Prayer Tips: A Good Book from Luther
Luther believed that the Lord’s Prayer was an excellent model for prayer. In fact, said Luther, had the Lord known a better prayer he would have taught us that one as well![4] That being the case, it’s not surprising to find that Luther’s method is grounded in the Lord’s Prayer. In other words, Luther would take each part of the Lord’s Prayer and pray through it.
You are a pastor in a small city. You’ve known your barber for almost twenty years. One day while he trims he asks for help in prayer. He, like many others, struggles in that area. So, you decide to go home and write a brief thirty-four page guide for him. You even incorporate your friend in the work. Encouraging attentiveness in prayer you write, “So, a good and attentive barber keeps his thoughts, attention, and eyes on the razor and hair and does not forget how far he has gotten with his shaving or cutting.” Once finished you decide to publish the work and it’s ready for popular consumption by the early part of the year. Now, your friend and others have help.
What you just read is fact and not fiction. Peter Beskendorf, Martin Luther’s barber asked this very question. In response, Luther wrote a brief book titled A Simple Way to Pray. It’s a little gem. And it is exactly what you would expect from the pen of Luther, nothing more and nothing less. For example, in Luther’s pithy way he warns us not to become lax and lazy with regard to prayer because “the devil who besets us is not lazy or careless.”[1]
Luther also gives the sort of advice that you don’t hear very often today. For instance, he says, “Finally, mark this, that you must always speak the Amen firmly.” He goes on to explain exactly what he means. As firmly as his amen, Luther says, “Do not leave your prayer without having said or thought, ‘Very well, God has heard my prayer; this I know as a certainty and a truth.’ This is what Amen means.”[2] I wonder how many of us need that simple but profound instruction.
But Luther does more than give encouragements and terse sound bites. His simple way is nothing less than a way to pray. So, let me simply walk you through his method.
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Objecting with Love
Christians in nearly any context will have to biblically object to these culturally expected policies and practices. No matter the situation, we must start with the authority of Scripture, explain why we cannot acquiesce from what is clearly taught in Scripture, lay out how we will disobey the policy only enough to avoid sinning while maintaining respect for all, and then accepting the consequences and trusting God to sustain us through them and bring ultimate justice in the end.
As our culture becomes less and less “Christian”, we will increasingly face situations in which we are pressured to participate in or approve of activities that are sinful. As I write, the Supreme Court is considering just such a case, in which a Christian web designer is suing Colorado over a policy that would essentially force her to design websites for same-sex weddings. Christians in wedding-related professions have faced this situation for several years, but it is spreading far beyond that industry. Christians in all walks of life are threatened with similar scenarios. A Christian family may be invited to the same-sex wedding of a friend or family member. A Christian supervisor may be directed by superiors or company policy to participate in Pride Month events . Christian parents may face situations in which their children are forced by school policy to participate in Pride Month events or be exposed to overly descriptive or graphic curriculum on sexuality. And these are just scenarios dealing with homosexuality. There may be mandatory work social events in which excessive drinking is essentially required, work or school policies that require active support of causes that directly contradict Scripture and lead to the degradation of society, or the expectation of working in a dishonest way to increase profits. Possibly the most likely scenario for any Christian involves transgenderism and the use of pronouns clearly inconsistent with biology, which I cannot cover briefly here, so I will cover it in the next post. And there is a myriad of other such situations that any Christian may encounter.
Approaching the Situation
Clearly, all Christians need to be prepared to respond biblically to any of these scenarios. While such a prospect is new for American Christians, it has been the norm throughout the history of the Church, as Peter makes clear:“Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”
-1 Peter 3:13-17, ESVIn this passage, Peter basically outlines how Christians should approach these situations. This begins with approaching the situation with the right perspective. Peter points out that no matter what happens, blessing will come to those who obey Christ. Whether no harm comes to you because you are doing good (which Peter says is generally the case) or you suffer for the sake of righteousness, you will be blessed, whether in this life or the next. Therefore, we should approach the situation without fear, trusting in the sovereignty and goodness of God over and above what any human can do. We must fear God rather than man, which is the point of Isaiah 8:12-13, which Peter is directly referencing in verses 14 and 15. Next, we must start with the objective of honoring Christ as of first importance. We must honor and obey Christ in whatever we do, so however we decide to act in the situation, it must honor and obey Christ. Then, we must always be prepared to give an answer as to why we decided to act in that way. This means we need to have a well-thought-out reason from Scripture and be able to explain it. But we must do this with gentleness and respect, honoring our opponents as people made in the image of God. So any conscientious objection must be both logically robust from Scripture and lovingly applied with the ultimate objective of glorifying Christ.
Knowing Your Opponent
With that in mind, we must prepare for battle. Arguably the most famous line from Sun Tzu’s Art of War is: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril”. He wrote this around the fifth century B.C. about military battles but it applies equally to spiritual battles. Make no mistake, when we face these situations we are at war and must therefore take on a wartime mentality, following his advice to know both ourselves and our opponents. First, we must recognize that the people who make and support these policies are not the enemy, neither are the people who want to coerce us to support their sinful lifestyle. Instead, the true enemy is the devil who has blinded and enslaved them. Therefore, we must always approach our opponents not as the true enemy but as those held captive by the true enemy, whom God can free from that captivity. He may even choose to use the humble and winsome demeanor with which we approach them as part of their salvation. Paul says as much when telling Timothy how elders are to approach such conflicts:“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”
-2 Timothy 2:24-26, ESVJust as it would be foolish to treat an enemy harshly who is about to defect to your side, it would be foolish to alienate someone whom God may save (and therefore make your brother or sister). The Gospel that says that all people are dead in sin and cannot do anything to be right with God is inherently offensive, so we have no need (or Scriptural warrant) to offend people any further. In everything, we must avoid offending God altogether and endeavor to offend people as little as possible.
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Sovereignty and Evil
God uses the difficulties of life, even those that are evil in intent and impact, to bring believers to the goal of completion. As you struggle through the impact of the evil actions of others, you will be led to contemplate the righteousness and truth of God, how obedience to God would have changed the situation.
This combination of words appears to put the Christian on the “horns of a dilemma.” It seems that you must, “pick your poison”.
To hold to belief in the sovereignty of God seems untenable because God somehow cannot eliminate or control the evil in the world, or, if he is sovereign, he must be choosing to not exercise this power and eliminate evil, in which case, we cannot hold that God is good or loving. In fact, at this point, some make the case that God becomes the author of evil! Is this the teaching of scripture? Let’s start with what is clear:
God is Sovereign
Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…[i]
…and He does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “what have you done?”[ii]
The New Testament describes Jesus as
…the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.[iii]
The consistent testimony of scripture presents God as the one who reigns, who is in absolute control, and is not limited by the will or power of any of his creatures.
Evil Exists
The existence of evil is equally clear. It doesn’t take the life experience of sixty or seventy years to recognize this, just open your newspaper, turn on the evening news, or go to your favorite new-source on the internet. The results of the fall are everywhere made manifest. From the moment that Adam and Eve sought to “be like God, knowing good and evil”, all humanity has lived in a state of autonomy. Instead of bowing the knee to their creator and living according to his moral law, we have sought to set our own moral standards independently of God.
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From Eating to Dining: How Shared Meals Reveal What It Means to Be Human
God created us as embodied beings comprised of both bodies and souls, nourishing our physical hunger through eating naturally nourishes our minds and hearts. As we engage in rich conversation, we draw closer and grow in intimacy with each other. Our souls are in turn nourished by this communion we achieve with others during the meal. Since our minds, bodies, and souls are in union with each other, when one is nourished, they are all nourished. It is in this act of dining that we can harness the true communal potential of shared meals that our Creator intended them to be.
In 2019, a disheartening survey was released on the eating habits of Americans. It found that only 48 percent of respondents eat at the dining room table, with 47 percent saying they eat on the couch or in their bedrooms instead. Tellingly, 72 percent of respondents also said that they grew up eating in the dining room. This is the latest illustration of a trend that has been happening for quite some time in America. Families and households are putting less of an emphasis on one of the most fundamental pillars of family and communal life—a shared meal.
Social science bears out the central importance that family dinner has on positive outcomes for children, including lower rates of drug abuse, teen pregnancy, depression, obesity, and eating disorders as well as higher grade-point average, self-esteem, and vocabulary. But the benefits of family meals—or any shared meal—go much deeper than what social science can prove. Dining together fills an innate need that all human beings crave: the desire for true communion and fellowship with our Creator and with one another.
The Centrality of the Meal in Scripture
Scripture tells us a great deal about just how fundamental meals are to human flourishing. Moreover, the Bible contains many examples of how the provision of food often served as a means for teaching important spiritual truths. For example, in the Old Testament, God fed the Israelites manna in the desert. Despite their disobedience (which resulted in the people having to wander in the desert for 40 years), He fed them, teaching them to depend and rely on Him for their daily sustenance (Exodus 16). Similarly, throughout the gospels, Jesus chooses a shared meal as the context not only for building relationships but for enacting His salvific plan.
His desire for forming intimate bonds over a shared meal is shown through His dinner with tax collectors and sinners at the home of Levi (Luke 5:29-32), eating at the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50), dining at the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:25-42), and staying at the home of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). Strikingly, Jesus also emphasizes communal dining with His disciples in His resurrected body. He sups with two disciples that He meets on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), with His disciples in Jerusalem (Luke 14:35-48), and again with His disciples on the shores of the Sea of Tiberius, sharing a miraculous catch of fish and bread over a charcoal fire (John 21:1-14).
Indeed, Christ’s plan of salvation is miraculously revealed multiple times in the context of a shared meal. It is at a wedding feast at Cana that Jesus performs His first miracle of turning water into wine, ushering in His public ministry (John 2:1-11). After feeding the souls of 5,000 men (besides women and children, which means the total number may have been as much as 15,000) by teaching them about the kingdom of God, He orchestrates a miraculous, spontaneous dinner for everybody when He multiplies a few loaves and fish to feed the entire throng, so much so that there are 12 wicker baskets left over after everyone has eaten their fill (Matthew 14:13-21, Luke 9:10-36). At the Last Supper, Christ reveals a fundamental aspect of His sacrificial mission through sharing bread and wine with His disciples (Luke 22:14-23).
It’s clear that Christ placed great emphasis on the importance of the meal as a conduit for revealing the depth of His love for His flock. But a natural question arises here—why did Christ do this? What is the true nature and potential of a shared meal?
“From Eating to Dining”
Judging by the survey referenced earlier, for the most part, eating has become a pretty mundane and isolated exercise for many Americans. At the same time, the popularity of cooking shows and eating out prove that even the fragmented nature of everyday life in our culture has not fully tamped down the pleasures of a good meal.
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