Praying Through Scripture (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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April 25, 2008

Praying Through Scripture (part 2)

00:00: Thank you, it is very good to be here. Oh, you have to wonder,
00:05: I'm sure, as an attendee of the conference, how good can this be when even the pastor doesn't show up? So I hope we've proven wrong on that point.
00:15: You can judge after the slides come up whether or not the lights behind it should come down or up.
00:21: I don't know whether that would be better or not, but we shall see. I was here, was it three or four years ago?
00:29: I can't remember exactly, something about three years ago. Okay, well, it's turned around,
00:37: I spoke over there last time, but it's very good to be back and I'm honored you would come out tonight.
00:44: I bring greetings to you from our president, Dr. Alan Mohler, and our dean,
00:50: Dr. Russell Moore, and from Southern Seminary.
00:58: We were outside on a warm day in May, almost a year ago, and put the doctoral hood on your pastor, and so have that connection.
01:08: Then last November, I was at his brother Pat's church in Omaha for the second time. We have a lot of mutual friends,
01:15: Mike and I, your church and I, and so I'm very honored to be back and delighted to be back.
01:21: And you do have Pew Bibles, is that correct? Okay, in case, because a little bit tonight, everyone will need a
01:28: Bible, we don't want anyone sharing, and so if anyone forgot, if anyone came as a couple and we're gonna share a Bible, I wanted to make sure of that I thought you did, but I didn't see them,
01:36: I guess underneath there. Well, let's get started. Several years ago, in the denomination that I'm a part of, there was a man who had developed some material on prayer who had this material used all over the
01:53: Southern Baptist Convention in various settings. Churches would use it, associational meetings would use it, state denominational meetings would use this material about prayer for spiritual awakening.
02:05: And in it, he included a survey where people were asked, how much time do you spend in prayer every day?
02:12: And don't worry, I'm not gonna ask you that question, but I found the answers to the question very interesting, especially in light of who answered the question.
02:22: For of the 17 ,000 people who attended these over the years, you have to assume these would be among the cream of the crop of praying people in these churches.
02:31: Otherwise, they wouldn't voluntarily come to a seminar like this, just like you.
02:38: I would assume that pretty much about your churches. Anyone who would voluntarily come out on a Friday night would be pretty committed to these sorts of things in the first place.
02:47: But of these 17 ,000 people, the average answer of the 15 ,000 laymen and women who were there was five minutes a day.
02:59: Now, as you would expect, the 2 ,000 ministers and their spouses who were there, they did considerably better.
03:06: Some 40 % better, in fact. A few took bookkeeping in college or accounting,
03:15: I see. Seven minutes a day, not a lot better, right? And that really puzzled me because I thought these would be the very first people in their churches who would say,
03:27: I believe in prayer. The very first people in their churches who would say, I ought to pray,
03:32: I want to pray more. And yet these are the people praying five minutes a day, seven minutes a day.
03:40: And so I thought about that for a long time. And I finally came to the conclusion that the reason we don't pray is simply because we don't feel like it.
03:53: And we don't feel like it because when we do pray, we tend to say the same old things about the same old things.
04:00: And when you've said the same old things about the same old things about 1 ,000 times, how do you feel about saying them again?
04:12: Somebody said it. Bored. I think it takes courage to admit that. We can be talking about the most important things in our lives to the most fascinating person in the universe and be bored to death.
04:26: And we tend to assume, well, I guess I'm just a second rate Christian. And my response to that is no.
04:33: If you have the Holy Spirit, the problem is not you. Unless there's a real sin problem you've refused to deal with.
04:43: The problem is not you. It's your method. And the method for most of us seems to pretty quickly in prayer devolve into saying the same old things about the same old things.
04:59: And frankly, that's boring. But the solution to that,
05:05: I'm gonna argue in a moment, is pretty simple. Now, our problem is not that we pray about the same old things.
05:14: You wanna forward that for me now? Is that gonna work? Okay. All right, yeah, okay, keep going.
05:24: The problem is not, click it a couple more times, that we pray about the same old things.
05:31: I'm gonna argue that's normal because our lives tend to consist pretty much of the same old things.
05:39: Forward that through the next slide there, if you don't mind. To pray about the same old things is normal. If I sent you out right now without any instructions and said,
05:47: I would like for you to pray for about 10 minutes or so, I would assume that most of you would pray about the same six or so things.
05:56: You'd pray about your family. You click that again. Just keep going through that. Your finances, your future, your work, your schoolwork if you're a student, your church or your ministry, and the current crisis in your life.
06:11: Because that is your life, isn't it? Some form or another, you may be single, you might be praying about a family you'd like to have.
06:17: You'd pray about some decision that's before you in the future. Should you make that move or not?
06:23: You'd pray about your finances, God's provision for those bills, for school, for something. You'd pray about your work.
06:29: Students would pray about schoolwork, your church or your ministry, maybe just someone you're trying to share the gospel with at work or down the street.
06:35: And then the current crisis in your life. That thing that I'm told on the average, each of us has about every six months or so, that when you go to pray, it's one of the first things that pops into your head when you pray.
06:47: It may be a good thing or a bad thing. It can be a birth or a death. It can be a job change you want or one you don't want.
06:55: But whatever it is, it's such a big thing in your life at the time, when you go to pray, it's one of the first things that pops into your head.
07:01: Well, to pray about these six things most of the time is normal because our lives tend to consist of these six things, don't they?
07:09: This is where all of our time is, isn't it? How much of your life is not related to your family, your future, your finances, your work or schoolwork, your church or ministry or the current crisis.
07:20: Furthermore, these are the great loves of our lives, aren't they? This is where our hearts are. And so to pray about the same old things is normal.
07:30: Our problem is that we tend to say the same old things about the same old things.
07:38: And frankly, that's boring. And you become after a little while, like the girl who would go to bed every night and she would pray that same old prayer, now
07:48: I lay me down to sleep. And then one night she thought, why does God need to hear me say this again?
07:54: And so she recorded that into a tape and she would play the tape every night when she went to bed. Now you're laughing, but you have prayer tapes in your head.
08:03: They're just a little more sophisticated than that. There are people in this room,
08:08: I would guess that if I called on you to pray right now and you stood up to pray, other people in this room could give that prayer.
08:15: And you could give the same prayer that someone else who's called on to pray. Because that's often the way we learn how to pray.
08:22: We pick phrases that we like and we string them together like beads on a string. Here comes the red bead, then the blue bead, then the green bead.
08:29: I'm in a different church just about every Sunday of the year. And all over the country, I hear the same prayer. Lead God and direct us, bless the gift and the giver, hide the pastor behind the shadow of the cross.
08:40: You know, like beads on a string. Now, you know, maybe here in the Wusta area, it's very different.
08:48: Maybe it's the green bead, then the red bead, then the blue bead, but it's the same prayer. I've been at Southern Seminary in Louisville for three years now.
08:56: I taught at Midwestern Baptist Seminary, the youngest and smallest of the Southern Baptist Seminaries for 10 years.
09:02: Before that, I pastored in the suburbs of Chicago for 15 years. And one Sunday, as the ushers came for the offering and one of the men was praying,
09:12: I'm on the platform and I hear someone talking while this usher is praying. And I thought, well, surely this person will be quiet in a moment.
09:19: But it continued. Then I realized that it was a child. And I thought, well, surely some adult will get this child in line in just a moment.
09:26: And it continued. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked, and there on the second pew was the five -year -old son of the man who was praying.
09:34: And you know what he's saying? Exactly what his dad is saying. He is praying along with his dad.
09:41: They're not repeating after his dad, but in unison with his dad. You know, we'll say the
09:47: Lord's Prayer in unison, only this was dad's prayer. The man and his son were praying in unison. Five years old.
09:54: Now, how could he do that? It's because every time dad prayed, whether over the Lord's Supper Table at the church or the
10:01: Supper Table at home, it was the same cotton -picking prayer. That's why. This kid has been in the world 60 months and has already memorized everything his dad says when he prays.
10:13: And again, they're probably people you know in your Sunday school class or somewhere else. When they're called on to pray, you can give their prayer.
10:19: We just kind of politely endure it, you know? Our hearts don't soar with such prayers. We just don't know how else to pray.
10:24: That's just the way it is. And so we say the same old things about the same old things, and that's boring.
10:35: And when it's boring, it's hard to make yourself pray. Five minutes, seven minutes can feel like an eternity.
10:43: And your mind is wandering half of the time. You suddenly come to yourself and think, wait a minute, where was
10:49: I? I haven't been thinking about God for the last several minutes here. Now, where was I? You come back to that mental script in your head and pick it up again.
10:55: And almost immediately, your mind is wandering off because you find yourself praying while you're thinking of something else.
11:03: And we feel defeated by that. I guess it's just something wrong with me. I'm a second -rate Christian. No, if you have the
11:09: Holy Spirit, the problem is not you, most likely. It's your method.
11:16: Now, preface that by saying, if you have the Holy Spirit, because there is no method that will enliven prayer for someone who doesn't have the
11:21: Holy Spirit. But those who have the Holy Spirit, and let me hasten to say the biggest problem in evangelicalism probably is the church member who doesn't have the
11:33: Holy Spirit, the unconverted church member. I know a fellowship that I'm a part of, and I don't think we're any different than any other group around the country.
11:45: Statistics just came out, and by our own self -reported statistics, church by church count, almost 2 3rds of the people in our churches will not be in church this
11:55: Lord's Day, giving biblical reason to at least question their salvation.
12:01: Now, only the Lord knows. But the Lord has told us, by this we know we have passed out of darkness into light because we love the brethren.
12:11: And if they don't love us enough to ever be with us, well, that's reason enough to at least question that love, isn't it?
12:19: If you don't think so, try that on your spouse. I love you. I don't care if I ever see you again, but I really love you.
12:27: Well, you would question that love, wouldn't you? But I presume to be speaking to people who do have the
12:34: Holy Spirit. And if you have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, when he indwells you, when he indwells any flesh and blood creature, he brings with him holy hungers, holy desires, holy appetites, holy longings.
12:51: You long to live in a holy body without any sin, to have a holy mind never again affected by temptation and sin, to live in a holy and perfect world with holy and perfect people, and at last see the one face -to -face, the angels call, holy, holy, holy.
13:07: You have new holy loves and appetites. You have a love for the holy word of God you didn't have before, that it was boring to you and irrelevant to you before.
13:16: You have a new love for the people of God. You have a love for the holy will of God. New loves, new appetites, new aspirations.
13:25: And one of those given by the Holy Spirit is both Romans and Galatians tells us, to cry out, what?
13:34: Abba, Father. Those who have the Holy Spirit have this new fatherhood orientation, this new heavenward orientation.
13:40: In other words, those who have the Holy Spirit really want to pray. And yet, while that desire is pressing against one side of your soul, so to speak, colliding with that is our experience.
13:54: And our experience is, but when I pray, it's boring. And when it's boring, it's hard to make ourselves pray.
14:05: So on the one hand, the Spirit of God gives us this desire to pray. We want to pray, but when we do pray, it's boring.
14:13: And so it's hard to sustain it. On the other hand, the work of the Holy Spirit is why you can't ever imagine yourself not praying.
14:20: Despite all the frustrations, despite all the boring aspects of prayer, despite all the failures or lack of answers to prayer.
14:28: Those who have the Holy Spirit could never imagine saying, well, that's it. It's too boring. It's not working.
14:35: It doesn't do any good, so I'm done. I'm never praying again. You can't imagine that if you have the
14:42: Holy Spirit. That's the persevering work of the Holy Spirit causing us to persevere in prayer.
14:48: And yet, colliding with that is our experience. Can't imagine not praying. But when
14:54: I do pray, it's so boring and it's just so hard to sustain it. Five minutes, seven minutes is an eternity.
15:00: I guess it's just me. No, if you have the Holy Spirit, it's not you. It's your method.
15:08: And our method is to say the same old things about the same old things, and that's boring.
15:15: And when it's boring, we don't feel like praying. And when we don't feel like it, it's hard to make ourselves pray.
15:20: When we do pray, it's just duty prayer, just obligatory prayer. We pray because we know we should. And we just grind it out.
15:27: Our mind is wondering, it's boring, and we feel like failures. Well, what is the solution?
15:35: Whatever it is, it must be fundamentally simple. In other words, every person in this room, every person in this church, or the church of someone from some other churches, every person in your church who has the
15:51: Holy Spirit must be able to have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life.
15:59: And I mean every person in your church who has the Holy Spirit. Because if you can't, and if every person, excuse me, in your church cannot, then you're saying that virtually no other
16:15: Christian in the world could. Because almost no other
16:21: Christian in the world has your Christian advantages. Many of you know by experience, because you have moved, you've had the experience in recent years of looking for a church home, just simply having a church where the
16:33: Bible is preached and taught is surprisingly rare, even in America.
16:40: Certainly in New England. And on top of that, you have right in your own church building
16:46: Christian books available to you. There are Christian bookstores, and if it's not convenient to find a decent one, you can go online and have basically any
16:54: Christian book you want the next day or so if you're willing to pay for overnight charges. You have untold numbers of Christians like your pastor and others from whom you could borrow
17:04: Christian books if necessary. You have Christian radio, Christian television, and with all the things on there that are not worth paying attention to, at least there's some things, right?
17:14: You got John MacArthur on radio here and so forth. And beyond all that, on the internet, you can hear the best
17:20: Bible preaching and teaching in the world 24 -7 on the internet. So with all of that, with all those
17:28: Christian advantages, if you can't have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life, what about our brothers and sisters in the
17:36: Sudan or in certain parts of India who have none of those advantages?
17:46: Are you willing to say then that with all the, you know, since I have all these advantages, and if I can't pray, then that means they can't have a meaningful prayer life, and that means most of the
17:55: Christians in the world. You don't believe that. I don't think there's a person in this room who believes that.
18:02: I don't think there's anyone here who would say, you know what, it's true, I have all these Christian advantages, and yet I can't pray in a meaningful, satisfying way, so I know that means virtually no
18:11: Christian in the world can pray. No one in this room believes that. We just say, look, all
18:16: I know is in my experience, when I pray, it's boring. And so I feel like a second -rate
18:23: Christian. I can't sustain any time in prayer. It's just me. No, it's not you.
18:30: It's your method. The hardest thing I'll have to do perhaps this whole weekend is to convince you that some of you, after decades of frustrating prayer in the way
18:41: I've described, that indeed the solution is simple, and that indeed it's got to be doable.
18:50: It's got to be doable by every person in this room who has the Holy Spirit, because see,
18:56: God has children that are nine and 99. He has children with low
19:02: IQs and high IQs. He has children with very little education and a great deal of education, and yet if He requires all of them, all over the world, to do the same thing, in this case, namely to pray, then to do so has to be fundamentally simple, and certainly it has to be simple and doable by people with Christian advantages like you.
19:34: The Bible tells us, you know, not many that are mighty, not many that are noble, and so forth.
19:40: God tends to call ordinary folks like us, and so ordinary people like us must be able to pray in a meaningful, satisfying way, because if ordinary people like us, with all of our
19:56: Christian advantages, if we can't, nobody can. Therefore, the solution must be fundamentally simple, and when
20:04: I show it to you, you're gonna say, well, I've heard of that before. Well, if I'm coming to tell you the simple solution to prayer for every
20:12: Christian, and nobody in this room ever heard about it before, I think you would have reason to be suspicious in a Bible -teaching church like this, but I do think you'll hear about it tonight in some fresh ways, if you'd forward that.
20:23: Here it is. When you pray, pray through a passage of Scripture, particularly a
20:28: Psalm. Now, turn to the 23rd Psalm, and as you're turning, where most of us have heard about this before, you'll be studying the letters of the
20:39: Apostle Paul, and in many of those letters, there are prayers, and we study those prayers, and we say, we should pray these prayers today, and we should.
20:52: I'm not gonna argue, we should pray the whole letter, but I think the best place in Scripture to do this is in the book of Psalms, for reasons
21:01: I'll explain later. But I wanna use the 23rd Psalm as an example, because I'm confident most of you are pretty familiar with it, we don't have to spend time explaining it.
21:12: I can use it just to illustrate what it would look like to pray using this method of praying through a passage of Scripture.
21:21: Now, let's say I've already had my daily Bible -reading time, I've already read over in Matthew, I've read in Hebrews, and finished
21:28: Bible -reading, so to speak, and now I'm going to pray, and I turn to the 23rd Psalm, I begin like this,
21:34: I read, the Lord is my shepherd, and I say, Lord, I thank you that you are my shepherd, you're a good shepherd, and you've shepherded me all of my life, but oh, great shepherd, please shepherd me through this decision
21:47: I have to make about my future, do I take that change at work or not?
21:55: Lord, please shepherd my family today, guide them into the ways of God, guard them from the ways of the world, lead them not into temptation, deliver them from evil, and oh
22:04: Lord, I pray you would make my children your sheep, may they own you as their shepherd, and Lord, please shepherd our under -shepherd today, shepherd him as he shepherds us, and basically, all you do is talk to God about whatever comes to mind when you read the words, the
22:29: Lord is my shepherd, pretty simple, huh? And when nothing else comes to mind, you go on,
22:38: I shall not want, Lord, I thank you, I've never really been in want, all that I have, all that I am is from you, oh
22:46: Lord, but I thank you too that you want me to bring my desires to you, and so Lord, did you provide the money we need for those finances, for those bills, for school, maybe for the church, or maybe you know someone who is in want, and you pray for them, and when nothing else comes to mind, you go on, he makes me lie down in green pastures, your prayer may be as simple as when you read that,
23:14: Lord, I pray you'd enable me somehow to lie down and take a nap today, maybe the idea of the green pastures there reminds you of the feeding of the flock of God, a ministry that you have, and feeding
23:27: God's sheep in the green pastures of his word, and you pray for that, or for the one who feeds you, your
23:32: Sunday school teacher, for example, when's the last time you prayed for your Sunday school teacher, and their ministry to you, when nothing else comes to mind, you go on, he leads me beside quiet water, so Lord, please lead me in this decision about my future,
23:45: I want to do what you want me to do, Lord, I'm just not sure what it is, lead me in my decision about the future, and Lord, I pray you would lead me beside quiet waters, quiet my anxious heart about that situation, quiet the anxious waters in my family, quiet the anxious waters at work, wherever waters need to be made quiet, so to speak, and when nothing else comes to mind, you go on, he restores my soul, you might say,
24:15: Lord, I come to this weekend conference so spiritually dry, please restore to me the joy of your salvation, or you may think of that guy you're trying to witness to down the street or at work, and you say,
24:27: Lord, I pray you would restore his soul, her soul, from darkness to light, from death to life, and basically, whatever comes to mind as you go through it line by line, that's what you talk to God about, now see how simple that is, anybody can do that, the newest
24:50: Christian, the oldest Christian, a six -year -old who can read can do that, the most mature
24:56: Christian, the brand new Christian, anybody can do that, brilliant or simple, well -educated or not, old or young, everyone can pray like that, just go through it line by line, whatever comes to mind, talk to God about it, so that what we're doing is taking the words that already originated in the heart and mind of God and circulating them through our hearts and minds back to God, so his words become the wings of our prayers, see how simple it is, or it's the first time you've opened the
25:35: Bible, or you get the whole Bible memorized, anybody can do that, simply talk to the
25:43: Lord about whatever comes to mind as you go through it line by line, even if, please listen carefully, because this is the most potentially misunderstandable thing
25:56: I will say, there are probably already some that have had some question marks come up, if you've ever heard the word hermeneutics before, you've already had some wonderings about what
26:06: I've said, even if, talk to God about whatever comes to mind, even if what comes to mind has nothing to do with the text, now let me defend that biblically, what does the text of Scripture tell us to pray about?
26:25: Huh? Everything, right? So everything that comes to mind is something you should pray about, isn't it?
26:34: So whatever comes to mind as you're reading the text, turn that thought Godward, to use biblical language here, turn every thought captive, obedience to Christ, because whatever comes to mind is something we ought to pray about, the
26:48: Scripture tells us to pray about everything, so even if it has nothing to do with the text, pray about it, and let me make a distinction here between interpreting the
26:58: Bible, studying the Bible to seek its meaning, and praying while you're reading the
27:05: Bible, when we're studying the Bible to understand what it means, for the purpose of understanding, for the purpose of teaching, we have a class, a very important class of seminary called hermeneutics, the art and the science of interpreting the
27:19: Bible correctly, we never have the right to come and read the meaning into the text, we seek for the original meaning from the text, many applications, but what does it mean?
27:31: And I wanna distinguish that from turning every thought Godward in prayer that occurs to us while we're reading the
27:38: Bible, and over here, when I'm studying, my main activity is study, and secondarily,
27:51: I'm praying, and always as I'm studying, what does this mean?
27:57: So when I'm asking God to show me, but my main focus and concentration, what does this mean? So I'm using tools and so forth, over here, my main activity is what?
28:08: Prayer, I'm praying, and I happen to be praying while I'm reading the Bible, so in one sense, we can say at some points,
28:19: I'm praying scripture, at other points, I'm praying thoughts that occur to me while I'm reading scripture, but the point is whatever comes to mind is matter for prayer, and so no matter what the thoughts are that come to your mind while you're reading the scripture, turn those thoughts
28:35: Godward, let me use a ridiculous illustration to make the point, over in Psalm 120 or 30 something, it says,
28:41: Oh Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who could stand? And as you're reading that, your friend
28:48: Mark comes to mind, what should you do?
28:55: Pray for Mark, now you know that verse written 4 ,000 years ago has nothing to do with your friend Mark, right? But Mark comes to mind, so turn that thought
29:02: Godward, rather than it being a distraction, turn that Godward, and when you've prayed about Mark, come back to the text, you see how simple that is?
29:17: Anybody can do that, just go through it line by line, whatever comes to mind, talk to God about it, pray about it, even if what comes to mind has nothing to do with the text.
29:26: Now, if I were to get up Sunday and preach on the 23rd Psalm, and I mean, I gave several illustrations of that already, makes me lie down in green pastures, that's not lying down and taking a nap, he restores my soul,
29:37: I use the illustration, Oh God, please restore the soul of my friend from darkness to light, if I got up Sunday morning, preached on this text and said, he restores my soul, that's about God, that's about evangelism, that's about God restoring the souls of lost people from darkness to light, that would be not only wrong, that would have,
29:52: I'd have no right to do that, that'd be misusing the text. I'm not, my primary activity is not interpreting the
30:00: Bible here, it's not communicating the Bible, I'm just reading, and turning every thought
30:05: Godward that occurs to me while I'm reading. So, I just want to assure everyone, that, and Tom Schreiner and others who teach hermeneutics at our seminary,
30:21: I've talked with several of them about this, and they are, complete agreement with me on this, that it's my intention and my desire,
30:30: I believe everything I'm saying is in accord with good hermeneutics, but I use that extreme example, and I have enough confidence in the word and in the spirit of God, that if we would pray this way, in the long run, probably in the short run too, our prayers would be far more biblical than they ever would be just making up our own prayers.
30:53: Let me say that again, because some people say, oh, you might be leading people into, they can just read anything they want into scripture, and make it say whatever they want, well, for starters, there's no ironclad method to keep anybody from doing that, but I have enough confidence in the word and in the spirit of God, that if people would pray this way, their prayers would be far more biblical than they ever would be just making up their own prayers.
31:17: And in a situation where you've got a Christian who just has their English Bible and themselves, no other study tools or anything else, can you really come up with any better way of helping people understand the true meaning of the text than to pray over every verse?
31:33: I mean, wouldn't that be wonderful if people would pray over every verse? So I really believe in the long run, probably in the short run, this would make people's prayers far more biblical.
31:48: I've used some extreme illustrations, but I think most of the time, the meaning is so evidently clear that most people's prayers would conform pretty closely to the meaning of the text.
31:57: But I use those extreme illustrations as an example of whatever comes to mind, just go through it line by line, until either
32:05: A, you run out of time, or B, you run out of Psalm. If you run out of Psalm, just turn the page.
32:14: Most days you run out of time before you run out of Psalm, right? I have my students at seminary once during the semester there to spend at least four consecutive hours alone with God.
32:24: On the first day of class, when I tell them that, you can see them swell a hard thing. Man, what am I gonna do for four hours? Well, after I've taught what we're teaching tonight and what we're gonna do in the morning, they all spend almost the entire time just alternating between those two.
32:36: And nearly every student spends more than four hours, not because they have to, because they want to.
32:45: So you see, you just keep turning the page. You never run out of anything to say.
32:51: And best of all, you never repeat yourself. You never again say the same old things about the same old things.
33:04: Every prayer is different, fresh, and that alone is worth it, isn't it?
33:10: That alone, if that were the only benefit, that would be worth it, wouldn't it? But it's even better than that, because the words we're using are inspired words.
33:18: These words have a supernatural quality to them. So you simply go through it line by line, talking it out about whatever comes to mind.
33:26: When nothing else comes to mind, go on to the next verse. Nothing says you have to finish the psalm.
33:34: I was doing this out in Santa Rosa, California. Gave people a chance to try. One woman prayed 25 minutes and never got passed.
33:41: The Lord is my shepherd. Five words, 25 minutes.
33:47: Now, do you really think the Lord was up there going, you didn't finish the psalm? No, I think he was delighted that she found so much delight in him, she could talk to him 25 minutes about being her shepherd.
34:00: But if it's one of those occasions where not a lot comes to mind, just turn the page and go on to the next psalm. And one of the great things about it is whether you've got four hours or four minutes, this works.
34:11: If you've got four hours, you just keep turning the page. If you only have four minutes, you just don't get as far. But this works in either case.
34:19: Just go through a line by line. Whatever comes to mind, talk to God about it. If nothing comes to mind, fine, skip that verse and go to the next one.
34:28: If you don't understand it, fine, skip it and go to the next verse. You don't have to pray over every psalm.
34:35: You don't have to finish the psalm. You'll come to those imprecatory sections of the psalms.
34:42: Oh Lord, dash their children's heads against the rock and smash their teeth in their mouth, cause them to dissolve like a snail into the slime.
34:52: Well, there may be some at work you'd kind of like to pray that for, but it's hard to do with a pure motive.
35:01: Well, I don't think we put people's names in there. I think ultimately we've put all the psalms in the mouth of Jesus. Someday he's going to do far worse than just smash the teeth in the mouth of his lifelong unrepentant enemies, isn't he?
35:13: Now, I don't think we put people's names in there. I think we can put sins in there. I put my own sins in there.
35:19: Sometimes I put sins of our nation. I pray God will do that with abortion in this country, for example. But you may come to those imprecatory psalms and let's say next
35:27: Thursday, you say, now that Whitney guy said we could pray through these kinds of sections. I forget what he said. Skip the whole section if necessary.
35:34: You may have a psalm of 30 verses and only three or four ideas come to mind. That's fine.
35:40: Go on to the next one. You can't do it wrong. You can't do it wrong.
35:46: Just go through it line by line. Whatever comes to mind, talk to God about it. See how simple that is?
35:54: Anybody can do that. I can say that having done that since the 1st of March, 1985, there's nothing that more quickly and consistently kindles my cold heart in praying through a passage of scripture.
36:13: Well, look over at Psalm 25. What would it look like there?
36:22: Let me tell you why I chose Psalm 25. Go ahead and move to the next slide, please. This is not original with me.
36:28: Some of you heard about this, the Psalms of the day. Once again, we have 150 psalms. If you divided that by 30 days in the month,
36:35: I'd give five psalms a day. If, this is not what I'm advocating, but if you were to read five psalms every day for a month, at the end of the month, you would have read through the book of the psalms.
36:43: It's a great practice. What I'm advocating is to take 30 seconds to scan five psalms and pick one of those five as the one you pray through.
36:55: I'm gonna tell you the benefit of that in just a moment. Let me show you how to do that. Many of you know how to do this already. Start with the day of the month.
37:00: Now, suppose this is the 15th, it's the 25th, I know, but suppose today is the 15th. All right, there's my first psalm.
37:08: First psalm is the day of the month. That's about the most thinking you have to do. What day is it, okay? All right, there's my first one.
37:14: How many am I looking for? I'm looking for five. So here's how you get the next one. You add 30. Why 30? 30 days of the month.
37:22: So that gives me 45. Well, I wanna get five, so I just keep it up.
37:30: So you just add 30. 30 more is 75. 30 more is 105. 30 more is 135.
37:35: So these five numbers in gold, these are the five psalms of the day whenever the day of the month is the 15th.
37:43: Whether it's the 15th of April, the 15th of May, the 15th of June, the 15th of July, if it's the 15th, those are always the five psalms of the day.
37:54: And what do you do on the 31st? Psalm 119. Now that comes up on the 29th, but even if you use it on the 29th, my guess is you'll have plenty left over for the 31st.
38:12: Now let me see if you've got it. What are the psalms of the day today? Why 25?
38:21: It's the day of the month. Okay, great. What's the next one? Why 55? You add 30.
38:27: What's next? 85. What's next? Ah, some of you hesitated. When you get to three digits, it's a little tougher, but it'll be good for your math on top of that.
38:37: 115 and 145. All right, so those are the five psalms of the day today.
38:43: That's why I chose Psalm 25 as another example. Here's the benefit of doing that.
38:50: It gives you a place to go. It gives you some momentum as opposed to, you know, when this becomes not so new anymore and you go to pray, you're rather mundane or maybe even you're sleepy and you go, okay, let's see.
39:09: I'm gonna pray. Let's see, which psalm? How about, no, let's see. I used that one a couple of days ago.
39:15: Let's see. How about, no, I don't like that one. Let's see.
39:20: You see, that's already stops the momentum. That's the last thing you need.
39:27: But when you say, okay, I'm sleepy, I'm tired of work. Okay, I'm gonna pray. Let's see, what's today? That gives you a place to go. Okay, see, 25, 55.
39:36: What I'm advocating is taking just 30 seconds and scan those five. See this, okay, that's what that one's about.
39:44: And then pick the one that just stands out to you for that day. So today, you take 30 seconds.
39:50: You look at Psalm 25 for a minute, a few seconds. Then you look at Psalm 55, Psalm 85, and just pick the one that strikes you as the one you want to pray through that day.
40:02: See how simple it is? You don't have to worry about, well, which one did I use last month?
40:08: I might use the same psalm three months in a row on the 25th.
40:13: I'm gonna use Psalm 25 three months in a row. I just know that over the years, this will take me through all of the psalms and they're all equally inspired.
40:24: But most importantly, it gives you a place to go. So based upon that, here's what it might look like today.
40:31: Psalm 25, to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. It might just be an affirmation that just, Lord, here
40:39: I am, a Godward look. Help me lift my eyes off of the world, keep my eyes on you, fix my eyes on Jesus.
40:45: O my God, in you I trust. It might be, Lord, I do trust you to guide me in this decision.
40:51: I trust you with my future. I've trusted you with my soul, O Lord, so I certainly wanna reaffirm my trust for my future with you.
40:59: Do not let me be ashamed. Lord, I pray I would not be ashamed to ever identify myself with you.
41:05: Help me not be ashamed to speak of you at work. Whatever comes to mind about not being ashamed, do not let my enemies exult over me.
41:14: Perhaps that brings someone to mind. Or maybe the enemies of your soul. You ask
41:19: God to strengthen you against certain temptations, to ask forgiveness for sin. Indeed, none of those who wait for you will be ashamed.
41:25: Amen, Lord, I wanna be one of those. I do not wanna be ashamed of judgment, and I wanna wait for you.
41:33: Those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed. I don't want to be one of those, Lord. Let my family not be one of those.
41:39: Make me know your ways, O Lord. Lord, I want to know your ways, and if I don't see and willingly follow, make me know your ways.
41:49: I want you to do whatever it takes for me to be in your ways. That is the only way of life.
41:55: That's the way I wanna live, and Lord, if I'm so blind, if I'm so stubborn, make me know your ways. Teach me your paths.
42:07: Lead me in your truth and teach me. A lot of this is reiterating the same idea.
42:15: You see how you do that today? Whatever comes to mind. Well, you pray like that in Psalm 25, which is if you're really seeking
42:25: God's will, that's the Psalm you wanna pray through, by the way, but you got plenty to pray through there in just those 22 verses, right?
42:34: I believe the Psalms are the best place in Scripture from which to pray
42:39: Scripture because of the purpose for which they were originally inspired.
42:46: What was the original usage of the Psalms? Worship. Yeah, song.
42:55: Songs to be used in worship, and if I'm gonna be so simple, the worship of God, right?
43:01: Next, please. In the Psalms, God has revealed to us how he wants us to praise him because we don't know.
43:12: He's invisible to us, right? Let's see that. Hold it right there for a moment. It is God, if you do it one more time again, we should have an arrow coming down.
43:20: Good. It's God who gave us the Psalms, right? For us to do what with them?
43:29: To praise God. So next one there. Now, let's run that back.
43:34: This is the technological highlight of the whole weekend. I know some of you are overwhelmed by that, but it's very important. Let's back it up.
43:40: Let's go through that again. Where'd the Psalms come from? They came from God. And why did God give us the
43:45: Psalms? Go ahead. Why did God give us the Psalms? For us to give the Psalms back to God. Have you thought about it like that before?
43:52: It's as though the Lord said, now, I want you to praise me, but you don't know how to praise me. You don't know anything about me unless I reveal it to you.
44:02: I'm invisible to you. Am I capricious like Allah? Well, how do you know? How do you know anything about the invisible
44:08: God unless he reveals it to us? So he said, I want you to praise me. If you have my spirit, you'll want to praise me, but you don't know how to praise me.
44:15: So here you go. Here are the words I want you to sing.
44:22: So he gave the Psalms to us so that we would give the Psalms back to God. They were the songbook of Israel, right?
44:30: They were given from God to be given back to God. You can bring up that last point there.
44:36: So God inspired the Psalms so that we would sing the Psalms back to God. That's why
44:41: I believe that the Psalms are the best place in Scripture from which to pray Scripture, because it's the only book in Scripture given by God for the express purpose of being given back to God in worship.
44:55: Incidentally, you see anything in the Bible that says we should stop singing Psalms? No, in fact, in the
45:01: New Testament, we have not only one, but two commands to sing three things. What are they?
45:08: Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. Never been in a group that didn't know that little triad. I was actually teaching,
45:14: I have a course and a conference on worship that I teach, and I was actually teaching a course on worship at the seminary, referring to that text, and right in the middle of my own lecture, it suddenly dawned upon me that in my whole life, though I had known that triad like a palm of my hand all my life, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs,
45:31: I had never once intentionally sung a psalm, nor as a pastor had I ever led anyone intentionally to sing a psalm.
45:39: Now, we'd sung them, but not intentionally in obedience to that command. Ephesians 5 .18,
45:46: be filled with the Spirit, comma. Colossians 3 .16,
45:52: let the word, basically synonymous phrase there, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, comma.
45:58: Speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, making melody with your heart to the Lord. We're commanded to sing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.
46:11: Did you know that until 1700, I will need that board tomorrow, that's back there.
46:18: I don't have to worry about it right now, I was gonna use it for a moment, it's not necessary. Did you know that before 1700, every denominational group sang mostly psalms, and many denominations sang nothing but psalms?
46:30: It's a view that's still adhered to by some smaller groups today, I don't advocate it, but there's still a view called exclusive psalmody.
46:41: Exclusive psalmody are the view that we should sing the psalms exclusively in worship.
46:48: Or another way of thinking of it, we should exclude everything else from worship to sing except the psalms.
46:55: And it's the view that the Bible teaches that, that when the Bible says we're to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, that the
47:02: Bible is teaching we are to sing psalms and nothing but psalms in worship.
47:09: And so those that were Presbyterian, those that called themselves Reformed, the Congregationalists, which used to be very conservative,
47:15: Jonathan Edwards, D .O. Moody were Congregationalists, and the Baptists of all stripes, Calvinistic and Arminian, all
47:21: Baptists held that we should sing in worship nothing but psalms.
47:26: Now, Amazing Grace wouldn't be written for 100 years, but for example, to sing Amazing Grace in worship would have been sin.
47:33: Sing it at home, sing it in a fellowship time, but if it's in worship, it's sin to sing anything but the psalms.
47:41: And so they got it from places like, we just looked at Psalm 25. You see at the top there, it says a Psalm of David. That's in the, that's verse one in the
47:50: Hebrew Bible. And if you go on, let's see, in the 40s in particular, you see, here we go, verse
48:08: Psalm 47, for the choir director, a Psalm of the sons of Korah, verse
48:13: Psalm 48, a song, a psalm. So they understood that phrase in the
48:20: New Testament, psalms sing spiritual songs. Sing the psalms like Psalm 47 that are called psalms. Sing the psalms like Psalm 48 that are called songs.
48:29: Sing all of the psalms, not just the ones that are called psalms. Sing the whole book of psalms.
48:35: Because God says to do that. And to do anything else would be sin. Now, around 1700, there was an
48:42: Anglican hymn writer named Isaac Watts and a Baptist pastor named Benjamin Keech, who began to teach that the
48:51: Bible permits human compositions to be sung in the worship of God. It took
48:57: Keech 12 years of teaching that before his congregation would allow that.
49:03: But finally, when the pendulum swung, it swung very quickly and far.
49:11: So that very quickly, and since then, for example, those of you who have approximately the same amount or color of hair as I do can remember growing up singing nothing but human compositions, right?
49:23: And not consciously singing psalms. Although most churches probably sing more than they realize.
49:32: If you sing, as the deer panteth for the water, which is
49:38: Psalm 42. But we don't call it Psalm 42, do we? We say, let's sing as the deer.
49:44: Or how about, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
49:50: Psalm 103, right? How about this one? You ever heard this psalm in your life? Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
50:02: In your hymnal, is that number one in this hymnal?
50:08: No, it's not a hymnal, but it is in a lot of them. Well, on page one, for example, is what I was gonna point out, is at the bottom right -hand corner, in small capital letters, it says,
50:20: Hymn to Joy. I want you to imagine that page, page one, with no words on it, no lyrics, nothing but notes and lines of music.
50:31: That collection of notes has a name, and it's called what? Yeah, O de
50:36: Joy, Hymn to Joy. We know it as Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. That's the name for the lyrics, that collection of lyrics, which you could sing to other tunes.
50:46: You could say, let's sing Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee to the tune of something else. But O de
50:54: Joy, Hymn to Joy is the name for da -da -da -da -da -da, you know, or da -da -da -da -da -da -da in this case, okay?
51:03: Well, the song I sang just a moment ago is called
51:09: Old Hundredth. Why do you think, praise
51:15: God, from whom all blessings flow, it's called Old Hundredth? Because it's Psalm 100. See, that's not the only stanza.
51:21: It also says, all people that on earth do dwell, it's Psalm 100. Good, we sing psalms.
51:32: But you know why most churches sing psalms? Because they like the songs. They don't even know they're from the psalms.
51:39: They just like the songs. The words could be out of mind comp as far as some people care. They just like the song.
51:45: Let's sing a song, it's a good old song. Or they choose it because it fits the theme of the service. I say the
51:54: Bible teaches us we should sing psalms just in obedience to God. Now, sing tunes that you like.
52:01: Sing psalms that fit the theme of the service. You've got 150 psalms. There're gonna be plenty of them that fit whatever the theme of the service is if that's what you're trying to match up.
52:09: But just out of sheer obedience to God, intentionally sing psalms. So instead of saying, let's sing
52:18: As the Deer, how much more satisfying to say the Bible teaches that we should sing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.
52:25: Let's obey God now by singing Psalm 42, As the Deer, Pants of the Water. There's a sense of, we're not just singing another song.
52:32: We're actually obeying God by singing this song. It doesn't make sense that there are no words in all the world that would nourish our hearts in the worship of God to sing than the only words in the world
52:43: God inspired for us to sing. God actually inspired, He told us to sing these words.
52:49: I believe we can certainly, should sing human compositions as well.
52:55: If you believe literally, in exclusive psalmody, you never sing about Jesus. That can't be right.
53:04: But I fear that the pendulum has swung so far. We never consciously, intentionally sing psalms, privately or in worship, but that we should sing psalms just because the
53:12: Bible says to. Now, this is not a musical style issue. I mean, if the church may have the most traditional musical style possible or the most contemporary, there are entire psalters you can get for each of those styles.
53:23: So this has nothing to do with musical style or taste. This has to do with the words that God has told us to sing.
53:32: So that's just my own little personal attempt at bringing Reformation to our churches and returning us to the biblical practice of psalm singing.
53:37: Because if the Bible says to do it, we want to do it, right? Let me say that again.
53:45: If the Bible says to do it, we want to do it, right? Now, this is Bethlehem Bible Church, isn't it?
53:53: Have I shown up to the wrong place? I want to make sure I thought, my goodness, I'm supposed to be some other church tonight.
53:59: Here I am. Yeah, if the Bible says that we want to do it and nothing will satisfy us in singing like singing the very words
54:06: God told us to sing, right? Let's just, let's do it. Let's return to the biblical practice of singing psalms and do so just because God said to do it.
54:15: Let's find those that fit the theme of the service. Let's sing them to tunes we love, but let's sing psalms.
54:20: But for this reason here, this is why I believe the best place in scripture from which to pray scripture is the only book in scripture inspired by God for the very purpose of reflecting those words back to God.
54:34: So because of the very nature of the, or the purpose of the inspiration of this book,
54:40: I think the best place in scripture from which to pray scripture is a book of psalms. Martin Luther said the whole
54:46: Bible is in the book of psalms, either in the bud or in the flower, but every doctrine in scripture is there.
54:54: Someone else put it this way, that the psalms, there's a psalm for every sigh of the soul.
55:02: There's nothing you will ever experience that is not in general represented in the book of psalms.
55:09: The entire range of human emotions is reflected in psalms from exhilaration to great discouragement, from sense of guilt, the sense of forgiveness and freedom, contentment to anger and everything in between.
55:23: It's all there. And so if you will take 30 seconds to scan five psalms, it is uncanny how one of them will put into expression exactly what's in your heart right then.
55:35: But if you'll forward that, just we go for a break here. Once again,
55:41: I think the best places I've said in scripture from which to pray scripture is the book of psalms. But the next best place would be the
55:47: New Testament letters. For that reason, would you look at 1 Thessalonians chapter two. 1
55:53: Thessalonians chapter two. But it raises the question, why?
56:01: Would you want to pray through 1 Thessalonians chapter two? Well, most likely it would be because in your daily
56:07: Bible reading, you read 1 Thessalonians chapter two today. And you said,
56:15: I don't wanna go anywhere else. I wanna go back and pray through what I just read through. This has proven to be so meaningful to me today.
56:22: This is right where I am. I want to stay here. And that may often be the case.
56:29: So if that is the case, and you feel like I wanna go back and pray through what I just read through, what would it look like?
56:34: Well, if I were to pray through 1 Thessalonians chapter two today would look something like this. For you yourselves know brethren that our coming to you was not in vain.
56:45: I would say, Lord, I pray that my coming to Bethlehem Bible Church would not be in vain. I don't wanna waste my time.
56:51: I don't wanna waste their time. I pray that no one would walk out of here tonight saying, well, that was in vain. That was a waste of time.
56:57: Let there be much lasting fruit from this evening together. But after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, stop.
57:07: Two words stand out. What are they? Suffered, mistreated. Maybe that's you. You're suffering physically.
57:13: Like I am for the first time in my life with allergies. I think right now. Or you're suffering with something else like colon cancer, which
57:23: I've had since I was here last. Or maybe it's something else that you're suffering with. Or you know someone who is, or you're being mistreated, or you know someone who is, or you know someone who makes you think of our persecuted brethren somewhere, and you pray for them.
57:39: When nothing else comes to mind, and we have the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much opposition.
57:46: Oh God, give me the boldness to speak the gospel to that guy at work down the street, despite the opposition in his heart.
57:53: Or I pray for the Christians or missionaries in those places that are persecuted that they would have the boldness to speak the gospel despite the opposition to the gospel there.
58:02: For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit.
58:09: Lord, keep me from error. Or maybe you know someone who is falling under error. They're falling under some false teaching on television or from people who come door to door and they shouldn't have anything to do with them, but they're studying with them, being persuaded.
58:20: You pray that God would protect them from error. You pray for your own pastor.
58:25: God will protect him from error as he studies. Lest that error infect the church or impurity or deceit.
58:32: Well, you pray like that. How long would it take you to pray through those 20 verses? You'd have plenty to pray about, wouldn't you?
58:39: And you'd never run out of anything to say, would you? And you'd never repeat yourself.
58:47: That prayer would be unlike any prayer you ever prayed in your life. You would never again, by praying this way, you would never again say the same old things about the same old things.
59:03: And all you have to do is just talk to God about what comes to mind as you're reading his word.
59:11: So the reason why the New Testament letters are the second best place in scripture from which to pray scripture is because in the
59:17: New Testament letters, you've got so much compacted in almost every verse. We've already seen here that even between the commas, there are things to pray about.
59:26: So in the New Testament letters, almost every verse suggests something to pray about. You don't have to like the
59:32: Psalms. You don't have to read very long before there's something that comes to mind to pray about. Almost every verse in the
59:39: New Testament letters will provide matter for prayer. But now finally, what about the narrative passages of scripture?
59:48: What's in a narrative passage? Story, yeah. Let's look at John chapter eight as an example.
59:56: And once again, you might, because you read through John chapter eight, you said, I'm gonna go back and pray through this. I don't wanna just close my
01:00:03: Bible and go somewhere else. I want to linger a little bit in this chapter. So you decided to let this be the place where you pray through today.
01:00:11: But now there's a big difference between what we have done thus far and praying through a narrative passage of scripture.
01:00:19: Thus far, we have looked at the text microscopically. The Lord is my shepherd.
01:00:25: Five words, 25 minutes, maybe. But now in a narrative passage, you have to back up and get the big picture.
01:00:36: Because if you try to pray microscopically over a narrative passage, a narrative passage, that's the biggest chunk of our
01:00:43: Bible. That's the book of all the gospels, the book of Acts, all those Old Testament stories. If we're gonna learn to pray through scripture, we have to learn to pray through a narrative passage.
01:00:49: But you do it differently. Instead of looking at it microscopically, you back up and get the big picture.
01:00:56: Otherwise, it could look like this. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:08: If you had to pray about something, it'd be about mountains or olives or something, but it wouldn't be easy, would it? No, you're gonna probably back up and read all 11 verses of this story.
01:01:18: Because in a narrative passage, you often have these stage -setting verses after which comes the punchline.
01:01:26: It may only be the punchline you would pray about. So you'd back up and just read the whole thing until something strikes you as something to pause over.
01:01:36: You don't force yourself to try to find something in every single verse. But just as you're reading it, as things come to mind, turn those thoughts
01:01:44: Godward. So having once done that, I'm confident you can open up to any part of the
01:01:49: Bible and pray through that. And it's so easy.
01:01:56: Anybody can do it. Now, we're about to take a 10 -minute break and come back for the second session, which should be only about half as long as this one has been.
01:02:08: And if you came here saying, we can't stay for the whole thing, this would be a good time to leave.
01:02:13: I plead with you to do this. Come back for at least the first 10 minutes after the break and then leave. I understand you have children, you have babysitters, you have other reasons.
01:02:20: And so if at all possible, please come back for at least the first 10 minutes and then leave. I won't be offended, I understand. I just plead with you, that may be the most important part of the whole two days.
01:02:29: And I promise not to say that again. That's on a ministerial hook. Tomorrow I'll say, well, now last night, I said the most important part, but now it's gonna be the next section is gonna be the most important part to keep you here.