ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 40.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> NICK: As long as we're headed in a new direction, I would like to ask about the development of the prayer life of the church and the central components of that life. >> DR. ARTHUR JUST: The question you're really asking, Nick, is a question that I think we all need to spend some time thinking about. And that is this: How do we, as not just simply laity but as future pastors and pastors, how do we develop a devotional life in which we can come before our Heavenly Father with our requests, our prayers. What is it that can give us the solid foundation that we need outside of the Sunday morning worship to keep us faithful and to keep us focused in on what are the first things, the things about God, the things about Christ, the things about heaven and our life in Christ? I think, in many ways I've already answered that in talking about the prayer life of the church. But let me just kind of draw this out for you. One of the things that I get at the seminary a lot from our students who are living there and studying there is they have tremendous guilt because they're so busy and involved that they sometimes do not find themselves praying as often as they think they should or being engaged in the life of devotion that, as future pastors, they feel they should have. Sometimes, they really beat themselves up about this. I know many of them do come to chapel, but even then, they have jobs. The have other responsibilities. They can't come to chapel as often as they would like. We offer three opportunities for chapel a day. And on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, four because we have an office before bedtime. And we hope that our students have an opportunity to at least sample one of those during the day, or at least a number of times during the week. One of the things I try to do to kind of encourage them and, in a sense, to help them get over this guilt is to very simply give them a kind of program that will hopefully be simple enough that they can do it on a regular basis. Now, I would start by saying that if at all possible, to use the format of matins, vespers, and compline in one�s prayer life. Not that you always have to do it or that it's the only way to do it, but it does give you a structure to do, what I've said before, the three major things. You want to read the scriptures. You want to sing or least say psalms or hymns. And you want to pray. And those three things must go together. Those three things are the components of a healthy devotional life. Now, there are many, many resources out there to help you read the scriptures in a regularized way. There are many ways in which you can read some of the prayers of the church that you can use as a foundation for your own prayers. And certainly, you have the freedom to do, in a sense, whatever you like. One of the things we're going to be doing in the new hymnal is that we're going to be doing a book of prayers and readings, psalms, lessons, you know, a format of prayer for the laity. A prayer book for the laity which we think is going to be a very valuable thing. It's going to be one in which these very components are going to be there, along with some of the readings of Luther and other church fathers and other saints in the church that are going to provide kind of a substantial comment on some of these, not long, not real long, but enough so that there's some meat there. What I would do if I were developing a devotional life, is I would make sure there were certain times of day that I might be able to set aside. And that's going to depend on the individual. But if you look back on the history of the church, it has been the experience of Christians for hundreds and thousands of years that if you set aside hours for prayer, you will pray. It's as simple as that. This doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't even have to be more than once a day. If you set aside that one time, you will find yourself being more regular. If you miss a day or two, it's not the end of the world. Just start up where you left off. And if you have a kind of a series of readings, just pick up wherever it is. We do have available now through the commission, a daily lectionary that is very reasonable. It has two lessons. They're both short enough that you can read them fairly quickly, but they're also long enough so that there's enough there that gives you something to chew on. And I think it's very helpful to, even in a formal way, have a list of things that you pray for. Put that in your prayer book or put that in your bible. Or put that in your hymnal and use that as a way of praying. And you can jot down things as you go along the things that are coming up, you know, that day or looking forward to in the week that you would like to pray for. And just pray for them. God hears our prayers, no matter how sophisticated, no matter how unsophisticated they may be. But to come to him in prayer acknowledging him as the giver God as the redeemer and the one who gives his all good gifts and then coming humbly before him with our requests is exactly what he wants us to do. One final thing as a suggestion here, use your hymnal as a prayer book. That's one of the things it was intended to be. That may seem unusual to you, but it really is a great source. For one, you'll find many of the psalms there. You�ll find great hymns, and use hymns. Hymns are wonderfully salutary ways of saying things that one cannot say with one's own words because these people have written beautiful hymns. Just to give you an example, last week in chapel, we sang "Jesus, thy boundless love to me," from the hymnal supplement which is one of my favorite hymns. It's a Paul *Gearhart hymn, and the new tune is just magnificent. This November, my daughter is getting married, and that's one of her hymn choices, and I'm going to be preaching the sermon. If I can get through that hymn, I'll be able to preach the sermon because that sermon has such meaning for me. When I'm down, I just get that hymn out, and I read that hymn. And that hymn just has an extraordinary salutary effect on me. The catechism is in the hymnal. There are really many, many things in the hymnal, the propers, the readings, there are so many things. And you can use it. Those little ones, especially, are wonderful to take along on a trip or to have by your bed as a way of providing a source of comfort and consolation to you in your prayer life. The other thing is when you develop a devotional life, don't be too rigid. Be willing to experiment a little bit, too. Because sometimes it can get stale, and there are some many resources out there and many that I think you'll find that can sometimes refresh your life of devotion and prayer. The most important thing, though, is to remember that when you pray, you always pray in Christ. And even when you do not have words to say, Christ is praying for you. And Christ is praying with you. So don't feel badly that even when you are so broken that you don't even know how to come to your heavenly Father, Christ is coming on your behalf. That's what it means that he is our intercessor. He is our advocate. He is the one who stands before the Father knowing what we need, even when we sometimes don't know how to say it.