How Does Scripture Serve Our Prayers?
00:00:00.000 | Gary writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, back during Tim Keller's week of APJ episodes
00:00:09.720 | on prayer, he encouraged us to take time for meditation on the Scriptures before prayer
00:00:15.260 | so as to warm our hearts to God.
00:00:18.200 | Can you give some practical advice and tips on how this looks practically for you?"
00:00:23.700 | I think the best way for me to answer this is with the help of George Mueller, because
00:00:32.520 | what he taught me years ago, many years ago, is still the way I function in the morning.
00:00:41.280 | And I just think it'll be significant to let Mueller talk here with me just sticking in
00:00:46.400 | a comment here and there.
00:00:48.040 | George Mueller is famous for establishing orphanages and being a great man of faith.
00:00:53.880 | He died in 1898 and in 1841, so I think he was 36 years old when he made this life-changing
00:01:05.840 | discovery.
00:01:06.840 | Here's what he wrote, "While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach
00:01:12.200 | me a truth irrespective of human instrumentality as far as I know.
00:01:17.760 | The benefit of which I have not lost now more than 40 years since that event has passed.
00:01:26.680 | The point is this.
00:01:28.400 | I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought
00:01:35.600 | to attend every day was to have a happy soul in the Lord.
00:01:42.600 | The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, how much
00:01:49.360 | I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state and how my
00:01:57.320 | inner man might be nourished.
00:02:00.620 | Before this time, my practice had been, at least for 10 years previously, as a habitual
00:02:08.360 | thing to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning."
00:02:12.800 | Now notice here, this is my insertion, that's the opposite.
00:02:16.560 | He had been doing for years the opposite of what Keller was suggesting.
00:02:21.120 | "Now," he says, "I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the
00:02:29.880 | reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it," like Keller suggests, "that thus
00:02:37.400 | my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed, and that thus, whilst
00:02:44.480 | meditating, my heart might be brought into an experiential communion with the Lord.
00:02:51.800 | I might begin, therefore, to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning early in
00:02:58.000 | the morning.
00:02:59.000 | The first thing I did after asking in a few words for the Lord's blessing upon His precious
00:03:05.720 | Word," now pause, notice, "He does actually begin with prayer.
00:03:10.440 | A brief, short, 'God, open your Word to me.
00:03:13.760 | God help me.'"
00:03:14.840 | And this has been very important to me, because even though I know Bible reading precedes
00:03:20.400 | praying in a significant way that he's explaining, I have found it important to do my little
00:03:25.960 | I-O-U-S, "Incline my heart, O God.
00:03:29.640 | Open my heart, O God.
00:03:30.640 | Unite my heart, O God.
00:03:32.480 | Satisfy my heart, O God.
00:03:34.240 | Else I might blunder into God's Word in a spiritually self-sufficient frame of mind
00:03:40.840 | in which I'm not at all listening to God or hearing God."
00:03:44.840 | So just a short, I'm talking about one minute, one minute, you say to God, "I'm about to
00:03:51.720 | read your Word, and I need your help."
00:03:55.160 | And then he goes on and says, "It was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching,
00:04:00.600 | as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it, not for the sake of public ministry"—oh,
00:04:07.160 | how important that is—"not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated on, but
00:04:12.520 | for the sake of obtaining food for my soul."
00:04:16.240 | Now, that's crucial.
00:04:18.120 | This is John Piper talking again.
00:04:19.920 | That's crucial.
00:04:21.480 | Meditation is not a professional thing.
00:04:25.600 | It's a hunger thing.
00:04:27.000 | I'm here to eat.
00:04:29.640 | I'm not here to stockpile arguments.
00:04:31.760 | I'm not here to get a lesson.
00:04:33.920 | I'm hungry for you, God.
00:04:36.080 | I need to eat truth here.
00:04:39.760 | That's a huge difference between the way you might read to get a sermon ready.
00:04:44.840 | He goes on, "The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a few minutes,
00:04:52.120 | my soul has been led to confession or thanksgiving or to intercession or to supplication so that
00:04:59.620 | though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer but to meditation, yet it turned
00:05:07.920 | almost immediately more or less into prayer."
00:05:12.960 | Now here's a caution.
00:05:15.120 | Don't be so mechanical in responding to Keller, which he doesn't want you to be.
00:05:20.800 | Don't be so mechanical or categorized that you think, "Okay, first we do a little meditation.
00:05:27.440 | Then we pray."
00:05:28.440 | That's not the way it works.
00:05:30.040 | Not for Mueller, not for me.
00:05:32.120 | I'm sure not for Keller either.
00:05:34.760 | First we think over the Bible, then we launch into prayer.
00:05:38.360 | No, no, no.
00:05:39.360 | While you're eating for your soul, you will not be able to pray.
00:05:46.280 | Things will start to happen in your soul that will cause you to cry out in confession or
00:05:50.680 | in longing or in intercession for someone or in praise.
00:05:56.040 | You won't be able to put that off until 10 minutes or 20 minutes later, and that's really
00:06:01.400 | good.
00:06:02.400 | He goes on, "When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication
00:06:09.320 | or have given thanks, I go on to the next verse or verses, turning all as I go into
00:06:17.120 | prayer for myself and for others as the Word may lead to it."
00:06:22.280 | But here's a crucial point.
00:06:24.440 | This is what Keller was getting at, I think.
00:06:26.480 | But still continually keeping before me that food from my soul is the object of my meditation.
00:06:36.800 | And the result of this is that there is always a good deal of confession, good deal of thanksgiving,
00:06:44.120 | supplication or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost
00:06:50.120 | invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened, and that by breakfast time,
00:06:58.280 | with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful, if not a happy state.
00:07:04.840 | And then he ends like this, "Since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me
00:07:11.360 | as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do in the morning is obtain
00:07:17.440 | food for his inner man."
00:07:21.440 | I would end with one last thing.
00:07:24.000 | When you're done with that meditation part, and yes, all mingled with prayer, there may
00:07:30.240 | be serious—I mean, there probably will be—serious prayer work yet to do, because you've got
00:07:37.360 | a list of things that never came to your mind.
00:07:40.220 | Some of those things are going to happen this very day.
00:07:42.360 | Some are urgent for your family or for the church or for the world that's coming down
00:07:46.800 | the line, and you didn't think of them while you were praying, and you do want to pray,
00:07:50.560 | but now you're in a frame of mind that it's far better to take them to the Lord than before.
00:07:57.200 | Outstanding testimony.
00:07:58.200 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:59.200 | And Gary's question was built off of a week of podcast episodes, five episodes we recorded
00:08:03.840 | with Tim Keller on prayer.
00:08:06.080 | Those are in the archive, and you can find those in episodes number 459 to 463.
00:08:11.560 | 459 to 463.
00:08:13.820 | You'll find those episodes in the Ask Pastor John podcast archive, most easily found in
00:08:17.920 | the app for the iPhone and Android.
00:08:20.000 | Well, we draw nearer and nearer to Christmas, a sweet time of year, and I hope you have
00:08:24.400 | a wonderful weekend as you plan and prepare for it.
00:08:27.280 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:08:28.280 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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