Tim Keller on the Battle with Prayer and the Pathway to Having fun with God

Prayer

In 2014, Keller was requested what had been his hardest e-book to jot down. His reply: “The e-book I simply completed, as a result of it was on prayer.”¹

Prayer was not only a difficult subject to jot down about; it was additionally a self-discipline of nice private wrestle for Keller, as it’s for numerous believers. Over the course of his grownup life, although, the nice wrestle yielded unimaginable reward.

In reality, not lengthy earlier than his dying, Keller was requested if, trying again on almost fifty years of ministry, there’s something that he would have finished otherwise.

“Completely,” he replied. “I ought to have prayed extra.”²

Well timed Illustration

It’s not as if Keller was ever detached to prayer. Like all good minister, he taught on it usually. However one thing was nonetheless lacking, nonetheless missing within the vibrancy of his personal friendship with Christ. He opened his 2014 e-book on the subject with these phrases: “Within the second half of my grownup life, I found prayer. I needed to.”

Whereas educating a Bible research course on the Psalms within the fall of 1999, Keller grew to become keenly conscious that his prayer life was nowhere close to what God’s phrase indicated it must be. Inside a pair years, he confronted the tough realities of ministry to New Yorkers within the wake of 9/11. Compounding this darkish time have been his personal private weights, as Kathy suffered the results of Crohn’s illness and shortly after he obtained a analysis of thyroid most cancers. Certainly, Keller’s expertise with prayer was taking a dramatic flip. Maybe most formative for him throughout this season was Kathy’s urging to easily and faithfully be a part of her each night time to hope. She used an illustration that Keller later recounted, which positioned prayer in its correct mild:

“Think about you have been identified with such a deadly situation that the physician advised you that you’d die inside hours except you took a specific medication—a capsule each night time earlier than going to sleep. Think about that you simply have been advised that you can by no means miss it otherwise you would die. Would you neglect? Would you not get round to it some nights? No—it could be so essential that you simply wouldn’t neglect, you’ll by no means miss. Properly, if we don’t pray collectively to God, we’re not going to make it due to all we face. I’m actually not. We’ve to hope; we will’t let it simply slip our minds.” . . . For each of us the penny dropped; we realized the seriousness of the difficulty, and we admitted that something that was actually a nonnegotiable necessity was one thing we may do. . . . [Since then] Kathy and I can’t bear in mind lacking a single night of praying collectively, no less than by cellphone, even after we’ve been aside in several hemispheres.³

Tim and Kathy Keller maintained this unbroken streak night time after night time for greater than twenty years—during till the tip of his life.⁴

Theology Drives Intimacy

It wasn’t simply nightly prayer with Kathy, although, that revolutionized Keller’s prayer life. He additionally started studying and learning, looking for assist. Craving for richer communion with God, he devoured the works of revered Christian thinkers from the previous. His quest in the end yielded a newfound appreciation for, and deeper engagement with, his personal theological heritage.⁵

From Augustine within the fifth century all the best way to Martin Luther and John Calvin within the sixteenth, John Owen within the seventeenth, John Newton and Jonathan Edwards within the eighteenth, Charles Spurgeon within the nineteenth, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones within the twentieth—and plenty of others in between—Keller realized anew that he didn’t have to decide on between strong theology and vibrant expertise. His personal custom featured each.

As he put it, “I used to be not being known as to go away behind my theology and launch out to search for ‘one thing extra,’ for expertise. Relatively, I used to be meant to ask the Holy Spirit to assist me expertise my theology.”⁶

The underside line is we want theology and expertise—expertise that’s theological and theology that’s experiential.

Suppose Out, Work In, Pray Up

Maybe lets say that if expertise with out theology finally results in heresy, theology with out expertise usually leads to hypocrisy. Each are critical threats. Prayer, although, is the important thing that may “flip theology into expertise.”⁷ When Keller was requested to elucidate this dynamic, he sketched out three easy steps:

• First, suppose out your theology. Know what you consider and why.
• Second, work in your theology. It requires honesty to wrestle down a stressed coronary heart. “Why are you solid down, O my soul?” the psalmist cried (Ps. 42:5). It additionally requires uncomfortable questions: How would I be totally different if I took this theological reality significantly? How wouldn’t it change my attitudes and actions if I actually believed this from the underside of my coronary heart?
• Third, pray up your theology. Study the artwork of turning theology into prayer, letting it set off adoration, confession, and supplication.⁸

“Do these issues,” he advises, “and your theology will intersect together with your expertise.”⁹ Those that are inclined, whether or not from doctrinal formation or pure temperament, to raise emotions over theology are planting their ft in midair. However theologically minded believers ought to likewise beware. “The irony,” Keller warns, “is that many conservative Christians, most involved about conserving true and sound doctrine, neglect the significance of prayer and make no effort to expertise God—which might result in the eventual lack of sound doctrine.”¹⁰ Christianity that lacks an actual encounter with God will finally be no Christianity in any respect.

So there are two methods, not one, to welcome false doctrine into your life or your church. The primary is to by no means worth doctrine in any respect. That’s apparent. However the second is much extra delicate, and subsequently extra insidious: Let your coronary heart turn out to be sterile over the course of years. Develop numb to the grandeur and splendor of Christ Jesus. Cease listening to his voice in Scripture or letting him hear yours in prayer. Slowly abandon your past love (Rev. 2:4).

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The underside line is we want theology and expertise—expertise that’s theological and theology that’s experiential. What God has joined collectively, let nobody separate.

Responding to Revelation

Some of the important takeaways from Keller’s educating is that this: Prayer, primarily, is answering God. He began the dialog—we didn’t. This implies he units the agenda and dictates the phrases. Our voices are responding to his, not the opposite approach round.

It’s subsequently unattainable to have a wealthy prayer life other than cautious consideration and glad submission to God’s phrase. In any other case, we’ll find yourself speaking to a figment of our creativeness—in essence, praying to an idol. But when we hope to anchor our life in “the true God,” we should pray in accordance with who he’s revealed himself to be.¹¹ Keller places it frankly: “With out prayer that solutions the God of the Bible, we’ll solely be speaking to ourselves.”¹²

Addressing college students on the Oxford City Corridor in England, Keller mirrored on the mannequin of prayer that Jesus gives in Gethsemane.We encounter a Savior who’s brutally trustworthy about his need (“Let this cup move from me”) and but completely submissive to God’s plan (“however, not as I’ll, however as you’ll”; Matt. 26:39). Jesus neither represses his emotions neither is dominated by them. What an instance for us! “The fundamental function of prayer,” Keller observes, “is to not bend God’s will to mine however to mould my will into his.”¹³

Because of this sound biblical interpretation and meditation are indispensable foundations for prayer. Keller commends two questions every time we open our Bibles: First, What did the unique creator intend to convey to his readers? Second, What position does the passage play in the entire Bible—that’s, How does it contribute to the gospel message and transfer alongside the primary narrative arc of Scripture, which culminates in Jesus Christ? Keller warns us towards meditation devoid of such questions, which can unintentionally quantity to “listening to your individual coronary heart or to the spirit of your individual tradition”¹⁴ reasonably than to God’s authoritative voice.

Once more, this is the reason theology should inform and gas expertise. Simply as you’ll be able to’t develop relationally with an individual except you study who she or he is, so you’ll be able to’t deepen intimacy with God other than learning and treasuring his phrase. Prayer, then, is equal components response and reward—a response to revelation from God’s phrase and a present for these safe in his grace.¹⁵

And this method to prayer, nourished by biblical meditation, is the pathway to having fun with God.

This text is tailored from Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Remodeling Energy of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst.

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