Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

by Timothy J. Keller

our purpose is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

We may pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, but if we don’t enjoy God supremely with all our being, we are not truly honoring him as Lord.7

Contemplative prayer . . . neither can nor should be self-contemplation, but [rather] a reverent regard and listening to . . . the Not-me, namely, the Word of God.”9

prayer is both conversation and encounter with God.

The traditional forms of prayer—adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication—are

Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine—a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No—it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t let it just slip our minds.

I do not know You God because I am in the way.10

Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves.

Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.

divine glory that would have been fatal to Moses

ordinarily prayer will be addressed to the Father with gratitude to the Son and dependence on the Spirit.

PRAYER What It Is Work: Prayer is a duty and a discipline. Word: Prayer is conversing with God. Balance: Prayer is adoration, confession, thanks, and supplication. What It Requires Grace: Prayer is “In Jesus’ name,” based on the gospel. Fear: Prayer is the heart engaged in loving awe. Helplessness: Prayer is accepting one’s weakness and dependence. What It Gives Perspective: Prayer reorients your view toward God. Strength: Prayer is spiritual union with God. Spiritual Reality: Prayer seeks a heart sense of the presence of God. Where It Takes Us Self-Knowledge: Prayer requires and creates honesty and self-knowledge. Trust: Prayer requires and creates both restful trust and confident hope. Surrender: Prayer requires and creates surrender of the whole life in love to God. PART FOUR Deepening Prayer

There is a note of realism here. Notice that the tree bears fruit only in season, yet it never loses its leaves. Meditation leads to stability—the tree is an evergreen!—but not to complete immunity from suffering and dryness. We must not always expect meditation to lead to uniform experiences of joy and love. There are seasons for great delight (springtime blossoms?) and for wisdom and maturity (summertime fruit?). However, there are also spiritual wintertimes, when we don’t feel God to be close, though our roots may still be firmly in his truth.

First, what did the original author intend to convey to his readers in this passage? Second, what role does this text play in the whole Bible; how does it contribute to the gospel message and move along the main narrative arc of the Bible, which climaxes in the salvation of Jesus Christ?

When I forget I am justified by faith alone—I give place to guilt and regret about the past. I therefore live in bondage to idols of power and money that make me feel better about myself. When I forget I’m being sanctified through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit—I give up on myself, stop trying to change. When I forget the hope of my future resurrection—I become afraid of aging and death. When I forget my adoption into the family of God—I become full of fears. I don’t pray with candor. I lose my confidence. I try to hide my faults from God and myself.

There are many traditional ways to get such a clear view of a text. One is to read the biblical text slowly, answering four questions: What does this teach me about God and his character? About human nature, character, and behavior? About Christ and his salvation? About the church, or life in the people of God? So, for example, we might read John 2:13–22, about Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple:

Another fruitful approach to meditation is to ask application questions. Look within the passage: for any personal examples to emulate or avoid, for any commands to obey, for any promises to claim, and for any warnings to heed.

Another approach to meditating on the Scripture, especially with a short passage, is to take one crucial verse and think through it by emphasizing each word. Ask what each word uniquely contributes to the meaning of the text, or what meaning would be lost from the statement if that particular word were removed.

Another way to fix the mind on the truth of the passage is to paraphrase the verse in your own words. Read the verse(s) and close the Bible and try to restate it. Then look back at the passage and you will see how much you missed. Do this until you are satisfied with your paraphrase. This kind of meditation forces you to think more deeply about the text than you would otherwise. If you realize you don’t really know what a word or concept means, take time to study and find out. Putting it in your own words—your own heart language—will send it down into your inner being more easily.

As we observed before, a final way to meditate on a text is to memorize

We must not settle for an informed mind without an engaged heart.

Yet the root problem of them all is that you are rich in Christ but nevertheless living poor.

“If someone as all-powerful as that loves me like this, delights in me, has gone to infinite lengths to save me, says he will never let me go, and is going to glorify me and make me perfect and take everything bad out of my life—if all of that is true—why am I worried about anything?”