Christians should not – in fact, must not – view themselves as “second-rate” believers because they “feel defeated in their prayer lives.”
Kirkland“If you are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and generally seeking to live in obedience to God’s word,” declared Don Whitney, professor of biblical spirituality at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, “then the problem likely isn’t you, but your method.”
That was the encouraging, though challenging, word from Whitney to the annual gathering of Southern Baptist editors held recently in Williamsburg, Va.
For many Christians, Whitney said during two teaching sessions with the editors, “to pray even five to seven minutes seems like an eternity, and their minds wander much of the time.”
Whitney contended that persons indwelled by the Holy Spirit have an “orientation” toward God and “really want to pray.”
“And yet,” he continued, “while they believe in prayer, want to pray, and can’t imagine ever totally abandoning prayer, when they do pray it’s frustrating. Their hearts are often cold, their minds can’t stay focused on prayer, and frankly, prayer is often boring. And so, many conclude, ‘I’m a second-rate Christian.’?”
The problem? “We say the same old things about the same old things,” he pointed out.
But don’t get him wrong. “Our problem is not that we pray about the same old things. To pray about your family, your future, your finances, your work or school work, your church or ministry, and current crises is normal. If you’re going to pray about your life, these things are your life.”
He went on, “So our problem is that we say the same old things, and that’s boring. When prayer is boring, we don’t feel like praying, and when we don’t feel like praying, it’s hard to pray for any length of time with much consistency.”
His solution? “When you pray,” he said, “pray through a passage of Scripture, especially a psalm, and there is a psalm for every sigh of the heart.”
He advised the editors to “let the words of Scripture become the words of your prayers,” adding, “For example, if you pray through Psalm 23, read ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ and thank him for being your shepherd. Ask him to shepherd your family that day, to guide, protect and provide for them. Pray that he will make your family members his sheep, that they will look to him as their shepherd. Ask him to shepherd you through the decisions you must make about your future. Pray for him to bless the undershepherd at your church, shepherding him as he shepherds the church.”
When nothing else comes to mind about that line, Whitney said, go to the next one – “I shall not want” – and continue to pray.
Keep going, he told the editors, “until you run out of time or you run out of psalm.”
Whitney said the psalms, the hymnbook of the Hebrews, are the best source for praying Scripture because “the entire range of emotion is recorded in the 150 psalms,” but he said the letters of the New Testament and the narrative passages of the Bible also are beneficial.
“By praying through a passage of Scripture,” he said, “you’ll find yourself praying about most of the same old things, but in brand new ways. You’ll also find yourself praying about things you would otherwise never pray about.”
Jesus also prayed the psalms, Whitney emphasized, noting that two of the statements of the Lord from the cross – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and “Into your hands I commit my spirit” – were taken directly from psalms.
The other day I sat in the Nashville airport waiting for a flight to Atlanta and then a connection home to Greenville in the evening. I had just attended the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee meeting in Nashville, only days after the Virginia gathering of SBC state convention executive directors and editors from across the country.
Waiting for my boarding call, I had a little downtime to put my body at rest and my mind at ease. My mind wouldn’t cooperate; it kept going back to Dr. Whitney’s teaching session on praying Scripture. I pulled my Bible out of the carry-on bag at my side and turned to Psalm 1.
As I read of that “happy man” whose “delight is in the Lord’s instruction” and who “meditates on it day and night,” I began to pray silently, “Lord, I, too, want to meditate on, to ponder, to study your instructions habitually. Help me to think deeply on your truth as revealed in Scripture until it has taken deep root within me. Give me the peace that comes from having a mind that is fixed on you, Father. Help me with the gardening of my mind, Lord, that it might produce good fruit for use in your service. And thank you for the ministry of Don Whitney. It’s true what he said – that the solution to our prayer problem has to be simple for it to help God’s children of all ages and educational levels and all stages of spiritual development. Praying the Scriptures? I can do it. And so can all of my South Carolina Baptist brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen.”