Fixed-Hour Prayer | Prayer E8 (From the Archive)

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello and welcome to the John Mark Comer Teachings podcast. My name is Inca Dawson and I'm your host. Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space. It's wonderful to have you with us. Work including our prayer series, exploring different types of prayer and what it means to live in relationship with God. Today, John Mark compacts what it means to pray continually and introduces the ancient practice of fixed hour prayer as a way to move through all of our life. Today, John Mark compacts what it means to pray continually and introduces the ancient practice of fixed hour prayer as a way to move through all of life and joyful, grateful awareness of God's presence. Here's John Mark. Hey everybody. Great to see you again. Welcome. If this is just your first or second time here, my name is John Mark. And what I want to do tonight is tie off our prayer series. But tonight is a little less of a sermon. And more kind of, I don't know, if you and I were to sit down for coffee in the coming week on a beautiful Portland day, outdoor patio, whatever. And you were to ask me, hey, what are you learning right now in your apprenticeship to Jesus? I just kind of want to, this is like the lecture version of what I would say, OK? So that's it really very simple tonight, straightforward. And I don't think I'll take too long at all. To start, if you have a Bible, please turn to 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5. There is a line in the New Testament that I just can't get out of my head for a year or two now. And it's here in 1 Thessalonians, which is, if you've never read it before, it's a letter, actually, not a book written really early in the first century, just a few years after Jesus of Nazareth, by this master level of Prentice of Jesus who goes by the name Paul to this church plant, brand new kind of community of followers of Jesus in the first century city of-- we call it Thessalonika. It's actually Thessaloniki. If you wanted to sound really pretentious, nobody cares. But it's Thessaloniki in Greece. And toward the tail end of the letter, he has this little one-line summary of what following Jesus is all about. Have a look. Chapter 5, verse 16 to 18, rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Say that out loud with me. Rejoice always. Pray continually. What does it all come down to at the end of the day? Well, moving through life from a posture of joyful, grateful prayer. The word prayer there in Paul's command to pray continually is prosukomai, which is the Greek verb to pray. But then it's followed by this little word, Adeltthos, which is an adverb that basically means without stopping. Here's a few other ways to translate the Greek into English. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. It's a number of translations. Or here's another. Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances. For this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. Or here's another. Celebrate always. Pray constantly. And give thanks to God no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. This is God's will for all of you in Jesus the anointed. Or as always, Eugene Peterson for the win. Win a doubt, quote the message, that's my philosophy. Be cheerful no matter what. Pray all the time. Thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live. However you word it, the idea that Paul is getting out is crystal clear. We are to live from a place of joyful, grateful prayer. Now what exactly is Paul saying here? Pray continually. Is he saying quit your job and throw your iPhone into the will limit? And if you have a family abandon it like the Buddha and wander off into the wilderness and join them on a stairs and pray 24 hours a day. And then what, like for a week and then you die? Like what's his long term plan here? Or is he saying something else? Well, I mean, of course, at one level, it's just hyperbole. He's just saying pray and pray a lot. But at another level, to Paul-- and I would argue all the writers of the New Testament-- prayer is more relational than it is functional. Put another way. It's more about moving through life in relationship to God than it is about doing something, or if you prefer, getting God through prayer to do something. Over the last two months, we covered all sorts of types of prayer-- the Lord's Prayer, Contemplative Prayer, Intercessory Prayer, Unanswered Prayer, Singing Prayer, Imaginative Prayer, Listening Prayer, then last week with Alex, How to Pray for People. Notice that intercessory prayer is one on a list of like seven or eight, and that's not an exhaustive list. But for a lot of people, when I say the word prayer, that's all that comes to mind for you. The picture in your mind's eye of a missionary in a far off corner in the world, kind of old and the haggard and tired looking eyes closed down on his or her knees, praying for a move of God. And that is prayer, and that is beautiful. But that's just one little corner of the room that is prayer or relationship to God. The most basic definition of prayer that I can think of is this, a whole life orientation toward God. That's prayer, a whole life orientation toward God. Robert Mahulland in his book Invitational to a Journey, which I'm guessing a lot of you don't recognize that book. It's a bit old now from the '90s, but it is one of the best books I've ever read on following Jesus and how we are transformed. And I love his definition of prayer, quote, "In established posture of relationship with God that becomes the context within which we experience all the events and relationships of our lives." Let me read that again. This is prayer, an established posture of relationship with God that becomes the context within which we experience all the events and relationships of our lives. That is what we are after, a whole person orientation to God through all of the events and all of the relationships of our day to day life. I think that is what Paul is getting at here with this command to pray, quote, "continually." His end goal for your prayer life, and by that, I mean, your relationship to God is nothing short of a whole life orientation to God all day long. You wake up in the morning and you have your coffee, you walk your dog, you brush your teeth, you exercise, you listen to MPR on your commute into work, you answer email, you design a thing, you go to class, whatever your life is, you make a coffee, you build a house, whatever your thing is, you raise a family, you go home, all of life, an awareness of, and connection to God. There's all sorts of labels for this kind of a life. Right here, Paul calls it prayer, quote, "continually." But in his letter to the church in Galatia, he calls it "walking in the spirit." I love that word picture, walking side by side with the spirit of God. Jesus calls it abiding. That's a first century agrarian word picture. And Jesus makes the claim that if you don't make abiding, the center point of your life, you will bear little or no fruit. And interesting, in that teaching, it's in John 14, if you wanna go read or 15, the number one fruit on Jesus list is joy. Joy, a deep, pervasive sense of well-being at a soul level is more than anything, the byproduct in Jesus' mind of abiding. Evangelicals, in my church tradition that I grew up in, talk a lot about a quiet time. Our Catholic brothers and sisters call it contemplation. Skyjatani, his beautiful little book with, calls it life with God. Brother Lawrence, if you know him, he calls it the practice of the presence of God. I think that's one, that one is actually my favorite, because this kind of a life, it takes practice. Have a look at this from the one and only Dallas Willard. This is my all-time favorite Dallas Willard quote, I've used it before. I literally have it on the inside of my closet wall at my house, and I read it most days before I go to work. I just wanna read this really slow, and give it time to sink in to your mind and imagination. He writes this, the first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds. This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in thus practicing the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to Him. In the early time of our practicing, we may well be challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God. Anybody? Or is that just me? Meaning your mind is all over the map. You're like, yes, anything but God. But these are habits, not the law of gravity, and can be broken. A new, grace-filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps toward keeping God before us, more on that in a bit. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the north. If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the pole star of our inward beings. How good is that? That is from the great omission, which Dallas Willard is a pain to read. That's the easiest thing he has out. And it's great 'cause it's actually a collection of essays, and he has a little 40-page intro, and you can just read the 40 pages and kind of get the gist of it, and then you can pick or choose with the rest. That's from one of the essays. It's fantastic. Are we here every year? You should too. Moving on. Any other questions? Thank you. You know, we have this little turn of phrase at Bridgetown, "The three goals of apprenticeship to Jesus, "go one, be with Jesus, "go two, become like Jesus, "and go three, do what he did." That is not a three-step formula, because following Jesus is not a three-step formula. But there is a flow to that. And if in a hypothetical scenario, following Jesus was a three-step formula, or a formula of any kind, I have no doubt that step one would be whatever you wanna call it, be with Jesus. Practice the presence of God, abide in the vine, pray continually, walk in the spirit, life with God, get up in the morning and have a quiet time, whatever you wanna call it. That is the beginning point. It's also the middle and it's also the end. The longer I follow Jesus, several decades now, the older and hopefully wiser, but not necessarily that I get, the more I come to believe that life is very complex. Even following Jesus, I think, is very complex. But the most important thing in life is very simple. You wake up in the morning, you have KimEx coffee, right? You all know this is an ancient spiritual discipline that is non-negotiable if you follow Jesus, okay? That was sarcasm, kind of. But you wake up in the morning, you get your whole person, mind and body into the presence of God. And you do, whether that takes you two minutes or two hours, you do whatever is necessary. And then you move heaven and earth, you do everything in your power to live out of that place all day long. You might make it four hours, you might make it four minutes, but then you just come back, you come back, you come back. There's all sorts of other things to think about. And that in my humble opinion, is the most important thing in life. And that place, that Jesus called the secret place. Have you ever read that teaching of Jesus? He has a great teaching about how, you know, when you pray, go into your room and close the door. Now, this is the first century, okay? So don't imagine like I mentioned in Lake Go, okay? Like most of life was done outdoors, and but most people had a home that was usually one room, and there's usually one door in it. And there was like just a little back room that was kind of a storage room slash mini barn for the animals where you would put extra food and your donkey or whatever. Really the only private space in a home in the ancient world, unless if you were rich or whatever. Jesus says, when you pray, that's where you go. Like the one place where you can go and close the door and shut out the world, and you go to that secret place. And for Jesus, it's more than a room in your house. It's a place in your heart, in your thinking and your feeling. And that secret place of awareness of and connection to the God that Jesus called Father, that if you take Jesus seriously, that is the ultimate source of joy. For Jesus, there is a seamless connection between what he called a biting, and what we call happiness, or he called joy. Though there is no line, seamless connection between those two. That is the life that you crave. We live in a social experiment built around the pursuit of life, liberty, and what, pursuit of happiness. We live in a city that has taken that to the next level and defined life, liberty, and happiness as a food cart and a bicycle and a fantastic beer on a Sunday afternoon. So seriously, our whole city is like a temple to the God of hedonism, right? Like just how much can we eat and drink and how good can it be and fantastic can we just make loafing around? Like that's the city that we've been. Seriously, I was gone for three weeks and I came back and I'm like, man, this city is just like utopia four months of the year, the other eight months of the year, it's Portland. But four months of the year, utopia, we live in the city that is chasing after whether you wanna call it joy or the American vernacular happiness or whatever in our good time. And we're chasing after in this next meal with a new restaurant opening or the new bar or new drink or vacation or a hiking trip or stamp on our passport, promotion at work or that business we started or more followers on whatever or however we define it. But the beauty of the way of Jesus is that joy, it's not out there, it's right here. And you don't need more money, you don't need a nicer apartment, you don't need a new car, you don't need a change in relationship status, you don't need a promotion at work, you don't need a certificate. Like that's all great stuff, sure, fantastic. It's a whole other teaching. But you don't need any of that to tap into joy. There is an undercurrent running right beneath the distraction of your mind and the disordered love of my heart, of in the language of your testament love and joy and peace that is all the byproduct of life in the flow of the Spirit. All you have to do is slow down long enough to tap into it, it's waiting for you. So for those of you that are at that spot in your life where you want to tap into that, you want that kind of a life. Well, I think there are a few things that you and I have to do. So this is basically the three things that I'm working at right now in my apprenticeship to Jesus, not only over the last few weeks, but really over the last few years. It's this, first, slow down. Most of us have to slow down. Most of us move way too fast through our day and our week and next thing you know our life, to spend any time abiding. A life of hurry will sweep the rug out from under a life of abiding. It's been said that if the devil can't make you sin, he'll make you busy. Because if you think about it, both sin and hurry have the exact same effect. They cut off your life from relationship with God. Think about it. When you sin, you have to seal off your mind from its default setting of connection to God, and you have to live as if God is not with you, even though he is. To close your eyes and pretend like he's not there. When you hurry, the exact same thing happens. When you hurry, you have to step outside of the moment in a futile and frantic attempt to bend space and time to your will because you have too much to do and not enough time to do it. And the moment that you step out of the moment, you step, you break off your awareness of in connection to God. Because God is always in the here and in the now. Not back there, not up there, right here, right now. So most of us have to slow down. Secondly, and let me just pause there. I don't just be in all of you type A workaholics need to slow down. You're not your head. The reality is a lot of you are way too busy and not because you're a workaholic or your type A because you have Netflix. And you have internet connection. And you have too many friendships. And like your life is just over busy. And it's not even with, to be honest, it's not even with meaningful things. That's why I think busyness is an epidemic. It's not just like for type A workaholic kind of career people. It's for everybody around us. It's so easy to get sucked in to a life that is not life. We have to slow down. Secondly, we have to open up our life to the flow of the spirit. That's what it's all about. And to do that, we have to remove any and all obstructions and obstacles to the flow of the Spirit in our life. One of my favorite teachers of the way of Jesus and writers is this pastor down in the Bay Area by the name of John Orpberg. You might not know that name, he's actually quite well known, but kind of he's a generation ahead of me, one of the best Bible teachers of my parents' generation. And he was a mentee of Willard for like 20 years and so I'm like a super fan and I read all of his stuff and so I was just a few weeks ago I was down in San Francisco teaching on a Sunday and I had the chance to sneak out for the afternoon and go buy him lunch. And I just I'm not a fanboy with a lot of people, I was so fanboy. It was like I had my journal and my list of questions and I was like thinking the conversation through and like working on it on my drive down and my pen out and I wanted to record it on my phone. I just thought that's a little creepy so let's save that for the second lunch, you know. And and it was just he's you know I think he's 60 years old and he's just everything he's everything I want to be when I grow up you know just at ease and his own soul and sometimes you meet people and they're very different in real life than on stage and he was just absolute congruence the exact same person from the podcast and the book and all of that. Anyway I was smitten it was fantastic and it's just really great to be around somebody who's been following Jesus longer than I've been alive and has become a phenomenal human being through apprenticeship to Jesus that just like is that not inspiring so anyway and ask questions like how do you pray how do you follow Jesus how do you pass your church and stay human and all of that stuff. Anyway long conversation but one of my favorite things he had this great little question that he said he asks before any activity he'll just pause for a little moment and he'll ask this very simple question does this activity the show on Netflix the social media binge this relationship this whatever does this open me up to the flow of the spirit or block me off from the flow of the spirit and I loved how framed it because I think when a lot of us kind of run an activity through the is the sin or not filter we frame it through a moral lens rather than through relational lens and that's not all about I'm all for morality I think Jesus is too but even more important than the question is this sin or not and really we're asking there is like how close can I get to the line without getting in trouble what if that's the wrong question what if a far better question is does this lead me deeper into relationship with the Father or not because if the answer is no then like I'm saying no not only to God I'm saying no to love and joy and peace and what I ache for at a soul level Nicholas Herman better known as brother Lawrence was the 17th century Parisian monk maybe you know his story devoted his life to what he called the practice of the presence of God it was dishwasher in a monastery and nothing glamorous at all wasn't a priest or a teacher but people would write letters to him from all over Europe and he became famous like just because he was all about practicing the presence of God and he was just full everybody who writes about him says he was just full of joy and after his death as you know letters were put together into this little book/panflit called the practice of the presence of God which fun fact is thought to be the most widely read book in the world after the Bible itself and in this little book this little collection of letters he writes that the most important part of the practice of the presence of God is quote renouncing once and for all whatever does not lead to God I love that framework just does this activity lead to God or not and don't misread me here I'm not saying that you need to you know like do church stuff 24 hours a day all right so like come back we talk a lot about work and about rest and about play all of that culture all of it's beautiful but run any activity through that lens does this lead me to God or not and it doesn't have to be a church activity doesn't have to be of course reading your Bible prayer fasting community for me like reading I read a novel a week right now I'm reading all the light you cannot see pull its surprise winner from two years ago is nothing about Jesus in it and I just feel like Jesus and I are reading this thing together one page at a time I just think he really likes it and he's like dang that is some good writing and I'm like she's blind but her dad makes her a model of the city and it's like just so it's just so it's just like me and Jesus are reading this book together right now and it's like I open my soul up to Jesus it's just so I don't know what it is for you maybe for you it's cooking or it's hiking or it's like ultimate frisbee or I don't know what it is like I feel so alive I'm like okay have fun with that whatever it is for you does this activity does it lead me to God or not or is there a way to invite God into this activity or not because that's what it's all about open your life up to the flow of the Holy Spirit so first we have to slow down second most of us have to open our life up to the flow of the Holy Spirit and third arrange we have to arrange our days around the practice of the presence of God like so many things prayer comes down to your schedule all of the peas on the Myers-Briggs right now or just saying no like they use the dirty word schedule I'm so it's not authentic yeah most of life should not be authentic that's a whole other teaching but you know it's true Stephen Covey of 90s daytime or fame most of you are too young to get that joke but had this great line about how we achieve inner peace when our schedule is aligned with our values I love that you come to believe Jesus claims and Paul's and so many other followers of Jesus down through history the deep soul level joy that you and I crave is found in prayer and by prayer once again I mean relation not just like interest relationship whole person orientation to God all day long that that's where the joy is found it stands to reason that you would make prayer your highest value in life which means you would put it at some place on your schedule and of course it's the both and if your Myers-Briggs person it's the both and of the J and the P of structure and spontaneity we need both not one or the other based on your personality you default to one but we need both in order for a well-rounded spirituality and experience of God all that to say following Jesus has to make it onto your schedule or the odds are it will not happen or it will be sporadic at best Dallas Willard would frequently say this little line quote you must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment joy and confidence in your everyday life with God I love that think about your morning routine think about your kind of week think about your weekend how you spend your free time think about your budget think about you know your relationship your disciplines or lack of disciplines to your phone like you must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment joy and confidence in your everyday with life with God he had this little follow-up line what he would say you must arrange your days so that sin no longer looks attractive to you there is a way to live in which sin no longer looks attractive to you there are 86,400 seconds in every single day when you wake up in the morning your goal in mind as an apprentice of Jesus is to live as many of those as we can in the presence of God with our mind just to click over and set on God the attention of our heart set on God John Orpher again writes this prayer more than any other single activity is what places us in the flow of the spirit when we pray hearts get convicted sin gets confessed believers get united intentions get encouraged people receive guidance the churches drink them stubbornness gets melted wills get surrendered evil gets defeated grace gets released illness gets healed sorrows are comforted faith is born hope is grown and love triumphs in prayer in the presence of God we come closest to being fully ourselves and I love his line here the goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God let me read that again the goal of prayer is to live all of my life and I would say the goal of following Jesus to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God so if that is the end goal right that's the long term kind of your own a journey of following Jesus that's the destination that's maybe a year away 10 years away 20 30 40 but that's the end term goal to live all of your life speak all of your words in the joyful awareness for the presence of God how do we get from here to there how do we get from right now I just like can't put down my phone and I'm over busy and I'm stressed out because of work and I'm behind on email and I have a dog and a roommate to brother Lawrence in the back of the kitchen just be mean like one dirty pan at a time like how do we cross that chasm how do we as Willard said take intentional steps toward keeping God before our mind end quote well all sorts of ways here's one once again this is for those of you that want to move forward if you're not ready for that that's just fine there is a practice from the way of Jesus actually it's for older than the way of Jesus. It goes back to several hundred years before Jesus Himself. It goes by a few names. I call it Fixed Hour Prayer. In the Catholic tradition, it's called the Daily Office. In the monastic community, you read about the liturgy of hours, which is this idea, but like on steroids. Most of the time, it's three prayer three times a day, morning, noon and night. In the monastic community, it's seven times. It's like, here it is, mountains, midnight, lads, 3 a.m., prime, 6 a.m., turse, 9 a.m., sex, noon, not sex. There's not a lot of that in the monastery, especially not at noon. 9 3 p.m., vespers, 6 p.m., complying, 9 p.m. So that's hopefully you already all practiced this in your apprenticeship to Jesus. My favorite is lads every morning, 3 a.m. I'm just, you drive by my house. The light is on. I'm just there in my office. You can't see me because I'm down on my knees. Just face out before God, speaking in tongues, just caught up in the glory. Every single morning, for an hour. So obviously that's like crazy. That's people who literally have a full-time job. And it's what do you do for living? I pray, okay. Most of the time you read about prayer three times a day. For example, Psalm 35, 17, evening, morning and noon, Jews day started at night, evening, beginning of the day, morning, the middle, and noon, the end. I cry out in distress and he hears my voice. I love how honest he is brutally honest. Even evening, morning and noon, I read a liturgy from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. No, I cry out in my distress and God hears my voice. Meaning three times a day, I pause and I offer up to God whatever it is that I'm thinking and feeling in that moment. And I meet God in that place. One of the reasons that so many of you, if we're honest in the room tonight, I think that prayer is boring and have no desire to do what I'm teaching on tonight is because you don't actually pray, you pretend. And you don't actually offer up to God what it is that you're thinking and feeling. You filter what it is that you're thinking and feeling because a ton of it is lousy. And you offer up to God whatever is left that you should be thinking and you should be feeling. Am I right? Which is just this childish game that we play with God. Like, you are where he's God, right? And he knows what you're thinking better than you do. And he knows what you're feeling better than I do. You can't hide anything. Life comes in prayer when you stop praying what you should pray and you start praying where you're actually at. And you pause. There's a discipline to it. You set a time. It's in your schedule. It's on your phone, whatever. Then you're routine. There's a discipline, but you just stop and you offer up to God. or distress. Joy or doubt and anger and confusion and God. I don't feel you at all right now, and you invite God into that thought. Into that moment, into that frustration. Have you read the book of Psalms recently? It's a collection of ancient Hebrew prayers. It's a lot of Lausier prayers in there. Seriously, read it, doubt, anger, lament, bitterness, rage, hatred, confusion, depression. Like the whole gamut of the human condition is in there as a prayer to God. You just offer up to God. Whatever it is that you're thinking and feeling in that moment. And that is a huge step forward. I just want to show you, I'm going a little long, I just want to show you one story before you wrap up with your finger here. We'll come back and just read that last line one more time. But turn really fast to Daniel chapter six. If you're new to the Bible, there's a table of contents on page one. This is an ancient memoir from hundreds of years before Jesus of Nazareth by a brilliant man, kind of a political genius by the name of Daniel. And Daniel chapter six, if you're a group in church, you know this story. It's the story of Daniel in the like non-vegan lion's den. You read that story. So fascinating story. The odds are you know it or you know the gist of it. I just want to read to you the first part of the story. I want to remind you what put Daniel in the lion's den in the first place. Chapter six, first one. It please, dearest king of the Persian Empire, most powerful and influential empire in human history at the time before the Roman Empire. To a point 120 sat traps to rule throughout the kingdom is spread out all over the world with three chief ministers over them. One of whom was Daniel who's not a Persian, not a pagan at all. He's a Hebrew and a follower of Yahweh, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Now the sat traps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer at loss, no corruption in the government. Now Daniel, man, how cool would it be to have this said about you at your work? He's so distinguished himself among the chief ministers and the sat traps as co-workers by his exceptional qualities that the king plan to set him over the whole kingdom. He's a very powerful and influential man in the world after Darius himself. Now at this, the chief ministers and the sat traps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs like office politics, nothing new, but they were unable to do so. Listen, they could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally, these men said, "We'll never find any basis for charges against this man." Daniel, unless it has something to do with the law of his god. Say with me. So the chief ministers and sat traps, "When is a group to the king and said, "May King Darius live forever?" blah, blah, blah. Here's what we want you to do. Issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who praised any god or human being during the next 30 days except to you, your majesty, shall be thrown into the lion's den. Now your majesty, issue the decree, put it into writing so that it cannot be altered. So King Darius said, "That sounds like a great idea. I am awesome." Okay, that's in the Hebrew, right? Now, when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, take a look here at 10, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows were opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and he prayed, giving thanks to his god. Just as he had done before, then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for his help. So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree and the story goes on and he is in the lion's den. And if you want to know what happens, read it or grow up in church, by the way, works. I just want to remind you, what is Daniel put in the lion's den for? Yeah, fix our prayer three times a day, morning, noon, night. Now think about it. How many of you have read the first five books of the Bible or like, "Skimmed?" We'll count Skimed, okay? Most of you? Is there a command in there, what is called the Torah, the law, to pray three times a day? A command where you have to do it? Nope. If I think about it, is there a command in all of the Bible to pray three times a day? Not really. Is there a command that you need to wake up in the morning and first thing read your Bible and pray? Oh, it's what most followers of Jesus who do well at it all do. But no, there's no command. Is God angry at Daniel if he like takes an afternoon off prayer? No, is God angry at you if you, you're like, "I've never had an afternoon on prayer." But is he angry at you if you like wake up and check Instagram instead of reading your Bible? No, it's not a command. You don't have to do it. You're stupid not to. But that's a whole other teaching. But you don't have to do it. You have to think about it. Here's Daniel. His life hangs in the balance. Not only that, but he has the chance to become the most powerful and influential man in the world after the king. And to shape or reshape the Persian Empire to more in line with God's vision for human flourishing, all he has to do is for 30 days, like just praying the quiet of his heart. All he has to do, just close the window for 30 days. It's all you have to do. Like, what are you doing? I'm like, you know, doing my hair or whatever, you know? That's it. Or just say, "I'm going on a walk." Are you talking to the air? No, no, just on a walk. Just, that's all he has to do. He is willing to die and to give up the chance of a lifetime just because he will not break his practice of fixed hour prayer. It was that important to him. Could it be that Daniel who was just brilliant, that he was so smart, that he realized if I don't practice this, if I don't ground myself in the practice of the presence of God, I don't stand a chance in the corrosive soil of a place like Persia before that Babylon. So far from Jerusalem, so far from the temple, so far from the Torah, I don't stand a chance. If that was true for Daniel, it was just a tad better than most of us in the room tonight. How much more so is that true for you and I? Not living in ancient Persia, but living in Hortland, Oregon, in corrosive soil, that of a secular, progressive, post-Christian city. How much more so is it true? If you and I don't ground our life at a so level in the practice of the presence of God, the other. "I'm sorry that you and I will not make it." How many of you have friends that were sitting next to you a year ago and aren't here anymore? I don't need to fix our prayer, I'm not. Okay. Daniel does. He's kinda smart. I do. Jesus seemed to think he did. Is this a legalistic guilt trap? Not at all. This is like how you get in on life. This is like how you get in on love and joy and peace. So coming out of our prayer series, I'm just about done. I just wanna, I don't know, it's challenge in okay word, call, invite, woo, whatever, suggest. This is obviously your, totally your decision. But I just wanna challenge all of you to fix our prayer. And once again, I don't mean like 3am, an hour naked whipping your back, like in the rain. (audience laughs) Save that for the dark ages, all right. I just mean, I wanna challenge you to two or three times a day, pause, and set God before your mind. If you have an hour in the morning to read the Bible and pray and pull out of prayer cards and do a listening prayer or great, if you're not there right now and five minutes of stretch for you, okay. Start where you're at. Start right where you're at. All what I do is really, really simple. I wake up in the morning, I make really good coffee that I can't quite afford. And it's the Kenyan right now from heart is like off the chain as they say. I don't know who they is, that was like 1999 or like I think two-box said that, but thank you. I make my coffee, I digress. And I just, I read a song. So in the morning I read a song and usually I'll do a little listening prayer. The over-vocation, I was so fun. I just would ask God a question every morning. I've been thinking about that line of Ephesians, find out what pleases the Lord. And so I would just, I had extra time. And so I would just ask God the question, what would please you today? And usually just one or two things would come to mind. Usually it had to do with somebody else in my family where I have my kids. And hopefully I would go and do that a few hours later and usually it was the best part of my day. And in the morning I just, I read a song. I take a moment and I listen to God. At noon, I slip out of my office, usually for like a five or 10 minute walk. It's not like a 40, it's like five or 10 minutes. I pray the Lord's Prayer. And I pull out my prayer cards, one, two, three of them. And at night, the examine, if you were here for that teaching, if not, it's on the podcast, replay, rejoice, repent, and resolve. That's it. You can take an hour each time. You can take five minutes each time. You can take five seconds each time. Just to start where you're at and move forward. Just to pause, to recenter, remind, and your heart ungod. And what happens is at first it's kind of hard. But actually, after time, it's really easy. So psychologists talk a lot about the J-curve. You know about that? Maybe you had that in sociology class or psychology class, the learning thing, where normally when you start to learn something new, whether it's like the piano or Spanish or prayer, you start to learn something new, and you think it's going to look like that top line in orange. And reality, it's going to look like that bottom line in blue. Want, want, want. Normally, you get way worse at something before you get better. So best of all, Jake can think of it because everybody, if you're American, you kind of just speak a little bit of Spanish and play a little bit of guitar. We all kind of do badly. You know what I'm saying? See? Comprendé? You're like, see? That's the only thing I know. But we all kind of do both just a little bit and badly. So most guitarists are self-taught, right? So back in the '90s, I grew up in the '90s where we didn't have YouTube, which is why-- yeah, we just play power chords all the time. So I thought that was funny. No? OK. Power chords are really easy to play. They take two fingers. Anybody can do it. It was a Dave Grohl thing. Anyway, when you teach yourself guitar, you naturally pick all down strum. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And then once you actually start to pick it up and get better, maybe you take a lesson or you watch a YouTube video or you go to a concert and you pick close attention, you realize, oh, actually, the proper technique for guitar is down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. And then you have to go back and re-teach yourself the proper technique. And it's a pain in the butt because you get way worse before you get way better. And for like a month or two or three, depending on how much you practice, you just feel like, I got worse at guitar. I'm like back when I started, I sound like an idiot. It feels unnatural. It feels awkward and clumsy. It doesn't feel authentic to me. It's like, I'm bad at it. Yes, you are bad at it. But you do it long enough. You don't give up. Some of you're like, that's when I stopped. That's when you stopped. You don't give up. And next thing, it starts to become natural. And it's like becomes as natural as breathing. And actually, it's really easy. And you don't even think about it anymore. And then your guitar playing surges forward just for some of us. All right, goes forward. The same is true with pretty much any kind of practice. There's no different prayers. Some of you were like, I thought I was pretty good at prayer. And then we did this like practice on prayer. And now I just feel like I'm terrible at it. Like imagine a prayer and listening to prayer and saying, I can't even keep up track of it all. Like, I'm so bad I just give up. That's the J-Curve. Like it gets worse before it gets better. Just stick with it. Even if it feels a little awkward and clumsy and forced and inauthentic and like a time around your foot and just stick with it. And after a while, neuroplasticity will do its thing. And your mind, every time you just get at that little moment, that little free space in your thought life, little break from the activity in front of you or whatever, the noise, the traffic. Your mind will default instead of do its usual list of suspects. Kind of worry about that thing tomorrow. And does she like me? And I'm really mad at him. I'm really mad about that. And I really want to buy this, but I don't have the money. But if he said, but my mom will find out, like that whole thing, whatever, like the mental video is that plays in your mind's eye and imagination, that roller coaster that we all live on moment to moment, over time, that will start to change. Not all at once, not in a moment, over time, through practice, through discipline, when you keep at it, in the language of the New Testament, through faithfulness. That will start to change. And your mind will start to default instead of to that mental video of worry and anxiety and lust and greed and insecurity. It will start to default to, oh yeah, God's here. Wow, that's a beautiful day. Thank you. And it's not always fun like that. I'm driving home from the Eastern Oregon, from Camping on Thursday with my wife, family in the car. It's a beautiful day. And we just get in this deep conversation where we don't agree with each other. We're in a really bad fight, all right? It's really bad. And I am so mad at my wife. And she is, I'm in theory, mad at me. And I'm right, and she doesn't know it yet. And we're in this fight. And it's just ugly and nasty. And there's a deep pain over this area in our marriage. And it's just a lousy way to end a vacation. I'm just thinking really, the last day, like seriously, come on. I can't wait to go back and teach the way of Jesus. Just that stuff, you know? And we come to this low in the conversation. And I just have a little free space. And all of a sudden, God comes into my mind's eye. And I'm like, God, I don't-- can't have you here right now. I need to win. And you're not interested in that. I don't-- later. I need you Sunday. I don't need you to teach. I don't need you now to win, OK? But God comes-- and in that little moment, you'll know what I'm talking about, right? Because you all have these moments. Some of you a lot, some of you not so much. But you all have these moments. In that moment, I have this little sliver of an opportunity to say no, to block the flow of the Holy Spirit or to say yes, and to open my life up to the ugly, selfish, narcissistic, angry part of my heart, this deep place of pain in a relationship with the person I love most. And to invite God into that mess, God help is about all I can get out most of the time. And there was this shift. And it wasn't like I'd turned and started to quote long fellow and like, you know, it wasn't that, but that turned it. And then we had a great night together. All that to say, all through your day, not just in like an emotional experience at church in the middle of a fight with your significant other, the stress of email tomorrow morning, a paper that's late, whatever your thing is, like right and you will have tomorrow hundreds, at least dozens, little open doors, a little window where you can grab your phone, you can shut God out, you can stay in your anger, you can let your mind play that broken record, or you can just pause and say, come, Holy Spirit, help or help, that's enough, help or thank you or I love you. or thank you for your love, or what a beautiful day. Whatever it is, just right there. The more you do that, the more you will do that. The more you teach and you train your mind to come back to God, come back to God, come back to God, the more God will become the center. Not only of your mind, but out of that, your whole life. That's the invitation of Jesus. And guess what will happen? You will start to leak out love, enjoy, and peace, and patience. Will you mess up? Yes. Will you get out of the flow all the time? Will you feel like a tool shed if you're me? Yes. But then you just come back. There's mercy. Come back. Mercy. Come back. Mercy. And next thing you know, you're just there. That's it. And that's, I think, what he's calling me to. That's my life. What am I working on right now? I'm trying to slow down, open my life to the flow of the Spirit, and practice the presence of God. That's it. I think that's what God is calling not only me, but a lot of you too tonight. And that's God's will for you. I love that line. Normally when we think about the will of God, and we ask that age-old question, what is the will of God for my life? What we mean is what are like the major -- what's God's will for the major decisions of my life? Do I marry him or her or no? Do I move to New York or no? Do I become a doctor or a lawyer or a this or that? Or like, live at my mom's house and play halo. Like what? You don't need to ask that question, by the way. But we think about major decisions. And that's those are great questions. But guess what? You already know 99% of God's will for your life. There it is, right in front of you in black and white. Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. Start there. The most important and most influential decisions you will ever make are not the major decisions in my humble opinion. What city you live in, what career you pick. That matters. But even more so, you know what matters? The thousands, if not millions, of tiny, miniscule, ordinary, boring decisions you will make about what you're doing. Wake up in the morning. Your relationship to your phone. Do you have disciplines there or not? Are you in community or not? What about diet exercise? How is your body and how do you relate to God? Like just what about free time? What's your budget like? What's your relationship with your mom? Just these normal, ordinary, boring decisions that over time have a cumulative effect that make a life. How many of you want to come to the end of your journey? At least this side of resurrection. And stare death in the face and say that was a life well lived. Willards, last words, eyes open, dine of cancer, on no pain medication, lucid, his last words before death were thank you. I would love to have my last words be thank you. If you want that, don't worry about the major decisions. We'll figure that out later. Start with what you know. Slow down. Open your life to the flow of the Spirit. Arrange your days around the practice of the presence of God. Move through life from a posture of joyful, grateful prayer. Let's stand in prayer. That was a powerful question from John Oppaugh. Does this open me up to the flow of the Spirit? Or block me off from the flow of the Spirit? We make dozens of these little choices every single day. Maybe opening ourselves to the flow of the Spirit in our everyday activities might be the way to experience the closeness to God that we crave. So to end, let's take some time to talk with the Holy Spirit about the activities and habits that either opening you up or blocking you off from His presence. Start by taking a few deep breaths with me. Become aware of God's presence. When you're ready, ask the Holy Spirit, what's one thing in my daily life? Maybe a habit, an activity, a relationship, or even just how I use my phone that's subtly blocking me off from you? And what's one step I could take this week to either release that thing or invite you into it? I give you 30 seconds here and then close with amen. Amen. Thanks for listening. This podcast is from Practice in the Way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks for little thoughts for our show music. We're a crowd-funded nonprofit to everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by the circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks to the day goes to Austin from Fourth Wayne, Indiana. Michael from Bon Aqua, Tennessee. Chloe from Quiz Bamses, New Brunswick. Christian from Selenis, California. And Savannah from Mill Creek, Indianapolis. Thank you all very much. To join these friends in the circle, or learn more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.