Five
hundred years ago, Martin Luther’s barber asked him for advice on how to pray.
Luther responded with a 34 page booklet showing a simple but effective way to
structure a life of devotion. Thousands have used this outline to improve their
prayer-life. Let’s a take peak at what the great Reformer had to taught. Luther wrote:
Dear Master Peter, I will tell you as best I can what I do personally
when I pray. May our dear Lord grant to you and to everybody to do it better
than I! Amen.
First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because
of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and
obstruct prayer), I take my little Psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the
day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as
time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-forword the Ten Commandments,
the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some
psalms, just as a child might do.
It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning
and the last at night. Guard yourself carefully against those false, deluding
ideas which tell you, “Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I
must attend to this or that.” Such thoughts get you away from prayer into other
affairs which so hold your attention and involve you that nothing comes of
prayer for that day.
It may well be that you may have some tasks which are as good or better
than prayer, especially in an emergency. There is a saying ascribed to St.
Jerome that everything a believer does is prayer1 and a proverb, “He who works
faithfully prays twice.” This can be said because a believer fears and honors
God in his work and remembers the commandment not to wrong anyone, or to try to
steal, defraud, or cheat. Such thoughts and such faith undoubtedly transform
his work into prayer and a sacrifice of praise.
On the other hand it is also true that the work of an unbeliever is
outright cursing and so he who works faithlessly curses twice. While he does
his work his thoughts are occupied with a neglect of God and violation of his
law, how to take advantage of his neighbor, how to steal from him and defraud
him. What else can such thoughts be but out and out curses against God and man,
which makes one’s work and effort a double curse by which a man curses himself.
In the end they are beggars and bunglers.
It is of such continual prayer that Christ says in Luke 11, “Pray
without ceasing,”2 because one must unceasingly guard against sin and
wrong-doing, something one cannot do unless one fears God and keeps his
commandment in mind, as Psalm 1 [:1, 2] says, “Blessed is he who meditates upon
his law day and night.” Yet we must be careful not to break the habit of true
prayer and imagine other works to be necessary which, after all, are nothing of
the kind. Thus at the end we become lax and lazy, cool and listless toward
prayer. The devil who besets us is not lazy or careless, and our flesh is too
ready and eager to sin and is disinclined to the spirit of prayer.
When your heart has been warmed by such recitation to yourself [of the
Ten Commandments, the words of Christ, etc.] and is intent upon the matter,
kneel or stand with your hands folded and your eyes toward heaven and speak or
think as briefly as you can: “O Heavenly Father, dear God, I am a poor unworthy
sinner. I do not deserve to raise my eyes or hands toward thee or to pray. But
because thou hast commanded us all to pray and hast promised to hear us and
through thy dear Son Jesus Christ hast taught us both how and what to pray, I
come to thee in obedience to thy word, trusting in thy gracious promise.”
I pray in the name of my Lord
Jesus Christ together with all thy saints and Christians on earth as he has
taught us: Our Father who art, etc., through the whole prayer, word for word.
Then repeat one part or as much as you wish, perhaps the first petition.
Let’s
read an portion of Martin Luther’s “Way to Pray” through the first of the Ten Commandments on
the next post. I think that you shall be blessed by it.
In
Christ, Brian
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