http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15449790/how-the-word-of-man-becomes-the-word-of-god

“I’m just not feeling it today.”

How often have you reached for that excuse? Many of us can be quick to cast ourselves as the victim of a sluggish heart.

Now, making peace with a pokey heart is a very strange phenomenon, even as it now is a widespread assumption and typically goes unquestioned. It may be no big deal if we’re talking about whether you want peanut butter on your breakfast toast. But far more is at stake when this becomes an excuse for neglecting God, whether in his word, prayer, or Christian fellowship.

Specifically, this excuse has served to undermine habits of spiritual health related to beginning each day with the voice of God in Scripture. Some of us are gaunt, frail Christians because we’ve learned, like our world, to cater to the whims of our own fickle hearts rather than direct them and determine to reshape them.

Your Pliable Affections

In what may be his most insightful and deeply spiritual book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (2014), the late Tim Keller introduces us to a side of the great English theologian John Owen (1616–1683) that is especially out of step with modern assumptions. Owen, according to Keller, would not be so quick to grant the excuse, “I’m just not feeling it today.” In fact, he likely would respond forcefully — and many of us might be better for it.

Owen would at least challenge whether our initial feelings determined anything significant at all. He surely wouldn’t say to skip God’s word (or prayer or church) to cater to whatever unspiritual inclination you woke up feeling. Rather, he might say, as Keller summarizes, “Meditate to the point of delight.” Don’t give in to your heart’s first inclinations. Rather, take hold of them, and direct them. Open the Bible, and turn your attention to the one who is supremely worthy, and keep your nose in the Book, and your mind on Jesus, until your sluggish heart begins to respond like it should.

That’s striking counsel for a generation conditioned to “follow your heart” and, in time, presume to reshape our external, objective world based on the subjectivity and flightiness of our own desires.

How often do we hear even Christians concede, as a veiled excuse, to be “wired” a certain way? Indeed, God has wired us in certain ways. But how often do we resign ourselves to being hardwired in ways we’re actually far more pliable? And the world’s not helping us with this. Our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places we’re hardwired (like biological sex) and to pretend hard-wiring in the places we’re actually plastic (desires and delights).

Long before anyone talked about neuroplasticity, Owen believed in what we might call “affectional plasticity” — that is, your desires and delights are not hardwired. They are pliable. You can reshape and recondition them. You can retrain them. You may be unable to simply turn them with full effect in the moment to make yourself feel something, but you can reshape your heart over time. Oh, can you. Your desires, good and bad, are not simple givens. Stretched out over time, as the composite of countless decisions, they are wonderfully (and hauntingly) chosens.

Recondition Your Heart

In chapter 10 of Prayer, Keller adds his commentary to Owen’s premodern insights for a much-needed perspective on the wedding of God’s word with our prayers through meditation. It’s a perspective on forming and reforming our pliant hearts that will challenge readers today. It will frustrate many, but certainly inspire a few.

In general, we are far too easy on our minds and hearts. We grant we can train the body. In fact, you’re always training the body, whether for the better or the worse. And most will agree that you can train the mind — “the mind is a muscle,” so to speak. You can set it on a particular object and learn to keep it there. It will take practice. Such training is vital for engaging with God’s word as we ought, and few skills are more difficult or important to cultivate.

And far more controversial, you can train your heart— not just in sinful emotions to avoid but also in righteous emotions to entertain. With a Bible open in front of you, you can learn, as Keller summarizes Owen, to “meditate to the point of delight.”

Three Stages of Meditation

Some well-meaning Christians set out to read their Bibles, don’t feel much (if anything), move on swiftly to pray a few quick, shallow petitions, and then embark on their day. Owen would say, with C.S. Lewis, you are far too easily pleased — that is, if you’re even pleased at all. Rather, Owen would have us wrestle like Jacob across the Jabbok, until light dawns. Wrestle with your own sluggish soul. Direct it. Turn it. Grapple with it until it does what it’s supposed to do, and feels more like it’s supposed to feel about the wonders and horrors of the word of God. Say, in effect, to the God of the word, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” and discipline your heart to receive the joy for which God made it.

Now, a few clarifications are in order to recover this lost art of meditation. Owen distinguished between study, meditation, and prayer. Meditation is the bridge between receiving God’s word (in reading and study) and responding back to him (in prayer). Meditation, says Owen,

is distinguished from the study of the word, wherein our principal aim is to learn the truth, or to declare it unto others; and so also from prayer, whereof God himself is the immediate object. But . . . meditation . . . is the affecting of our own hearts and minds with love, delight, and [humility]. (quoted in Keller, Prayer, 152)

Meditation, then — distinct from study and prayer, though overlapping with them — might be parsed into three sequential stages.

1) Fix Your Mind

Begin with Bible intake, through reading, and rereading — the slower the better. And as we encounter various knowledge gaps in what the passage says and means, we might turn briefly to some “study” to “learn the truth” or rightly understand the text. Beginners will have more questions and need to navigate how frequently to stop and study or just keep reading and pick up clues as they go. But the main point is that meditation begins with immersion in the words of God.

Unlike Eastern “meditation,” which seeks to empty the mind, biblical meditation requires the filling of the mind with the truth of God’s self-revelation in his Son and Scripture. We don’t just up and meditate — not in the deliberate sense. We begin with Bible, fixing our thoughts on God and his Son through the content of his word.

2) Incline Your Heart

Fixing our thoughts can be difficult enough, but inclining the heart is imponderable for many. Not because it can’t be done, but because we have been socialized to assume it can’t. So, this is where Owen (and Keller) seems forceful, and surprising. But Owen counsels us, having fixed our minds on God’s word, to “persist in spiritual thoughts unto your refreshment” (Works of John Owen, volume 7, 393). That is, meditate until you begin to feel the word. Preach to yourself until you begin to feel more like you ought. Does the word declare God’s majesty? Feel awe. Does it warn sinners? Feel fear. Does it announce good news? Feel joy.

The goal is not to meditate for a particular duration of time, but to meditate until the point of delight, to persist “unto your refreshment.” The apostle Peter speaks of the present, not merely the future — of joy the Christian experiences now, in this age, not only in the one to come — when he says, “Though you do not now see [Jesus with your physical eyes], you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). Inexpressible, glorified joy is offered even now, and by no better means than fixing our minds on the word of God himself and meditating until he smiles on us, and warms our souls, with some real measure of delight.

Owen offers hope for those who think this is impossible: “Constancy in [this] duty will give ability for it. Those who conscientiously abide in its performance shall increase in light, wisdom, and experience until they are able to manage it with great success.” Keller then comments, leaning on Psalm 1, “Trees don’t grow overnight. Meditation is a sustained process like a tree growing its roots down toward the water source. The effects are cumulative. You must stick with it. We must meditate ‘day and night’ — regularly, steadily” (161–162).

Questions arise not only because of our sin but our humanity. Owen knew this every bit as much as we do, if not far better. Anticipating our objection, Keller writes,

Owen is quite realistic. He admits that sometimes, no matter what we do, we simply cannot concentrate, or we find our thoughts do not become big and affecting, but rather we feel bored, hard, and distracted. Then, Owen says, simply turn to God and make brief, intense appeals for help. Sometimes that is all you will do the rest of your scheduled time, and sometimes the very cries for help serve to concentrate the mind and soften the heart. (Prayer, 161)

A huge difference lies between occasional realism and a daily pattern of resignation. There’s a world of difference between a lazy beginner and the wise veteran, who has learned the lost art and come to experience the third stage with regularity, despite the “sometimes” of dryness and distraction.

3) Enjoy Your God

In the final stage, we give vent, or give space, to the enjoyment (or crying out) begun in the second. We fan the flame of fitting affection for the truth in view. This is the high point of meditation — enjoying God in Christ — which fills our souls with “an answering response.” As Keller comments, we “listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds” (55, emphasis added) — which leads us to prayer. According to Keller,

meditation before prayer consists of thinking, then inclining, and, finally, either enjoying the presence or admitting the absence and asking for his mercy and help. Meditation is thinking a truth out and then thinking a truth in until its ideas become “big” and “sweet,” moving and affecting, and until the reality of God is sensed upon the heart. (162)

And this “sensing of God on the heart,” through meditating on his word, issues in our response of prayer.

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist. . . . Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves. (62)

So, we want our prayers to be prompted by and tethered to the intake of God’s word. “We would never produce the full range of biblical prayer if we were initiating prayer according to our own inner needs and psychology. It can only be produced if we are responding in prayer according to who God is as revealed in the Scripture” (60).

Not Just Truth but Jesus

Keller ends this blessed tenth chapter with Jesus himself as the chief focus of our meditation. Not only did the God-man delight in the word of God like the happy man of Psalm 1, but he himself is “the one to whom all the Scripture points” (163). As Christians, we learn to meditate both with him and on him.

In our reading and rereading and study and lingering over Scripture, we persist to know and enjoy not just truth but the Truth himself. For Christians, the final focus of our meditation is personal, and both perfectly human and fully divine in the person of Jesus Christ.

Motherhood’s rescue mission outside the gates of hell was supposed to look tidier.

But here we are.

One child has just yanked another’s hair. Sticky hands and messy bottoms (of two different children) have been wiped, but someone just somersaulted through another’s drawing space. Picture ruined, sadness abounds. Another child is hungry but — phew — distracted, scouring five bottomless laundry hampers for underwear. We hurriedly search for shoes to rush to lessons of all kinds. But we will be even later because a shoeless child rages after a half-dressed one to hijack back a pen identical to ten others in plain sight.

How can mothers possibly intercede for their children during little moments of chaos?

God in Small, Chaotic Spaces

Like her life “hidden with Christ” (Colossians 3:2), the glory of a mother’s rescue mission hides in small moments. Even if no one else sees and delights in a mother’s labor of love, God does. In fact, no one sees more or delights more than him. The mundane, however, will not last forever — God “has made everything beautiful in its time.” Though mothers now yearn for eternal assurances for their children, it is not for us to know “what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11–12).

Anxieties pile on because the weight of eternity presses in. How will today’s messes translate into eternal joy with our children in the presence of the King? Little moments offer opportunities for big prayers — not as an oppressive obligation but as a way of casting anxieties on the God who cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).

God has promised our labor in Christ is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58), so we cast our anxieties at the throne during moments when it seems his kingdom has not yet entered our homes. Prayer surrenders our desire for certainty about their salvation and frees us to share gospel hope with our children without measuring results.

Massive prayers are more than an invitation for God to hear our pleas; they also invite him to speak back to us. When we pray, the indwelling Spirit counsels moms toward Scripture’s glorious promises to us and our children (John 14:26). He exchanges our proneness to unravel for eternal eyes, power, and joy to labor and trust him as we continue to intercede for the little hearts in our care.

Big Prayers for Small Moments

One day mothers will see what now remains hidden in heaven — golden bowls of incense filled with the massive, intercessory prayers of mothers crying out to God on behalf of their children (Revelation 5:8). Consider these three massive prayers for your mundane and messy little moments.

1. ‘Lord, save my children!’

Prayers for a child’s salvation are so massive and redundant that perhaps we tend over time not to want to bother God with them anymore.

The weight and value of our children’s eternities peek through in little moments. He is “not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness,” but is patient toward them, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:8–9). So we pray, “Lord, remove my child’s heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26)!” Messes do not need to hinder mothers. They are brief windows in which we can plead for salvation and fuel patient, tender gospel-preaching to the eternal beings we shepherd. “Lord, I see the sin in them (and in me!), and I know I cannot save them. Break in and capture their hearts. Help them to see!”

“When mothers pray, we invite our children into our desperation before the God of salvation.”

When mothers pray, we invite our children into our desperation before the God of salvation. Charles Spurgeon never forgot his mother’s unwavering plea: “Oh, that my son might live before thee!” (Devoted, 91). With consistency and fervor, we can invite our children in as we pour out our hearts to God.

2. ‘Jesus, fill us with your Holy Spirit.’

If there is one thing I have learned in motherhood about prayer, it’s that I often don’t know how to pray.

Jesus is unhindered by moms who yearn for communion with him but falter or abandon these hopes in little moments. Here’s good news for yearning moms: the resurrected King reigns in our inability. He promises that when we ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, he will fill us (Luke 11:13). A mother’s plea invites the power of Christ to replace our anxiety with peace to know him more, and authority to display his glory in little moments. So we pray, drawing on Ephesians 3:14–21:

You have named and formed my family (verse 15).
You have endless riches to supply all my needs (verse 16).
Strengthen me and my children with power through your Spirit (verse 16).
Do for me what I cannot do on my own; do what your Spirit is meant to do — show us Christ, and fix our eyes on him (verse 17).
Be our firm foundation whether we see any fruit from our faithfulness (verse 17).
Through your powerful Spirit, show us “what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of your endless love (verse 18).
Empty us of anything less than your fullness (verse 19).
Do far more than we or our children even think to ask, through the power of your Spirit at work within us (verse 20).
May we, our children, our children’s children, and all generations glorify Christ (verse 21).

Mothers can pray child-specific verses. We can pray that our service, gifts, and teaching in the name of Christ will bear fruit. We can pray that our children would grow into men and women of the word, mighty warriors for Christ’s kingdom. We can pray that they would live for Christ, die for Christ, be all in for Christ. But let’s also pray for ourselves, that we would be filled with the Spirit, who enables us to pray and love well.

3. ‘Holy Spirit, give us more of Jesus.’

Jesus delights to fill us with his Spirit. And the Spirit delights to satisfy us — with more of Christ.

“Jesus delights to fill us with his Spirit. And the Spirit delights to satisfy us — with more of Christ.”

Jesus is our eternal portion (Psalm 73:26–28; John 6:35), but also our daily bread (Matthew 6:11). He is “good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him” (Lamentations 3:24–25). Little moments with our children now will turn into bigger moments after they have left our homes. Mothers want the gospel to one day pour out from their children’s hearts and lives. So we pray and ask the Spirit to satisfy us and our children (and our children’s children!) toward the day when we will fully know him (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Spirit, use this hair-yanking. Grow our children to beg you for more of Jesus until they get him.

Spirit, move in sticky hands and messy bottoms. Grow our children to be satisfied in the kind, gentle hands of our shepherd when they’re confronted with their own messes (Romans 2:4).

Spirit, shine behind sinful somersaults. Grow our children to be satisfied in the quieting presence of Christ, who sees their pain (Psalm 56:8), as they long for the day when sin and sadness will be no more (Revelation 21:4).

Spirit, fill hungers and reveal yourself in underwear searches. Grow our children to not distract their appetites but invite the bread of life to fully satisfy them (John 6:35).

Spirit, tardiness does not steal your power. Grow our children to be content in Christ when their plans don’t match your purposes (Proverbs 19:21).

Spirit, don’t waste our unnecessary pen collection. Surprise our children in their yearnings by teaching them the secret behind hunger and plenty (Philippians 4:12) — more of Jesus.

And as you do these things in them, Holy Spirit, do them first in me.

He Prays for Us

We live in a dark world. Massive prayers now for more of Jesus may prepare our children and generations to come for persecution, or for a time when they are stripped of all things but the one who never leaves. Whatever comes their way, may our children grow into godliness and contentment because a praying mom pleaded that Jesus would be enough.

Mothers, we don’t need to collapse under the weight of our mission, or pretend that only majestic prayers can intercede for our children. The Spirit helps mothers in their weakness when words fail us — the Spirit himself prays for mothers “with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). And one day, what were once massive prayers in little moments will, in the light of glory, usher in massive praise forever.