Gary writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, back during Tim Keller's week of APJ episodes on prayer, he encouraged us to take time for meditation on the Scriptures before prayer so as to warm our hearts to God. Can you give some practical advice and tips on how this looks practically for you?" I think the best way for me to answer this is with the help of George Mueller, because what he taught me years ago, many years ago, is still the way I function in the morning.

And I just think it'll be significant to let Mueller talk here with me just sticking in a comment here and there. George Mueller is famous for establishing orphanages and being a great man of faith. He died in 1898 and in 1841, so I think he was 36 years old when he made this life-changing discovery.

Here's what he wrote, "While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth irrespective of human instrumentality as far as I know. The benefit of which I have not lost now more than 40 years since that event has passed. The point is this. I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have a happy soul in the Lord.

The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, how much I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state and how my inner man might be nourished. Before this time, my practice had been, at least for 10 years previously, as a habitual thing to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning." Now notice here, this is my insertion, that's the opposite.

He had been doing for years the opposite of what Keller was suggesting. "Now," he says, "I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it," like Keller suggests, "that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed, and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into an experiential communion with the Lord.

I might begin, therefore, to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning early in the morning. The first thing I did after asking in a few words for the Lord's blessing upon His precious Word," now pause, notice, "He does actually begin with prayer. A brief, short, 'God, open your Word to me.

God help me.'" And this has been very important to me, because even though I know Bible reading precedes praying in a significant way that he's explaining, I have found it important to do my little I-O-U-S, "Incline my heart, O God. Open my heart, O God. Unite my heart, O God.

Satisfy my heart, O God. Else I might blunder into God's Word in a spiritually self-sufficient frame of mind in which I'm not at all listening to God or hearing God." So just a short, I'm talking about one minute, one minute, you say to God, "I'm about to read your Word, and I need your help." And then he goes on and says, "It was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it, not for the sake of public ministry"—oh, how important that is—"not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated on, but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul." Now, that's crucial.

This is John Piper talking again. That's crucial. Meditation is not a professional thing. It's a hunger thing. I'm here to eat. I'm not here to stockpile arguments. I'm not here to get a lesson. I'm hungry for you, God. I need to eat truth here. That's a huge difference between the way you might read to get a sermon ready.

He goes on, "The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a few minutes, my soul has been led to confession or thanksgiving or to intercession or to supplication so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer." Now here's a caution.

Don't be so mechanical in responding to Keller, which he doesn't want you to be. Don't be so mechanical or categorized that you think, "Okay, first we do a little meditation. Then we pray." That's not the way it works. Not for Mueller, not for me. I'm sure not for Keller either.

First we think over the Bible, then we launch into prayer. No, no, no. While you're eating for your soul, you will not be able to pray. Things will start to happen in your soul that will cause you to cry out in confession or in longing or in intercession for someone or in praise.

You won't be able to put that off until 10 minutes or 20 minutes later, and that's really good. He goes on, "When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication or have given thanks, I go on to the next verse or verses, turning all as I go into prayer for myself and for others as the Word may lead to it." But here's a crucial point.

This is what Keller was getting at, I think. But still continually keeping before me that food from my soul is the object of my meditation. And the result of this is that there is always a good deal of confession, good deal of thanksgiving, supplication or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened, and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful, if not a happy state.

And then he ends like this, "Since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do in the morning is obtain food for his inner man." I would end with one last thing. When you're done with that meditation part, and yes, all mingled with prayer, there may be serious—I mean, there probably will be—serious prayer work yet to do, because you've got a list of things that never came to your mind.

Some of those things are going to happen this very day. Some are urgent for your family or for the church or for the world that's coming down the line, and you didn't think of them while you were praying, and you do want to pray, but now you're in a frame of mind that it's far better to take them to the Lord than before.

Outstanding testimony. Thank you, Pastor John. And Gary's question was built off of a week of podcast episodes, five episodes we recorded with Tim Keller on prayer. Those are in the archive, and you can find those in episodes number 459 to 463. 459 to 463. You'll find those episodes in the Ask Pastor John podcast archive, most easily found in the app for the iPhone and Android.

Well, we draw nearer and nearer to Christmas, a sweet time of year, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend as you plan and prepare for it. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.