(This post comes from 1517.org. It was written by Kyle Jones, Director of Youth and Family Ministry at Calvary Lutheran Church in Brookfield, WI. You can find the original post here.)
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When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.
n an open letter, A Simple Way to Pray, Martin Luther addresses the concern his friend and barber, Peter Beskendorf, has regarding prayer. Lutherâs letter is as instructive to us today as it was when he penned it in 1535. He covers three big questions we all have about prayer: when to pray, how to pray, and what to pray.
When to Pray
Luther never takes for granted his readerâs knowledge about prayer. He writes as if we need to learn it allâand rightly so. Dietrich Bonhoeffer picks this up later when he writes, âIt is a dangerous error, surely widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicingsâall of which the heart can do by itselfâwith prayer.â
We rightly assume we must learn to pray, but our assumption falls short. We eye the content or the âwhatâ of our prayer. In doing so we skip over the equally important âwhenâ and âhowâ of prayer. Lutherâs letter never does.
He begins with when to pray. He writes âFirst, 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).â Lutherâs first encouragement is to pray when weâre under attack by our old self and the devil. Sometimes this attack is obvious. Other times, it's as subtle as when we feel unenthused about our prayers.
He goes on to add, âIt is good to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night.â Luther knows how distractible the flesh is. We always have pressing business to attend to, whether itâs caring for our children; carrying out a vital morning routine; or, for many more of us, checking what the internet has to say about this, that, or the other.
Luther does not mean we should only pray at those times. He would have our prayers punctuate our day. He encourages frequent prayer, âbecause one must unceasingly guard against sin and wrongdoing.â Luther never forgets how eager the devil is for us to pass on prayer, especially when weâre under his attack.
How to Pray
When Luther talks about how to pray, he means more than posture. He does mention that one could kneel or stand with hands folded and eyes toward heaven. But more importantly, Luther reiterates in several places the need for our hearts to âbe made ready and eager for prayer.â The heart is âwarmed and inclined toward prayerâ by meditating on and reciting the word of God. In this way, Luther teaches that our prayer is a response to God first speaking to us.
In order to meditate on and recite Godâs word, Luther encourages us first to limit distractions. We can follow his example by going to our rooms âor, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled.â Luther also recognizes that we may not have a lengthy time to give to prayer. He repeats himself in numerous places when he instructs, âas time permitsâ or âif I have the time and opportunity.â
He calls for us to be focused in our prayers. He encourages the reader not to take on too much, to limit our words and avoid âidle chatter and prattle.â At one point he writes, âa good prayer should not be lengthy or drawn out, but frequent and ardent.â
Above all, Luther would prefer we listen for the Holy Spiritâs preaching in our prayers. Even at the expense of our usual order of prayer. He writes, âIt may happen occasionally that I may get lost among so many ideas in one petition that I forego the other six. If such an abundance of good thoughts comes to us we ought to disregard the other petitions, make room for such thoughts, listen in silence, and under no circumstances obstruct them. The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is far better than a thousand of our prayers.â
What to Pray
Luther spends the bulk of his letter discussing what to pray. Implicitly in his letter, Luther teaches that God's word is the content of our prayers.
Again following Lutherâs lead, Bonheoffer says it explicitly: âThe child learns to speak because his father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us. By means of the speech of the Father in heaven his children learn to speak with him. Repeating Godâs own words after him, we begin to pray to him.â Godâs word not only spurs on our prayer, Godâs word makes up our prayer.
Luther mentions other parts of Scripture, such as the Psalms and the words of Paul, but he organizes his prayers and the instruction of his letter around the basics of Godâs word: the Lordâs Prayer which Jesus taught; the Ten Commandments which God himself wrote down and gave to his people on Mount Sinai; and the Apostlesâ Creed, the oldest, faithful summary of Godâs word.
In organizing himself this way, Luther teaches us to pray nothing more than the Catechism. To pray the Catechism is to pray Godâs word. As the Formula of Concord confesses, the Catechism is the âBible of the laity, in which everything is summarized that is treated in detail in Holy Scripture and that is necessary for a Christian to know for salvationâ (FC Ep Summary 5; K-W 487).
John Pless points out that âthe Catechism provides both the categories and contours of our theology.â He later writes, âthe texts of the Catechism serve to anchor the praying Christian in Godâs word.â As the Catechism provides the categories and contours of our theology, it also provides the content and configuration of our prayers.
Ultimately, the when, how, and what of prayer can be summarized by Lutherâs teaching on the word âAmen.â âDo not leave your prayer without having said or thought, âVery well, God has heard my prayer; This I know as a certainty and a truth.â That is what Amen means.â
We say, âAmen,â trusting that God, in his mercy and grace, will rescue us from the attacks of the old self and the devil, both of which make us cool and joyless in prayer. We say, âAmen,â in response to the words God has first spoken to us. And, we say, âAmen,â affirming that the words we spoke to God, which he taught us to speak, are true and will be heard because as Paul writes, God âremains faithfulâfor he cannot deny himselfâ (2 Tim 2:13).