Hello and welcome to Deep Roots, conversations about theology and ministry.
My name is Kristy Mayer, I'm one of the lecturers here at Oak Hill College and today I'm joined by...
Tim Ward, I'm also one of the lecturers here. Hi Kristy.
We're also joined by our greatly esteemed colleague Dr Matt Bingham. Hello Matt, how are you doing?
Hello Kristy, hello Tim, great to be here together today.
Hello Matt, remind us of what you teach. I know obviously, but it is...
Yeah, I teach systematic theology and church history.
Nice and there are many things that we would love to ask you about but we're going to be focusing on one area today and that is we're going to be looking at the topic of early modern Puritan prayer because Matt, you have just written a book all about Puritan spirituality and I hear that you have quite a juicy chapter on prayer itself.
Yeah, that's right Kristy, so that's my kind of current project, early modern Puritan spirituality, spiritual formation and prayer is a significant part of that and a significant part of the book.
It was a significant aspect of Puritan piety, Puritan devotion. The John Owen who some would say is the greatest of the Puritan divines or theologians, he said that all will readily acknowledge that as without it, without prayer, he says there can be no religion at all.
So the life and exercise of all religion doth principally consist therein. So no prayer, no religion, the life and exercise of all religion is tied up with prayer.
That's strong. For those who aren't watching but just listening, Matt was reading that quote from a piece of paper in front of him. I'm slightly disappointed you haven't got that memorized, Matt.
Give it time.
There's a way to go. For those who, I mean obviously some people watching and listening will be kind of all over the Puritans, we've used the phrase already early modern, just locate for us for those who need some help on just when in history are we talking and where?
Yeah, right. So historians are always arguing over periodization, how do you divide history up into different periods so that you can kind of get a handle on what's going on and sort of shorthand so we can identify where we're at. So if we think big three, ancient, medieval or middle ages and then modern.
And so the modern era runs from, again people argue over it, but say 1500 to the present. And so the early modern period then would be the front end of that. Say 1500 to 1700, some people say 1500 to 1800, but for our purposes, if we're talking about Puritans, we're really looking at late 16th century and then especially in the 17th century, the 1600s in England and in North America.
That is very exciting. I feel like I've just learned a lot in that past kind of minute or so. Thanks so much, Matt. Because I think that kind of takes us on to the next question of just thinking a little bit about the Puritans and considering that they are early modern, what on earth do they have to teach us about prayer?
Like why should we even care about them? I mean, you've already read that lovely extract, but I'm just wondering why them and not, as you mentioned, some of the medieval kind of writers or even earlier than that has been passed on through church traditions.
Why the Puritans? Why are you so passionate about them? And why should we care about what they have to say when it comes to prayer?
Yeah, no, it's a good question. And I find, so I teach a lot of the church history modules here and I find that I'm always sort of commending voices from the past. And sometimes when you're constantly commending voices from the past, especially from one period like, oh, this Puritan says this and that Puritan said that, you do have to remind folks, yeah, I'm quoting these people a lot, but I'm not want to convey that everything they said was right or just because they said it, it's right.
Ultimately, we want to root our ideas, our theology about prayer, whatever else in scripture. But in the case of the Puritans, it seems to me, as it seemed to me, that they had a deeply biblical way of thinking about life, about the Christian life, about who God is, about who we are.
And they really left behind an incredibly rich collection of devotional writings. So there, you know, again, Puritanism gets going in the late 1500s, but then in the 1600s is where a lot of the most well-known sort of Puritan authors are operating.
And so if you think about that, that's kind of after the Reformation has been going a bit. And you have people who are really reflecting deeply on, okay, we have this Reformation theology, we have justification by faith alone, we have the solas of the Reformation.
What does this look like for the spiritual life? What does it look like for growth, you know, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ? How do we do that in a way that's consistent with this Reformation theology that we've embraced?
And so I find them really helpful. They just wrote a tremendous amount. And I suppose ultimately as well, it's, you know, C.S. Lewis talked about the need to have old books, the breeze of the centuries blowing through.
And part of his reasoning there is just that, you know, each cultural moment has its own blind spots and its own, you know, things that gets really right, things that it doesn't.
And so when we enter into this world of early modern Puritan spirituality, I think sometimes we just see people who come at issues, come at problems from a different angle than we're coming at them.
And sometimes they can highlight things for us that we might not have been attuned to.
Well, let's, okay, let's get into it. What are the Puritan distinctives around what prayer actually is?
Yeah, what is prayer? It's interesting. So when I was working on this section, actually, that was one of the first questions. And I think we take it for granted, don't we?
Because we, you know, I think if you're a Christian person, you know, prayer is important to you. We hope the Bible is full of references to it.
We talk about it. We pray in our services. We encourage people to pray at home. But what actually are we doing when we talk about prayer? What does that entail?
And what I found, you know, with the Puritan authors, when they define prayer, they seem most often, they'll elaborate on this, but most often they come back around to some basic variation on prayer is talking to God.
Prayer is talking with God. So one of the earliest sort of English Reformation writers on this on the subject in the 16th century, he published a catechism in 1548.
So this is before the Puritans, but they would have been on board with this. He defined prayer as an earnest talk with God. Prayer is an earnest talk with God.
And there's a simplicity to that. But it makes sense, doesn't it? If God is personal, if God is the God who hears the prayers of his people, the cries of his people, then, yeah, we are talking to him.
It's a conversation. We're telling him we're pouring out our heart, our desires, our thanksgiving, our praise. And for them, they would have situated this in terms of, look, God has spoken in his word.
We are hearing him. We're thinking about what we're hearing. And then we're responding back in prayer.
And that sense of earnestness that you just mentioned, what do they mean by that? Because when I hear the word earnest, all sorts of things come to mind. What are they putting their finger on that, do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I think when they talk, they'll talk often about earnest prayer, heartfelt prayer, prayer from the heart. That's really important to them.
And in part, I think they are, again, they're reacting against a sort of medieval backdrop in which they have perceived a real emphasis on prayers that are not heartfelt or earnest.
That's the perception, right? So they were sensitive to the idea that you would engage in vain repetition.
Think of Jesus' words in Matthew's gospel, you know, don't pray in this vain, repetitive way.
And so they're very sensitive to that because that's what they see in the medieval sort of Catholic background.
They see prayers repeated often for some sort of effect.
And so they really stress this idea that, no, if you're going to pray, it's personal, it's conversation with God, it's heartfelt.
You need to mean it. It just just as though, you know, if you and I were having a chat and I was just sort of repeating some set formula, I might be doing something, but it's not a genuine conversation.
It's not an interaction. And so they were very sensitive to that.
There's a, if you're into Thomas Watson, he told a story about a man who taught his bird, his parrot or something to say the Lord's prayer.
And he talked about this man and he concluded that this shows that to say a prayer is not to pray.
Don't know what you make of that.
Depends what your theology of animals is. Let's not go there.
Do you have an avian theology?
It's interesting you picked up on the word earnest because, yeah, it may be that nowadays we might hear the word earnest and think serious, unsmiling, joyless.
And in some circles, the Puritans have the reputation of being exactly that.
You know, these are these are this is the no fun crowd.
If you want to laugh, don't go out for the night with the Puritans is the reputation.
But it sounds like for you, when they're using words like earnest, what they really mean is heartfelt.
Is that right? You just expand that out for us.
What's what's going on in that for them? What is this the wrong question?
If I showed up at a Puritan church prayer meeting, what you know, what would you expect?
What's what's going to hit me?
How might that be different from the local church, excellent local church prayer meeting I go to?
Yeah, it's interesting. So, I mean, Puritans do have this reputation as these kind of dour, sour kind of folks.
And I think it is they were very serious about God and the things of God.
But that doesn't mean they lacked emotion and warmth and, you know, far from it.
I mean, one of their big things, one of their key emphasis is they want to move away from religion
that they see as going through the motions, as as rooted in in habit or, you know, tradition, tradition understood as
I'm doing it just because it's today, we might say, mere tradition or bear tradition.
They want to move away from that and they want to move toward a religion that is marked by godly affections.
So when they talk about prayer, you'll often see whether you're looking at their journals or treatises they wrote,
there's often talk about prayer with with sighs and groans and tears.
There's often this sense of of pleading with God.
Call it whatever you want, but but dry. It isn't.
And that's a different I think they were serious about this, but that doesn't mean they were, you know, sour faced.
So they're really trying to kind of rehabilitate this kind of sense of what does it mean to enjoy God in our in our prayer life
through that joyful communication, often with words.
You mentioned conversation with with God.
Is that an important piece of this as well?
That this is a what does conversation mean to to a Puritan as they're speaking to with God?
Yeah, that that is that is interesting.
This idea of conversation with God, you know, Calvin uses the same language.
He talked about prayers to enter into a conversation with God, you know, John Calvin.
So now we're talking about 16th century reformer earlier in Geneva, not in England.
But this is the reformed tradition in which the Puritans were taking part.
So they would look into him and he he he talks about prairie says it's inter inter conversation with God,
a conversation whereby we expound to him our desires, our joys, our sighs in a word, all the thoughts of our hearts.
And so I think for them, they're, you know, they're working from this point of a personal God who hears, you know, it's it's one
author talks about how it's it's in scripture, it's characteristic of God to hear prayer.
That's one of the things that God that makes God, he's the God who hears the prayers of his people early in Genesis after the fall.
You know, then people began to what to cry out to the Lord.
And so, you know, you see in that thing by Calvin, there's just is pouring out your heart.
So it's for them, it's a conversation in in the sense that it's comprehensive.
It's not just narrowly defined about, OK, I'm going to say these sort of religious formulas and then I've done my duty.
You wouldn't treat a real relationship like that and you wouldn't treat your your life with God in that way.
And then the other part of conversation, of course, is it's it's two ways.
OK, yeah, we're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, do it.
No, exactly. Because it's interesting that quote from Calvin.
He said his conversation with God, but then he what he went on to say sounded rather like my monologue to God.
And I mean, it would often be said of prayer, you know, in many good churches, if you want a one liner on prayer, it would be God speaks to us in scripture.
We speak back to him in prayer.
It sounds like there's more going on in the Puritans than that, that actually in the praying, it's not just me talking to God, pleading his promises with him.
It's absolutely that. But there's more going on.
There is a listening to God in praying.
Is that right? Is that going on in prayer spirituality?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that makes this area interesting and sometimes kind of tricky is that the way they talk about
you mentioned reading the Bible.
So they'll talk about reading the Bible. And and yeah, you are, you know, the the primary place where we hear God speak, we hear God speak in his in his word.
So they're going to that's God's sort of chief means.
And so we're hearing him in his word.
Then they're going to talk about prayer where we're responding back to him.
But you said, is there something more?
Just another definition from a Puritan, William Bridge defines prayers, the that act and work of the soul, whereby a man doth converse with God.
So there you have that converse conversation language.
But I think he talks about that work of the soul.
So what's what's going on? And they have a third element.
They've got hearing from God in his word, our words back to him in prayer.
But then they have this third element, meditation.
You know, this is a big issue for them as well.
And the way they talk about these three meditation, prayer, scripture intake, they talk about them almost sometimes interchangeably.
Like they'll almost talk about them as though these three things, though distinct and distinguishable, are kind of three elements of the same thing, namely communion with God, the work of the soul relating to him.
And I think there's a lot of leeway in there then to kind of enter in imaginatively to say, OK, what does that look like to do that work of the soul?
And so, yeah, I think it's more than if we're imagining it as sort of rote.
I say this, you know, there is that kind of sense of back and forth and engaging and wrestling with God in prayer and meditation and the scripture.
I was just I was just really struck by what you the phrase that you used to describe that as communion is a communion of the soul with the soul.
What what does that mean?
Because I think in my mind, Seth, and before we kind of recorded this podcast, we were chatting about some of the backdrop that the Puritans are writing against in terms of particular mystical strands and threads.
So when I hear communion of the soul with the soul, you know, with with God, there might be particular kind of mystic authors who use that kind of language.
So I'm just wondering kind of what what would you say is that what's the distinction here with with the Puritans when they use the language of communion of the soul with God?
I can't remember what the what the word was. But what do they mean by that?
And how do they distinguish themselves from from the mystics if that was their purpose partly as well?
So much to ask. Sorry. Lots of questions there. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
We talked about communion with God. He's the historian.
You can have it. It's all good. And the work of the soul and communion with God, the work of the soul.
What are we talking about? Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, you mentioned the mystics, mystical theology, this sort of thing.
And that that can be a tricky term because people use it in different ways.
It's quite broad. People try to pin down what they mean.
There's been a lot of work that has identified a mystical strain within Puritanism.
And again, depending on what you mean by mystical, you can you can certainly find that again.
They're very warm, very experiential or they might say experimental, you know, sort of Christians.
They're very active. There's one story recorded of a woman who after her death,
her husband records finding in her little bureau, her nightstand, this piece of paper.
And he found it and on it she had written out, you know, Bible verses.
And he just makes the observation that the paper was so worn through constant use that it was almost falling apart.
And he says these were verses she turned to when she was facing times of difficulty or temptation or trial.
And to me, that image of that paper almost worn out by by use is a symbol.
It's an image, isn't it, of the way they approached the spiritual life generally.
Prayer. It was active. It was it was as Bridges says, the work of the soul.
Now, you talk mystics and mysticism.
I think one thing where we where we can see a different emphasis is at least in some mystical theology, certainly.
There is a sense that sort of you have different levels of communion with God, different levels of spiritual experience.
Right. And often these are divided into often it's three levels, sometimes other numbers, but, you know, three levels distinguishable.
And there's this idea of a progression. And so if you're better, if you're if you're a spiritual adept, if you've if you've really got deep into this,
you will advance and you'll get to more and more sort of significant kind of realms of spiritual engagement.
And I think the Puritans reform theology generally, you know, has always wanted to resist this idea of a two stage Christian life or a three stage Christian life.
You have an idea of a progression in a growth in grace, growing the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ,
progressive sanctification, moving towards the goal, becoming more conformed to the image of Christ.
That is there. But the idea there be discrete stages and that you'd want to move from stage one to stage two.
That is something that, you know, they're going to resist.
And specifically in our chat here, you know, we talk about prayers, conversation with God, and that implies words, implies words and implies thoughtful words.
And there is a strain, at least in some mystic authors, where those later stages where you want to get to, where if you're really good, you'll get to.
They sort of are are moving beyond, you know, mere in quotes, mere words towards some sort of wordless communion with God.
And I think that way of framing it would have made these authors very uncomfortable because they would say, well, we we, you know,
they had a very deeply word based piety.
You know, it's a spirituality very much of the word, by the word.
And so any kind, any time, any kind of rhetoric that says somehow words are a starting point, but you move beyond them.
I think that would make them very uncomfortable.
I can't think of a way of asking. Here's what I want to ask.
I can't think of a more sophisticated way of asking.
Just take that line, I think I've heard a lot, I use it myself in a sense is significantly true.
God speaks to us in scripture. We speak back to him in prayer.
If that's basically all someone works with.
Moments of silence in prayer, moments of meditation, contemplation, waiting on the Lord.
Those kinds of things are probably not going to get a place and might be thought to be,
no, I'm not sure some people like me should be doing that.
I'll leave that to other kinds of people.
Sounds like the Puritans are not going to be entirely comfortable with that.
They are having these moments in prayer where they are doing so that they call conversation.
They might would I mean, they they might not have called it waiting on the Lord.
But something like that is going on, isn't it, from what you're describing?
Yeah, I mean, so I think they would say that the way you get from.
I'm reading this verse in the Bible and the way you get to a prayer that's not empty, hollow,
vain repetition is through this intermediate step called meditation.
This other thing called meditation, which is one of these places where I'm going to think,
at least in the evangelical circles I grew up in, I did hear a lot about the need to
read your Bible and I heard a lot about the need to pray and that's good.
But I didn't hear much about meditation, which is again, that has all sorts of connotations
in our own day and all sorts of meanings.
But the Puritans used it.
They used it a lot and they thought it was really important.
And in a sense, I think it's the thing you're talking about.
How do you move from kind of a bear, OK, I'm reading these words.
I'm sort of spitting them back in this sort of automatic way.
The way that becomes not just automatic but actually real communion with God is through
meditation, which they very much saw as the thing that kind of works the promises of God,
the things of God, works them into the heart, works them into the soul so that they well
up in some sort of real, authentic, godly affection.
And so that meditation in a sense bridges, I'm taking in God's words, I'm going to speak
back to God in my words in prayer.
But this is the bridge between them that makes it authentic, that makes it real so that you're
not just Thomas Watson's friend's parrot who can just memorize a set form and spit it back.
So what is going on then in meditation in order to kind of work it into the soul?
How when I'm reading my Bible, for example, and I want to I'm talking to God, what would
I what would it look like for me to do exactly what you've just described when I'm praying?
How do I sorry, when I'm meditating, how do I do what you've just described?
Yeah, well, I think a lot of it was taking what you're reading in scripture and applying
it to yourself and thinking through the implications for yourself and your life and your soul.
You know, so it's it's it's pausing, it's pondering.
You know, the psalmist says I waited on the Lord and you heard my cry.
You answered me and it's it's pausing there and it's sitting in that and it's not just
necessarily rushing on it saying, okay, what is waiting on what does it mean to wait on
on the Lord?
Oh, you know, David doesn't say how long he waited.
He might have waited a really long time.
I've been waiting a really long time.
He waited.
I'm waiting.
But the Lord does answer.
He's the God who answers prayer.
We can see it here.
He'll answer my prayer.
And then all of a sudden you're giving thanks to God.
Thank you, God, for being the God who answers prayer.
You know, how long must I wait?
I don't know, but it's in your head.
You know, you're you're you're working, you know, you're working this stuff into into
your heart, and that is broadly what they call meditation.
And for them, they really just thought that without meditation, your Bible read in your
prayer life can very easily fall into kind of something that they might regard as hypocritical
or false or or empty.
OK, this is this is really helpful.
So meditation is the bridge.
That's that middle thing between I've read my Bible and I'm now going to pray.
It's the point at which I kind of I'm what I'm asking the Lord to I'm taking time for
that word to from to what to rub it into my soul, to work it into my heart.
Mm hmm.
About it just I'm just kind of flesh out what you're saying.
It'll be those moments when I'm I'm asking I've just read this passage.
I've seen some wonderful truth about him and what I'm now saying.
Lord, will you show me now what does this mean in my life?
What do you show me about what this means?
I should repent, repent over, give thanks for.
Yeah.
Where I should seek to grow in godliness.
And that that work has to be done.
Mm hmm.
Is this right?
It has to be done.
Yeah.
And if it's not done, if I close my Bible and I pray, even if I'm not parroting a set
prayer, they're coming with my own prayer, I'm I might it might just be words.
I might just have got skillful at turning Bible words into nice sounding prayers.
But the hard work is this the territory we're in?
I think I think so.
And you mentioned it has to be.
So one of the images they like to use was they'd say that, you know, the reading the
Bible or hearing the Bible, however you're taking in God's words.
That's like, you know, taking in in food.
You know, you're chewing.
But meditation is the digestion.
And you know, again, you think about that and you think, OK, yeah, if I just if I just,
you know, took in some food, but I spit it out after chewing on it and I didn't let it
get digested, I'm not going to grow.
It's not going to nourish me.
It's not going to actually build me up in any way.
And so it's that's how they see meditation.
Meditation is what takes that takes the food and actually turns it and turns it into new
tissue.
And so, again, that's why if you're not doing it, you're you're not growing.
Can really see then how focusing on on meditation as digestion just completely cuts across and
just beautifully speaks into that that notion of prayer is just rapid vein repetition.
It's you just doing it by rote.
But also, I was just thinking that it also speaks into the objection of, you know, when
is it Matthew six where Jesus is saying, you know, don't pray like the pagans who are just
babbling and they're using many words because they think that they will be heard by God.
There's this in an interesting way.
You've also described a threefold stage progression to prayer, which obviously isn't the same
as kind of the mystical progression, but there's still this kind of movement to to prayer with
with meditation in the middle.
And it's it that's that's given me a lot to think about in terms of this isn't babbling.
It isn't using lots of words because God will be able to hear you regardless.
But also, it's not vain repetition.
It's this digestion of of the word and a reflection upon your your life and your spiritual state.
So that when you pray, is this right?
So that when you pray, you're praying from a position of Lord, help me or Lord, thank
you in the particulars of our lives, not as a kind of an esoteric.
Here are the things that I have to say so that I'm a good Christian or so that God will
hear me or so that I'm pious in some way.
This is an expression of the soul reaching out to God and saying, Lord, hear my cry,
see my state or thank you so much for what you've been doing.
And that's that's just that's just really beautiful, because I think I don't know if
you're like this as well, Tim.
Often when I've had the Puritans, I have thought dour and sour.
But also, you know, you need to spend more time with that.
I do.
I genuinely.
But also like Richard Sibbes and others, you know, like the honey mouth preacher.
You know, you just think, wow, how do how do these two two visions, two different pictures
of of the Puritans emerge when you've got people like Sibbes and Owens?
And then you've got this picture of the dowowners.
It's great to recover it.
Let's put contemporary evangelical spirituality in light of this.
Now, it's contemporary evangelical spiritualities plural.
You know, there's a real breadth here.
But just, you know, in your own upbringing as Christians and how you've been influenced
and how people have helped you.
Is something like this meditation being in the air for you?
Is this significantly lost?
Do you think for us?
What do you reckon?
I mean, I think so I mentioned I didn't hear a lot about this in my circles growing up
and I didn't.
But I suspect that when people were commending Bible reading and prayer, I suspect that a
lot of them, most of them perhaps, were actually doing something a lot like what the Puritans
were commending with meditation.
I think that that probably was happening.
I think there's a sense in which what we're describing when we describe meditation is
just the way a thoughtful, you know, Christian person engages with scripture.
And you know, you read, you know, Jesus says that not a sparrow is going to fall apart
from the will of your father.
And if you're really reading that and you're thinking about it and you're not just doing
it to tick a box that I read my verse for the day, if you're really reading that and
thinking about it, you're going to start to do what the Puritans identify as meditation.
You're going to think about what that means for me.
You're going to think about the things I'm worrying about right now and you're going
to think, you know, I'm really anxious about this but actually Jesus is telling me that
I'm worth more than many sparrows.
And you're going to start to work that into your heart.
And it's going to then lead you to an authentic heartfelt prayer that's not a mere vain repetition.
And so I suspect that this does go on but I think there's value in the way the Puritans
draw it out, name it explicitly and identify the lack of this meditation as a, you know,
common cause for spiritual dryness and lack of sort of growth and lack of a sense of vitality
in one's prayer life and one's spiritual life.
It's definitely not spoken about, is it, or at least I've never heard a sermon or a seminar
or a conversation in which meditation has taken centre stage as an important piece of
our prayer lives.
Often I think it's been what you've mentioned, Tim, is the, you know, you hear from God in
the Word and then you turn it back to Him in prayer.
It's almost like an automatic response.
You literally just pray the words that you've just read.
But also I'm an immigrant and I come from a Pentecostal background.
So this whole piece in terms of meditation is very common to me in terms of my own background
from central Europe.
But I think it has been interesting coming over to the UK and hearing how in, you know,
I've been in Pentecostal, conservative, evangelical churches, charismatic churches.
There's the ways in which this is spoken about in those three different groups and particular
things that are emphasised in each church culture and context.
And so I think, you know, particularly for the conservative evangelicals, this, you know,
as we've been discussing, it does seem to be kind of an overlooked piece because it's
almost quite, you're not in control really, are you?
If you have moments of silence and stillness and where you're so decentered in that you
are, we're always in the presence of the Lord, but as we're praying, we're waiting on the
Lord to such a degree that as we're reflecting on scripture and as we're allowing the Spirit
to move in our hearts and minds, we aren't expressing in words immediately what it is
that God is saying to us.
There is that gap, as it were, that can feel quite, I can feel quite frightening, I think,
to be still and to focus upon the Lord, that there's a sense there in which I just wonder
if to some degree that can prevent people from engaging with it a little bit more than
perhaps you're encouraging us to, Matt, through the Puritans.
Thinking about that sense of loss of control.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting too.
So one of the things, so I think clearly the direction of travel for Puritan authors, if
they're talking about prayer as conversation with God at its heart, if they're talking
about the need to avoid vain repetition, and so you want thoughtful words, you want prayer
that's tethered to scripture that's largely responding to it and incorporating it into
your prayer, it does raise the question, well, what if I can't pray?
What if I struggle to do that?
They often do set a high bar when they're talking about the devotional life of the Christian,
and in part I think that just reflects the seriousness with which they approach this.
In part I think it reflects the sense that they were trying to often paint the sort of
ideal portrait, this is what we're aiming for, very much of the thought that if you
don't know what you're aiming at, you're never going to hit it.
And so they try to give this sort of often this picture, this is what we want, this is
godliness.
But then I think also if we're feeling that, we need to recognize that they were actually
very good and very attentive to the questions about what happens when things go wrong, what
happens when I feel dejected, discouraged, faithless, they were actually very surprisingly
sensitive to these issues and they addressed them quite frequently.
So yes, you can find the statements that are very strong and says a Christian will do X,
Y, and Z, but then if you read on in that same sermon, say, they'll say now, when you
don't feel that way, here's five remedies.
And so sometimes when we just hear the strong quotes but without the balancing second bit,
we can get a distorted picture.
So just for example, here's a quotation, I think you mentioned Richard Sibbs, Christie,
here's one from Sibbs, in which he says that God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.
These desires cry louder in his ears than your sins.
Sometimes he says a Christian has such confused thoughts that he can say nothing, but as a
child cries, oh Father, not able to express what he needs.
And then he says that these stirrings of spirit touch the heart of God and melt him into compassion
towards us when they come from the spirit of adoption and from striving to be better.
So again, just note the emphasis on the heart, a heart that is inclined toward God even when
it's in a position where the person doesn't know what to pray.
All they can say is, oh Father, I need help.
He says this is not a problem for God.
God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.
And I think that's a significant counter balance to, you know, we talk about prayers need to
be words, thoughtful words.
I think they're also going to say, you know what, there are times when your prayers aren't
going to resemble that and it's going to be very difficult and you might not know what
to say.
And that's okay too.
God understands that.
God comes to us and meets us in our weakness.
I think the difference though between what Sibs is saying there and what I was mentioning
some of these mystical authors is Sibs is identifying that moment when, you know, you
can't say anything, you don't know what to say, but as a child all you can do is cry,
oh Father, not able to express what you need.
He's seen that as in your moment of weakness, in your moment of difficulty, when you can't
express prayer as you would like to, God is kind, God is gracious to his children, as
opposed to a scheme that would sort of frame a wordless state as the desirable destination.
He's saying, you know, we try to pray the way we see the psalmist modeling it.
We try to pray in this way, present your petitions to God.
But when that breaks down because life in a fallen world is hard, your heavenly Father
understands your weakness and he meets you in it.
May I ask another question on that?
I think, I don't know, one of the things I think that came to mind hearing you say that
is, and one of the questions I think that comes up quite regularly in some of the modules
I teach is the question around what if someone is unable to speak?
So what if there are particular learning differences or you're born with particular kind of physical
difficulties that mean that you're not able to speak?
And so how does this apply to those who have children who might be autistic or have never
been able to speak or through a really awful accident or some other kind of, oh, you know,
really bad thing that's befallen them, aren't able to express themselves in this kind of
word based way in their prayer lives?
I think it can sound sometimes, and this isn't what you're saying, sometimes it can sound
like God as it makes a concession to those who are unable to use their words because
he is kind, but there is again an insertion of a superiority of words in that whilst words
are desirable and he's made us to be able to communicate and to be able to use speech
in particular ways to honor and glorify him and to speak to him and with him, how would
you help someone who's hearing this and thinking this is great, but my husband has just had
an awful accident in the workplace and is no longer able to speak or my child has never
been able to learn how to talk.
And obviously there are lots of other questions there in terms of what does it mean to communicate
the gospel and what does it mean to respond in repentance and belief and to say that Jesus
is Lord and all of those things.
Just love to hear your reflections on that.
Great question.
Yeah, it's a good question and I've had these sorts of questions come up as well in teaching
contexts and in pastoral contexts and especially when, so again I think the Reformation and
form theology and the Puritans in particular, it is a word-centric piety, right, so that
is there so it does raise these questions and there's other questions as well.
But I think one helpful thing, a lot of the issue I think is addressed when we recognize
that to say that words are important, thoughtful words are important, that God has inspired
and given us a book, that His primary means of revealing Himself to His people is through
His Word, that faith comes by hearing all of these sorts of, you know, Psalm 119, I
mean there's all this, Puritans would say they have word-centered piety because they
would say Scripture promotes a word-centered vision, right.
So I think one helpful thing is to distinguish and recognize that to promote a word-centered
piety is not to say that the more articulate you are, the more eloquent you are, the more
godly you are.
And so once we are talking about human beings made in God's image who have this innate capacity
for communication and language, and I know you mentioned cases where maybe that's so
compromised but we can come to that, but once we mention that in, you know, God's image
bearers were made to communicate with each other, with God, and language is this marvelous
means that God has given, and then you recognize, okay, that's how God is engaging with us in
this significant way.
That is not to then say, if I can put together a better, longer, more complicated, more intricate,
more grammatically correct, precise, vivid sentence, I am somehow at the front end of
spiritual development.
The key for them was, are you engaging with the promises of God?
Are you engaging with who He's revealed Himself to be in the Scriptures?
And so again, when we think then about the varying capacities that we all have, they
would be, in fact, they'd be quick to say the opposite.
They would be quick to say, again, in their constant sort of worry about hypocrisy and
false religion and pharisaical pretense, they would be quick to point out that often some
of the people who can sort of speak the most words in the most polished, fluid way are
actually using that to deceive, and that the plain-hearted or the plain-spoken but heartfelt
prayer is the one that the Lord hears and honors.
Because again, for them, it's really about the orientation of the heart.
And so I think that helps to speak into that a bit.
If we were talking about the sort of really extreme cases where through accident or whatever
else a person was just truly unable to engage with human language at any sort of level or
capacity, at that point I think that's a very, that's a real theological pastoral challenge.
But at that point, I think that goes to all Christians of whatever your theological persuasion.
I mean, I think at that point, everyone has a deep question to wrestle with, Puritans
included.
But even if you didn't quite put the emphasis where they do, you're still dealing with the
question of, okay, if God has revealed himself in Scripture and I have a person who can't
engage with that, what does that mean pastorally?
How do we address that?
The very personal thought is maybe think about as you were asking the question and then as
Matt was responding.
As I've gone on over the years as a Christian, I think more reflection on my own praying
is that I have, I guess, learned to be more eloquent.
As I've come to know the Lord better and Scripture better and spent more and more time praying
with others who are eloquent in prayer.
I guess that's had an impact.
But as I've got older, and as you get older, and you realize there's quite a lot you can't
do that when you thought you were going to be changing the world, is I think I spend
more time now just praying, Lord, I'm praying that same prayer again that I've brought to
you before.
You must be tired of hearing it.
I think I'm tired of seeing it.
So I just would I present this intractable situation to you.
Then there is that the wordless moment.
It's not entirely wordless, but that is the oh, father moment when.
So I think I'm now better with words in prayer than I used to be.
And I'm also often worse with words than I used to be in prayer in different situations.
But probably when I, as it were, present myself to others as a prayer and I'm invited to talk
about praying.
It's the smoothness and the eloquence that I present and talk about rather than the.
Yeah, I sat for five minutes and couldn't say anything other than Lord, I'm just lifting
that up to you again.
And I really don't know what else to say.
I don't know if that feed does that in any way feed into your question?
I don't.
Maybe it doesn't.
I think it's I think you've both you know, you mentioned, you know, this is the orientation
of the heart.
This isn't about, you know, fine and eloquent words.
It is about the heart, isn't it?
Because it's not salvation by prayer.
That's essential, I think, to that question.
That prayer is a gift.
We are able, if we're able to speak, that is a gift.
And for those whose ability is compromised, as you've mentioned, it's not that God condescends
to meet them in that, but that He is glorified by their very existence and that they are
alive and that, you know, there is a deep faith there that even if they aren't able
to express that in words, God looks at the heart and one day they'll be with him face
to face.
And then there'll be heavenly languages and all sorts of things going on.
So, yeah, thank you for helping us to think about that question.
I guess in the last kind of five minutes or so that we have, this kind of moves us on
to a little bit and to what does this look like a bit more in practice?
So how does this help us think about our quiet times?
Is there such a thing as a quiet time or the set times?
And yeah, how can you help me think about tomorrow morning or this evening or in the
afternoon when I'm walking on the grounds of Oak Hill and just enjoying all the, you
know, the lush greenery?
Well, changing seasons, the lovely kind of leaves as they're falling.
How can I make, really enjoy my time with Jesus as a result of what you're saying?
Yeah, it's great.
It's great.
And that's kind of where it comes out, isn't it?
You know, it's, I mean, I think a couple of things.
First of all, when I read the Puritans and I think about my own prayer life, I am reminded
that this is actually really, really important and that it's not box ticking because, you
know, I was told to do this and I need to do it.
This actually is to a large extent what constitutes my relationship and communion with God.
Again, another quote from Richard Sibbes.
He says, take away prayer and take away the life and breath of the soul.
It says, take away breath and the man dies.
As soon as the soul of a Christian begins to live, he prays.
In other words, Sibbes is saying to be a Christian is to be a praying person, a soul that's alive,
a heart that's been reborn by you.
You're a new birth, you're a new creation in Christ and that new creation is going to
be a praying creation.
You're a prayer.
And they underscore that in a way that encourages me and helps me to see the significance of
it.
It leads me to want to fight for that a little bit more, to go out and make sure I'm doing
it and not neglecting it.
That's one.
They also, I think, help me orient my heart around the need for prayer that is actually
coming out of a place of real need.
And again, that warning against vain repetition.
It's interesting, they warn against vain repetition.
They're sensitive to that.
And they also are big on this idea of repeating your prayer, of coming to the Lord again and
again and again, in a sense, until he gets, not until you get what you want, but there
are those parables in the New Testament out there.
Your persistence, yeah.
And they stress that.
And sometimes those can feel like, okay, are those intention?
But I think the key is the orientation of the heart.
So Tim, when you talk about sometimes I just come and say, Lord, this is the same prayer
again.
Here it is.
I think why is that not vain repetition?
Well, it's not vain repetition because that's actually what is on your heart.
And the reason you're bringing it again and again every day is because that continues
to be a real reflection of where you are and what you need.
And your Heavenly Father hears you.
So those sorts of things help reorientate me around.
What am I doing when I pray?
It's really important.
This is your communion with God.
This is the life and work of the soul.
This is coming from the heart because it's real communication with a real personal God
who's really there.
And then thirdly, I think they're helpful.
One thing that they do that I think is helpful, they all, not all of them, but a lot of them
will distinguish between two kinds of prayer.
They'll talk about a sort of set or solemn prayer and then they'll talk about a spontaneous
sort of prayer.
And they say that the Christian life needs both.
So you need set, solemn times of prayer, what we might call a quiet time, you know, where
you're sitting down perhaps by yourself, perhaps with someone else, but you're sitting down
and you're taking a moment to say, this is what we're doing now.
We're communing with the Lord, Scripture, meditation, and prayer.
And for however long you do it, they actually were surprisingly unprescriptive.
They weren't telling you, you must do it in exactly this way for this long, but they said
you should do it and you should try to do that every day.
But then they said the whole day is full of this spontaneous prayer.
A lot of them would connect it to, you know, Paul's exhortation to pray without ceasing.
How do you do that?
Well, it's because at each moment you're buoyed along by a real sense of dependence on the
Lord.
I'm not my own and each day I go, everything I'm doing, I want it to be for God's glory
and in God's strength and not my own.
And so I'm going to be praying at different times in short, brief ways appropriate to
the moment.
But they said you need both and you want both.
And again, it's one of those things where I think a lot of, I suspect most Christians
do that naturally, right, but I find sometimes when they spell things out and they make those
distinctions, it's a helpful reminder and helpful encouragement.
Terrific, Matt.
Thank you.
Christy, final thoughts, was any of this sparking off in your mind?
Just what privilege it is to be able to pray.
And I think just what you're mentioning with that distinction between the set and the spontaneous
that I just think that praying without ceasing, that's just a lovely way of just describing
that spontaneous prayer of the relentlessness of prayer as we're in God's world, that we're
able to respond to him and to our circumstances and lift up our hearts to him at all points.
How about you, Tim?
What's on your?
This thing about meditation as the crucial middle term, I think is for myself, I think
it's very helpful.
I suspect you, I think one of you, who was said it earlier, a lot of Christians are probably
doing this even if they've not been taught to do it, even if it's not been articulated
for them.
I think over the years I have absolutely grown in doing that.
I can't actually remember anybody telling me, maybe people were and I was just not listening.
I'm sure I've read things around it and I had it muddled to me, but I have just found
myself doing it.
And for me, one thing that's meant is in the set solemn time, the quiet time, is often
taking shorter portions of scripture.
Precisely so I have time for that.
And there's just something simple here in front of me to chew on, to meditate on before
I turn it into prayer.
This is less text to think about and I may well then chew.
So I think what this is spurring me on is, yes, that's a good direction in my own praying
life more and thinking of it more deliberately as that crucial middle between reading and
now I really am starting to pray.
And then also, that's the most important for myself in relation to how I talk to prayer
to others.
This is slightly ironic for me.
In the church I'm a member of, I've just taught three sessions for our small group
leaders, Bible study leaders, on prayer.
And I don't think I use the word meditation and I don't think I particularly talked about
this category.
You know, I hope what I talked about was good and useful, but this is spurring me that next
time there's this absolutely something to articulate and help people think through because
I think I'd discover lots of Christians are doing this.
But because they don't have a name for it and therefore haven't thought it through,
there might be a sense of, should I be doing this?
And a lack of sense of being helped to do it better and more thoughtfully.
We must wrap up.
Thank you both so much.
This has been terrific.
Thank you.
Matt, you mentioned a book earlier.
Now that's not out yet.
It doesn't have a title.
So I mean, Christmas presents this year, it's going to have to wait.
It's going to have to wait.
Maybe next Christmas.
Christmas 2025, 2024.
When it's out, Oak Hill social media and he's there.
Thumbs up.
Our communications and digital marketing guy is all over social media when your book comes.
I mean, big launch by the thought.
Big launch.
Champagne.
That's good.
Yeah.
Great.
Can you have champagne at a Puritan book launch?
Well, I think we've established you.
You can have a lot of fun.
Whether you need champagne to have the fun might be a debatable issue.
This has been Deep Roots podcast brought to you by Oak Hill College.
We just have been good blessings for you in this.
We look forward to being with you next time.