Tag: prayer

Sometimes the Prayer Book Just Makes Sense (sorry for having the word “just” so close to the thought of praying)

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

For those who resist watching videos like the one posted earlier today from “King of the Hill,” here is the text of Bobby’s prayer, which is a brilliant illustration of the enormity that happens when trying to put sober truths into vulgar words.

I want to give a shout out to the man that makes it all happen. Props be to you for this most bountiful meal that’s before us. Okay, check it. God, you got skills. You represent in these vegetables and in this napkin and in the dirt that grows the grains that makes the garlic bread sticks that are on this table today. Yes. Yes. Thanks, J-man. Peace.

Of course, Reformed Protestants don’t need to go the Anglicans to read prayers before meals. Most of the older psalter-hymnals of the Dutch Reformed churches include liturgical resources at the back of the book that reproduce prayers, many of them attributed to Calvin, for public worship, ecclesiastical assemblies, and family devotion. The following is the prayer for before a meal. At the risk of offending contemporary worship leaders, I’d argue this is, like “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” is a better hymn than “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” a better prayer than Bobby’s.

Almighty God, faithful Father, You have made the world and uphold it by Your powerful word. You did provide Israel in the desert with food from on high. Will You also bless us, Your humble servants, and renew our strength by these gifts, which, through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have received from Your bountiful Fatherly hand. Give that we may use them with moderation. Help us to put them to use in a life devoted to You and Your service. May we thus acknowledge that You are our Father and Source of all good things. Grant also that at all times we may long for the lasting food of Your Word. May we thus be nourished to everlasting life, which You have prepared for us by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.

One additional advantage of Calvin’s prayer over Bobby’s is that the Frenchman’s thanksgiving is not blasphemous.

WWDED? (Defenders of Edwards)

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

So here I am, a revived Reformed Protestant, sitting in an average Presbyterian worship service and I am not comfortable. Granted, they are singing hymns and so not guilty of that strange insistence on psalm-singing that plagued Calvin and Knox. But these tunes and words just don’t resonate with my soul.

Then there is the long pastoral prayer. I know my good friend at church wishes the pastor would pray the “long” prayer after the service. He seems to think the pastor could apply the sermon better by praying for the needs of the congregation in light of what the sermon covered. My problem is that the prayer is too long and doesn’t use the language I use in my own quiet times. The pastor feels distant from me and the way I approach God.

And the sermon itself is way too long on exposition and short on application and relevance. I get it that we need to enter into the world of the human authors and their audiences. But I have my needs and the pastor really could do a better job of bringing it down to the sort of temptations and problems I face.

But the biggest problem is the lack of emotion and energy in the service. This place is way too laid back. Talk about God’s frozen chosen. This worship needs to go up tempo, with room for the people to express their own feelings of joy, sorrow, gratitude, and praise. Why not let a praise band lead us in more vibrant songs? Why not let members of the congregation pray? And why not have some testimonies? This service is far too remote from my own experience of God and the way I express my trust in him.

So it looks like I’ll be heading down the street to the non-denominational church where the worship is far more compatible with the way I know and love God.

Okay, maybe I don’t have the logic and feelings quite right, but I’d bet that millions of Americans have left Reformed churches precisely with objections like these. And this would-be kvetch illustrates precisely the problem with efforts to balance the subjective and the objective in Reformed piety. When Edwards’ defenders talk about the need for more emotion or love or affections, and they worry about the dangers of formalism, then how do they respond to a believer like this? We are not talking about the ordo salutis. We are not talking about individual experience in relation to effectual calling, or the place of love in sanctified obedience. We are talking about something as basic as Lord’s Day worship: when people get a strong dose of experience, they invariably want that experience affirmed and empowered in worship.

The Old Life answer is – surprise – take the objective highway to true religion: worshipers really should have their private piety conform more to public worship. They should let the nature and cadence of prayers, the exposition of Scripture, and the idiom and content of hymns (preferably psalms) inform the way they express their own devotion, even in the hot and congested confines of their prayer closet.

If we don’t ask church members to conform their personal experience to corporate devotion, they we are walking with the time bomb of charismatic members putting a lid on it in Sunday worship.

And people wonder I stress the objective or why the subjective looks so threatening. Do they have a clue about the worship wars and who won?

Where's Waldo Wednesday: Keeping the Union Balls in the Air

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

So for my devotions this morning I used a prayer from Calvin and needed to pause to consider what I was requesting (I guess this an argument against forms). Calvin wrote (in French, of course):

Grant, Almighty God, that since thou hast deigned in thy mercy to gather us to thy Church, and to enclose us within the boundaries of thy word, by which thou preserveth us in the true and right worship of thy majesty, O grant that we may continue contended in this obedience to thee; and though Satan may, in many ways, attempt to draw us here and there, and we be also ourselves by nature inclined to evil, O grant, that being confirmed in faith and united to thee by that sacred bond, we may be constantly abide under the restraint of thy word, and thus cleave to Christ thine only begotten Son who has joined us forever to himself, and that we may never by any means turn aside from thee, but be, on the contrary, confirmed in the faith of his gospel, until at length he will receive us all into his kingdom. (Devotions and Prayers of John Calvin, p. 15)

Here is my confusion:

1) Is being united to God different from union with Christ? In this prayer Calvin speaks of union to God, Almighty before union with Christ.

2) If we are united to Christ how do we cleave to him? Doesn’t union suggest a oneness that exists independent of cleaving, such as that between a husband and wife?

3) If we are united to Christ how would we turn aside? Wouldn’t Christ be there when we turned since he is united to us?

My intention is not to mock union. It is to show that its usage is not altogether clear or free of confusion unless we have a map and glossary. Union advocates would really help us out if they could identify the balls.

Forensic Friday: Christ’s Priestly Office

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

Priest is a strong and lovely word. There is no lovelier or sweeter name on earth. It is much better to hear that Christ is called “Priest”, than Lord, or any other name. Priesthood is a spiritual power which means no other than that the priest steps forth, and takes all the iniquities of the people upon himself as though they were his very own. He intercedes with God for them and receives from Him the Word with which he can comfort and help the people. It is lovelier and more comforting than “Father” and “Mother”, for this name brings us everything else. For by being a priest He makes God our Father and Himself our Lord. When I believe in His priesthood, then I know that His work is none other than to be seated in heaven as our Mediator, and that He makes intercession for us, before the Father, without ceasing, and all the time speaks on our behalf. This is the highest comfort which can be given to any man, and no sweeter sermon can be preached to our hearts. (Martin Luther, Exposition of Genesis xiv. W.A. 24. 480)

Praying in Public

Published on by D. G. Hart36 Comments

Since I grew up in a home where the mother passed out tracts with tips and even with fares for turnpike tolls, I will be forever scarred by an evangelical piety that was always in the “car sales” mode, always looking to make the deal. (For a particularly empathetic treatment of this piety – as well as way too many ehff bombs for those with sensitive consciences, see The Big Kahuna.) Part of my mother and father’s piety included prayer before every meal, not only at home but also in the restaurant or diner. Oh, the embarrassment for a pubescent boy when the waitress brought the house salad to the table while dad was prayerfully thanking God for his provision. For that reason it became a source of comfort to learn while doing dissertation research that Machen was no fan of praying in public, say in a restaurant before a meal with commissioners to General Assembly. During my time in the Christian Reformed Church I also welcomed the practice among Dutch-American Calvinists that you did not need to say grace if a meal lacked potatoes or used no utensils. This meant a meal of just burgers at McDonald’s could be consumed without an audible prayer. Add fries to the order and you had to pray out loud.

The point of these memories is to introduce a question for readers of Oldlife: what do you do when you are invited to dinner at the home of non-Christians? Do you bow your head and pray silently before eating? Do you pray with your spouse and/or family by the curb before entering the house or apartment? Or do you simply go with the flow and not pray? My own sense is that good manners involve respecting the rules of the house in which I am a guest. Better then to pray before entering the non-believing home than to make the hosts feel uncomfortable or embarrassed when I bow my head, say a prayer, and invariably miss the mashed potatoes while they are being passed. Doh!

What is impermissible, it seems to me, is for me to turn to the head of the non-Christian household and say, “let me lead us in prayer,” stand, and ask God’s blessing in the name of Christ. If I use the words “we” and “our” in my prayer, I am rightfully including my wife. But I am also including people who have not professed Christ and perhaps given them the impression that they are Christians by the use of “we.” If they are generic God-fearing Americans, that won’t alarm them. If they are some of my secular academic friends, they will think I’m nuts and likely lose respect. And if I pray in the first-person singular – “I just want to thank you Lord” – then why am I praying out loud? Am I not guilty at that point of doing exactly what Jesus told his disciples not to do when he said, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men” (Matt 6:5)?

But so far these questions and considerations are only the sub-point for this post’s point, which is how Christians act in public life in the greatest nation on God’s green earth. For a long time in our country’s history — 1789-1965 — Protestants acted like the public square was their dining room. They could go out and pray in Jesus’ name and not have to worry about anyone else taking exception because those from other faiths were not “real” Americans. The genuiness attributed to being American could sometimes reach back to New England’s Puritan federal theology, or sometimes to the nation-shaping energy of the Second Great Awakening’s Benevolent Empire, or sometimes it was simply a civil religion that put “in God we trust” on coins and “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to show those atheistic Russkies just who was God-fearing. But no matter what version of Christian America, Protestants believed that this land was their land and they did not have to be bashful about praying in public. The public and private were indistinguishable. For proof, just look at the way that Protestants defended prayer and Bible reading in public schools.

The problem with this conception of “real” America was that lots of non-Protestants were also citizens of the nation. The U.S. public square was also the home of Jews, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and various strains of unbelief. In which case, to enter into the public square and speak in Christian categories was akin to going over to a non-Christian friend’s home for dinner and insisting that a prayer be said before the meal. It is one thing to do that in your own home when non-Christian friends come over for a meal – though even then what pronouns do we use for such a prayer to show respect for the guests but not pray falsely to our Lord? But to go over to a non-believers house and be pushy about including non-Christians in forms of Christian devotion is rude.

It seems to me that this is what happens when Christians insist that faith and religious discourse be part of American politics. They don’t seem to recognize that non-Christians also live in the United States. This nation belongs to non-believers as much as it belongs to Christians. In which case, the insertion of religion in American public life is a modern version of Nativism – that nineteenth-century phenomenon that sought to keep Roman Catholics from becoming citizens of the United States (and sometimes burned Roman Catholic buildings). Driving unbelief from the land was wise domestic policy for Israel in the centuries before Christ – not just wise but holy. It is folly for any nation after Christ. For Christ’s followers, it is down right inhospitable.