We're joined again by pastor and author Tim Keller. He has a wonderful book coming out soon titled Prayer, Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God and it may just be one of the best Christian books of 2014. That's not hyperbole. He joins us from New York City to talk about prayer and I asked him two questions yesterday.

Here we go with two more. Question number three, Dr. Keller. Throughout your new book on prayer, you warn readers about moving from Bible study to prayer. Skipping over one crucial step in the middle, which is meditation. Why are we quick to skip right over this step of meditation? Well, it's possible that we're quick to miss this step because we live in a culture that doesn't encourage solitude and reflection.

It's also possible that evangelicalism is a little bit too shaped by rational, rational, I should say rationalism maybe, rationality, rationalism. So our approach to the Bible sometimes is get the meaning through the grammatical historical exegesis and once you got the meaning, then there it is and that's all you need and you don't have to work it into your heart.

So maybe we're too rationalistic, maybe we don't have the solitude. But if you read Martin Luther, especially his, well any of Martin Luther, Martin Luther believed that you need to take the truth that you have learned through good exegesis. I'm a little concerned about some approaches to reading the Bible that says don't read the Bible and listen to God speaking to you, don't think about theology, just let God speak to you.

I'm a little concerned about that because the way God speaks to you in the Bible is after you do good exegesis and you figure out what the text is saying. But once you understand that, Luther said you need to learn how to warm your heart with it, get it into your heart.

And it really diminishes our prayer life because our hearts are cold and we get into prayer. And I think without meditation, you tend to go right into petition and supplication and you do very little adoration or confession. Because when your heart is warm, then you start to praise God and then you confess.

When your heart is cold, which it is if you just study the Bible and then jump to prayer, is you're much more likely to spend your time on your prayer list and not really engage your heart that much. >> So it seems a key to the fruitful prayer life is the conviction that the Bible was really and truly written for me personally.

>> Well, yes, of course it is. I mean, you know, Deuteronomy 29, 29, "The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed are revealed that you may do them." And so, of course, the Bible is the part of God's will and mind that he wants us to know.

But the way you determine what he's saying in the Word of God is through sound theological exegesis. But then once you discern the meaning, you have to work it into your heart to make sure it does become a personal word to you and not just a concept you hold with a mind.

>> Excellent. All right, on to question number four. Last December on Twitter, you were asked, "Why do you think young Christian adults struggle most deeply with God as a personal reality in their lives?" And you replied, "Noise and distraction. It's easier to tweet than to pray." That's sadly true.

I mean, we are fickle people, and for all the many benefits of digital technology, we are tempted to get distracted from prayer by tweets and our Facebook feeds and texts and emails on our phone. I mean, in a sense, we want to be distracted. So what counsel would you give to a Christian who finds himself or herself lured to distractions when they are trying to pray?

>> Well, I may have just answered the question. I mean, primarily, there is no way around just simply the discipline of saying, "This is something I've got to spend time doing." In my book on prayer, I tell a story about how my wife used an illustration on me, and she basically said, "If a doctor said you have a fatal condition unless you take this medicine and every night from 11 to 11, 15, you have to swallow these pills and do this thing, otherwise you'll be dead by morning," she said, "you'd never miss.

You would never say, 'I was too tired.' You'd never say, 'I didn't get to it,' or 'I was watching a movie and I didn't leave time.' You never would do that. If anything that you know you've got to do, you do." And so when people say, "Well, I don't know.

How am I going to get to prayer? How am I going to deal with the distraction?" I say, "I'm sorry, you don't believe you need prayer, and that's a theological spiritual problem, and there's nothing I can do except tell you you need to get your heart straight and your mind straight on that." However, having said that, once you've determined you've got to do it, inside your prayer time, it's hard sometimes to keep from being distracted.

That's where meditation helps. See, Martin Luther said that if you warm your heart through meditation on the Scripture so that your heart starts to really warm up, and you go into prayer because you want to pray, because you want to praise Him for what you see, and you want to confess your sins, meditation on a passage of the Scripture actually, in my case, it helps me from, keeps me from being distracted.

Because it means you've got to figure this out. You've got to say, "Okay, what does it mean to me? What is it? How do I praise God for this? How do I confess for this? How do I petition for this?" Meditation warms the heart and absorbs the mind so I'm not as distracted.

So I guess the answer is twofold. One is you've got to decide it's something you've got to do, and there's nothing I can do to help you with that. But once you're inside, meditation keeps you from having your mind wandering during your prayer time. >> Good. Very pointed and convicting, but very good.

Thank you, Dr. Keller. And tomorrow, I'll ask you questions number five and six, including something that we've touched on previously, but I want to expand on, because lament is part of the healthy Christian life, as you argue in the book. So that means prayer includes complaining. So how does a good Calvinist complain to God?

That's tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. 1 Ask Pastor John podcast.com/AskPastorJohn.