Tools of the Trade (1)

The news hadn't been terribly pleasing for Daniel. His enemies had tricked King Darius into issuing a foolish decree, restricting the petitions of the people to him alone for the next thirty days (Daniel 6:1-9). Their impiety could stomach such a law; Daniel's piety, on the other hand, was another matter. Daniel could, of course, have made accommodations, to make it more difficult to incriminate him for praying to God. But it would be wrong to flinch in such an important thing. So, as per usual, he opened his westward window, knelt down, gazed in the direction of Jerusalem's ruins (Daniel 6:10), and began to recite: “Shema' Yisrael...”

Daniel has plenty to teach us. This year, we've been taking a look at what life is all about. We're made to be on a great human journey, the voyage of each person to ultimately behold the face of God, and thereby to be made like God in every way a creature can be. Of course, not every person is going to succeed on the great human journey. Many don't even get started, because it takes supernatural power to begin and supernatural power to take each step. We've talked, too, about how the great human journey is a relational journey, where we become increasingly united to God by the love that animates our faith. So some of the most important things we can do on this journey are what we've called 'spiritual activities' – the things that most directly involve themselves in our relationship with God, like prayer, reading Scripture, going to church, and so on.

All that is stuff you've already heard. We've even talked through some of the biggest obstacles that we face in persisting in the spiritual activities we try, or know we ought to try. And now that it's Easter, we're going to spend today and the next couple Sundays seeing if we can get a little bit deeper still. Because there are some tips, tricks, and techniques that have the potential to give assistance to our spiritual activities. So today, let's look at some of these “tools of the trade” that we can bring out in our lives of prayer.

Sometimes, you know, prayer is hard. We want to pray, or at least know we ought to pray, but we just don't have any new words to say. Well, here's a tool: pray some old words! Pray those wonderful words of life all over again, even if they aren't your own words. Even if you're reading them off a page, you can pray with them. Now, I know that as Evangelicals, at least some of us have an inborn instinct that balks at this idea. The last thing we ever want is to be 'formal' in how we worship. We like spontaneity, we think everything has to be fresh and new and personally tailored, because to us that's what a 'personal relationship' with God means. Besides, we tell ourselves, didn't Jesus warn us not to use “vain repetitions” when we pray (Matthew 6:7)?

Well, what Jesus was saying there is that we shouldn't have a faithless approach to prayer that stammers the same prayers over and over again because we're like the pagans Elijah made fun of, who thought repetition was the way to get their god's attention and wrestle him into submission (1 Kings 18:26-29). Those pagans had no confidence their god would hear them unless they repeated themselves, whereas persistent effort could guarantee results even if their god was unwilling. That attitude that, Jesus says, must never shape our prayer.

Why? Three good reasons. First is the one Jesus says: “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). When we pray, God has already pre-heard our needs; indeed, we wouldn't be praying if he hadn't prompted it. Second, God cannot be impressed more deeply with our prayers if we just add more filler to them. Jesus doesn't outright say this, but I bet he agreed with the rabbis who observed that, in Leviticus, the sacrifices of a big bull, a little bird, and just some grain are all described as pleasing God the same way; so they concluded that the size of the offering didn't matter, because it was all about the heart's direction.¹ A longer prayer doesn't impress God more than a short one; it's about the heart's direction. And third, God can't be browbeaten or cornered into becoming a sure thing. The ancient rabbis saw good and bad reasons to stretch out your prayer. If it was because you've got more things to ask, then it's good! But if it's because you think that you can wrestle a guarantee from God that way, then it's the sin of presumption.²

Those are the things Jesus warns us against when he talks about 'heaping up empty phrases' or 'vain repetitions.' But what if you've got different reasons? Maybe you offer the same old words to God because they seem no less worthy of him, or no less amazing to you, the twentieth time than the first. Maybe you borrow the prayer because it's teaching you. Maybe you can't think of anything better or newer to say. Then quote away, repeat away! Our spiritual lives are poorer if we never pray in our own words, that's true; but they're also poorer if we only pray in our own words, if we never allow the good old words to enrich and train and fill out our voice.³

Alright, enough theory; let's think of some examples. Say you want to deepen your spiritual life. What helpful prayers could you find to borrow? There are lots of them, and one place to start would be with the Psalms. The Book of Psalms isn't just a song book; it's a prayer book. These are real model prayers, and there's nothing at all wrong – in fact, a lot right – with taking a psalm and making it our own. God inspired these words for exactly that kind of purpose. Jesus prayed the Psalms. In Acts, we find the apostles using the Psalms in their own personal prayers (e.g., Acts 4:25-26). Eventually, some prayer specialists made the commitment to pray all 150 psalms every single week, in a rotating cycle. Stumped in prayer? Try out a psalm or two. The greats all did.

Another useful prayer – and I hope this one doesn't surprise you – is the Lord's Prayer. According to Luke, we get this prayer because, after listening in on Jesus' own prayer life, a disciple asked him: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). The disciple was looking for a prayer to memorize and use as both a tool and a template. What they got was what's come down to us as the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:2-4; cf. Matthew 6:9-13; Didache 8.2). The very fact that we use the Lord's Prayer together reminds us that making this prayer our own is a good thing – in fact, it's a thing Jesus commanded. Use it at home, too, and out-and-about. You can't go wrong – you're way less likely to go wrong – if you just pray the Lord's Prayer, whether it's all you can do or whether it's a starting point to build on. The Lord's Prayer covers your bases the right way. Trust it.

Besides whole psalms and the Lord's Prayer, there are a lot of other passages in the Bible that give prayers that are short, easy to memorize, and good for using as often as it seems helpful, even back-to-back. One that was very popular from early on was the first verse of Psalm 70: “Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me!” (Psalm 70:1). Whether in this translation or a different one, it's a good one to repeat over and over again: it calls out to God, and asks for his help to come fast. That's an all-purpose prayer right there! And another one is like it: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is often called the Jesus Prayer, and it's built on a few passages from the Gospel of Luke. The ten lepers said to Jesus: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 17:13). The tax collector in Jesus' parable a chapter later prayed: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). And right after that, a blind beggar called out: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38). So the Jesus Prayer is a deeply biblical prayer. It's also short and sweet. It's easy to memorize. It won't steer you wrong, no matter how many times in a row you say it, because it never gets less true or good to turn to Jesus, confess him as Lord, admit you're a sinner, and plead for his mercy. Again, talk about an all-purpose prayer! And for many centuries, there have been some Christians who commit themselves to praying this prayer so often – thousands of times every day, not just out loud but silently within – that it becomes the rhythm of all their thoughts, breaths, heartbeats, an unceasing prayer with a life of its own.⁴

You know what else makes a good prayer, especially when you run out of things to say? The words of your favorite hymn. Many of the hymns we sing are just prayers set to music. When we sing those hymns, we're already admitting that we can pray fruitfully with words we didn't put together ourselves. And if the hymn's got a chorus, we're admitting the benefits of some repetition here and there. If a hymn's one of your favorites, then hopefully that's because it's well said, because it captures an impulse of prayer that's meaningful to you. So when you get stumped in prayer, just break out a hymn you know – whether you sing it or just say the words.

So we've got the Psalms, we've got the Lord's Prayer, we've got other easy-to-memorize verses, we've got the Jesus Prayer, we've got our hymns, and there are plenty of other pre-composed prayers that have been said by somebody somewhere down through the history of the church. Some are newer, some are older; some are shorter, some are longer. There are treasures of prayer out there. It'd be a shame to not learn them, use them, when – if we're honest with ourselves – we need all the help we can get. Collect these tools. Keep 'em handy.⁵

So that's one tool set for prayer: these words we can break out, which can change the way we pray. But there's another tool set, and that's actions of prayer. This, again, might feel a bit strange for us Evangelicals, who are used to doing everything very casually, because informality is the name of the game. But if you listen to the early Christians, they knew that the actions of the body can help or hinder the soul. There are things you can do to act out what's going on inside, and to help remind you of what you're doing and keep you focused. We read that Daniel, when he wanted to pray, “had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem” (Daniel 6:10)? Why? Because, centuries earlier, King Solomon had dedicated the temple by asking God to “listen to the plea of your servant, and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place” (1 Kings 8:30). So even after the temple was destroyed, God's people were accustomed to pray in the direction of Jerusalem, because that was where God had made his earthly presence known. When Jesus came, he told the Samaritan woman that Jerusalem as such would soon be irrelevant for prayer (John 4:21), but the early Christians famously faced the east to pray.⁶ Why? Not only is it sunrise, but Jesus compared his return to lightning that flashes from east to west (Matthew 24:27). So by praying toward the east, they prayed in a way that gave them a physical reminder and demonstration of their confident hope in Jesus' coming again. Historically, many churches were therefore built so that people would face east when praying. Ours got built opposite, but even in churches that couldn't be built facing the right way, the altar was considered 'liturgical east' anyway.

If the body matters enough for the early Christians to care about direction, maybe posture can make a difference in how we pray, too. Jesus gave his disciples instructions about “whenever you stand praying” (Mark 11:25) – the assumption was that most prayer would be done while standing at attention before God. One early Christian actually wrote that “of the numerous dispositions of the body, standing with hands extended and eyes upraised is much to be preferred,” because that's the posture mirrors the soul posed upright, looking up to God, reaching out to heaven in hope.⁷ Of course, sometimes that posture doesn't quite fit the tone. The tax collector in Jesus' parable was standing, but because he was praying for mercy, he “would not even lift up his eyes to heaven,” as would have been normal, “but beat his breast” (Luke 18:13). Daniel, in his prayers, “got down on his knees... and prayed and gave thanks to God” (Daniel 6:10). In the garden, Jesus even “fell on his face and prayed” (Matthew 26:39). But all these postures helped to express and shape their prayer.

And there's one more thing early Christians did to physically enhance their prayer life, and that's a gesture they used before or after they prayed. They came to call it 'the sign of the cross.' This, too, might be a bit unfamiliar to us as Evangelicals. But every time I pronounce the benediction, you see me make the sign of the cross over you to bless you. And if you watch during the doxology, I cross myself when we praise the Trinity. Well, this gesture goes back at least to the second-century Christians, one of whom said: “We make the sign of the cross on our foreheads at every turn: at our coming in or going out of the house, while dressing, while putting on our shoes, when we're taking a bath, before and after meals, when we light the lamps, when we go to bed or sit down, and in all the ordinary actions of daily life.”⁸ So it's no surprise that if they prayed that way, too.

This was no superstition. It was a real way to celebrate that Christ crucified is the champion. If we make this sign, then we are physically joining Paul when he says, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). That's what this gesture means. And since early Christians professed to see demons cast out and miracles happen when they made this sign with faith, it's a bit silly to lay it aside, isn't it?⁹ For my part, I recommend using it.

So we've got one set of tools: prayers already written out, in the Bible and beyond, that we can use and repeat. We've got another set of tools: bodily actions that express and assist our prayers, like a direction to face, posture to take, and gesture to use. One last tool, real quick, is a rhythm of prayer. In the Old Testament Law, both the meat sacrifices (with grain and drink) and the incense offerings were made at specific times in the morning and in the evening (Exodus 29:38-39; 30:7-8). Alongside this, there came a practice of prayer at each end of the day, plus in its middle. So the psalmist says he prays “evening and morning and at noon” (Psalm 55:17), and we already read about how Daniel prayed “three times a day... as he had done previously” (Daniel 6:10). This became a regular pattern – the rabbis talk about morning prayer, afternoon prayer, and evening prayer.¹⁰

In the first-century church, from the time of the apostles, we hear an instruction given to pray the Lord's Prayer “three times per day” (Didache 8.3) – that is, the same time their Jewish neighbors were praying their prayers. After all, Luke shows the apostles making use of Jewish times of prayer like the third hour, sixth hour, and ninth hour – which are 9am, noon, and 3pm (Acts 3:10; 10:9). And as time goes on, we begin to see some expansion. One third-century Christian writes that, as we learn from the story of Daniel, “prayer... should not be performed less than three times a day.”¹¹ Christians in those times talk about not just the third hour, sixth hour, and ninth hour, but also sunrise, sunset, and even getting up at midnight to pray.¹² Just as one psalmist said, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules” (Psalm 119:164), some Christian communities gravitated toward seven fixed times of prayer each day, plus their midnight prayers.¹³ It's an intense regimen.

And, building on the fact that, in the Temple, the Levite singers sang specific psalms each day to accompany the sacrifices, it quickly became a normal practice that at each scheduled 'hour of prayer,' early Christians would not just pray the Lord's Prayer, but also have certain psalm passages to pray, plus some alleluias.¹⁴ Over time, these turned into a rhythm of prayer that the church carefully crafted for maximum benefit. In some communities today, it's called the Daily Office or Divine Office; in others, it's called the Liturgy of the Hours.¹⁵ But whatever it's called, the idea is that very wise Christians have recommended certain prayers for each time of day, on each day of the year. Some parts might be the same each time of day; some parts might be the same from day to day; some parts might vary completely. But let me tell you from experience: it is so, so helpful. It's like the skeleton of a whole prayer life, around which everything else can be built. The very simple version I do offers about a 20-minute prayer sequence each morning and each evening. I'll be honest, I don't always manage even that – but when I do it, I sure don't regret it. It is a major blessing. I can't recommend something like it enough.

Here's the point. When it comes to upgrading our prayer lives, or bolstering them where we're likely to falter, God's wisdom hasn't left us alone. God shows us, in Scripture and in the lives of early Christians, some things we can take up to bridge those gaps, to build stable disciplines, to keep ourselves focused, to learn how better to pray, and to take off some of the pressure so that we can just be with God. That's what all this is about. And I can tell you, if you take up some of these tools and use them, you might just find your prayer life reaching some fascinating new places you didn't expect. What tools? Repeating prayers you didn't have to come up with, for one, like the Psalms, the Lord's Prayer, the Jesus Prayer, Bible verses, and more. Trying a good posture for prayer, facing the right direction, making the sign of the cross. And even putting it all together in some bigger pattern of prescribed times of prayer. These are some of a Christian's “tools of the trade” for prayer. Whatever of them you try out, may they increase the flavor and fruitfulness you find as you deepen your relationship with God, and assist you ever onward in your great human journey, in Jesus' name. Amen.

1  Mishnah: m. Menakhot 13.11, at <https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Menachot.13.11?lang=bi>.  See discussion in Herbert W. Basser with Marsha B. Cohen, The Gospel of Matthew and Judaic Tradition: A Relevance-Based Commentary (Brill, 2015), 182.

2  Talmud: b. Berakhot 54b-55a, at <https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.54b?lang=bi>.

3  Brant Pitre, Introduction to the Spiritual Life: Walking the Path of Prayer with Jesus (Image, 2021), 9-10, 92.

4  Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love (Emmaus Road, 2019), 232-240.

5  Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love (Emmaus Road, 2019), 251.

6  Tertullian of Carthage, Apology 16.10 (“we pray facing the east”), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 10:51; also Origen of Alexandria, On Prayer 32 (“the direction of sunrise obviously indicates that we should make our prayer facing in that direction, as having the symbolic implication that the soul is facing the rising of the True Light”), in Popular Patristics Series 29:211.

7  Origen of Alexandria, On Prayer 31.2, in Popular Patristics Series 29:207.

8  Tertullian of Carthage, On the Chaplet 3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 40:237.

9  See, e.g., Lactantius, Divine Institutes 4.26.39–27.5 (“the terror it [the sign of the cross] causes to demons will be known to anyone who has seen how far those conjured in the name of Christ flee from the bodies they beset,” and he explains that Christian slaves signing themselves with the cross at their masters' pagan sacrifice “put their masters' gods to flight”), in Translated Texts for Historians 40:273-274; Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of St. Anthony 78-80 (e.g., St. Anthony taught that “where the sign of the cross is made, magic loses its power and sorcery fails,” and then he made the sign of the cross a few times over some demon-possessed hearers, and they immediately “stood up, now perfectly sound in mind, blessing the Lord”), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 15:203-205; Cyril of Jeruslaem, Catechetical Lectures 4.14 (“seal it [the cross of Christ] openly on your brow, that the demons, seeing the royal sign, may tremble and flee far away”) and 13.36 (the sign of the cross is “a powerful safeguard..., for it is a grace from God, a badge of the faithful, and a terror to devils..., for when they see the cross..., they fear him who has smashed the heads of the dragons”), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:126; 64:28; Sulpicius Severus, Life of St. Martin of Tours 12, 22 (e.g., St. Martin “made the sign of the cross before the approaching crowd and ordered them not to move,” and they became stuck in place; and “Martin, undaunted always, would protect himself [against the devil] with the sign of the cross and the power of prayer”), in Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 15, 23; Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Confessors 11 (“the old man made the sign of the cross over the priest's knee,” and “immediately the priest stretched out his foot and bent it back cured”), 24 (“the nun Monegundis... made the sign of the cross over the sore, and... immediately all the poison vanished”), 28 (a mute man “requested a priest who was present to make the sign of the cross over his clenched jaws," and so "regained the use of his voice”), 55 (“Bishop Victorius of Le Mans... confronted the whirlwind, and after he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross against it, immediately the entire fire died out”), in Translated Texts for Historians 5:10-11, 21, 24, 41; and plenty of other sources and examples, too.

10  Mishnah: m. Berakhot 4.1, at <https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Berakhot.4.1?lang=bi>. See also L. Edward Phillips, “Prayer in the First Four Centuries AD,” in Roy Hammerling, ed., A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century (Brill, 2008), 36.  See also 2 Enoch 51:4 (“In the morning and at noon and in the evening of the day, it is good to go to the LORD's temple to glorify the Author of all things”), in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:179.

11  Origen of Alexandria, On Prayer 12.2, in Popular Patristics Series 29:138.

12  Tertullian of Carthage, On Prayer 25, in Popular Patristics Series 29:61; Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lord's Prayer 34-36, in Popular Patristics Series 29:90-92.

13  See the third-century Apostolic Tradition 41, in Popular Patristics Series 54:200-202.

14  Mishnah: m. Tamid 7.4, at <https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Tamid.7.4?lang=bi>, discussed in Jeremy Penner, Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (Brill, 2012), 54-58; and see also Tertullian of Carthage, On Prayer 27 (“those who are more conscientious in prayer are accustomed to join 'alleluia' and psalms of this sort to their prayers”), in Popular Patristics Series 29:62.

15  See, e.g., Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Liturgical Press, 1986).