Welcome to Episode #164 of Way of the Bible podcast. This is our fourth of eight episodes in our Twenty-First mini-series entitled, Sermon on the Mount Part 2. On today’s episode we’ll be hearing Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. Now this is a big topic. Prayer.
I have to admit, growing up as a Catholic I really didn’t think I had a problem with prayer. Since my first communion and later Catechism classes I had a plethora of memorized prayers. Some for use in when in mass and other for use after confession.
The in-mass prayers typically included a Hail Mary and an Our Father. The confessional prayers typically included an Act of Contrition an Apostles Creed and multiple Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s depending on the accuracy of my confession.
I have to admit, I held back quite a lot. Eventually knowing I’d forgotten more than I remembered of my sinful past which hadn’t been confessed, I realized I was too far gone for grace and accepted hell as my destiny. And that turned out to reemerge in my struggle to receive Christ at my spiritual rebirth by the Holy Spirt. I’ve shared this account before and will reshare this account on another episode but not right now.
The skinny was I wrong about that. But in total honesty, that’s how I felt at the soul level. I was unworthy of Jesus, so I had to find another way to God other than my Catholicism. Fortunately for me I married a Baptist and I discovered an entirely different kind of works based salvation than my former faith practices. “We don’t drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t dance, we don’t chew, and we don’t go with girls that do.”
For me I felt right at home knowing I was breaking all these as well, but they didn’t make me confess it so I didn’t think about hell. I grew comfortable saying I believed in Jesus and if by chance after I died, I’d came to see him and/or Peter at the gate of heaven, I’d just deny ever remembering my sin. Believe me, I had gotten very good at forgetting sin as soon as I sinned it. No guilt or shame, that was my saving grace so I thought.
It was in this new religion I discovered ad hoc prayers. Whatever rolled off my tongue in the moment. Little forethought. Uncomfortable of making a mistake at first, I soon mastered the craft of just talking at God in a measured tone.
After a radical salvation by the Holy Spirit my prayer life changed to a more scripture-based content from passages I’d been memorizing. This lasted a good long time before I was awakened out of my prayer slumber. Up to this awakening I became a Methodist, then a none, then a charismatic, before finally settling in a non-denominational evangelical church where I got radically saved in the second service I attended.
Once born again, I had questions about talking with God. Then I heard a pastor from the pulpit say his greatest struggle in ministry was his prayer life. That rocked me, how was that possible. I started to do some research and discovered prayer was one of the most written about topics out there. No one seemed to have a handle on it. Everyone had their own take, I guessed to sell more books. I certainly was struggling but I wasn’t fully committed like a pastor. I went to seminary and got an MDIV and found no adequate answer there. I had several seminary professors confess struggling with prayer. This seemed to be shear madness.
I limped along for over 25 years until last year when I discovered the secret of prayer in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Others have four the same discovery in an area called Lectio Devina. In short, they both emphasize spiritual meditation and contemplation. Learning by doing that special emphasis has been a game changer.
And why do I share all that before getting to today’s lesson? Because, had I known then what I know now, I would have known the value of Jesus’ teaching on prayer he gave to his disciples. Jesus in a very compact less
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