Theophan the Recluse’s Three Types of Prayer

You have probably heard such words as: oral prayer, mental prayer, prayer of the heart; you may also have heard discussions about each of them separately. What is the cause of this division of prayer into parts? Because it happens that sometimes through our negligence the tongue recites the holy words of prayer, but the mind wanders elsewhere: or the mind understands the words of the prayer, but the heart does not respond to them by feeling. In the first case prayer is only oral, and is not prayer at all, in the second, mental prayer joins the oral, but this prayer is still perfect and incomplete. Complete and real prayer of word and thought is joined by prayer of feeling.

Spiritual or inner prayer comes when he who prays, after gathering his mind within his heart, from there directs his prayer to God in words no longer oral but silent: glorifying Him and giving thanks, confessing his sins with contrition before God, asking from Him the spiritual and physical blessings that he needs. You must pray not only with words but with the mind, and not only with the mind but with the heart, so that the mind understands and sees clearly what is said in words, and the heart feels what the mind is thinking. All these combined together constitute real prayer, and if any of them are absent your prayer is either not perfect, or is not prayer at all.
Theophan the Recluse in The Art of Prayer, p. 66-67

The divisions are helpful, as they enable us to be more attentive to our inner dispositions as we pray. Are we speaking empty words? Do we understand what we say? Is our heart aligned with both thoughts and words? Are we humble before God in our inmost being, and does the Spirit intercede with our spirit in identifying and requesting divine help for our deepest needs?

Our goal is to come before God as complete selves, and, as Theophan says, unite body to mind and heart, thus entering “real prayer.”

Tree Growth and Spiritual Formation: An Illustration

An acquaintance and former associate of mine, Matt Johnson, helpfully made a connection for me between spiritual growth and the life cycle of trees. And here is Mandy Brown, deepening that connection:

In the spring, when the weather is (hopefully) warm and wet, a tree will grow rapidly, forming large, porous cells known as “earlywood.” Later, as the weather cools, it will grow in smaller, more tightly packed cells known as “latewood.” You can spot the difference when looking at a tree’s rings: earlywood appears as light-colored, usually thick, bands, while latewood shows up thinner and darker. What doesn’t show up in the rings is the dormant period—the winter season, when the tree doesn’t grow at all, but waits patiently for spring.

I think this is a useful metaphor for thinking about how we grow, too. There are times and seasons when the conditions are right for earlywood—for big, galloping growth, where you learn a lot in short order. This is often the case when you first step into a new role, or take on a new and challenging project, or start at a new organization. But those periods of rapid growth are often (and ideally) followed by periods when the growth is slower, more focused, moving in short and careful steps instead of giant leaps. These latewood periods are when the novelty of a new situation has worn off, and the time for reflection and deep-skill building arrives.

In the Christian spiritual life, growth doesn’t happen all at once, nor does it take place at a steady, constant pace. There are times when it seems like nothing is happening at all, but that isn’t necessarily true. Rest, or patient waiting, is preparatory for the growth ahead, big leaps and the small steps. Smith is again helpful: “[W]e must remind ourselves that growth occurs in intervals: there are times of growth, and there are times of non-growth. The latter isn’t a failure so much as a necessary period of rest. Dormancy isn’t stagnant; it’s potentiating. It’s patient.”

If you’re growing, great! Celebrate. If you’re steadying and solidifying, great! Stand firm. If you’re “potentiating,” wait! Be still, and know that God is God.

Unstopped Ears

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
Luke 2:15, New International Version

I offer a weekly devotional to a small group of fellow staff members, and this Monday we turned our attention to the passage quoted above, Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus. And while I have more often placed the stress on the shepherds’ exhortation to one another to “go” and “see” the sign of the baby born and laid in a manger announced to them as “the Messiah, the Lord,” I have less often contemplated the assertion that it was the Lord who had told “this thing” to them, directly. Luke tells us that the messenger is “an angel of the Lord,” and that “a great company of the heavenly host” appeared with and alongside the angel. But they considered these angelic messengers as acting at God’s behest. They claim divine revelation.

There is a distinction between having ears and hearing with understanding, as Isaiah 6:9 makes plain. Not every person who hears news about Jesus and his birth receives that message with a sense that it is the Lord who has told them, directly. But I am among those who, over time, have come to that conviction, that God communicates with us through the Word, people, and the heart-stirrings of the Holy Spirit.

To claim that one has received communication from God is a sign of the movement of God’s grace. Anyone who shares in understanding that Jesus is the Messiah can make this claim. That is worth marveling at. After seeing the child, the shepherds returned to their sheepfolds “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”

For any who have seen Jesus, who have truly beheld him and contemplated what his birth, life, death, and reign meant and mean, they can do the same.

It’s the Little Things

Carl Richards, writing at *The New York Times*

We think it is the big things.

It is far more often the little things.

In the Christian spiritual life, think about the disciplines and practices that are foremost in your tradition. Prayer. Attending worship. Serving others. Reading or studying a Scripture portion. Fasting. Generosity and giving.

Don’t think about what doing these things might render in a day, or a week. Consider what might happen if you did these things routinely over years, even decades.

Choose a few seemingly small commitments. Keep them.

You won’t know where keeping those commitments will take you, what it will render.

But years from now, you may be very glad to have found out.

I Like’em Both

This is not a screwup.

But it is a real, recent text exchange. And it’s brilliant!

I like’em both.

If you aren’t familiar, The Dark Night of the Soul is the most famous work of Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite friar and great spiritual writer. T

The Dark Knight is another appellation for Batman, the superhero persona of Gothamite Bruce Wayne.

Godspeed

There’s a book here and a church resource kit and other resources, but if you visit the website, this short film is there for anyone to watch.

Check out Godspeed.

One of the Greatest Vocations We Have as Christians is a Humble Task Open to Everyone but Few Undertake

One of the greatest vocations we as Christians have is to pray for others. To pray for the many people who we know as well as for the many we don’t know but of whose suffering we are aware. My sense is that you will come closer to the Lord Jesus the more you pray for others, because Jesus came for others and praying for others is entering more deeply into the mystery of His divine intercession. There are so many people who need our prayers, and to take the time to lift them up to the Lord is one of the greatest services we can perform.

Maybe you can buy a notebook in which you can write down all the people for whom you want to pray. I am sure that book will fill up very soon, and you can take that book with you in your prayer and ask the Lord to touch all the people whose names you have brought together. Doing so, you certainly will experience more fully the love of Jesus.
Henri Nouwen in a letter to “Ruth” dated February 3, 1983, from Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life [affiliate link]

This isn’t a bad idea. Nouwen states further, “My conviction is that those who desire to come closer to the Lord will be richly rewarded. Be sure to ask the Lord to give you the gift of prayers. It is the greatest gift He wants to give.” In prayer, we commune with God. We experience further God’s companionship and presence. The reward Nouwen speaks of is God; God is our treasure, and we receive it by seeking after him. The desire to seek God is a gift. It is a gift extended to us and made sure in and through Jesus.

In Isaiah 33:5-6, the prophet writes:

The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high;
    he will fill Zion with his justice and righteousness.
He will be the sure foundation for your times,
    a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge;
    the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.

To the degree that we know the Lord, and to the degree that we seek fervently after God, the desire of our hearts should be that others would be blessed by Jesus, would come to know Jesus, and to receive from the Spirit access to salvation and wisdom and knowledge. We have been extended the invitation and privilege and opportunity to pray toward that very end. We have God’s ear. As intercessors, we are invited to bend it.

What is Christian Spiritual Formation Anyway?

Several months ago I had someone ask me how to define Christian spiritual formation. It isn’t easy, because there isn’t just one definition. Some hear the term and choose to shy away from it altogether. But I’ve found it helpful. While in my reading of the Bible I understand spiritual formation and discipleship to be roughly equivalent, discipleship in modern parlance is often associated with involvement in a Bible study or a small group, and I’ve found that using the term “spiritual formation” can often open doors to a broader understanding of what it means to be transformed by the love of Christ. Discipleship to Christ takes place in far more spaces and places than a Sunday school classroom; ideally, the setting for discipleship is understood to be the totality of one’s life lived in Christ, by the Spirit, and under the reign, or kingdom, of God.

I’m linking the following here partly for myself; this article by Wilson Teo from a 2017 issue of Regent University’s Emerging Leadership Journeys journal explores this subject, identifying different definitions of spiritual formation, its theological foundations, goals, elements, and challenges, but for friends who have wondered about this term, where it comes from, and why it matters, this is a helpful survey.

It is certainly good if pastors and leaders are encouraging those in their orbit to become like Christ. In most circumstances this will not be up for debate. But the difficulty comes in answering, with precision and clarity, what the result would be and how it is done.

It has been done. It is being done. It can be done. And it must be done. By faith, and with God’s help.

An Unsexy Idea about Discipleship

Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on water is easy to someone with impulsive boldness, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is something altogether different. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he “followed Him at a distance” on dry land (Mark 14:54). We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises— human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God— but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people— and this is not learned in five minutes.
Oswald Chambers, “Impulsiveness or Discipleship?“

This thought would never headline a conference or excite publishers.

But it is exactly right.

And this is not learned in five minutes.

Helpful Comparisons

I had a seminary professor, Howard Hendricks, who warned his students against the dangers of comparison. At Dallas Theological Seminary, everyone received feedback on their work through a campus mail system. Students gathered near the campus mailboxes, pulled their papers, and the game began.

“What’d you get?”

“How’d you do?”

Hendricks said that if we did it in schoolwork, we’d do it in ministry. We would look at people who were leading churches that are growing numerically or launching new ventures or preaching to large crowds and make one of two mistakes.

If we were leading a growing ministry, we’d be susceptible to pride and self-conceit, thinking that our success could be traced to ourselves. Rather than giving God the glory, remembering the fruit we bear is a sign of God’s presence and grace or that our gifts and abilities trace themselves to God’s favor, and crediting countless co-laborers for their contributions to shared work, we act as though we are the ones who made everything go, that we did it all for God and that God and others should worship and thank us for all of the wonderful things that have taken place.

Conversely, if we work among rocky soil and see little signs of progress, labor among a sleepy congregation that is in need of renewal, or if we’re placed in a small community hidden from the attention of the world, we think we’re failing. We mistakenly believe that God has forgotten us or that the work that we are doing is insignificant in God’s sight. We compare our work to the wrong standard. We do not consider if we’re being faithful with the “talent” God has entrusted to us. Our service is not done unto the Lord. The comparison game leads us to look to others for our sense of well-being in ministry and in faith. As a result, we miss what God is doing in and through us right where we are.

I’ll confess this has been a difficult lesson for me to learn. Like most everyone, I have ambitions and the desire to be successful in what I do. I’ve wanted to “do great things for God” or to be admired. Rather than thinking about my calling, my need for growth, and my next step in faith before God, I’ve compared myself to others and how they are doing rather than considering carefully how I am doing.

The Christian difference here is that I am not only measuring my growth against myself. I am measuring my growth against Christ, in whom I am called to maturity. Ephesians 4:14-16 puts it this way:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Note that Paul calls each member to grow up into Christ. But as we grow, we do so as part of the fellowship of faith. In fact, membership within the body helps us to become all we’ve been created and redeemed to be in Christ, nourished within a kingdom ecosystem that allows each to flourish and to bear fruit that has been appointed in service to the whole.

One last thought that enables us to free ourselves from comparison to others: as part of a redeemed community, we remember that all other members, like us, were sinners in need of God’s grace. Therefore, there is no superiority. But we also remember that those who are part of the Christian community have been claimed by God’s love. Jesus died to demonstrate for us the depths of the love of God for us. Therefore, there is no inferiority. Christ died once, for all.