awesome power of such a direct experience of the numinous. Both religious experience and religious practice were, therefore, for Jung psychological phenomena that found their source inwardly and outwardly in the collective unconscious.” See also page 97, where Hopcke writes about the Jungian “archetype” within the collective unconscious of the “Self,” which meant an awareness of our oneness with all reality: “Jung saw that this organizing archetype of wholeness was particularly well captured and developed through religious imagery, and he thus came to understand that the psychological manifestation of the Self was indeed the experience of God or the ‘God-image within the human soul.’” Hopcke insists that Jung was not seeking to “reduce the almighty, transcendent Divine Being to a psychological experience” but was trying to show how the “image of God exists within the psyche” (97). However, Jung’s belief that one experiences God by going down into one’s self and unconscious rather than by listening to words spoken by God via revelation through the prophets shows that his understanding of God was far more like the immanent, impersonal Divine being of the East than the transcendent God who speaks through revelation in the Bible. See also M. Esther Harding in “What Makes the Symbol Effective as a Healing Agent?” in Current Trends in Analytical Psychology, ed. Gerhard Adler (Abingdon, UK: Routledge reprint, 2001), 3. Harding explains that Jungian psychologists ascribe to the collective unconscious what religious people ascribe to God.

62. Jung wrote a foreword to D. T. Suzuki’s classic An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 9–29. In this essay he argues that his view of the collective unconscious fits in with the Buddhist view that there is “a cosmic life and a cosmic spirit, and at the same time an individual life and an individual spirit” (13). Jung also points approvingly to the similarities between the Buddhist experience of satori and the spiritual experience of the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart. He quotes Eckhart saying, “In the breakthrough . . . then I am more than all creatures, for I am neither God nor creature: I am what I am, and what I will remain, now and forever. Then I receive a jerk, which raises me above all the angels. In this jerk I become so rich that God cannot suffice me, in spite of all that he is as God, in spite of all his Godly works; for in this break-through I perceive what God and I are in common. I am then what I was, I grow neither less nor more, for I am an immovable being who moves all things” (14).

63. See Harding, “Symbol Effective,” 14. She writes that, while religious experience could help a person surrender the ego to something greater and avoid immaturity of egocentricity, particular religious doctrines were unnecessary. Though Christians, for example, might believe that their egocentricity can be countered only through “faith in the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice,” psychologists knew that it “must be achieved not by faith but by understanding and conscious [psychological] work” (15).

64. See Ira Progoff, trans., The Cloud of Unknowing (New York: Julian Press, 1957), 24. Quoted in Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 208. Most Christian thinkers who have heavily used Jungian insights and assumptions about the unconscious have been Catholic. See T. E. Clarke, “Jungian Types and Forms of Prayer, Review for Religious 42, 661–76. See also Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey, Prayer and Temperament: Different Prayer Forms for Different Personality Types (Charlottesville, VA: Open Door, 1985). The Centering Prayer movement, led by Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating, combines Jungian thought and Catholic theology. See Spilka and Ladd, Psychology of Prayer, 49.

65. Heiler’s distinction between mysticism and prophetic religion follows the Swedish Lutheran theologian Nathan Söderblom. While Heiler believed that the purest versions of mystical prayer are found in Eastern religions, specifically in the Upanishads and in Buddhism, he saw similar dynamics in the tradition of Christian mysticism, beginning with the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius (late fifth century), then continuing with the thirteenth-century work of Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and The Cloud of Unknowing, as well as the sixteenth-century John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila (Heiler, Prayer: A Study, 129, 136). He granted that “Christian-God mysticism” shows much more “personal warmth and fervor” than the “sobriety, coldness, and monotony of pure mysticism” in Eastern religions (Heiler, 136).

66. Mysticism is defined as “that form of intercourse with God in which the world and the self are absolutely denied, in which human personality is dissolved, disappears and is absorbed in the infinite unity of the Godhead” (Heiler, Prayer: A Study, 136).

67. Ibid., 284.

68. As Heiler says at one point, various types of prayer are strikingly different—not just externally but at their cores. They are different “in every way: in motive, form, and content, in the conception of God and in the relation to God implied and in the standard of prayer” (Ibid., 283).

69. Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1970), 45–56. Bloom quotes Luke 17:21 here. But Jesus is using a second person plural when he says to his disciples, “The kingdom of God is within you [all].” Most scholars believe Jesus was not saying the kingdom of God was within each individual heart but rather was within them as a community. Some translate it “The kingdom of God is among you.” It is important to note that Bloom is careful to say that, while he directs people to go inward in prayer, he does not mean inward psychologically. “I don’t mean that we must go inward in the way one does in psychoanalysis or psychology. It is not a journey into my own inwardness, it is a journey through my own self, in order to emerge from the deepest level of my self into the place where He is, the point at which God and I meet,” 46.

70. “Belief in the personality of God is the necessary presupposition . . . wherever the vital conception of the divine personality grows dim, where, as in the philosophical ideal or in pantheistic mysticism it passes over into the ‘One and All,’ genuine prayer dissolves and becomes purely contemplative absorption and adoration” (Heiler, Prayer: A Study, 356).

71. Ibid., 358.

72. Ibid., 285.

73. Ibid., 30.

74. Ibid., iv. The italics are in the original.

75. Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 204–08. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, God can be known only through “the darkness of unknowing,” not through the intellect. Rationality must be abandoned in an act of self-abnegation, “renouncing all the mind may conceive” in order to be “uplifted into the divine shadow.” The Cloud of Unknowing revises and reworks the insights of Dionysius, insisting that what gets us beyond thought and conception is a state of perfect love. However, to achieve this requires growth in virtue and a purging of the soul from sin, a longing and passion for union with God, and finally the rigorous use of the contemplative method. The goal is to “get into the cloud of unknowing”—into the presence of God—and simply stay there, being open to God. All words and ideas are seen as distractions from awareness of him—even so-called thoughts about him. So to stay in God’s presence means “rejecting all worldly thoughts,” namely all “association, fantasy, and analysis.” The author directs that people use repetitive prayer, urging for contemplatives “the repeated utterance of a short word, preferably of a single syllable. He proposes God or love.” This word plays a dual role: “First, it suppresses thought under the cloud of forgetting, stopping rational thought.” Then, second, that frees the contemplative to “coalesce all their desire for God” around this word, “freeing the naked will to penetrate the cloud of unknowing in an act of perfect love,” 206–07.

76. See the long summary of the differences between mystical and prophetic prayer in Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 283–85.

77. Donald Bloesch says, “Heiler’s analysis has often been subject to severe criticism, especially by Roman Catholic and Anglican scholars who are concerned with defending the biblical foundations of Christian mysticism.” Bloesch summarizes the criticisms on page 5 of his Struggle of Prayer. Bloesch is supportive of Heiler. In fact, his book is something of an updated, more accessible promulgation of Heiler’s thesis that biblical prayer is preferable to the mysticism of Eastern religions and of some of Roman Catholicism. Bloesch rightly makes distinctions between some forms of Catholic prayer and others. (See his approval of Teresa of Avila’s “prayer of quiet” on p. 5.) In his book, Bloesch contrasts mysticism with what he calls “biblical personalism.” He uses this latter term to describe the view of prayer in which God is assumed to be a personal friend and father rather than simply the impersonal ground of being. Bloesch is, however, rightly concerned to not overreact to mysticism or to play down the truly experiential and mystical aspects of biblical prayer. See his chapter “Prayer and Mysticism,” 97–130.

78. Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 30.

79. Even the Zaleskis cannot be fully consistent on this idea that we should embrace all kinds of human prayer. For example, they draw the line at human sacrifice, calling it “suicidal,” and they point out that “the great religious traditions have come to reject it” (Ibid., 65). However, they don’t say why human sacrifice is wrong, only that most people don’t do it anymore.

80. Ibid., 161–71, 179–89.

81. Agehananda Bharati, The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism (Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson, 1976), 28, 43. Cited by Edmund P. Clowney in “A Biblical Theology of Prayer,” in Teach Us to Pray: Prayer in the Bible and the World, ed. D. A. Carson (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002), 336n1.

82. “Belief in the personality of God is the necessary presupposition . . . wherever the vital conception of the divine personality grows dim, where, as in the philosophical ideal or in pantheistic mysticism it passes over into the ‘One and All,’ genuine prayer dissolves and becomes purely contemplative absorption and adoration” (Heiler, Prayer: A Study, 356).

83. “Personal Narrative” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 16: Letters and Personal Writings, ed. George S. Claghorn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 801.

84. Ibid., 797.

85. I do not want to give the impression that the answer is a “third way” perfectly balanced between the Zaleskis and Heiler. The reality is that the traditional Protestant understanding of prayer—and the one I will describe, unfold, and assume in the rest of this volume—is much closer to Heiler’s and Bloesch’s. That is not to be wondered at since, as noted, Heiler converted to Protestantism and I am a Protestant minister in the Reformed tradition. Nevertheless, the Zaleskis’ brilliant and erudite survey of the practices and history of prayer forcefully reminds us that prayer is something that belongs to all human beings. It is a human instinct, not just a spiritual gift for Christian believers.

86. The first quote is from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.3.1. The second quote is from Calvin’s commentary on John 1:5, 9. Both quotes are found in John T. McNeill, ed. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1960), 43, 43n2. Calvin quotes Cicero, who asks, “Where is there to be found a race or tribe of men which does not hold, without instruction, some preconception of the gods?” (from Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, 44n4). Neither Calvin nor Cicero is saying it is impossible to sincerely and vigorously profess atheism. Cicero’s statement occurs in a book where he has a dialogue with Velleius of the Epicureans, who denied the existence of the old gods. Rather, both Cicero and Calvin are saying that, because of this inherent sense of God, prayer is a natural response unless repressed. And the instinct is difficult to eradicate. See Calvin’s Institutes, 1.3.2: “Indeed, they seek out every subterfuge to hide themselves from the Lord’s presence, and to efface it again from their minds. But in spite of themselves they are always entrapped. Although it may sometimes seem to vanish for a moment, it returns at once and rushes in with new force. . . . The impious themselves therefore exemplify the fact that some conception of God is ever alive in all men’s minds” (McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 45).

87. William H. Goold, ed., The Works of John Owen, vol. 4 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1967), 251–52.

88. See “The Most High a Prayer-Hearing God,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. Edward Hicks (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1974), 117.

89. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 1.4.1., 47, “As experience shows, God has sown a seed of religion in all men. But scarcely one man in a hundred is met with who fosters it, once received, in his heart . . . all degenerate from the true knowledge of him. . . . They do not therefore apprehend God as he offers himself, but imagine him as they have fashioned him in their own presumption.”

90. Another traditional Protestant theologian who acknowledges these two levels of prayer is nineteenth-century Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, who wrote: “It is principally through the efficacy of prayer that we receive the communications of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is not a mere instinct of a dependent nature, seeking help from the Author of its being; nor is it to be viewed simply as a natural expression of faith and desire, or as a mode of communion with the Father of our spirits; but it is also to be regarded as the appointed means of obtaining the Holy Ghost.” Hodge shows that Christians have the “instinct of a dependent nature,” but they also have prayer as a means by which the Holy Spirit communicates his gifts. He continues: “Hence we are urged to be constant and importunate in prayer, praying especially for those communications of Divine influence by which the life of God in the soul is maintained and promoted.” Charles Hodge, The Way of Life: A Guide to Christian Belief and Experience (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1978; reprint of an 1841 work), 231. Similarly, J. G. Vos says: “Prayer is practically universal in the human race. . . . All the non-Christian religious systems involve the practice of some kind of prayer. Non-Christian prayer, however, is not addressed to the . . . Triune God of the Scriptures . . . [and] does not approach God through Jesus Christ as Mediator. . . . That God in his great mercy may sometimes hear and answer the prayers of non-Christians . . . we should not deny. But such prayers differ essentially from Christian prayer.” Johannes G. Vos, The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary, ed. G. I. Williamson (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 512–13.

91. Eugene H. Peterson’s book on prayer through the Psalms is Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989). Though he uses the title “Answering God” to describe the Psalms themselves, I believe this also serves as an excellent and compressed definition for all prayer. I also draw on Clowney, who defines prayer as “personal address to a personal God” (Clowney, “Biblical Theology,” 136). Much of this chapter is influenced by the outline of Ed Clowney’s article. He calls prayer an address to a personal, covenant, and triune God.

92. Donald Bloesch quotes Karl Barth: “However difficult it may sound, the hearing really precedes the asking. It is the basis of it. It makes it real asking, the asking of Christian prayer” (Bloesch, Struggle for Prayer, 55).

93. C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 318.

94. Ibid., 319.

95. We know Lewis had read Martin Buber’s I and Thou (see C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2 [New York: HarperOne, 2004], 526, 528), which contains the phrase Alles wirkliche Leben it Begegnung, “All real living is meeting.” See Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937), 20.

96. J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 39–40.

97. See the longer discussion of this story in Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (New York: Dutton, 2013), 270–93.

98. John Knox is quoted by Bloesch, Struggle of Prayer, 50. The first and second quotes from John Calvin are taken from McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.16, 3.20.2, 872, and 851, respectively.

CHAPTER FOUR—CONVERSING WITH GOD

99. For more on the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, see chapter 5.

100. The Father speaks to the Son and the Son to the Father: “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me” (John 17:4–8). The Father and the Son speak to the Spirit: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you” (John 16:13–15).

101. See Vern S. Poythress, God-Centered Biblical Interpretation (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1999), 16–25, from which many of the ideas in this part of the chapter are taken.

102. Nicholas Wolterstorff quotes Sandra M. Schneiders for an example of this view. She writes: “Divine discourse cannot be taken literally. . . . Words . . . are the intelligible physical sounds emitted by the vocal apparatus (or some substitute for that apparatus). . . . Language . . . is a human phenomenon rooted in our corporeality as well as in our discursive mode of intellection and as such cannot be literally predicated of pure spirit.” Put another way, words are physical sounds (or physical marks on a page) that exist only for physical creatures. To talk about God, a pure spirit, speaking is wrong. Taken from Sandra M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 27–29. Quoted in Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 11.

103. Clowney, “Biblical Theology,” 136.

104. Ward, Words of Life. This is one of the main burdens of Ward’s entire volume.

105. Ibid., 22.

106. Ibid., 25.

107. Ibid., 27. The italics are in the original, not added.

108. Ibid., 31–32.

109. Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 49.

110. Ibid., 48.

111. Peterson, Answering God, 14.

112. Bloesch, Prayer: A Study, 101.

113. Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), 83. Quoted in ibid.

114. Quoted in Bloesch, Prayer: A Study, 101.

115. John Jefferson Davis, Meditation and Communion with God: Contemplating Scripture in an Age of Distraction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 16. Davis quotes Diana Eck in stating that the crossing over of Eastern meditation practices into Christianity is “one of the most important spiritual movements of today” and that Buddhist meditation “is becoming an important strand of Christian spirituality.” Quotes from Diana L. Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 153. Davis cites Eck’s research that shows how explicitly many Roman Catholic teachers have brought Buddhist and Hindu practices into their own practices of prayer and meditation (Davis, Meditation and Communion, 16n22).

116. See Thomas Keating, “The Origins of Centering Prayer,” in Intimacy with God (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 11–22; and Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel (New York: Continuum, 1992).

117. In Prayer: A History, 204–08, the Zaleskis provide an excellent summary of the teaching of the anonymous work The Cloud of Unknowing and its roots in the Neoplatonic text The Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, from the sixth century. But they are critical—almost dismissive—of the way the Centering Prayer movement of Thomas Keating, William Menninger, and Basil Pennington has domesticated and perhaps commodified the wild, difficult path to contemplation marked out by medieval writers such as the author of The Cloud. The three basic steps of Centering Prayer:

Rule 1: At the beginning of the Prayer we take a minute or two to quiet down and then move in faith to God dwelling in our depths; and at the end of the Prayer we take several minutes to come out, mentally praying the “Our Father” or some other prayer.

Rule 2: After resting for a bit in the center of faith-full love, we take up a single, simple word [such as God or love] that expresses this response and begin to let it repeat itself within.

Rule 3: Whenever in the course of the Prayer we become aware of anything else, gently return to the Presence by the use of the prayer word (M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O, Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form [Garden City, NY: Image, 1982], 65).

The Zaleskis comment (in Prayer: A History, 208): “It’s easy to discern in this program the bare bones of the teaching of The Cloud, especially the effort to suppress awareness of created things and the use of a single prayer word. But one misses the boldness of the original, here replaced with painfully polite expressions. . . . For the author of The Cloud, contemplative prayer is an arduous trial with an uncertain end; the centering prayer movement . . . has turned it into a comfortable exercise with a foregone conclusion.” They end by observing that today’s Centering Prayer has “little in common with The Cloud’s hard-eyed realism and seems rather to partake of the Zeitgeist of the late twentieth century, with its spiritual eclecticism and optimism.”

118. John Jefferson Davis’s telling critiques of Centering Prayer and the Jesus Prayer are found on pages 134–42 of his Meditation and Communion. Davis rightly criticizes Centering Prayer not only as not comporting with the biblical teaching on God’s speech and personality, but also as not fitting with Christian beliefs about the goodness (versus the illusory nature) of the creation and the fact of Jesus’ permanent incarnation. Eastern mysticism and the Neoplatonism that The Cloud of Unknowing represents see the physical world and personality/rationality as illusions or at least merely epiphenomenal and temporary. But that’s not the biblical view. Davis writes: “The fact of the incarnation means that even now in heaven, and into eternity, the historical Jesus will still have a definite, though glorified, bodily form. . . . For all eternity the glorified Jesus will still have a human nature and consequently a human experience of the knowledge of God—a knowledge of God that of course transcends our knowledge, but is not utterly dissimilar to it. By leaving words and images behind, an exclusively apophatic style of meditation tends to erase the boundaries between Eastern (Buddhist, Hindu) and Christian forms of meditation.”

119. Davis, Meditation and Communion, 141.

120. Zaleski and Zaleski, Prayer: A History, 143. The Zaleskis treat the Jesus Prayer very sympathetically, but they admit that the prayer often functions as a “magical operation” (143–44).

121. Ibid., 138.

122. Ibid. The question poses itself: If we accept all the warnings and cautions about mysticism, how are we to interpret the experience of the medieval Christian mystics? Were they connecting to the true God or not? I believe we have to answer that on a case-by-case basis. Many of the mystics seem to be praying to a very personal, triune God of holiness and love, both transcendent and immanent. Though their manner of prayer does not ground their prayer in the Word as much as a Protestant would want, it appears that their heart and imagination were shaped enough by the Bible that the God they meet is the biblical God. Other mystical Christian writers, however, appear to have had the kinds of alterations in psychological consciousness that can be brought on by many forms of meditation and physical deprivation. I can’t be as confident those experiences are the same as that described by the biblical writers. It is also possible that some mystical authors have had both kinds of experiences, and it is difficult, at least for me, to distinguish which were genuine encounters with God and which were not.

123. J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way through Duty to Delight (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009) 65.

124. Ibid.

125. Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (New York: Penguin, 2012), 2–3.

126. Lamott (Help, 67) briefly alludes to confession once in passing. “So I prayed: ‘Help me not be such an ass.’” Then Lamott adds in parentheses: “This is actually the fourth great prayer, which perhaps we will address another time.” Nevertheless, while she calls it the “fourth great prayer,” it is neither named nor treated elsewhere in the book.

127. See Augustine’s Letter 130 (AD 412) to Proba found in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 1, 1887 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 997–1015; Martin Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray” in Luther’s Works: Devotional Writings II, ed. Gustav K. Wiencke, vol. 43 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1968), 187–211.

128. However, I think it is fair to say that Lamott does not really follow her own principle consistently. For example, she writes: “Most good honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something. . . . I am clueless, but something else isn’t” (Help, 35). This is an assertion about God’s sovereignty and power and our dependence on him. Such theological statements are unavoidable, really, because we can’t pray to God without some conception in our mind of his nature. But since Lamott has not chosen to ground her book on prayer in biblical narratives, we aren’t told why we should believe that God “isn’t clueless” or where that knowledge comes from.

129. Clowney, “A Biblical Theology,” 136. Compare the words of Arthur W. Pink: “In the great majority of books written, and in the sermons preached upon prayer, the human element fills the scene almost entirely. It is the conditions which we must meet, the promises we must claim, the things we must do, in order to get our requests granted; and God’s claim . . . rights . . . [of] glory are often disregarded.” From Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1961), 109.

130. Christian Smith’s Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) explores the faith and spiritual lives of young American adults, who he describes as being characterized by “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” This is belief in a God who exists but who is not particularly involved in day-to-day affairs, where human free will and choices determine things. In this view, God’s main desire for us is that we live good lives, being kind and fair to others. If we live that way, he then provides “therapeutic benefits”—self-esteem and happiness (pp. 163–64). This view of God has a profound effect on prayer. Smith found that American teens personally prayed frequently; 40 percent prayed daily or more, and only 15 percent said they never prayed. However, their motivation for prayer was pervasively that of meeting psychological and emotional needs. “If I ever have a problem I go pray.” “It helps me deal with problems, ’cause I have a temper, so it calms me down for the most part.” “When I have a problem, I can just go bear it and he’ll always be supportive.” “Praying just makes me feel more secure, like there’s something there helping me out.” “I would say prayer is an essential part of my success” (pp. 151–53). Smith points out that from young Americans’ prayers there were at least two things missing. First, repentance is virtually absent. “This is not a religion of repentance from sin,” Smith writes. Second, prayer to this God is almost devoid of adoration and praise, because he is a “distant God” who is “not demanding. He actually can’t be, because his job is to solve problems and make people feel good. There is nothing here to evoke wonder and admiration” (p. 165).

In Smith’s subsequent study of the faith of “emerging adults” (ages 18–29), Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), he observes “an increase in the selfish and instrumental use of personal prayer” (102). In summary, instead of adoration and repentance—two forms of prayer that put the one praying into perspective as small, limited, weak, and dependent—younger adults pray almost exclusively for help with their problems or to feel better and happier. Studies of younger adults in Europe have shown a similar shift in the use of prayer from seeking God to becoming “a path of discovery of the ‘true self.’ . . . God, according to these interviewees, can be found only inside the ‘true self.’” See Giordan and Swatos, Religion, Spirituality, 87. See also Giuseppe Giordan and Enzo Pace, eds., Mapping Religion and Spirituality in a Postsecular World (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012). A thin or vague view of God does not simply reduce prayer’s content but also reverses its motive. In the prayer of younger Americans, God is a means to the end of a happy life for themselves. Glorifying God is not in view—and indeed, would be an opaque and confusing concept. Instead, prayer is used on a cost-benefit (to the self) basis.

131. Peterson, Answering God, 5–6.

132. This story is recounted in John Pollock, George Whitefield and the Great Awakening (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1972), 205–08; and Arnold A. Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival, vol. 2 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1979), 168–69. See also Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 170. Pollock points out that a carriage near-accident that was averted when his wife was pregnant helped convince him that his son’s life was being preserved because God had great things in store for him. Dallimore adds that Whitefield’s assumption that God spoke to him directly through his impressions was a habit of mind Jonathan Edwards had warned him against earlier, and seemingly, it was advice Whitefield had not appreciated. Stout contributes the fact that Whitefield blamed himself for John’s death, fearing he had made an “idol” of his son. While Stout thinks Whitefield was wrong to interpret such misfortunes as punishment for his sins, Whitefield was certainly right that he had turned his infant son into an idolatrous focus of his own longing for usefulness and influence. If the child had grown to maturity, he would have been extraordinarily burdened with his father’s expectations and hopes.

CHAPTER FIVE—ENCOUNTERING GOD

133. Ward, Words of Life, 48. The italics are in the original, not added. Ward goes on to show also that the Bible is a covenant document. When God enters into a relationship with us human beings, it is not merely personal but also covenantal. It means we are bound to God and he to us by promises to be faithful to one another—and now we have right of access to him. It is analogous to the covenant of marriage. Both the Bible and prayer, then, are covenantal privileges. God speaks to his people (through the Bible) and listens to his people (through prayer), who are bound to him in the covenantal relationship. See Ward, 22–23.

134. Many object that since the word Trinity does not appear in the Bible and since the doctrine was not formulated until the third and fourth centuries after Christ, the doctrine is an imposition of later theology on the biblical text. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are three things the New Testament says repeatedly about God: (1) there is only one God, (2) the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally God, indeed “all of the fullness of the deity” dwells in each (cf. Col 2:9), not just one-third of the divinity, and (3) the three persons know and love one another and work together in distinctive ways for our salvation. Only the doctrine of the Trinity accounts for all three biblical propositions. J. I. Packer uses the illustration of something being “in solution.” Sugar dissolved in tea is not visible—it is “in solution,” but a chemist could crystallize it if necessary. Packer rightly insists that the Trinity was “in solution” in the Bible, and all the early church did was crystallize it. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 23–24.

135. When God said he would “make his name dwell” in the tabernacle (Deut 12:5, 11; cf. 1 Kings 8:16, 29), he meant he was going to live there himself. When the psalmist says God’s “name is near,” he means God himself is near (Psalm 75:1). And every time a human being in the Bible went through a deep transformation of character or nature, the name was changed, from Abram to Abraham, Simon to Peter, Saul to Paul. In the Bible, your name is your nature. So when Jesus says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have a single name, the divine name, it tells us that, though three persons, they are one being and share one nature.

136. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew: New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). He adds, “The fact that the three divine persons are spoken of as having a single ‘name’ is a significant pointer toward the Trinitarian doctrine of the three persons in one God” (1118).

137. See the Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 9 and 10. “Q. 9. How many persons are there in the Godhead? A. There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties. Q. 10. What are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead? A. It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son from all eternity.” This summarizes the doctrine of the Trinity. (1) There is one God existing in three persons, and (2) these persons are equal in power, divinity, and glory. These three are not merely different modes for the same person, nor are the persons interchangeable. They know and love one another and work together for the creation and redemption of the world—in which the Father sends the Son, and the Father and the Son send the Spirit.

This is one place where all branches of Christianity—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant—agree. If you don’t believe in the Trinity, you do not merely misunderstand prayer, but you twist Christianity completely out of shape so it is not itself. If you deny (1) one way, saying there is only one God with one person, that is Unitarianism. If you deny (1) the other way, saying there are three Gods in three persons, that is polytheism. If you deny (2), saying God the Father is the real God and the other two are derivatives, that is subordinationism. If you deny (3), saying there is one God but he inhabits different forms or shapes at different times, that is modalism. None of those are Trinitarianism. There is one God in three equally divine persons, who know and love one another and work together as a team to create and redeem the world. The entire Christian church throughout all the centuries has always said this is true. Without this, your understanding of everything else goes wrong.

It is worth noting that while various analogies can be used to illustrate certain aspects of the Trinity, any single analogy taken exclusively skews too much toward one aspect (oneness or threeness, equality or diversity). Common analogies include a cube with its height, width, and depth; the sun with its source, heat, and light; social analogies—in which God is a family or community; or psychological analogies, such as the lover, the self one loves, and the love with which the lover loves the self. See Augustine’s efforts to find images of the Trinity in the human mind in Book 9 of De Trinitate. As intriguing and as often illuminating as they are, any analogy adopted exclusively leads the thinking in the direction of one of the heresies mentioned above.

138. Paul Ramsey, ed., Ethical Writings: The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 403–536.

139. William G. T. Shedd, “Introductory Essay” to Augustine’s On the Trinity, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 14. “Here is society within the Essence, and wholly independent of the universe; and communion and blessedness resulting therefrom. But this is impossible to an essence without personal distinctions. Not the singular Unit of the deist, but the plural Unity of the Trinitarian, explains this. A subject without an object could not know. What is there to be known? Could not love. What is there to be loved? Could not rejoice. What is there to rejoice over? And the object cannot be the universe. The infinite and eternal object of God’s infinite and eternal knowledge, love, and joy, cannot be his creation: because this is neither eternal, nor infinite. There was a time when the universe was not; and if God’s self-consciousness and blessedness depends upon the universe, there was a time when God was neither self-conscious nor blessed” (14–15).

140. This fact—that the metaphor of adoption combines the forensic legal aspects of salvation (such as pardon and justification) with the relational (such as regeneration and sanctification)—means that the biblical doctrine of adoption is getting a lot of attention in current theological scholarship. See J. Todd Billings, “Salvation as Adoption in Christ: An Antidote to Today’s Distant yet Convenient Deity,” in Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 15–34. Billings sees the doctrine of adoption as an especially potent antidote to the “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (as Christian Smith calls it) of younger American adults. This term means belief in a God who is there but only for emergencies and who otherwise makes no demands. See also Michael S. Horton, “Adoption: Forensic and Relational, Judicial and Transformative,” in Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 244–47. As Horton’s subtitle suggests, the doctrine of adoption in Christ gives Protestants an answer to the charge that their belief in full legal acceptance—justification by faith alone apart from any inward change or personal merit—encourages Christians to make no changes or effort to live holy and righteous lives. Adoption unites the forensic/legal and the relational/transformative. An adopted child has a changed legal status and radically changed life patterns and lived relationships all at once. The two go intrinsically together. Anyone who is truly justified by faith in Christ apart from good works will necessarily produce good works. The conception of adoption prevents us from pitting aspects of our salvation in Christ against one another.

141. The quote is from a radio talk by J. Gresham Machen, “The Active Obedience of Christ,” from early in the twentieth century. The fuller quote: “[The] covenant of works was a probation. If Adam had kept the law of God for a certain period, he was to have eternal life. If he disobeyed, he was to have death. Well, he disobeyed, and the penalty of death was inflicted upon him and his posterity. Then Christ by his death on the cross paid that penalty . . . but if that is all Christ did for us, do you not see that we should be back in just the situation in which Adam was before he sinned? The penalty of his sinning would have been removed from us because it had all been paid by Christ. But for the future the attainment of eternal life would have been dependent upon our perfect obedience to the law of God. We should simply have been back in the probation again. As a matter of fact, [Christ] has not merely paid the penalty of Adam’s first sin (and the penalty of the sins which we individually have committed), but also he has positively merited for us eternal life. He was, in other words, our representative both in the penalty paying and in probation keeping. He paid the penalty [of failed probation] for us, and he stood the probation for us. . . . [Christ not only took the punishment by his death] but merited for them the reward by his perfect obedience to God’s law. . . . Those are the two things he has done for us.” This can be found in J. Gresham Machen, God Transcendent (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1982), 187–88.

142. See Edwards’s sermon “Justification by Faith Alone,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 19, Sermons and Discourses, 1734–1738, ed. M. X. Lesser (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 204.

143. C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 400. In the well-known article “Abba isn’t ‘Daddy,’” The Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988), 28–47, James Barr tries to correct the emphasis of Joachim Jeremias and others who stressed that Abba meant “Daddy” and was a term of supreme familiarity. Barr determines that the word Abba was not used only by small children but also by Jewish children when they were fully grown. There was another Greek word—pappas—that was used only by children and discarded later and so would be the equivalent of “Dada” or “Daddy.” Barr’s point was that it wasn’t appropriate to address the Almighty God in prayer as Daddy. Nevertheless, Barr’s point can also be overdone. In most cultures, children—especially males—do tend to discard the baby terms (e.g., from “Daddy” to “Dad”). Nevertheless, when an adult continues to call a parent Mama or Papa, it mixes respect with the old intimacy, delight, and access they had as little children.

144. Cranfield, Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 400.

145. Martin Luther, “Personal Prayer Book,” in Luther’s Works: Devotional Writings II, ed. Gustav K. Wiencke, vol. 43 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1968), 29.

146. Some commentators argue that the groans here are only the groans of the Spirit, not ours. We are, therefore, entirely unaware of them. They arise to God beside our petitions. The Spirit’s intercession, therefore, arises constantly and happens essentially apart from us and our prayers. (Commentators on Romans 8:26–27 who take that view include Douglas J. Moo and Joseph A. Fitzmyer.) Others believe that while it is strictly true grammatically that the groans are the Spirit’s—the point of the promise is that we feel weak and don’t know how to pray and the Spirit helps us in that. After all, God is a “searcher of hearts” (Rom 8:27), and this means God is looking into believer’s hearts. So the groanings of the Spirit are believers’ groanings and longings after conformity to God’s will originating from the Holy Spirit. Commentators such as John Murray, Peter O’Brien, John Stott, and Thomas Schreiner take this latter view. See Schreiner, Romans: Baker Exegetical, 445–47.

147. “Accordingly, we know not what to pray for as we ought in tribulations” Augustine Letter 130, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1011.

148. Clowney, “Biblical Theology,” 170.

149. Graeme Goldsworthy, Prayer and the Knowledge of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 169–70.

150. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 330.

151. See Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII.7, trans. W. D. Ross, Digireads, 2005.

152. This is D. A. Carson’s explanation in The Gospel According to John, Pillar New Testament Commentary series (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 496–97.

153. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.2.36., 585–84.

154. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 1.2.1., 41.

155. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 1.2.2., 43.

156. Of course, many things we do now, including prayer and praise, can be called a “pleasing sacrifice” to God (Heb 13:15–16), but they are no longer an appeasing sacrifice. In Hebrews 13, Christian prayer is depicted as a thank offering for a salvation already secured by Christ. Prayer is not, on New Testament terms, an atoning or appeasing sacrifice that turns aside God’s wrath and procures and merits God’s attention and favor.

157. My own translation. For a literal version of this, see the New American Standard Bible—“For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.”

158. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20., 850.

CHAPTER SIX—LETTERS ON PRAYER

159. Calvin’s Institutes are something like what we would today call a systematic theology. It is striking and somewhat puzzling, then, that even writers of systematic theology in Calvin’s Reformed tradition do not usually have a chapter on prayer. One exception was Charles Hodge, the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian, whose systematic theology contains a substantial section on prayer, and particularly on the implications of the Christian doctrine of God for Christian prayer. See Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965), 692–700.

160. Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 997–1015.

161. Ibid.

162. See chapter 8 for more on Augustine’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer.

163. Quoted in Mark Rogers, “‘Deliver Us from the Evil One’: Martin Luther on Prayer,” Themelios 34, no. 3 (November 2009).

164. Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray,” 193. It is worth noticing that Luther says that this twice-daily prayer regimen could be in private in your room or in a church with an assembled congregation. He writes: “When I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer . . . I hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled” (193). This is testimony to the importance of corporate worship in Luther’s theology. We do not conquer a hard, cold, prayerless heart only on our own, through personal exercises. The public house of worship of the people of God was a place where you could hear the Word of God through the preached Word—not just through the read Word as in private—and where the response of prayer and praise was corporate, not just individual.

165. Martin Luther, Luther’s Large Catechism, trans. F. Samuel Janzow (St. Louis: Concordia, 1978), 79.

166. Calvin too believed it was crucial to engage the heart and mind in prayer, and like Luther, he counsels to do it with disciplined meditation on the meaning of the Word and what is being said. He writes: “A fault that seems less serious but is also not tolerable is that of others who, having been imbued with this one principle—that God must be appeased by devotions—mumble prayers without meditation. Now the godly must particularly beware of presenting themselves before God to request anything unless they yearn for it with sincere affection of heart, and at the same time desire to obtain it from him. Indeed, even though in those things which we seek only to God’s glory we do not seem at first glance to be providing for our own need, yet it is fitting that they be sought with no less ardor and eagerness. When, for example, we pray that ‘his name be sanctified’ [Matt 6:9; Luke 11:2], we should, so to speak, eagerly hunger and thirst after that sanctification” (McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.6., 857).

167. Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray,” 194.

168. The only subject Luther proposes for this meditation that is not strictly Scripture is the Apostles’ Creed, perhaps because Luther was so thoroughly convinced that it was nothing but a distillation of biblical truth. Luther gives examples of how to meditate on the Creed in “A Simple Way to Pray,” 209–11.

169. Ibid., 200.

170. Ibid., 200–01.

171. Ibid., 196–97.

172. Ibid., 198.

173. Luther’s advice on how to meditate and then how to paraphrase and personalize the Lord’s Prayer can be applied to any part of Scripture. Praying the Psalms and other parts of the Bible back to God is a very ancient and time-tested Christian practice. But seldom has it been outlined and presented in a more accessible way than Luther does here. We also have in Luther’s “A Simple Way to Pray” an implicit approval of praying prayers written for you by others. While some, like John Bunyan, were completely against using scripted prayers, Luther’s Small Catechism offers some written prayers to be prayed in families before going to work and school in the morning and going to bed at night. Calvin provided the same thing. Luther had no problem with the use of scripted prayers, as long as we internally personalized the prayer as we pray—otherwise it would be but “idle chatter and prattle.” See “Daily Prayers” in Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation (St. Louis: Concordia, 1986), 30–32.

174. Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray,” 198.

175. Ibid., 201–02.

CHAPTER SEVEN—RULES FOR PRAYER

176. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.5., 854.

177. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, chapter 7, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”

178. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 856. This is the chapter heading for 3.20.6. It is marked with an asterisk, meaning that the editor supplied it—it was not original to Calvin. Nevertheless, it is a good summary of this second rule of Calvin’s for prayer.

179. Ibid., 857.

180. Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense (New York: HarperOne, 2013), 27.

181. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.7., 858.

182. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.8., 859.

183. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.11., 862.

184. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.13., 867.

185. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.15., 872.

186. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.16., 872.

187. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.17., 874–75.

188. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.15., 870.

189. Ibid.

190. Ibid.

191. R. A. Torrey, The Power of Prayer and the Prayer of Power (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1924), 106–07.

CHAPTER EIGHT—THE PRAYER OF PRAYERS

192. For Luther, see not only “A Simple Way to Pray” but his “Personal Prayer Book” in Luther’s Works and both his Large Catechism and Small Catechism as well as Luther’s Works: The Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat, vol. 21 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968). For Calvin, besides his Institutes, see David and Thomas Torrance, eds., A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994). For Augustine, see especially Paul A. Boer, ed., St. Augustine of Hippo: Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount according to Matthew & the Harmony of the Gospels (CreateSpace, 2012), taken from Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6 (Christian Literature, 1886).

193. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.36., 899.

194. Luther, “Personal Prayer Book,” 29.

195. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.36., 901.

196. Luther’s Large Catechism, 84.

197. Augustine, Letter 130, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, chapter 12.

198. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.41., 903–04.

199. Augustine, “Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” trans. S. D. F. Salmond, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 6, 1886 (Electronic edition, Veritatis Splendor, 2012), 156.

200. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.42., 905.

201. Luther, “Personal Prayer Book,” 32.

202. Ibid., 33.

203. Augustine, “Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” 158–59.

204. Luther, “Personal Prayer Book,” 34.

205. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.43., 907.

206. George Herbert, “Discipline,” in The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 620.

207. Augustine, Letter 130, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, chapter 12.

208. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.44., 907–08.

209. Luther’s Large Catechism, 92.

210. Luther’s Large Catechism, 93.

211. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.45., 912.

212. Augustine, “Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” 167.

213. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.46., 913.

214. Ibid.

215. Luther’s Large Catechism, 96–97.

216. Augustine, Letter 130, in Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, chapter 12. See also his “Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” 171.

217. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.47., 915–16.

218. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.49., 917.

219. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.47., 915.

220. Horton, Calvin on the Christian Life, 154.

221. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, 1960), 61.

222. Ibid., 62.

CHAPTER NINE—THE TOUCHSTONES OF PRAYER

223. Forsyth, Soul of Prayer, 9–10.

224. Ibid., 62.

225. Phelps, The Still Hour, 61–62.

226. Ole Hallesby, Prayer (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1975), 89–90.

227. See the important and extensive discussion of the conflict between the Puritans and the Quakers in Peter Adam, Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 175–201. Adam sides with the Puritans, who charged that the Quakers separated Word and Spirit, but he adds it is possible to overidentify the Spirit with the Word so that there is no way that the Spirit can influence us at all apart from our reading the Bible. That is an opposite mistake. “Too close an identification of Spirit and Word falls down when we reflect that the Spirit indwells believers even when they are not thinking the words of Scripture. Too radical a separation between Spirit and Word diminishes two of the means God has provided and chosen to use: Bible and Bible teacher” (199).

228. J. I. Packer, “Some Lessons in Prayer,” in Knowing Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1995), 129–30.

229. See the evidence for this conclusion in Wayne R. Spear, The Theology of Prayer: A Systematic Study of the Biblical Teaching on Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979), 28–30; and Graeme Goldsworthy, Prayer and the Knowledge of God, 82–83.

230. Packer, Knowing Christianity, 127.

231. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 189.

232. Phelps, The Still Hour, 55.

233. Hallesby, Prayer, 16.

234. Packer, Knowing Christianity, 128.

235. Forsyth, Soul of Prayer, 10.

236. The moment we believe in Christ, we are said to be “in Christ”—united with him. Sinclair Ferguson discerns several aspects of our union with Christ—we are united with him legally, by faith, spiritually, and vitally (S. Ferguson, The Christian Life, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1981], 107–10).

237. Clowney, “A Biblical Theology of Prayer.”

238. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 182.

239. John Newton, “Letter II to Mr. B****,” in The Works of John Newton, vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1985), 622.

240. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 174.

241. William Guthrie, The Christian’s Great Interest (Glasgow: W. Collins, 1828), 156.

242. Forsyth, Soul of Prayer, 18–19.

243. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 105. Here, explaining the first commandment—not to have any other gods before the true God—the catechism tells us that we are to root out “self-love, self-seeking, and all other inordinate and immoderate setting of our mind, will, or affections upon other things, and taking them off from him in whole or in part . . . and ascribing the praise of any good we either are, have, or can do, to fortune, idols, ourselves, or any other creature.”

244. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 1.1.1.

245. Clowney, “A Biblical Theology of Prayer,” 142.

246. Hodge, Systematic Theology, 703.

247. Hallesby, Prayer, 61–118.

248. Cited in Bloesch, Struggle of Prayer, ix.

249. Hallesby, Prayer, 76.

250. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 40.

251. Ibid.

252. A paraphrase of Romans 7:19–20, 22–23.

253. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.1., 850.

CHAPTER TEN—AS CONVERSATION: MEDITATING ON HIS WORD

254. Peterson, Answering God, 23–24.

255. Edmund P. Clowney, CM: Christian Meditation (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1979), 11.

256. Modern people might think that the term “law of the Lord” meant only the Ten Commandments or the books of the Bible that were explicitly filled with divine legislation. But the broad usage of the term “law of the Lord” in the Bible shows that the term can and does often refer to all of the Scripture. The Scripture is all “law” in the sense that it is all normative, all binding on the believer as an expression of God’s will, whether taking the form of actual legal precepts or of a story with a lesson.

257. Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, vol. 15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 48.

258. New Testament words that are associated with the work of meditation include the word logizdomai, a favorite of Paul’s, which means to “calculate, to assess the value, to count up” (1 Cor 13:5; 2 Cor 2:6) or “to evaluate, estimate, consider” (Rom 2:26; 9:8) or “to think about, ponder, let one’s mind dwell on” (Phil 4:8; 2 Cor 10:11). See P. T. O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 436. Similar terms in Paul are seen in Ephesians 3:18, where he prays for “the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ”—the term meaning to comprehend or take in, referring to both the intellect and the affections.

259. Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray,” 200.

260. Lindsay Gellman, “Meditation Has Limited Benefits, Study Finds,” The Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2014. The study found no benefits for mantra meditation and a few limited ones for “mindfulness” meditation or “present focused awareness.”

261. Clowney, CM, 7.

262. Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 286. Moo rightly points out that since the “you” in Colossians 3:16 is plural, he is talking not merely of individual meditation on the Scripture but corporate study and contemplation of the Word.

263. Two classic Protestant treatments of meditation from the seventeenth century were written by Richard Baxter, in The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, and John Owen, in The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded. Baxter wrote of two basic movements within meditation. First, there was “consideration”—meaning long, thoughtful reflection—and second was “soliloquy” meaning preaching to oneself, self-communing, and exhortation. See Richard Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest, abridged by Benjamin Fawcett (The American Tract Society, 1759). See Peter Adam’s summary of Baxter’s teaching on meditation in Adam, Hearing God’s Words, 202–10. John Owen’s main work on meditation is The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 7 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965), 262–497. Owen’s steps of meditation—to “fix the mind” on truth and then to “incline the heart” toward it—are parallel to Baxter’s. See also Owen’s “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” in Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965), 274–461. Here we have an extended example of an actual meditation by Owen on various aspects of the glory of Jesus Christ.

264. Owen, The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, 384. See also p. 270, where he lists the three stages or parts of meditation. “Three things may be distinguished in the great duty of being spiritually minded . . . [1—Fixing the mind] The actual exercise of the mind, in its thoughts, meditations, and desires, about things spiritual and heavenly. . . . They mind them by fixing their thoughts and meditations upon them. [2–Inclining the heart] The inclination, disposition, and frame of the mind, in all its affections, whereby it adheres and cleaves unto spiritual things . . . from the love and delight . . . in them and engagement unto them. [3–Enjoying the Lord] A complacency of mind, from that gust, relish, and savor, which it finds in spiritual things, from their suitableness unto its constitution, inclinations, and desires. There is a salt in spiritual things, whereby they are condited and made savory unto a renewed mind; though to others they are as the white of an egg, that hath no taste or savor in it. In this gust and relish lies the sweetness and satisfaction of spiritual life. Speculative notions about spiritual things, when they are alone, are dry, sapless, and barren. In this gust we taste by experience that God is gracious, and that the love of Christ is better than wine, or whatever else hath the most grateful relish unto a sensual appetite. This is the proper foundation of that ‘joy which is unspeakable and full of glory,’” 270–71.

265. Ibid.

266. Cited in Adam, Hearing God’s Words, 209.

267. This is taken from John Owen, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, 400–01.

268. Ibid., 400.

269. Ibid., 401.

270. Owen, Works, vol. 7, 270–71.

271. Ibid., 393.

272. Ibid.

273. Ibid., 394.

274. It is interesting to compare Owen’s three steps of meditation to those of the traditional Catholic and Benedictine practice of lectio divina, or “divine reading,” as described by Thelma Hall in Too Deep for Words: Rediscovering Lectio Divina (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988). The four steps of lectio divina are reading, meditating, prayer, and contemplation. (1) Reading the Scripture in lectio divina means slow, meditative perusal of a Biblical passage. In lectio it is not recommended that you try to theologically analyze the text for doctrinal meanings. Instead you should wait on the Holy Spirit to show you something within the text especially for you. Wait for something to draw your interest and grab your attention and note it. You are looking for something that seems very relevant for “me, now” in my current situation (pp. 36–38). Once you have done this, move on to (2) Meditation. Hall suggests two kinds of meditation. One is using the imagination, putting yourself into the biblical scene (if it is a narrative) and thinking of what it would have been like to see the actions and hear the words yourself. If Jesus is in the passage, imagine him looking into your eyes and saying the words to you (p. 40). The second approach is to take the actual words and repeat them to yourself, pondering the meaning of each word or phrase. Hall says that meditation in any form is basically a cognitive and intellectual activity. But the goal of meditation, regardless of the method is to start to feel God’s love (pp. 40–41). Once you begin to feel your heart warmed with this love, you should move into (3) Prayer. A metaphor of fire is used at this point, taken from Teresa of Avila. When meditation leads to a small fire of feeling and love, don’t keep meditating—that is like throwing more wood on the fire, and too much fuel can smother the fire. Instead, now we should begin to just pray, just talking to God the way you would talk to a loved one. Nurture the love-fire with small pieces of “fuel”—a glance at a Scripture now and then—and just begin to pray, by longing for union with the one we love. This leads, finally, to (4) Contemplation. This Hall defines as “interior silence.” Any kind of thinking of thoughts, analysis, and reasoning, is basically being “in charge” and not surrendering to God. She recommends books about “centering prayer” to help us achieve, not thinking any thoughts “about” him, but experiencing direct, wordless, adoring awareness of him and his presence (pp. 45–55).

The similarities and differences between Owen/Luther’s approach and this description of lectio divina are easy to see. The Protestant thinkers agree that the Bible must be meditated on in order to engage the affections as a means to respond and pray to God with the whole person. They too want us to deliberately work the biblical truth into the heart until it “catches fire” and they believe the Holy Spirit can directly apply the inscripturated Word to our lives. But Owen and Luther do not advise that we ignore the theology of the text and look for a “personal word.” Luther actually proposes regular meditation on the Apostles’ Creed. Owen and Luther want us to think out the implications and applications of our doctrine and theology until the Holy Spirit makes the truths real in our affections. Second, Luther and Owen would not expect or advise that we only or mainly aim to know God’s love. Of course the knowledge of his love and grace in Christ must constantly be present, otherwise we would have no confidence that we could approach him at all. We pray only “in Jesus’ name.” But his power, holiness, majesty, sovereignty, or his wisdom could be the dominant theme of the biblical text rather than his love and therefore what we encounter that day. Finally, Owen and Luther would not say we are trying to get beyond thinking or thoughts into pure awareness. They assumed that the Scripture is the way God is actively present in the world and our lives (see the beginning of chapter 4, “Conversing with God”) and would not, again, pit thinking and feeling against each other as the contemplative tradition seems to do.

Having registered all these criticisms, it is worth noting that the essential order of things Hall lays out—reading the Scripture (fixing the mind), meditating (inclining the heart), and prayer (enjoying God’s presence)—are roughly similar to both Owen and Luther’s directions.

275. Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012), 213.

CHAPTER ELEVEN—AS ENCOUNTER: SEEKING HIS FACE

276. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 182.

277. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.1.1., 537.

278. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.2.36.

279. See D. M. Lloyd-Jones for a searching sermonic exposition of this prayer, to whom I am indebted for many of the insights in this chapter. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3:1 to 21 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979), 106–315.

280. This is Lloyd-Jones’s understanding of what Paul means here. See also P. T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). “At first sight it seems strange for Paul to pray that Christ may dwell in the hearts of believers. Did he not already live within them? In answer, it is noted that the focus of this request is not on the initial indwelling of Christ but on his continual presence . . . to establish believers on a firm foundation of love” (pp. 258–59).

281. See chapter 5, “The Night of Fire,” in Marvin Richard O’Connell, Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 90.

282. William R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody (Albany, OR: Book for the Ages, Ages Software, 1997), 127.

283. See O’Brien, Letter to the Ephesians, 258.

284. “O Jesus, King Most Wonderful” by unknown author, twelfth century, trans. Edward Caswall, 1814–78.

285. O’Brien, Letter to the Ephesians, 255.

286. Suzanne McDonald, “Beholding the Glory of God in the Fact of Jesus Christ: John Owen and the ‘Reforming’ of the Beatific Vision” in The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 142.

287. Owen, Works, vol. 1, 288. Cited also McDonald, “Beholding the Glory,” 143.

288. Ibid., 307–08.

289. Many will recognize in Owen’s discussion of the beatific vision many of the basic ideas on spiritual experience later developed by Jonathan Edwards. Edwards believed that the difference between a Christian regenerated by the Holy Spirit and a merely religious and moral person is that the Christian experiences “a change made in the views of his mind, and the relish of his heart whereby he apprehends a beauty, glory, and supreme good in God’s nature as it is in itself” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith, [New Haven: Yale, 1959], 241). Elsewhere he describes the change like this: “’Tis the soul’s relish of the supreme excellency of the divine nature, inclining the heart to God as the chief good” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 21, Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, ed. Sang Hyun Lee, [New Haven: Yale, 2002], 173). The two things Edwards discerns in genuine spiritual experience are: (1) a whole-person change (both views of the mind and the “relish” of the heart) (2) in which God becomes no longer a means to an end to other goods, but now becomes the supreme good. Edwards puts this in other ways—previously God was useful to us but now he is beautiful to us, satisfying for who he is in himself. God’s glory and happiness now become your glory and happiness. Behind both Owen and Edwards, of course, stands Augustine, with his teaching that sin is disordered love, and only if the heart’s greatest joy is changed, and God is loved supremely, will other virtues begin to develop and the character be renewed.

290. Owen, Works, vol. 1, 307. See also McDonald, “Beholding the Glory,” 143.

291. In her important article, Suzanne McDonald points out that John Owen’s emphasis on the beatific vision put him somewhat at odds with other Protestants in his day. Most of his colleagues saw the vision as too otherworldly and too “Catholic.” Only Francis Turretin, Reformed Protestant theologian in Geneva and Owen’s contemporary, gave it attention. Thomas Aquinas and Turretin, however, both thought of the vision as basically one of intellectual apprehension of God in general, with Jesus as a kind of conduit for it (see McDonald, “Beholding the Glory,” 151–54). Owen accepted the idea of the beatific vision but then “reformed” it along what he considered less speculative and more biblical lines, putting it into a Protestant and Reformed theological framework. Rather than understand it as some generic apprehension of the infinity of God, he understood it as centering on the person and work of Christ. Christ was not a mere vehicle for the vision; he was its central object. Indeed, Owen argued, even in the future it would be in Christ’s glorified human nature that we would continually see God. Instead of a completely future, intellectual experience, then, Owen described the beatific vision as something that could happen in part by faith now, and would affect the whole person through its impact on the heart. Owen made the apparently esoteric concept of the beatific vision into a practical basis for prayer and experience right now. Because we can be shaped by the foretaste of the beatific vision, it can profoundly shape how we actually live day by day in the world.

Owen looked at the 2 Corinthians texts and noticed the unusual nature of the verb “behold as in a mirror.” In 1 John 3:2, we are told that the vision of Christ is future, but in 2 Corinthians 3:18, we are told that we can see and contemplate the glory of Christ now. The Greek verb katoptrizdomenoi is a compound word, meaning “to gaze at an image reflected in a mirror.” This makes sense of the two texts. When we look in a mirror, we are not seeing the object itself; we are seeing a two-dimensional reflection of a three-dimensional object. We can “see” Christ now, though only by faith.

What does it mean to behold Jesus by faith? “For Owen, the mirror through which we behold Christ’s glory is the gospel. We do not have unmediated access to Christ’s person in his ascended glory; we behold the glory of Christ, in his divinity and humanity, through the mirror of the Scriptures” (Ibid., 149. Owen also makes this case in Works, vol. 1, p. 305. “We have ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in his face alone.’ . . . This is the principal fundamental mystery and truth of the Gospel.” Cf. chapter 2 in Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, 293–309. Owen also makes the same point throughout his work The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded). So it is when the gospel of Christ’s salvation is preached and explained that the glory of Jesus’ person and work is unveiled. It is as we meditate especially on gospel truths as they are set forth in the Bible that, with the Spirit’s help, the truth begins to shine, the love of God becomes palpable, and the glory of Christ dazzles, moves, melts, and transforms us.

This reading of the 2 Corinthians passages has good support by commentators today (see Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997], 206). “What will be Paul’s torch to shine the glory of that light into the hearts of others? It is ‘the gospel,’ the word of God,” by which the “knowledge of God” lights up the hearts of Paul’s hearers (2 Cor 4:4, 6; cf. Gal 1:16). Paradoxically, therefore, Paul’s readers see the glory of Christ as they hear the gospel, which in turn gives the knowledge of God” (206). See Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005). “‘The glory of the Lord’ is God’s glory as it is revealed in his image, Christ. If we must identify the ‘mirror’ in which God’s glory is seen, it is more likely to be Christ as present in the gospel, the essence of which is Christ, or the gospel along with the Christian life as lived in the Spirit, than gospel ministers or Christians in general” (315).

So, Owen concludes, our “sight” of Christ is only by faith through the gospel, and partial. In the future, we will see him face-to-face (1 Cor 13:12).

292. Owen, Works, vol. 7, 348.

293. Owen, Works, vol. 4, 329–30.

294. Owen, Works, vol. 1, 401.

295. All these items are taken from Owen’s chapter on the “Mental Prayer” of Rome. Ibid., 328–38.

296. Owen, Works, vol. 1, 401.

297. Owen, Works, vol. 7, 345–46.

298. Von Balthasar, Prayer, 28.

299. Ibid., 28–29. Von Balthasar says that Protestant pietism and revivalism has tried to recapture the missing element of the reality of the indwelling Spirit, but the attempts have not succeeded because “of the lack of an objective and official ecclesial act of worship with its surrounding liturgy,” 29. It is obviously a very sweeping statement to say Protestant efforts to promote spiritual experience have basically failed.

300. I stand with others in making a distinction between the modern movement of Centering Prayer and the older medieval mystics—this despite the fact that Centering Prayer proponents go to great lengths to argue that their approach is just a modernization of the medieval tradition. Among the more surprising critics of Centering Prayer are the Zaleskis. Despite their (overly) broad sympathies for nearly all kinds of human prayer, they see Centering Prayer as a consumeristic “dumbing down” of the older mystical tradition of The Cloud of Unknowing. “It’s easy to discern in this program the bare bones of the teaching of The Cloud, especially the effort to suppress awareness of created things and the use of a single prayer word. But one misses the boldness of the original, here replaced with painfully polite expressions. . . . For the author of The Cloud, contemplative prayer is an arduous trial with an uncertain end; the centering prayer movement . . . has turned it into a comfortable exercise with a foregone conclusion. . . .” Centering Prayer has “little in common with The Cloud’s hard-eyed realism and seem rather to partake of the Zeitgeist of the late twentieth century, with its spiritual eclecticism and optimism” (Zaleskis, Prayer, 208). For an appreciative but sharp Protestant critique of both the older traditions and practices such as the Jesus Prayer, see John Jefferson Davis, Meditation and Communion. See also Edmund P. Clowney, CM: Christian Meditation; and Peter Adam, Hearing God’s Words.

301. Carl Trueman, “Why Should Thoughtful Evangelicals Read the Medieval Mystics?” Themelios 33, no. 1 (May 2008).

CHAPTER TWELVE—AWE: PRAISING HIS GLORY

302. Trueman, 90–98.

303. Ibid., 90–91.

304. Ibid., 92.

305. Ibid., 95.

306. Ibid., 94.

307. James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009), 46–47.

308. Quoted in David K. Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), xi.

309. “Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves less or more which ought to be loved equally. No sinner is to be loved as a sinner; and every man is to be loved as a man for God’s sake; but God is to be loved for His own sake. And if God is to be loved more than any man, each man ought to love God more than himself” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, vol. 1, 27, 28). Quoted in David K. Naugle’s 1993 paper “St. Augustine’s Concept of Disordered Love and Its Contemporary Application,” available online at http://www3.dbu.edu/naugle/pdf/disordered_love.pdf.

310. Ibid.

311. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 51.

312. C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1963), 90.

313. Ibid., 91. Another figure who used the pleasures of the natural world for adoration is Jonathan Edwards. See his “Images of Divine Things,” in Typological Writings: The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Wallace E. Anderson, vol. 11 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).

314. See C. Frederick Barbee and Paul F. M. Zahl, The Collects of Thomas Cranmer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), ix–xii.

315. See both Matthew Henry, Method for Prayer: Freedom in the Face of God, ed. J. Ligon Duncan (Christian Heritage, 1994), A Way to Pray, ed. and rev. O. Palmer Robertson (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2010).

316. Peterson, Answering God, 128.

317. Ibid., 96–97.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—INTIMACY: FINDING HIS GRACE

318. For the Scripture references and the theology of this paragraph and the next, I am indebted to D. A. Carson, Love in Hard Places (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 74–77.

319. Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, 1517, Thesis 1.

320. John R. W. Stott, Confess Your Sins: The Way of Reconciliation (Word Books, 1974), 19.

321. The premier and unparalleled guide to what Stott calls “forsaking” sin, and older theologians called the mortification of sin, is John Owen’s “On the Mortification of Sin” in Works, ed. William Goold, vol. 6 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965). Owen’s work is in archaic English and is difficult to read, but it is a unique work of Reformed Protestant spirituality.

322. Stott, Confess Your Sins, 20. In his book, Stott distinguishes “confessing sin” (which he considers the same as admitting sin) from “forsaking sin” (which he sees as working a deeper attitude of contrition in the heart). I agree that “confession proper” is a more mental process in which you end blame shifting and take responsibility for sin as sin. What Stott calls “forsaking” sin is then the heart work that John Owen and the Puritans call “mortification.” I would rather refer to both the mental admission and the heart contrition as two parts of confession or repentance.

323. Stott, Confess Your Sins, 21.

324. See Owen, “On the Mortification of Sin.” “In a time of some judgment, calamity, or pressing affliction; the heart is then taken up with thoughts and contrivances of flying from the present troubles, fears, and dangers. This, as a convinced person concludes, is to be done only by relinquishment of sin, which gains peace with God. It is the anger of God in every affliction that galls a convinced person. To be quit of this, men resolve at such times against their sins. Sin shall never more have any place in them; they will never again give up themselves to the service of it. Accordingly, sin is quiet, stirs not, seems to be mortified; not, indeed, that it hath received any one wound, but merely because the soul hath possessed its faculties, whereby it should exert itself, with thoughts inconsistent with the motions thereof; which, when they are laid aside, sin returns again to its former life and vigour” (pp. 26–27). “The true and acceptable principles of mortification shall be . . . insisted on . . . [namely] hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting. . . . Now, it is certain that that which I speak of proceeds from self-love. Thou settest thyself with all diligence and earnestness to mortify such a lust or sin; what is the reason of it? It disquiets thee, it hath taken away thy peace, it fills thy heart with sorrow, and trouble, and fear; thou hast no rest because of it” (p. 41).

325. “To load it daily with all the things which shall after be mentioned, that are grievous, killing, and destructive to it, is the height of this contest.” Ibid., 32.

326. See Ibid., 54–118.

327. Ibid., 58.

328. Owen, “A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,” in Works, vol. 3, 547.

329. This is not to say that Christians who understand gospel truths can’t go to the law of God for help in weakening sin. In many places he tells Christians to “bring their sin” to the law and to the gospel (“Mortification of Sin,” Works, vol. 6, 57–58). Nevertheless, such counsel comes with warnings to remember that Christians cannot come back under legal condemnation for their sin, and that too much emphasis on the danger of sin and the law can lead to the legalistic spirit that can only stop sinful acts temporarily and not change the heart.

330. Alexander B. Grosart, ed. Works of Richard Sibbes (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1973), 47.

331. George Whitefield, quoted in Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times, vol. 1, 140.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—STRUGGLE: ASKING HIS HELP

332. Quoted in Horton, Calvin on the Christian Life, 159.

333. For much more on this topic, see Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, especially chapter 6, “The Sovereignty of God,” pp. 130–46.

334. Phelps, The Still Hour, 27–28.

335. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 157.

336. Ibid., 158.

337. Ibid., 157.

338. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 55.

339. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.52., 919.

340. Ibid., 178.

341. Ibid., 179.

342. This is my paraphrase of Edwards’s headings. The sermon is “Christian Happiness” and can be found in Wilson H. Kimnach, ed., The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 10, Sermons and Discourses 1720–1723 (New Haven: Yale, 1992), 296–307. Edwards’s thesis is that the Christian can be happy whatever the outward circumstances.

343. I address this kind of prayer at greater length in chapter 12—“Weeping,” in Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, 240–54.

344. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 181.

345. Ibid.

346. The descriptive terms for categories of complaint prayer in this paragraph come from Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 194–99.

347. See Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, 240–42.

348. Smith, Soul Searching.

349. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 192–93. For more on processing our complaints and suffering in prayer, see my Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, especially chapters 12–16, 240–322.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—PRACTICE: DAILY PRAYER

350. Alan Jacobs, The “Book of Common Prayer”: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 24. Jacobs relies on Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c.1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).

351. Edgar C. S. Gloucester, ed. The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (Wildside Press, reprint of 1910 edition), 3.

352. Ibid., 8.

353. Jacobs, The “Book of Common Prayer,” 24–27.

354. English translations can be found in Elsie Anne McKee, John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001), 210–17.

355. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes, 3.20.50., 917–18. Calvin adds, however, that stated hours of daily prayer should not become a “superstitious observance . . . as if paying a debt to God.”

356. There are many versions of the calendar online. See http://www.mcheyne.info/calendar.pdf.

357. See Matthew M. Boulton, Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011) for an extensive argument that Calvin’s Christian formative practices represented a kind of “lay monasticism.” This is especially interesting in light of what is today called the New Monasticism or Lay Monasticism. The original monastic ideal was for a way of daily work and life completely framed by Christian practices of prayer, Bible reading and instruction, Psalm singing and recitation, and corporate worship. This ordinarily meant interrupting daily work with fixed-hour observances of both private prayer and community worship. Monastics also submitted to close accountability for their lives with others as well as modest living standards and a commitment to serving others. The New Monasticism has grown largely through evangelicals dissatisfied with current church life and practice. It seeks to create a lay monasticism, not requiring members to leave secular work or live literally under the same roof, but nonetheless calling them to live in close geographic proximity, to accountability, concern for the marginalized, and practices from the contemplative tradition including common daily liturgical fixed-hours prayer. One main rationale given for the movement is the death of Christendom. As our culture becomes more post-Christian, believers need to be more immersed in communal Christian practices lest they be too assimilated to the values of the surrounding culture. See Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church (Brazos, 2008); and Rob Moll, “The New Monasticism,” Christianity Today, April 24, 2008. Those who promote the new, lay monasticism almost always look to either Catholic or Anabaptist historical resources, and this is to some degree because Anabaptist Protestants have functioned as somewhat embattled minorities for centuries, and the original monastic ideal has been inherited from Catholicism. But it is arguable that Calvin proposed the first serious effort to do lay monasticism. His program was far more extensive than Luther’s. As Boulton explains, Calvin was concerned to re-form an entire city, in the midst of medieval Catholic Europe, along the lines of what he considered biblical Christian faith. Calvin, therefore, provides many resources for those looking to develop spiritually formative Christian community today in the postmodern West. See also Scott Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

358. Quiet Time: An InterVarsity Guidebook for Daily Devotions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1945). Although the authors are given as InterVarsity Staff, the book was compiled out of the writings of many longtime evangelical missionaries, including Bishop Frank Houghton, W. Graham Scroggie, Paget Wilkes, and Mrs. Harry Strachan. C. Stacey Woods, Australian-Canadian founder of InterVarsity in the United States, took the British book, edited out its “Anglicanisms,” and published it in the United States. See A. Donald MacLeod, C. Stacey Woods and the Evangelical Rediscovery of the University (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), 107.

359. Cf.: One of the best was Appointment with God: A Practical Approach to Developing a Personal Relationship with God (The Navigators, 1973).

360. Quiet Time, revised edition 1976 (InterVarsity Press), 21.

361. Ibid., 15–16. Later in the booklet a different outline for prayer is offered—thanksgiving, worship, and adoration using the names of God, confession, intercession for others, and committal of the new day to God (p. 21). This reflects the fact that despite being quite short, the book is a compilation of reflections on daily devotions by seven different authors.

362. Appointment with God, 16.

363. Phyllis Tickle, The Divine Hours, Prayers for Springtime: A Manual for Prayer (Image, 2006); The Divine Hours, Prayers for Summertime: A Manual for Prayer (Image, 2006); The Divine Hours, Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime: A Manual for Prayer (Image, 2006).

364. See John Bunyan, Prayer (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965).

365. Owen, Works, vol. 4, 348.

366. See Owen’s entire chapter “Prescribed Forms of Prayer Examined,” in Works, vol. 4, 338–51.

367. Horton, Calvin on the Christian Life, 154.

368. Luther, “A Simple Way to Pray,” 193.

369. Arthur G. Bennett, The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1975).

370. David Hanes, ed., My Path of Prayer (Wales: Crossway UK Books, 1991).

371. Ibid., 57–65.

372. Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 286.

373. See Barbee and Zahl, Collects of Thomas Cranmer. This volume not only provides one year (fifty-two weeks) of Cranmer prayers but a short explanation and meditation for each one. This makes this book extremely useful for the initial “evocation/invocation” moment of daily prayer.

374. D. A. Carson et al., eds., New Bible Commentary, 21st Century Edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994).

375. Henry, A Method for Prayer. See also a shorter edition, Henry, A Way to Pray. The editor of the first edition, Ligon Duncan, outlines the whole book in an appendix. The appendix alone provides scores of specific ideas on how to adore, confess, thank, petition, and intercede with God. To use the book in prayer you need only to personalize the headings and pray in your own words and with your specific needs.

376. This is from Luther’s “A Simple Way to Pray,” which is quoted in Packer and Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way, 288. Packer here is quoting from a translation by Walter Trobisch, in his classic booklet, Martin Luther’s Quiet Time.

377. Quoted in Gordon Wenham, The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying and Praising with the Psalms (Crossway, 2013), 39.

378. The following are taken from T. M. Moore, God’s Prayer Program: Passionately Using the Psalms in Prayer (Christian Focus, 2005).

379. Ibid., 83.

380. Ibid., 88.

381. Ibid., 95.

382. Many people seeking to pray the Psalms find themselves confused and put off by the “imprecatory” Psalms in which the psalmist prays down God’s wrath and punishment on his enemies, often in violent terms. One such prayer comes at the end of Psalm 137, where the psalmist hopes that someone will do to the Babylonians what they did when they sacked Jerusalem. He hopes warriors will seize their infants by the feet and kill them by dashing their heads upon the rocks (vv. 8–9). Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner wisely points out that Christians must not pray in the same way now, in light of the cross, but we still must be able to understand such prayers. He writes about Psalm 137: “Our response to such a scripture should, we suggest, be threefold. First, to distil the essence of it, as God himself did with the cries of Job and Jeremiah. Secondly, to receive the impact of it. This raw wound, thrust before us, forbids us to give smooth answers to the fact of cruelty. To cut this witness out of the Old Testament would be to impair its value as revelation, both of what is in man and of what the cross was required to achieve for our salvation. Thirdly, our response should be to recognize that our calling, since the cross, is to pray down reconciliation, not judgment. . . . So this psalm takes its place in Scripture as an impassioned protest, beyond all ignoring or toning down, not only against a particular act of cruelty but against all comfortable views of human wickedness, either with regard to the judgment it deserves or to the legacy it leaves; and not least, in relation to the cost, to God and man, of laying its enmity and bitterness to rest” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 73–150: An Introduction and Commentary [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975], 497).

383. For much more on this subject, read Eugene Peterson, Answering God; Tremper Longman, How to Read the Psalms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988); and Derek Kidner, Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary in 2 volumes (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973).

384. Moody,  Life of Dwight L. Moody, 127.

APPENDIX—SOME OTHER PATTERNS FOR DAILY PRAYER

385. By reading two chapters a day from the M’Cheyne Bible Reading Calendar—one in the morning and one in the evening—you will read through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in two years. See http://www.mcheyne.info/calendar.pdf.

386. These are very freely adapted from prayers composed by John Calvin and placed in the 1545 Geneva Catechism to provide guidance for the occasions of private prayer Calvin wanted individuals and families to observe. Original English translations are found in Elsie A. McKee, ed. and trans., John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, 210–17.