Season 3 of the Women of the Word Podcast Is Now Available
Join us on Wednesdays as we dig deeper into what it looks like to study Scripture. Throughout the 12 new episodes, Jen Wilkin and several guests will explore what it looks like to bring Bible literacy to different spaces in ministry, such as mentoring relationships, worship, and youth groups.
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Join Jen Wilkin over ten weeks as she walks through methods, tips, and encouragements to studying the Bible more deeply so we might know and love the God of the Bible better.
Jen Wilkin describes the wrong ways we approach Bible study and what our failed attempts to engage with God's Word reveal about our own attitude toward Scripture.
Caleb Morell traces the story of Capitol Hill Baptist Church and how God sovereignly worked through history to both build his church and bring himself glory.
In this episode, Caleb Morell explores pivotal moments in the history of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, from enduring wars and navigating modernist controversies to facing pandemics and pastoral challenges. Through these experiences, he reveals how history remains surprisingly relevant in understanding the church’s identity and recognizing the local church as something worth dedicating your life to.
Matt Tully
Caleb, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.
Caleb Morell
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Tully
The foundational, core theme of this new book that you’ve written is the idea that church history—even the history of a single, local congregation—holds profound lessons for Christians living today. And yet we live in a culture where often history is not valued. We’re obsessed with the new, we’re obsessed with innovation and change and the future and so the history can feel like and afterthought. And there are some people who love history and love studying history, but when it comes to thinking wisely about how to live in the world, that’s often not where we would think to go. So what is it that first got you excited and passionate and awakened this realization for you that church history in particular holds with it so much wisdom for us living today?
Caleb Morell
I’ve always loved history. Ever since I was a kid, I loved reading and reading books about history. And the only thing I loved more than history as a kid was detective novels. I just ate up detective novels—Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, you name it. The thing I love about history is it is kind of like detective work. You’re discerning, you’re turning over stones, you’re learning new things, you’re putting clues together to try to learn something, to try to answer questions. Because ultimately what you’re answering is, How did things get to be the way they are today? That’s the question that history is answering. If you look around you, you see all kinds of technological developments, social developments, cultural developments, and they all come from something. And so tracing those back, and I think as a Christian in particular, what you’re tracing is the sovereign hand of God. He is sovereign over history. He is the God of history. He’s working in history, ultimately, for his glory and to build his church. And the Christian historian’s task is tracing those glimpses of God’s sovereignty in the lives of people—and in this case, in the life of a church—in a way that helps people see God’s glory on display in what he is doing.
Matt Tully
It’s such an interesting dynamic that sometimes, though, when we look at history and we have that perspective—God is sovereign, he’s orchestrating these events for his purposes—we can think that applies to history because we can kind of see how things work out, but we can forget that about our lives today and the situations and the struggles that we face today. We can almost neglect the fact that God is actually still sovereign over those things.
Caleb Morell
When it comes to history, I tell people that there’s a relationship between memory and identity. If you don’t know your past or if you’ve forgotten the past, you don’t know who you are and you don’t know where you come from. The more you know about your family history, your own personal history, the more you remember of it, the more you know who you are and where you came from. And I think as evangelicals, as Christians, the same is true for us. We need to know where we come from to know who we are. And so tracing back those steps and seeing where we come from—the good, the bad, the ugly—ultimately, just learning from that and seeing God at work.
Matt Tully
That’s a counter-cultural message today, because today the notions of identity are often rooted in my own personal feelings. Like, what do I feel right now? What do I want for myself right now? So the idea that my identity would be, in a very significant way, shaped by history, something I didn’t have control over, it can be a little bit hard to accept sometimes.
Caleb Morell
God assigns each person a time to live in, and today we’re living in the twenty-first century. Acts 17 says that God allots times, peoples, and the boundaries for them to live in. So these are the circumstances we’re born into, and we need to understand that and live faithfully. I just think if you’re not studying history, if you’re learning from it in order to face the problems of tomorrow, then you’re just missing out on collective wisdom that’s there. Because the more you look particularly at church history but history in general, you see that a lot of the problems we’re facing aren’t all that new. Christians have faced many of these challenges before. We can learn lessons in how they responded poorly and how they responded well to face the challenges of our day.
Matt Tully
One of the examples that we’re not going to get into today but one that you hit on in your book a little bit is even something like a pandemic, where churches were dealing with decisions about whether or not to meet, whether or not to obey different government mandates, and just all the nuances that came with that. That’s something that isn’t new. Actually, the church that you profile here in this book had to deal with this 100 years ago.
Caleb Morell
I remember vividly. It was maybe March 15th—I forget if the state of emergency had been called yet or not—but I was working as Mark Dever’s personal assistant at the time. He called me up and he said, “Hey, go down to our church archives and see what we did during the Spanish Flu.” And I was thinking, What’s the Spanish Flu? People were just starting to talk about this. They were just starting to remember, Oh, this has happened before. And he wanted to figure out what did our church do.
Matt Tully
That’s amazing that was one of his first instincts—I wonder what we can learn from history.
Caleb Morell
And thankfully, we have a fairly good minutes and fairly good records, so I go down to the basement, I start flipping through some old records. This is before I was even working on this as a formal project. And lo and behold, we see that we, in fact, submitted to the request of the D.C. Health Commissioner, and we didn’t meet for three weeks. Just three weeks. And then they lifted the request that churches not gather.
Matt Tully
And they had made a request for the pandemic because they had previously, earlier that same year I believe, had—
Caleb Morell
That’s right. We’ve got to set the context. It’s 1918. World War I is still going on. It hasn’t officially ended yet. Troops are abroad, there’s lots going on. So people are already in this heightened state of emergency. The expansion of government powers were obviously in Washington, D. C., and these things are happening. And earlier that year, there had been a coal shortage. They needed coal to go toward the war effort. And much to the frustration of many of the churches, among the prohibited activities during this coal shortage in January 1918 was church gatherings. They said that instead of having all the churches burn coal, let’s just have each denomination pick a church that will meet—one of each denomination in the city—and then the rest, we’re just going to ask you not to meet. I think, again, it’s a case where the churches had to figure out what to do. Was that a valid request? They understood they had a civic duty to support the war effort. They also understood that they had a spiritual responsibility, in terms of gathering for worship. They also understood that the government seemed to be toeing the line of stepping outside both the bounds of the First Amendment of the Constitution, and there were concerns there of the government overstepping the bounds. They were also stepping into the autonomy of the local church. And so churches had to think really carefully. And they thought variously about it. But one thing I’ll say is, at least at that time, the churches of the city met together and they deliberated so that they would speak with one voice. And in many ways, they had the formal authority and the relationships to gather together to deliberate, to make a decision, and to make requests as a block. And I’d say that, in many ways, we’ve lost some of those partnerships and relationships. I’m not sure we’d really be able to do the same thing. And I’m not sure even a government official would think, Okay, I’m going to speak to the churches, and I’m going to have to listen to them and respond and relate to them as a block. But that certainly contributed to their collective power is that they were able to come together, organize, and make a case.
Matt Tully
And we’re not going to go on too much further in that particular topic, so people can get the book if they want to learn more about that, but it’s just an illustration of the way that history can be so relevant—surprisingly relevant—to the things that we’re dealing with today in the modern world. Sometimes we think that there are new situations and new problems that we’re facing, but most often they’re not. So when we do history, we tend to focus, at least in terms of the way that we tell history at a more lay level, we tend to focus on these big history-shaping movements, these big key events, influential figures who had a big impact in some way. But in your new book, you zoom in on one particular church way down in a focused kind of way. What’s the value of doing history not just with a bird’s eye view but almost under a microscope? How do you see the balance there?
Caleb Morell
There’s value in doing the broad strokes. I think those broad strokes can leave out some voices though. They leave out the texture of church life. So if you think about most broad histories, they’ll either trace theological topics and just focus on disputes, disagreements, theological controversies. That’s one approach. That’s usually how denominational histories are done. A second approach is more the way a secular history would be written, is it traces political movements. It looks at social and political movements, and it is interested in religion insofar as it contributes to political outcomes. And so you’re going to look at this is why there’s such a focus on, say, with fundamentalism over the Scopes Monkey Trial. That’s kind of viewed, probably out of proportion, as this catalytic event, whereas I didn’t find a single reference to that, for instance, in our minutes. It doesn’t come up.
Matt Tully
Same time period, but they’re not even thinking about it.
Caleb Morell
Right. And so that can also be a way that captures some things, but it can also get things out of proportion. It reflects what we might value today and care about and want to know about; it doesn’t tell us as much about what they cared about and what they spent their time focusing on. Especially if you have a lot of minutes, if you have a lot of primary sources, if you have a lot of data, interviews, memoirs, and you’re able to reconstruct the social context in culture of a church and get a sense of what they valued and what they cared about, that might give you a more accurate sense of the texture of evangelical Christianity in America. And it’s definitely worth doing that slow, inductive work of let’s listen to them and let’s see what they have to say. And we’ll listen to them and we’ll let them tell the story. And that’s what I tried to do in this book. Rather than starting with the storylines and say, “I’m going to write about these five topics because I know people will care about them,” I started with I don’t even know what’s going to be there. I don’t know what I’ll find, but I’ll see what I find, and I’ll try to trace the storyline that is naturally emerging in the life of this church.
Matt Tully
That’s where you get that detective story dynamic to it. I wonder if sometimes the reason why more people don’t like history—or they think they don’t like history at least—is because they often are thinking in terms of those really big movements, the high-level summary that they might have gotten in high school. And actually, what we love as humans is we love stories. We love the texture. We need the texture to actually feel the things that people were feeling, understand their motivations for things so that it isn’t just decontextualized events that just happened a long time ago.
Caleb Morell
And it just brings it to life. Can I tell a couple stories from the life of the church? Will it give away too much?
Matt Tully
No, no, that’s great. There are lots of good stories in the book.
Caleb Morell
One of the stories I love telling is Celestia Ferris. Celestia Ferris has been remembered as the washer woman at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing who started the church. She called together a prayer meeting in her home. We knew that she was a widow. We just didn’t know much about her. So I just dove into the sources. I tried to find out everything I could about her. I visited other churches where she had been a member and went through their records. I reconstructed her childhood, her worldview, her experience during the Civil War as a teenager.
Matt Tully
Because the church is founded in what year?
Caleb Morell
The church was founded in 1878. She had started this prayer meeting in her home in 1867.
Matt Tully
The Civil War ended in 1858?
Caleb Morell
April 1865.
Matt Tully
And it started in 1850-something.
Caleb Morell
And so she’s growing up in this city, this war-torn city. She’s at a church where there’s a lot of controversy over the Civil War. The church splits over various responses to the Civil War. So this is just the world she’s inhabiting, growing up in the nation’s capital. She ends up marrying a Civil War veteran, Abraham Ferris, who has his own fascinating stories of close encounters during the war. And it’s in their second year of marriage that they call together a group of friends on Capitol Hill to start praying for a church. So they start praying just two years after the Civil War ended, because there was no local church in their vicinity. They thought somebody should start a church. “We’re not in full time ministry. We’re not going to be pastors, but we should just pray.” And that’s what Christians do. Christians gather together, they pray, and they ask God to work. And so that’s where Capitol Hill Baptist Church comes from; it comes from a prayer meeting. They prayed for years. They prayed for four years before anything really happened.
Matt Tully
Just meeting in their home.
Caleb Morell
Meeting in their home, praying. They started a Sunday school. They started a Sunday school. People always wonder why the Sunday school predates the church. Well, it’s because, one, that was the way to evangelize. On Sunday afternoon, they would evangelize kids in the neighborhood, share the gospel, hope that they’re converted, and reach the families through the kids. And then they bought a lot and they built a building on the same site where the church now stands. They started building and building, and it took eleven years. So from prayer meeting to church formation, eleven years. And during that time, Celestia became a widow and a single mother to three. Her husband, Abraham, died of wounds from the Civil War, ad so she was left, at 33, as a widow and a single mom. And yet she presses on. And she’s not the only one. Other people are involved, but she’s the one who got it started. And she stays. She stays at the church and serves faithfully until her death. Those are the kind of stories that I want to bring to life. Because you look at somebody like Celestia and you think there had to be seasons in her life where she’s just asking, What is the point of my life? What am I doing? Her husband dies. Her father died. She becomes the sole breadwinner for her family. And I’m sure life was hard. And yet she poured her life into her children and into her local church. And look at the fruit.
Matt Tully
And it’s also amazing that she did all that, she poured her life into this, not knowing what was going to happen necessarily.
Caleb Morell
Not knowing what was going to happen.
Matt Tully
We look back 150 years later and we can see how the Lord used that faith and used that perseverance and that prayer to do amazing things—Capitol Hill Baptist Church. But she didn’t have that perspective. So how do we keep that mindset when we don’t have the benefit of hindsight?
Caleb Morell
Faith in God. I think the right definition of success, which is not visible results. Success cannot be defined by my ability to perceive the impact of my life on the people around me. That is not a metric that is sustainable. That is not a metric that’s spiritually safe, because we can be so prone to deception. It’s also one that may not pass the test of heaven, when, as Paul says, that day will reveal the work each one has done. The work of some will be wood, hay, stubble, and burned, and the others will last. I think Celestia’s work is going to last. And I think there will be great rejoicing and joy on that day, but she didn’t necessarily live to see it. But we need the right definition of success. And we need a vision of the local church as something worth investing your life in, because God has attached his name to it, and he’s attached his promises to it. There are a lot of things in our lives that the Lord has not attached his name and promise to.
Matt Tully
Let’s talk about another person that you tell a little bit of their story in this book, a man named John Compton Ball. He served as pastor of CHBC for over four decades, I believe, which is quite the tenure as a pastor. You point to his life and his work as a pastor as illustrating the value of this longevity that pastors can have in a local church and the impact that can have. Tell us a little bit more about him.
Caleb Morell
Sure. He’s another fascinating guy. He’s born in England in 1867. He emigrates to America as a young boy, lives in Philadelphia. He’s eventually converted, and he works in the business world. He works for a large department store called Wanamaker’s. This guy, John Wanamaker, the founder of that store was a Presbyterian layman, and he supported young men to go to seminary. And John Compton Ball was one of those young men. He comes to the church in 1903. He had studied at Crozer, when it was a very theologically conservative seminary. And part of what I point out here is the length of his pastorate, forty-one years, gave the church a critical stability and leadership during an incredibly tumultuous time—1903–1944.
Matt Tully
It’s the First World War and the Second World War.
Caleb Morell
That’s exactly right. The Spanish Flu, the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, the Great Depression. And that was a huge blessing to the church. And I think particularly that they didn’t have to pick a new pastor, who would have likely been trained at an institution that taught theological modernism in a way that undermined the trust in Scripture. Had they had to call a younger minister during that time, there’s a strong likelihood that he would be somewhat compromised in his theology. But I think in 1944, that allowed them to just kind of wait it out, so people could see the outcome of where those different movements were going.
Matt Tully
And what was it that led him, ultimately, to step down?
Caleb Morell
You’ve got to read the book to get the full story, but he was quite old at the time. He probably should have retired sooner. He preached the Bible faithfully, but it was one of those situations where it was time.
Matt Tully
And that’s the other half of it. Longevity is a value to pursue, but sometimes the transition portion—transitioning out of pastoral ministry and leadership role like that—can be really hard for guys.
Caleb Morell
Yeah, absolutely. And what ended up happening is the pulpit committee, well, first, just to set this up a little bit, he made sure the church voted that he would retain three quarters of his salary and retain the title Senior Pastor Emeritus after retiring. So that was a sweet deal.
Matt Tully
Interesting. A little built-in parachute.
Caleb Morell
He lived across the street. So the pulpit committee comes, and they nominate a guy named Ralph Walker from Portland, Oregon. And at the members meeting, when the pulpit committee presents this new candidate to succeed the forty-one year ministry of this very established and well-known figure, a long-time Sunday school teacher named Agnes Schenkel raises her hand at the meeting and says, “I’ve heard considerable reports about this man, that he’s compromising in matters related to the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.” She’s saying he’s a man in the middle. He’s not clearly one way or the other. And that concerned her. And someone else spoke up and said, “I’ve heard the same thing.” The pulpit committee retracts their nomination, and the motion comes from the floor to call another pastor who had candidated, a guy named K. Owen White, who is a noted conservative. There was no question about where he stood. He stood on the inerrancy and authority of Scripture. So they call K. Owen White because of a motion from the floor against the pulpit committee, and that is Congregationalism in action.
Matt Tully
That’s another theme that you draw out, that Congregationalism can help to protect the gospel, protect a church from compromise, in some ways, when the congregation is empowered to have a voice in these decisions.
Caleb Morell
You don’t want to pull that emergency brake all the time, but you want that to be there just in case. And in this case, that was the right call. So K. Owen White, some listeners may know, goes on to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He preaches the famous “Death in the Pot” sermon about the liberalism that’s happening at the seminaries that calls the conservative resurgence into being. So he was definitely the right man for the moment. And I tell people this may have been the most consequential moment in the life of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. And I think that was the turning point, in terms of so many of these urban city center historic churches, somewhere in the twentieth century, lost their aim. And I think if we had called Ralph Walker, there’s a good chance we would’ve just started going on that slippery slope toward liberalism. And that was the turning point. Right there. And it started with Agnes Schenkel.
Matt Tully
I know one response from a non-Congregationalist person could be that just as often as a congregation like that might protect a church from compromise, they could also draw a church towards that kind of compromise, towards that loss of fidelity to the gospel. What would be your response to that?
Caleb Morell
Yes, but that’s why we don’t baptize babies, Matt. That’s why we’re a believer’s church. No offense to my Presbyterian brothers.
Matt Tully
So church discipline is so important?
Caleb Morell
Well, no, you’re right. It’s not just one thing and not the others. You don’t want to put too much weight on one single factor. Obviously, the gospel is paramount. Obviously, the preaching of the word. Clearly, John Compton Ball, for any problems he had, preached the Bible faithfully enough that the congregation themselves were able to discern which direction they needed to go. So the preaching of the word is paramount. There are other factors like the health of the church, good leadership. But in that instance, that wasn’t the only time the congregation had to step in. There was an earlier instance when the church went through a split in the 1880s, and again, the congregation stepped in. But on the whole, I’d say in the life of the Capitol Baptist Church, when those moments have happened, the congregation’s gotten the decision right.
Matt Tully
The story of Ball and his relatively faithful pastoral ministry for forty years that then maybe ended in a slightly more complex way, where he’s struggling to let go in some ways, it illustrates another dynamic of history that can be both quite interesting and fascinating to think about but also challenging sometimes for us. Just the complexity and the grayness at times of certain figures and things that happen, where we can see a lot of good that he did, perhaps. We can see the benefit to the church that he was for all those decades. And yet we can also see that there were things about his ministry, things about his decisions that we don’t love so much. How have you wrestled with the grayness at times with some of these people?
Caleb Morell
You want to view people not just as black and white characters but as complex characters with complex motivations. In history you don’t always know why people are acting the way they’re acting, so you want to complexify. And I think the book leaves plenty of riddles unresolved in some ways. Even if you take the same guy, John Compton Ball, he was very comfortable having a woman in the pulpit preaching in the 1920s and 30s. There was at least one evangelist, Amy Lee Stockton, who would regularly stop by the church and preach on Sunday mornings in the 1930s. And this is in a conservative church. This is an inerrantist church. And that didn’t happen from 1944 on. What do you do with that? How do you make sense of that? These are some of the things you wouldn’t really expect to find in church history until you really start digging around.
Matt Tully
It always tends to blow up the simple categories and the simplistic narratives that we often have when it comes to history. It’s usually not that clean.
Caleb Morell
Yeah.
Matt Tully
One more story that you can maybe tell us here, Harry Killbride. What was his story? Why was he a significant person in the history of Capitol Hill?
Caleb Morell
Yeah, Matt, this was the hardest chapter to write by far. It’s definitely what took the most time in painstaking research, because I went into it knowing that Harry disqualified himself and that he was Mark’s predecessor in ministry here. He was the pastor here for three or four years before Mark Dever came here. And I knew it would be sensitive for all those reasons—sensitive toward the other party involved, sensitive toward him and his family, sensitive toward our church and members there who were still hurting from the event. And I tried to go into it with an open mind, without prejudgment or preconception, and just follow the evidence and where it led. I did dozens and dozens of interviews. And I think what it left me with was a very gifted man who had incredible credentials, presented himself as a disciple of Martyn Lloyd Jones, came from the United Kingdom, had pastored prominent churches, and yet who seemed to leave a wake of carnage in his wake. I tried to interview him before he passed, and he wasn’t able to meet. He was very sick. And it’s heavy to listen to sermons from someone and you can read their books and say there’s so much good here, there’s so much correct grasp of things theologically, and yet we’re left with this life that does not reflect the qualifications for an elder or what the New Testament commands the Christian life to look like.
Matt Tully
That’s a challenge and a struggle that I’m sure all of us, to some extent, we’ve either heard of stories or we’ve even been directly impacted by examples like that of those in ministry—prominent positions of leadership and authority and influence—who, in some way, fall short of the calling that God has called them to. And then we’re left wondering, What do I do with the things that they said and the things that they wrote or did that I think God used powerfully in my own life? In your conversations with people, how have they wrestled with that difficult dynamic?
Caleb Morell
I think variously. It’s important to remember that these aren’t new things. If you look at your New Testament, Judas was one of the twelve. You see that Paul talks about Philetus and Hymenaeus and others who have left the faith. Demas, at great pain. And you’re also given instructions in the New Testament for what to do when an elder disqualifies themselves. First Timothy says to rebuke them in the presence of all so that they may stand in fear. And I think a sober mindedness about sin, a warning against self-deception, and a concern to watch one’s own life and doctrine was one of the most consistent takeaways from people I interviewed as they reflected on it. Just the need for the minister’s self-watch. I’ve really wrestled with this chapter with how much to tell. And some people thought it’s not appropriate to spend time exposing sin in the ministry, or that doing so will be confusing and challenging to Christians, or it’s better just to live and let live. I tried to write about it in a way that was both accurate in bringing it to the light and yet not unnecessarily groveling in the details of things. But I think it is important in the life of a church to tell the truth, when there’s an opportunity to do so. Not for the sake of destruction—this happened in this church, we need to burn it down. But saying like, no, this can happen in any church. And actually, I think the way the church responded on the whole was good, and I think there’s some lessons to learn from there.
Matt Tully
Because that can be the response of some Christians when there is some kind of scandal, for lack of a better word, in a church. The temptation can be, “Let’s just not talk about it. Let’s just move on. Let’s deal with it quietly and move on.” What’s your response to that? How do you think about that? Especially as someone doing history and looking back, how do you respond to the fear that in dredging up things like this and talking about the failures of a church or of a Christian, you’re questioning or you’re harming the church’s witness to a watching world?
Caleb Morell
It’s amazing that Psalm 51 is in the Bible, especially with the superscript to the choir master: “A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.” So that’s in the inspired word of God, superscript and all. And I think David was willing for his life to be on display because as a leader, he was responsible for what had happened, and that’s there in Scripture for a reason, so that we, as 1 Corinthians 10:12 says, should take heed lest we fall. You think of Paul and his life on display: persecutor, blasphemer, insolent opponent. What’s the point of that? Well, it’s so that we could see his his repentance. We could see how his life changed after an encounter with Christ. Do you think of Peter denying Christ three times? Greatly he had sinned, and greatly he repented.
Matt Tully
Caleb, any other fun or funny stories from your research of this church that come to mind?
Caleb Morell
What didn’t come through in the book but what we can talk about is the process of writing, because this was a very non-straightforward book. But the detective-like work of finding sources, finding people to interview is just absurd.
Matt Tully
Not the most efficient, straight forward, linear process.
Caleb Morell
No, but I would do things like this. So take John Compton Ball. I’m thinking we don’t have any of his sermons in our archives. This man preached here for forty years. He must have left a deposit. Where is it? Who has it? No one knows. Probably with the family. Okay, well he had a daughter. Okay, well not actually his daughter, an adopted daughter, but, okay, daughter. Is anyone alive? Are any descendants alive? She’s not alive. So going through newspaper records, looking at marriages, looking at obituaries. Obituaries are where you find all the family members.
Matt Tully
Yeah, they list out all the family members.
Caleb Morell
So I’m able to go through and I’m able to find a name of somebody who owned a company. So I call the company. I say, “Do you know so and so?” “Oh, yeah! His daughter still works here.” “Can I speak with her?” So just finding a human being and someone we could speak to. It turns out that there are family members who’ve kept everything. So I drive over to their home in an hour and twenty minutes, I set up an appointment to go meet with them, and we sit down, and they open up this chest of sermons, clippings, photographs, everything. Just a treasure store. And we’re looking it all over, and then she turns to me at one point and she says, “So is grandpa’s church still there? Does it still exist?” She has no idea.
Matt Tully
Wow.
Caleb Morell
And so just getting to share with her, “Oh, you have no idea.” She appreciates it for sentimental family reasons, but so many people appreciate it for kingdom reasons. And so to get to share with her some of the joy and impact that her grandfather had on countless hundreds, if not thousands, because he was part of keeping the church going. That was maybe the greatest joy. And I had that experience several different times, tracking down family members, collecting documents, that just added a real texture to the experience of writing the story.
Matt Tully
Yeah, absolutely. Caleb, thank you so much for taking the time to write this book, to do this research and give each of us just a glimpse into one church of God’s sovereign orchestrating of just one congregation and the incredible impact that’s had on so many people, as you just said. We appreciate it.
Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.
Rosaria Butterfield encourages us to engage our LGBTQ neighbors for Christ, highlighting how God used the radically ordinary hospitality of Christians to draw her to himself.
The new audiobook for The Biggest Story Bible Storybook enhances each story with music, sound design, and narration by Michael Reeves, giving kids a fun, compelling way to experience the Bible.
March 26, 2025
by:
Crossway
The Biggest Story Bible Storybook Now Available as an Audiobook
The Bible is a BIG book about the BIGGEST story. Each page tells about the God who created the world, acted in history, and continues to act in the present. In The Biggest Story Bible Storybook, pastor Kevin DeYoung shares this grand story with children ages 6–12. Beginning in Genesis and ending with Revelation, DeYoung provides engaging retellings of various Bible stories, explaining how they fit into the overarching storyline of Scripture.
Audiobook Edition
The Biggest Story Bible Storybook audiobook enhances each story with music, sound design, and narration by Michael Reeves, giving kids a fun, compelling way to experience the Bible. Also available in CD Format.
Would you like to receive weekly emails with lessons from The Biggest Story Curriculum that would include a brand new children’s program podcast, tips for parents and teachers, and more helpful resources? Learn More.
Learn more about the new and notable resources releasing this month from Crossway including Good News at Rock Bottom by Ray Ortlund and the The Biggest Story Bible Storybook Videos.
March 26, 2025
by:
Crossway
New Books
Below is a list of the new and notable resources releasing this month from Crossway. Titles include Good News at Rock Bottom by Ray Ortlund and the The Biggest Story Bible Storybook Videos.
Good News at Rock Bottom: Finding God When the Pain Goes Deep and Hope Seems Lost
We all long for a life worth living. So when we receive news of a frightening diagnosis, suffer heartbreaking loss in our family life, or get trapped in a cycle of our own sin, we might wonder about God. Where is he when we need him most? With wisdom from Isaiah 57:15, Good News at Rock Bottom helps readers discover that Jesus is hard to find in the comfortable lives we prefer. Instead, he meets us at rock bottom—where he is waiting for us with open arms. With grace and empathy, author Ray Ortlund opens a door for readers to go deeper with God and get closer to faithful friends when life is hard to bear. You will discover that, at rock bottom, Jesus is more satisfying than any comfortable life without him.
“I know pain, inside and out. I live intimately with its brutal assault, and at times it almost convinces me that all hope is lost. That’s when I reach out for the kind of rock-solid hope that is able to survive the worst of times. Honestly, it’s there. It’s available. And it’s meant for you. Ray Ortlund tenderly explains how to find and embrace it in his excellent book Good News at Rock Bottom. I love Ray’s style of writing—always accessible, believable, and gentle on the heart. The book you hold in your hands is extraordinary, and I envision that, by the last page, you will find the hope-filled release and relief you are yearning for.”
—Joni Eareckson Tada, Founder and CEO, Joni and Friends International Disability Center
In this concise booklet, author Timothy Paul Jones addresses the doubts and questions that arise from Jesus’s resurrection as recorded in the New Testament. Jones argues this story is not a mere repetition of old pagan tales or a fabrication to fulfill Jewish expectations. Instead, it was a historical event that is supported by compelling evidence, including accounts of men and women who were willing to die for what they believed they had seen. Skeptics are correct to assume that such claims should not be taken lightly. But what happens if Jesus really did rise from the dead? What would it mean for me and you?
“The Christian faith is more than a philosophy of life. It is rooted in concrete historical events. Timothy Paul Jones demonstrates that Jesus’s resurrection isn’t a myth but is grounded in history. The early Christians didn’t invent the bodily resurrection of Jesus to comfort themselves. They were confronted with the reality of the risen Christ. Jones’s book is a powerful reminder that Jesus is truly risen, and this changes everything about our lives today. A book for the young and the old. Indeed, a book for everyone.”
—Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
In the face of evil and suffering, many people question God’s goodness. Even faithful Christians may struggle to see God’s justice when they experience the heartache, pain, and tragedies of our broken world. Why does God seem to remain silent when we need him the most?
Collin Hansen’s short and accessible guide answers suffering peoples’ questions about God’s character by exploring the stories of Job, Jesus, and the Jewish people during the horrific events of the Holocaust. Ideal for both skeptics and Christians who want to help others in their pain, this booklet reminds us that God speaks through the cries of his people and offers us the gift of his Son—a suffering servant who makes all things new.
“The problem of evil is the biggest challenge to Christian faith in every generation. Collin Hansen’s short, wise, and thoughtful book is a superb resource for thinking deeply about it and responding with compassion and clarity.”
—Andrew Wilson, Teaching Pastor, King’s Church London
In this addition to the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series, Nicholas G. Piotrowski traces the theme of exile throughout Scripture, giving readers a renewed appreciation for redemptive history and atonement in Christ. Sharing from his 15 years of study, Piotrowski connects the journeys of Abraham, Joseph, and Jesus with tabernacle imagery and other types to illustrate recurring themes of exile from Genesis until the new creation. This accessible volume helps believers understand their own exile and rejoice with the hope that they will one day worship in God’s holy presence.
“Nicholas Piotrowski masterfully shows how the themes of exile and exodus, death and resurrection pervade the Scriptures and develop the biblical storyline climaxing in Christ and his church. Come read of the one whose tribulation and triumph were foreshadowed from the earliest pages of Scripture and whose story culminates in his people’s renewal in the garden-city of God.”
—Jason S. DeRouchie, Research Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
ESV Prayer Journals guide your study of a foundational Scripture topic over 30 days and create space for writing and prayer—turning your quiet time into a meditation on God’s Word. Each week opens with an overview related to that week’s passage, followed by 5 days of teaching and prayer prompts. Each journal also includes space for writing, clear definitions of biblical terms, and artwork by Ruth Chou Simons. This ESV Prayer Journal helps readers rightly understand their call to evangelism and prepares them to share their faith with assurance, boldness, and joy.
Why is Romans considered the greatest letter ever written? In this New Testament epistle, the apostle Paul provides the clearest explanation of the gospel and the eternal hope for a humanity marred by sin and death. Through King Jesus, God reveals his righteousness, redeems his people from their sins, and unlocks the floodgates of his mercy. In this 10-week Bible study for women, Lydia Brownback examines Romans verse by verse to explore how God works through his Son and in the hearts of his people. Written for individuals or groups, each lesson helps women understand important doctrines of the faith, such as justification, propitiation, and redemption, on a practical and accessible level.
“The brilliant and beautiful mix of sound teaching, helpful charts, lists, sidebars, and appealing graphics—as well as insightful questions that get the reader into the text of Scripture—make these studies that women will want to invest time in and will look back on as time well spent.”
—Nancy Guthrie, author; Bible teacher
Helping us kindle an ever-growing passion for God’s glory, this book by popular author Paul David Tripp reminds us of the importance of awe for shaping everything we choose, decide, think, desire, say, and do. Reflecting on how awe for God impacts our approach to spiritual warfare, ministry, material things, and more, Tripp will energize readers’ love for God by opening their eyes afresh to the glory of his love, grace, and power. This edition includes a section of engaging study questions for every chapter, helping individuals and groups reflect on each topic in greater depth.
“Paul Tripp has a way of helping us to get beyond the surface. It is clear that Paul has thought through this subject deeply. Read this book and find yourself challenged and encouraged to stand in awe of the reality of God and to take him seriously because of it!”
—Eric M. Mason, Lead Pastor, Epiphany Fellowship, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; President, Thriving; author, Manhood Restored
Beginning in Genesis and ending with Revelation, DeYoung provides engaging retellings of various Bible stories, explaining how they fit into the overarching storyline of Scripture. This audiobook enhances each story with music, sound design, and narration by Michael Reeves, giving kids a fun, compelling way to experience the Bible.
Exploring the way God created the world, acted in history, and continues to act in the present, The Biggest Story Bible Storybook Videos are designed to accompany lessons in The Biggest Story Curriculum or stand alone. Parents and children can watch the videos at home during family Bible study, before bedtime, or as part of a homeschool program. Churches can use them with other Biggest Story resources during their children’s ministry or Sunday school classes. Bringing Bible stories to life, this collection is a fun, approachable way to teach children about 104 key events in Scripture and how they all fit together to tell God’s big story.
In this episode, Ray Ortlund talks through what it means when God says he dwells not only in the high and holy place but also way down low with those at rock bottom. Ray shares how even in betrayal, loneliness, feeling trapped in sin, or death, God is waiting there with open arms.
Matt Tully
Ray, thanks so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.
Ray Ortlund
Thank you, Matt. It’s a privilege to be with you.
Matt Tully
Ray, you write in this new book that you’ve written, a book that, as the title suggests, is trying to meet people when they’re at their lowest, when their life has taken a turn that has maybe caught them by surprise and they just feel like they are at their wits end. And you write in the book that there are many ways for us in our lives to actually hit rock bottom. And I wonder if you could just start us off by telling us what that was like for you. Have you ever hit rock bottom? What did that look like?
Ray Ortlund
I think it’s inevitable. Sooner or later, something really bad comes and finds us. For me, it’s hard to talk about it, Matt, because it remains unresolved, and it’s still heartbreaking, and I don’t want to embarrass anybody. But I was among people who made promises and didn’t keep their promises. So I put my trust in their pledges and assurances. I think I should have done that, as I stand before the Lord, but they didn’t keep their end of the bargain, and it all fell apart, and it was very costly. And it shook me to my core. My parents and my Sunday school teachers and so forth, from the beginning of my life, taught me God loves you. And what then happened in that unfortunate experience was done in the name of Christ. So I actually had the terrifying thought, Have I been wrong all these years? Maybe the truth of my existence is that God hates my guts. That would explain everything. It would make sense. Now, I figured out soon enough that I was right the first time. God does love me. But then I had to go back and rebuild everything from the very deepest foundations. I couldn’t go back to my Christianity, as I had navigated it and understood it prior to that heartache, and just sort of tweak that, upgrade that, improve that. It was too shocking. It was too devastating. I had to rethink from the very deepest foundations. And that was a major turnaround in my life. It was the beginning of my real ministry and the beginning of a profound happiness that I didn’t experience prior to that. So I am living proof, Matt, that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
Matt Tully
It is just amazing. You hear anyone who’s been through profound suffering of some kind will kind of say the same thing, that there’s this clarity that can come. There’s a focus and even a recognition that things that maybe you thought were okay, things that seemed fine or healthy, maybe weren’t as healthy as you once believed they were. Why is it that suffering and pain—whether it’s the pain of betrayal, like maybe what you were talking about, or sickness, or some other just hardship that comes at us—why does that tend to have such a clarifying power in our lives?
Ray Ortlund
That’s a profound question, Matt. I wish I had a better answer for you, but let me just take a stab at it. I think we launch into life with the assumption that what we’re going to do is accumulate more and more. And I don’t mean just money and wealth and things, but we’re going to, as we go through life, accumulate more credibility and more assurance and more confidence and more skills and so forth. And we don’t realize that we don’t really get traction for the great things in life by gaining more and more, but we get traction by losing more and more. And we don’t go there until we’re forced to by circumstances, when we’re forced into shedding assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and so forth that have just seemed obvious our whole lives. When we finally let go of that and lose it, then we have that significant aha moment when the living Christ becomes more real—existentially real—than ever before. And that really is the point. It’s not a philosophical question. It’s not even a psychological question. It’s a matter of suffering the loss of all things that I may gain Christ (Phil. 3).
Matt Tully
You write in the book that there’s no rock bottom that’s too deep for Jesus. And that’s the main message, essentially, of the book is (spoiler alert) Jesus is there when we hit rock bottom, and that’s where he does his best work for us. But I could imagine somebody listening to that comment, listening to what you’ve said even thus far, and to those of us who have been Christians for a long time, who have been in the church maybe all our lives, who have walked with the Lord, a statement like that can just kind of sound a little trite. It can sound a little cliched. Of course Jesus meets us there. We’ve heard that. And it can be, if we’re honest with ourselves, it can be something that in the abstract doesn’t maybe sound all that comforting. It doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary. It just seems familiar. So, again, is that something that you would you say you’ve come to understand in a deeper way? You always would have said that Christ meets us in our lowest points, but is there something about going through it that you think has helped you to see that more clearly or more vibrantly?
Ray Ortlund
Didn’t C. S. Lewis say that pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world? That’s true for me, Matt. I have loved the Lord as long as I can remember. That’s a huge blessing. I am not disparaging that at all. I’m not taking anything away from his care for me all those many years growing up. But the other night, Jani and I were watching Father of the Bride. Do you know that movie?
Matt Tully
Oh yeah. Classic.
Ray Ortlund
The home where that movie is filmed was my neighborhood in California. That home was about three blocks away from our place, and so the street that you see there, I walked that street every day to school. I grew up in that world in a healthy family and a healthy church. I just thought this is normal, average reality for everybody. I had no idea. Now, again, I am so grateful to God for every way he blessed me all those years. But I was just saying to a friend this morning at breakfast that for me, personally, for far too long as a pastor, I didn’t really understand what people were lugging into church every Sunday. The questions, the fears, the regrets, the heartache, and so forth. And I am so grateful that I hit rock bottom. I finally began to understand what 99 percent of the human race is experiencing at this moment right now. And they’re entered into my heart this fierce sense of care for them, respect for them. I want to protect them. I want to provide a safe place for them to come in, take a deep breath, discover hope, rethink life, and so forth. I’m very earnest that they will not be mistreated. And so in Nashville at Emanuel Church, we used to have what we called the Emanuel mantra. We wanted to communicate that this is a church anybody can come to, and this is a Christian church for people who stink at Christianity. And we called it the Emanuel mantra. It was very simple: One, I’m a complete idiot. Two, my future is incredibly bright. Three, anybody can get in on this. I used to say that from the front, because I wanted to communicate to people who are just barely able to crawl into church, “You don’t have to serve. You don’t have to donate. If all you can do is just come and sit and heal, you’re so welcome here.” That, I think, is what this verse in Isaiah is talking about, that the High and Holy One dwells among the devastated, the crushed, the contrite, and the lowly.
Matt Tully
Let’s go there, Ray. Isaiah 57:15 is this verse. It’s a key verse for you and for this whole book. And I wonder if you can start off by reading it aloud for us, and then explain why you say it has these healing powers.
Ray Ortlund
In a way, this is the Christian gospel in one verse. It doesn’t explicitly mention the cross, but this is the hope and the good news of God’s grace for the undeserving in one verse. “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” So when we really need help, when life is not normal, when we are terrified, everything’s falling apart, where do go to find God? Well, that verse says God dwells, he lingers in, keeps an address at two places. One, way up high. It says, “I dwell in the high and holy place.” But we can’t go there. And he also dwells way down low among the lowly and the crushed and the contrite. So God dwells up in this heavenly place with angelic beings and also way down at the bottom of human society with devastated, terrified, exhausted people who are wondering if they even have a future anymore. And in between those two extremes—way up high, way down low—is a social space that I call the mushy middle. Now, the mushy middle is where the kids are above average, the career is on track, we have enough money to keep a lot of trouble out and a lot of comfort in, and “church” is a weekend option for upgrading our already pretty good life to an even better life. And the Jesus in that “church” is the chaplain to the mushy middle. And he never judges. He’s grateful to have our attention for a whole hour on a Sunday morning. He never disagrees with us, and he’s just there for us. You know what I mean? Now, there’s a lot of so-called Christianity like that. Some churches cater to the mushy middle. The problem is that it’s just harder to find the Lord there. Now, God is present everywhere, but he’s not present in the same way everywhere. And when he says in Isaiah 57:15, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and I dwell down among the crushed and lowly,” that means he manifests and reveals himself, gives himself, moves close in those two places—way up high and way down low. So that’s where we go to find God.
Matt Tully
What are some of the other warning signs? If someone’s listening right now and they don’t want to be in the mushy middle, they don’t want to be content with a passive, a little bit distant, uninterested kind of relationship with God, what are some of the warning signs that they should be looking at in their own life to assess, “Am I comfortable in this kind of Christianity?”
Ray Ortlund
One indicator would be how do I perceive people who are devastated? Do I look at them with disdain? Do I look at them and think, Well, I may not be perfect, but I’ve never sunk that low. If I regard people who are struggling and suffering as beneath me, well, Jesus told the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray. And one, he says, stood there and said, “God, I thank you. I do all these good things, and I’m not like that guy over there.” Now, this man, the Pharisee, was Reformed. He said, “God, I thank you. I give you all the glory that I’m superior.” And the other man just basically crawled in on his hands and knees and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus said that man went home justified. The parable begins, “And Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves that they are righteous and despised others.” Those two always go together—one’s own complacency and self-admiration with disparaging others. So perceiving others in a condescending manner, looking down on them—that’s a pretty serious indicator I might be stuck in the mushy middle.
Matt Tully
I think this is a helpful nuance to what you’re saying, because I think someone could hear what you’ve said about the mushy middle and think, Well, does that just mean if there are good things going in my life, if my life isn’t in crisis right now, does that mean I’m necessarily there? But it seems like the real emphasis here is even how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive God and our need for God. Do we see him as kind of an optional add-on, or do we see that every day I desperately need his grace in my life?
Ray Ortlund
Yes. Thank you, Matt. That’s a great point. The Lord is so kind to us. He gives so many good gifts. Right now I’m doing some work in Ecclesiastes, and I’m really struck at how often Solomon uses the word “give” when he describes what God does. God gives joy. God gives work. We’re just being showered with his good gifts every day, and we praise and thank his holy name for every single one. And what if life were endless crisis and intensity? It would be unsustainable. It would crush us. I’m just saying, inevitably, there comes a time when everything falls apart and we have to rethink everything. And what I’m saying is that’s not a catastrophe, that’s not actually a disaster. That’s a breakthrough, by God’s grace. And that’s when he becomes more real than ever before. And even as we sort of recover and he graciously puts his hand under our chin up above the surface of the water, we begin to breathe again and we begin to hope again. We take with us, from then on, a more vivid heart awareness of his nearness, his care, his gentleness, his humility, his sensitivity, his thoughtfulness, his patience. Matt, Jani and I spent a day with David Powlison, the biblical counselor—what a dear, precious man he was—back in Philadelphia, right in the middle of our rock bottom. And it was just a great day. And several years later, I saw David at an event and he said, “Ray, how are you doing with all that?” And I said, “David, I’m embarrassed to admit to you how much it still bothers me and kind of eats at me.” And he said, “Ray, God is patient.” Oh, those three words! God is patient. Matt, he’s not looking at you and me with a stopwatch in his hand. Click. “Okay, come on. Let’s see some progress here. What are you waiting for?” It’s not like that. Where would we be without the patience of God? I don’t change quickly. I don’t change easily. But God is patient, and when we go to that place of deep sorrow and loss and heartache, he’s not only there; he’s there with open arms.
Matt Tully
Ray, you mentioned your story of rock bottom, which is maybe in the broad category of betrayal. And that’s one of the categories that you address in the book. You hit on a few other ways that we can sometimes hit rock bottom. I wonder if you could just walk us through those. The next one that you highlight is when we feel trapped by our sin. Speak a little bit to the ways that God can use those feelings to make himself real to us.
Ray Ortlund
I forget which of our Puritan fathers it was, but he said it so well. “Satan shows the bait, but he hides the hook.” And we all know exactly what he’s talking about. We fall for a temptation, we’re restless—Following Jesus is so confining. Why can’t I think for myself? Why can’t I explore my options? And then we go do something really reckless. And then we find it gets its hooks into us. It’s easy to get in and hard to get out. Every single one of us understands that. Jesus said, “He who sins is a slave to sin.” It gets a power over us and inevitably, we go there. When we’re the ones who do the betraying, well, thank God for brick walls that we run into, where we finally have to face ourselves and own up and just fall before the Lord—and perhaps others—and confess our sins. James 5:16: “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.” The Roman Catholic Church has confession as an ordinance in the formal structures of their ministry. I think James 5:16 is talking about something far more profound, but we Protestants, to whom do we confess our sins? And it says confess your sins to one another. So this is mutual. There’s a transparency in real Christianity. And then it says, “Pray for one another that you may be healed.” That’s where healing is found. When we’re trapped in our own sins, confession and prayer with Christian brothers and sisters, as is appropriate, however that might be appropriate in any given relationship.
Matt Tully
I know that’s something that you and your church have done for a long time very intentionally, but you’re right, it’s something that sounds good in theory, but we struggle to actually do that in our lives. Another one of the categories of hitting rock bottom that you address is loneliness. And loneliness is one of those struggles that just by definition, it’s something that we often struggle with alone. When we don’t have that community, that’s what it is. It’s the lack of true community. So how does God meet us if we’re feeling alone?
Ray Ortlund
Solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment. And it’s really, really hard to bear. So many people in our nation today say they have no friend. They’re lonely. Our relationships and community groups and institutions that used to bring us together when America was sort of a more traditional culture, they’ve broken down. And we’re all aware of it. We all suffer the effects. My dad used to say, and I love how he said this, he said, “Take a risk, and go give your heart away.” I would say to anyone who’s lonely, look around and ask yourself (you can pray about it as well, of course), Who do I respect? Who do I trust? And go have coffee with that person. Go stick your neck out. Open your heart and say, “You know, I would really like to go to a deeper place with some trusted friends. And I wonder if we could put together something that maybe we could try it for three months and see how it works. We could get together for coffee every other week or something like that, maybe read some Scripture. And I would love the privilege of becoming vulnerable and transparent with you. Do you want to think about that? Could we consider that?” Now, that’s a scary step to take. Okay, well, let’s take it. Let’s not let fear hold us back. In Hamlet, old Polonius says to his son, as I recall, about friends, “And those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried.” In other words, you’ve chosen them as friends, they’ve been tested, they’ve been found faithful. “And those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” Okay, here’s a goal for every single one of us for the rest of our lives. We will stop losing friends. We will regain lost friends. We will make new friends, and there will be less loneliness in this world.
Matt Tully
A final category that you deal with, which is the ultimate enemy here that we all face at some point, is death itself. And I wonder if there’s someone even listening right now who is facing death, whether it’s their own death—they’ve just got some diagnosis or they have something that’s inevitably leading in a certain direction—or maybe they have a loved one that has recently passed away, and they’re just wrestling with the reality of death. It’s a reality that we so often push away from our consciousness until it becomes impossible to ignore. What does God say to us in the face of that death?
Ray Ortlund
Matt, that’s such a poignant question. Thank you for asking that. I read somewhere that back in the Victorian days of the nineteenth century, people talked frankly about death, but sex was the taboo subject. We have flipped that. We never stop talking about sex, but death, we have no idea. And then when we do go to a funeral, it’s not called a funeral. It’s called a celebration of life, and it’s sort of chipper and upbeat. Well, okay, I understand in a way what that’s about, but they’re going to call my funeral a funeral, Matt. I’m making sure of that.
Matt Tully
Why?
Ray Ortlund
A friend the other day called me a death non-avoidant person.
Matt Tully
That’s an interesting compliment, I guess.
Ray Ortlund
Yeah, I think it was meant to be, actually. Because, brother, if Christ is risen, and we’re following him into resurrection immortality, we can stop avoiding, fearing, ignoring death. We can look at it right in the face and say to death, “You sorry loser! You have no claim on me at all. You think you’re going to win? Well, I’m going to show you. I’m going to dance on your grave.” We should be cheerfully defiant of death. And I’m thinking of John 21, when Jesus speaks to Peter. Jesus describes to Peter how he’s going to die. I wish the Lord would do this for me. I would be very interested to know in advance. But he says that to him. This is in John chapter 21:9: “This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.” Now, here’s why I love that so much, and it’s true for every Christian, not just Peter. When Peter died, he didn’t just die; he glorified God. Matt, you and I, unless the Lord comes back first, there’s going to come a day when we die. We have a birthday, we have a death day. We know our birthday, we don’t know our death day, but God has that day circled on his calendar for me and for you and for everyone listening. And when that day comes and we can no longer care for ourselves, we can no longer breathe, and our body shuts down, in that moment, we will be glorifying God. How? Well, John, the author, says, “And after saying this, Jesus said to Peter, ‘Follow me.’” Now, I love the realization, Matt, that you and I don’t have to orchestrate how we die so that we make sure our death glorifies God. All we do is today, at this moment, follow Jesus. And then tomorrow, follow Jesus. And then the day after that, follow Jesus. He’ll take care of everything. He will lead us to a death that will glorify God. For example, and this is actually quite spectacular, my own dad. The man was a saint. He had pulmonary fibrosis. His lungs became hardened and sort of leathery, and they didn’t process oxygen well, so he often felt as though he was underwater, fighting for breath, especially if he exerted himself. And I don’t know how this happened, but one time mom found him on the floor of their home in California. He had collapsed, fighting for breath. Mom, of course, was so distressed. She was there with him. And between gulping down some air, dad said to my mom, “No, Anne, no. This is a gift. It’s a gift.” Dad trusted God and he followed Christ, even when Christ led him into pulmonary fibrosis. And he received it not as a curse but as a gift. And then the day he died, in 2007, the family gathered there at his bedside, they read Scripture, they sang hymns, dad gave a word of patriarchal blessing to the family, and died. Now, Matt, I don’t know if I’m going to have consciousness to speak to Jani and my children. Maybe I’ll die in a car accident. I don’t know. God decides that. But what we know from John 21 is that if we will follow Jesus, he will lead us not only into each day but to that final day. And however it goes down for me, however it goes down for you and every listener, a Christian following Jesus doesn’t just die, but glorifies God. In fact, back in I can’t remember which chapter it is—I think Deuteronomy 32—God says to Moses, “Moses, I want you to go up on that mountain there and die and be gathered to your people.” What a remarkable command. God’s going to give me that command someday, and you, and every listener. And that means that when you and I die, we will be obeying God. Our last moment in this mortal world will be a moment of wonderful obedience, faithfulness, consecration. And then God said to Moses, “Die and be gathered to your people.” The Apostle’s Creed refers to the communion of saints. Matt, you’ve got that picture of Martin Luther up behind you there in your study. And Matt, when you walk into heaven, it may well be that there you’ll be and you will see the Lord. Maybe he’ll be fifteen feet away, and he will look at you, and you will look at him, and he will smile at you. And he might give you a great big bear hug. He’ll say, “Welcome.” And then all these other people, the communion of saints, you’ll be gathered to your people. Martin Luther might come up with a great big, vigorous handshake and invite you into a conversation about justification by faith alone! It’s just going to be wonderful. And we’re one heartbeat away from that glorious eternal welcome.
Matt Tully
I love that at the end of that chapter on dying, you share a little anecdote from World War II, where a newspaper reporter asked C. S. Lewis what he would do if the German Luftwaffe dropped a bomb on him in England. And obviously, England knew what it was like to be bombed by Germany. London was bombed. And Lewis had this incredible little line in response. I wonder if you could tell us what he said.
Ray Ortlund
It was an Australian journalist, and the British knew that the Germans were working on the atomic bomb. So it was not just any old bomb; it was the big one. And Lewis said, “If I see that bomb heading straight for me, I’m going to stick out my tongue at it and say, ‘Poo! You’re just a bomb. I am an immortal soul!’” I love that!
Matt Tully
That’s just amazing. But it has that perspective. It’s not that death is relativized for a Christian. We understand its limits. It has a power over us, but it’s a limited power. It’s a power that will be undone in the last day. And that’s such an incredible, incredible thing for us to hold on to as we face whatever our rock bottom might be, that ultimately it will be undone by our Lord.
Ray Ortlund
I think the Lord is calling us to face not only death, but all the sufferings that lead up to it. To face our sufferings and advancing age, decrepitude, injury, and so forth—face it all with a cheerful defiance. Death will take us out, but at every step along the way, we prevail by not being intimidated and not being disheartened, but by rejoicing in Christ every step of the way. In fact, Matt, here’s how we can wake up every day by God’s grace for his glory: we’re going to go give the devil a really bad day, and we’re going to have fun doing it, and we’re going to glorify Christ. And that doesn’t mean that we’re sparkling, perfect Christians. We have many weaknesses and many failings. But even that we offer to Christ cheerfully. He is our all-sufficient Savior. Martin Luther, again, he’s taught me more than anyone else about cheerful defiance because Jesus is our all-sufficient Savior. Jesus loves and saves sinners, Matt. Let’s admit it. If we want in on Jesus, we’ve got to be, as Isaiah says, among the contrite and lowly.
Matt Tully
Ray, to close this out here, I wonder if you might consider praying for those of us who are listening, but especially for the person who maybe does find him or herself in this rock bottom spot, whatever it might be. Maybe it is that betrayal. Maybe it is their own sin, where they just feel completely trapped. Or maybe it is some kind of sickness or illness, some physical infirmity that they can’t escape. I wonder if you would pray to close us, that they would understand what Christ means to them right now.
Ray Ortlund
Thank you for that. It’s a very sensitive suggestion. So many people are suffering right now, suffering deeply. Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for being the Lord of the lowly. You dwell in a high and holy place, but also down here with us at our lowest, with us at our worst. You are not aloof. You’re not above it all. You’re not too busy for people like us. But you are down among us right here, right now. So we pray for everyone listening. Lord, give us an awareness—an existential, real-time awareness—of your nearness to us at this very moment. Your heart for us, your care for us, your presence. We are so grateful that we are not God forsaken. So grateful for your presence, your favor, your advocacy, your cross, your Spirit, your word. Now, Lord, whatever our next step is, help us to take that step right now. Give us that grace, Lord. Thank you. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Ray, for speaking with us today.
Ray Ortlund
Oh, it’s a privilege. Thank you, Matt.
Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.
Rosaria Butterfield encourages us to engage our LGBTQ neighbors for Christ, highlighting how God used the radically ordinary hospitality of Christians to draw her to himself.
In this episode, Zach Carter and Jonathan Arnold talk through the importance of understanding corporate prayer throughout history and the value of looking to past written prayers as a treasury of wisdom that teaches us how to live before God. Zach and Jonathan also share some of their favorite prayers from church history, reflecting on how these prayers have impacted their own lives and how they can do so for the church today.
Matt Tully
Jonathan and Zach, thanks so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.
Zach Carter
Great to be here. Thank you.
Jonathan Arnold
Thanks for having us.
Matt Tully
In the introduction to this new book that you two have worked on together, you write that this project was born from frustrations that you both felt related to churches that you’ve been a part of or at least the church tradition that you both are from. I wonder if you could just start off by explaining a little bit more what you mean by that. What were those frustrations that you felt and, how does that relate more broadly to the way that evangelicals often view their churches, view the past, view church history?
Jonathan Arnold
That’s a great question. My own background, which really poured into the beginning of this project, is from a broad Baptist background that was very unaware of its history, at least in the version that I received. And so as I was moving through my own academic career and realizing that I really didn’t have an understanding of why my church tradition believed what it believed or how it came to be, I, first of all, fell in love with the idea of finding that out and of understanding where we came from and why we do things the way we do them—what’s behind that, if there are good reasons. And sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. And one of those things was the lack of corporate prayer altogether, let alone the understanding of corporate prayer from history and trying to tie into a tradition. And so as I continued to study deeper into the history of the Baptists specifically and found not only some of those controversies that came up over the use of written prayers and the writing down of prayers for future generations, even if they weren’t going to use them in their own time, the recognition that we’ve got a long line of believers that we are able to learn from and to join with across the globe and across time to be able to understand how God has worked in their lives and how he’s continuing to work in ours—being able to see these prayers. So it really started as a personal discipline for me of trying to find prayers that would fit in given circumstances, and where God has worked in the past, and how people have put words to that in order to express both their dependence on God, their love for God, but also their understanding of where they are in their own personal and corporate experiences. And to find those and the ability that those have to speak into my own life currently, and then to share that with other people has been just an amazing blessing for me. And so much of this project was how do I get the chance to share that with other people.
Zach Carter
I think one of the things that I loved about what Jonathan said is, well, I didn’t grow up in church, and so I am a new traveler in this world. And so to be plopped into early 2000s, 2010s evangelicalism and see Young Restless and Reformed going on, see different sorts of resurgences taking place in denominations while declines were taking place in others, one of the things which I was helped most in Bible college but then also in seminary was learning what Jonathan just mentioned—the place from which we come and actually that the work of God to preserve his people over time didn’t start in the Billy Graham crusades in the 1940s. The church existed much, much earlier than that. And so the invitation by Jonathan to work on this project was a great one because it was enriching to my own faith to be a part of sourcing these, which is its own journey and story, because how do you even pick stuff like this? That was a challenge and there is a criteria we had to develop for that, but it was extremely edifying to see normal Christians who are heroes and titans of the faith, but with very normal prayers, asking God for help. It was incredibly edifying. It was an amazing project.
Matt Tully
And going beyond even just this topic of prayer, which is the focus of the book that you guys have worked on together, there is that broader question of the value of history for Christians today. And I think many people have acknowledged or recognized that evangelicalism as a movement can tend to be a little bit ahistorical at times. And Baptists—I’m a Baptist, so I can say this—we don’t have the best track record at times in valuing church history, valuing tradition in different forms. I wonder if you guys have thoughts on why that is the case for us sometimes. Not all denominations, not all Christians, not all churches, but so often it is true that we tend to maybe not feel like there’s as much value in looking to the past. We feel even skeptical of some of these traditions or things that are handed down from the past. What’s going on there in our thinking?
Zach Carter
I’m going to borrow George Marston’s language from his book, which is not necessarily talking about evangelicals, but I think it’s applicable here. Evangelicalism, more than being a tradition, is probably more like a co-belligerency against things. And so evangelicals feel like we don’t have a history because it’s better to think of evangelicalism as an alliance around certain things—Christocentrism, biblicism, activism. Those sorts of things. There’s scholarly articles defining what evangelicalism is, and it’s not worth getting into those here.
Matt Tuly:
Bebbington’s quadrilateral.
Zach Carter
Yeah, that’s right. And Thomas Kidd. Tommy Kidd adds a fifth one—a focus on the work of the Spirit. So those things don’t lend themselves to a historical identity. We’re probably getting in the woods here too, but I think it’s probably where young evangelicals are finding the traditions of Rome or the traditions of the Eastern church compelling, because they feel ancient. But those resources are ours too because we’re part of the universal church ourselves. And so hopefully some of that’s been borne out in this work too. Jonathan, you were about to say something.
Jonathan Arnold
You’ve hit on it, but I think there’s an underlying anti-view of evangelicals that is "we are not this" rather than "we are something." I grew up in Louisiana, which is a heavily Catholic area.
Matt Tully
Also a heavenly place.
Jonathan Arnold
Also a heavenly place.
Zach Carter
At least the food.
Jonathan Arnold
Yeah, absolutely. But the idea that I was taught growing up was just "We’re not Catholic." And so much of what we were doing was just because it didn’t look like what the Catholics were doing, rather than we’ve got a reason for this. And I think there’s a large part of evangelicalism and a large part of Baptist tradition which overlap quite a bit that says, "That’s who we are. We’re just not the others," rather than "We have a place to stand on our own." And so often you find, for the Baptist tradition (and we mentioned this, I think, in the introduction), at least in my experience in various churches and various branches of the Baptist tradition, they wouldn’t use corporate prayers, and it was largely because it seemed Catholic. They didn’t want to sound Catholic at all, and so there was no reason to use that, rather than being able to say, like Zach said, these are our resources as well. We come from a united background, even if we come into that Protestant side of things. And then you’ve also got, within the Baptist tradition, a fight over whether we’re Protestants or not and all that kind of stuff. It gets into some complexities there that are well worth learning about, but ultimately land in kind of the same place. It’s been very difficult to find a place for the Baptist and the evangelicals and the breadth of those traditions to be able to say, "This is who we are. This is where we stand." And it makes, then, those much more ancient seeming traditions very palatable to a whole host of people. And so part of our desire in this project is to allow our students to be able to say, "Hey, we actually can land where we do currently and yet draw from this amazing set of resources that God has left his people."
Matt Tully
And Jonathan, how would you summarize what Christians might be leaving on the table if they do remain, to quote from the book, "cut off from the past" when it comes to our history in general but maybe even prayers in particular? What are we leaving on the table when we do that?
Jonathan Arnold
There are several things I think that leads to. One is it leads to a feeling of isolation. You often end up either, as an individual or just as an individual congregation, reinventing the wheel in our theological journey and in our spiritual formation where we don’t really have to. There’s something about being able to sit down with a Samuel Johnson, who just lost his wife, writing a prayer and dealing with the death of somebody in your own life and being able to go, look, God’s people have been here before. And it’s not a it’s not a Band-Aid. It doesn’t solve everything. But to be able to sit with somebody, much like the best of the counselors either in Scripture or even outside of it, that just can sit with you and offer you a shoulder to cry on and to be able to hear you and go, "I can empathize with you." To have God’s people from history being able to do that in their written work, even if they didn’t know that’s what they were going to be doing. I don’t think Samuel Johnson was thinking about future generations when he’s writing in his journal about the death of his wife and how he’s going to deal with this moving forward. And yet in my own family were dealing with the death of a very close friend, a sudden death in a car accident, and to be able to pick up that prayer and to read it and go, "Man, God has been there through the sudden, unexpected death of his children throughout time." And to be able to read that alongside somebody else so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel and I don’t have to think I’m doing it alone. And that’s a real danger. If we cut ourselves off completely from that, then we get to a place where we either think that we’re alone in it or we somehow think that we are the ones who have to come up with all of the details of this and have to create the theology and have to create the rituals or the liturgy in order to do this well. And in reality, that’s not on our shoulders. It’s not something that we’re supposed to bear alone. We get to play a part in that process and leave behind, hopefully, prayers for others, and we get to guide them in their process as well and add our own experience in. And yet we don’t have to try to bear all of that responsibility. For me, at least, it removes a whole host of anxieties, both in the isolation and in the weighty responsibility that feels if I have to do it by myself.
Matt Tully
Zach, maybe I can play devil’s advocate for a minute for maybe the person listening who does come from a tradition that has been a little bit wary of the value of these things. I could think, especially when it comes to a church’s corporate worship but maybe even an individual’s personal devotional time, I could see someone saying, "We have the infallible testimony of the Bible, and that includes lots of prayers. The Psalms is a whole prayer book. Why would I need to incorporate the fallible voices of church history when God has already given us his word, which is a rich resource for us to mine for language, especially for prayer. Isn’t that enough?"
Zach Carter
That’s a great question. And the first thing I would say, if this was a congregation member, for example, or somebody in that way, the first thing I would do is I would say I don’t want to suggest that you need it. I want to be careful there, because we do only need Scripture, and Scripture does give us all those things. However, I would offer that person a question right back to them and suggest, "Why would you read a biography? Or why would you write a journal and read your journal?" What journals, biographies, and even these collection of prayers are is they’re like landmarkers, where you go back and you can see God’s faithfulness over time in a particular area. One prayer that’s dear to me is from John of Damascus. He writes a prayer where he prays for the conversion of his father. Those who know me personally know that I’m one of the first Christians in my entire family since 1830, and so his prayer is a prayer that resonates with me. John of Damascus’s words are not infallible. John of Damascus is a hero of the faith, to be sure, but he’s not the apostle Paul, and he wouldn’t want for us to receive his words like the apostle Paul. And yet that’s a guy who is very faithful and yet is in a moment of vulnerability, praying for the strength to talk to his dad about the gospel. And I would just say to that brother or sister who would come with that objection, it’s helpful to see how other people have been obedient to God’s word in the past, so they can glean insight and wisdom. What this is is not a prescription. It’s really a treasury of wisdom in how to live before God. And so what we’re really trying to help people see is how other people taken Scripture and prayed its truths in their own context. We’re not looking to replace Scripture in this by any means, but how do you pray in such a way that your prayers don’t become, as one professor of mine said a long time ago, just become about your cat’s hangnails. Prayer meetings can get really derailed, like a hospital list of things going on. Which, to be clear, God cares about those things. That’s not to suggest he doesn’t care about our needs. He wants us to bring them to him. But there’s a way to really say, How do I incorporate Scripture in my life? How do I pray without ceasing? How do I engage in real life, applying God’s word to my life into these really difficult challenges? You can think of these almost as like a poetic biography—how people have lived wisely in light of God’s revelation and been faithful to him in a variety of different circumstances.
Matt Tully
Another concern that sometimes people might have—and then after this last objection, I want to hear you guys talk about the actual prayers that you’ve got in this book—but another concern that people might have is just the distinction between a prepared prayer—one that’s been written down and is even being read perhaps—versus an extemporaneous prayer, where maybe there’s the sense that when I pray extemporaneously, I’m being led by the Spirit. I’m in the moment. It’s not a rote exercise. It’s more genuine. That can be the sense that we can have. What do you make of that? Is there any validity to maybe concern about these prayers being rote versus something more on the fly, so to speak?
Zach Carter
I think an analogy would hold, where you probably, if you’re in a relationship with a significant other, if I have a spontaneous date with my wife, that’s spectacular. But you know what’s also really spectacular? If I take time to think out exactly what I want to do, say, how I want the evening or the day to go, then that’s just as special. And I would suggest that God himself gives written prayers to be done in the context of corporate worship. That’s what many of the psalms are for. But then other ones are extemporaneous records of lament or fear, sadness or praise, and so whether it’s written or whether it’s extemporaneous is secondary only to the fact of does it reflect a genuine heart that’s genuinely moved by the Spirit and its affections towards its Maker and Savior. Because you can write a beautiful prayer and it be completely dead, or you could offer an extemporaneous utterance, Paul says, but if it’s not with love—if it’s not directed towards Christ—it’s meaningless as well. So I think that might be a good answer, but I’d love to know if Jonathan has anything to add there.
Jonathan Arnold
Yeah, no, I love that answer. I think there’s something, too, for me personally, as I’m thinking about moving forward and thinking about what’s coming in the week, or especially as a pastor, if I’m thinking about what’s going on in the life of my congregation and working during the week to write a prayer, I think there’s something very unique about that—or very significant, I should say—about the work of the Spirit in my life during the week while I’m prepping that and even while I’m writing and editing a prayer that is designed to be specifically for that situation in the life of my congregation or in the life of a loved one or in the life of a neighbor or whatever that looks like. That does allow for just keeping that idea and those problems and those issues on my mind regularly so that even as I’m constantly thinking about the right words and the right way to say this in a way that is going to be helpful in the middle of a service or in the life of somebody else, that I’m able to pray without ceasing in the midst of that week or whatever the length of time is while the Holy Spirit is keeping that on my mind and allowing me to work through that, and then hopefully it is helping the editing process as that happens. So I think there’s a both/and there. My own tradition is very extemporaneous. I love that. I love being able to hear what people are going through in the moment. But there’s also that time, and we’ve probably all been in situations where the extemporaneous prayer can meander and can either get to the cat’s toenails or can even get to places where, theologically, there are some dangerous things being taught even without knowing it in the midst of a prayer. And so I think there’s a place for caution and a place for preparation that doesn’t preclude the work of the Holy Spirit, as if he somehow can only be spontaneous in the moment.
Matt Tully
Yeah, that’s good. This book includes 100 different prayers from throughout church history. Initially, I think that feels maybe like a lot. There are a lot of different prayers in there from a lot of different people. Obviously, in the grand sweep of church history, it’s such a small fraction. So my first question on that was how did you guys go about actually picking which prayers to include? Were there certain criteria that you had that were always applied, or was it a little bit more free flowing, like just which ones really resonated with you personally?
Jonathan Arnold
I wish I could say it was extremely organized and we had a criteria from the beginning and a matrix that we worked through and it was all worked out. The project, because it started in a more organic way, much of what came about in this project was based around some of the things that I was teaching. In my early church history classes, I wanted to make sure that as I walked into class, rather than starting class with just a prayer about what’s going on in everybody’s life (because you ask for prayer requests, and church history class suddenly becomes about very important things, but not about church history), and so I would always start class with a prayer from somebody that we were studying at that particular period. And so gathering those together was part of what was going on here. So part of this was built around the curriculum that I was teaching through and that I still teach through. And so trying to make sure that I had a wide breadth of prayers that would touch on both the high points—those very significant figures that every church history textbook or every church history class is always going to touch on—but also trying to get some opportunities to show some of the less well-known figures and allowing people to see that God works through the average layperson or the average clergy person during that period of time as well in ways that history has sometimes forgotten if we’re not careful. So looking for those and just gathering those together. By the time we got to the point of putting together a book project, we had a host of prayers. I don’t know how many we have. We still have a collection of them and are continuing to add to them. Those then became the basis from which we chose, and we were looking for ones that sounded like they would actually still apply, that you could actually read them well, that there was something that was time honored about them. We were looking for ones that talked about specific aspects of theology, so you’ll note as you go through these that there are some that are extremely rich in their Trinitarianism. And so you get a feel, especially as the church was going through various issues and doctrinal complications and debates, that the prayers are built to reinforce the orthodoxy that the church had always held to. And so you get very rich theological discussions in several of these prayers that are intended both to be prepared prayers so that the church can be praying these but also to remind them that, yes, we do believe in a triune God; we do believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; we do believe that the Son came in the flesh; and all of those great truths that we want to remind ourselves of. And then we were also looking for, obviously some, breadth across time. We wanted to make sure that we were covering, as best as we could, all of the four eras that we looked at, trying to make sure that we had some representatives from all of those. There are some that, as you’re thinking through what to put together, you want some specific names in there because people are going to look for them. So we have a couple by Charles Spurgeon, who famously prayed very lengthy prayers in his sermons, and you get a feel for that as you look at it in the book just how long they are, which is wonderful, though, in this pastoral mindset of him praying for his people and for his city and for the gospel work that’s going on there. But then we also have prayers all the way back to the ancient liturgies that have been around for millennia. So trying to figure out how to represent that well. We certainly didn’t cover everybody that we’d love to cover. I think we could probably do ten, eleven, or twelve volumes of this before we got to a place where we felt like we had covered a good, wide variety of people. There are plenty of people that we’d like to add, and as we continue to gather more prayers, who knows what that will look like. But at least in my own use of them, they will continue to grow and we’ll add more and more and continue to gather them together and hopefully represent the church well over the course of its entire history.
Matt Tully
As you mentioned, you’ve broken the book into four distinct historical periods, and you have prayers for each of those. You have the early church, the medieval church, the reformation church, and the modern church. So I wonder if we can go through each of those distinct periods, and one of you can pick out one prayer from that period that just stands out to you. Maybe it’s your favorite one. Maybe it’s just one that has some special significance. And then we’re actually going to play an audio recording from the audio book of that prayer so that our listeners can actually hear what you’re talking about. So we’ll actually probably start with that first once you introduce the prayer, and then you guys can share some thoughts on it. Zach, why don’t you get us started with a prayer from the ancient church?
Zach Carter
I think one prayer to highlight would be from Ephrem the Syrian—a prayer for the singing of the church. Ephrem was one of these interesting people from the East. We don’t typically know about him because he was from the Eastern Roman Empire, but he was in the early monastic period, and he really just focused on ministry in his local congregation. He ultimately died from the plague, but it’s evident from his life that he gave himself to his congregation, and he died probably because of his contact, actually, with people who were sick. He wrote tons of songs, but one of the things that I think I love most about this is we don’t typically think about the fact that we should ask for God’s help before we sing to God. And that was his motivating factor in this prayer here.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that prayer together.
Prayer for Godly Singing and Speaking
Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306–373)
Whatever is allowed, let us sing, Lord, with instruments and
in the open. Let us not utter anything that is not permitted,
seeing these are but the instruments of frail creatures. Lord,
let my tongue be a pen for your glory, and let the finger of
your grace use it to write words that are edifying. The pen,
Lord, cannot write of its own accord. It needs someone to
write with it. In the same way, please do not let my tongue
begin to speak without you. Let it be an instrument in your
hand. Specifically, do not let it be used to say anything that
is not edifying. Indeed, praises be to your teaching!
Matt Tully
Zach, tell us a little bit more about when Ephrem actually lived. What do we know about the lifespan of his life?
Zach Carter
He was in the early fourth century, so probably born somewhere around 306 AD. The interesting thing about him is that there’s some confusion about this moniker that’s attached to him. It’s probably because everybody was confused about Aramaic in early scholarship. A lot of his stuff that he wrote were hymns to teach orthodoxy, and so his most probably well-known collection of hymns is called The Hymns Against Heretics, which helped popularize these ideas. Here’s what’s interesting. In the early church, heretics often used songs to teach their teachings, so Ephrem recognized that if he was going to match them and match their efforts, he himself would have to write songs. So he put many orthodox teachings into hymns, but wrote tons of commentaries and collections of sermons that still stand today. And so that prayer is significant to me because it emphasizes both the importance of singing in the life of the church but then also our need to prepare our hearts to sing to God.
Matt Tully
Zach, if you had to pick just one line from this prayer that you would say is your favorite, one that always hits you in a powerful way, what would that line be?
Zach Carter
Because he’s writing in that context of heresy and what we ought to sing and what we ought to not sing, if you don’t mind, I’m going to actually read the two lines because they’re almost like a stanza. "Let us not utter anything that is not permitted, seeing these are but the instruments of frail creatures. Lord, let my tongue be a pen for your glory, and let the finger of your grace use it to write words that are edifying."
Matt Tully
It’s amazing. It is so poetic.
Zach Carter
I think it’s just beautiful to think about. It echoes the epistle of James, where our tongues can either be used for blessing or cursing. And he’s acknowledging that, and he’s asking God to help his tongue be an instrument of blessing. And I think it’s just a good reminder for us that we are still tempted to the same things that his time period was, and the same vulnerabilities in the church to false teaching through music is still one that we face today. And then the ability of us to see ourselves as either instruments of incorrect cursing or incorrect speech, to be open to correction from the Lord and be open to letting our tongues be used for his glory, I think is an important reflection for us.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, let’s move to the medieval church. What’s one of your favorite prayers from that section?
Jonathan Arnold
I think the one that keeps coming back to mind for me is one by Bonaventure who is writing in the thirteenth century, and it’s his journaling about a prayer that is actually also included in the collection, a prayer by Anselm about 150 years earlier. And so in this prayer, Bonaventure is praying his own prayer, and he quotes a lengthy quotation from Anselm, which to me is very much what we’re doing in this entire project—of reading the prayers of those that came before us and being able to engage them in a way that makes them our own, brings them into our own experience, but recognizes what has come before us. So in our collection, it’s Prayer 57, which we’ve titled Prayer to Know Christ by Bonaventure.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that prayer right now.
Prayer to Know Christ
Bonaventure (1221–1274)
I have not yet expressed or even begun to understand, oh
Lord, just how great the rejoicing will be from your blessed
ones. Of course, they will rejoice as much as they love, and
their love will match their comprehension. But the question
remains: How much of you will they be able to grasp and,
thus, how much can they actually love you? In this life, no
eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has the heart of humanity
even begun to grasp how well they will know you and,
therefore, love you in the next life.
Oh God, I pray that I may know you and love you so that I
may find my joy in you. If I am not able to know and love you
completely in this life, at least allow me to make some progress
every day until the moment of completion arrives. Let the
knowledge of you so develop in me here in this life that there,
in the next life, it may be complete. Let the love of you so grow
here in this life that there, in the next life, it may be full. Here,
let my joy be great in hope; there, let it be full in actuality.
Lord, through your Son, you have commanded us—no,
you have counseled us—to ask, and you have promised to
grant this request so that our joy may be full. Faithful God,
I beg of you, please make my joy full. I ask, Lord, precisely
as you have suggested through your wonderful counselor;
I will receive what you have promised by your truth so that
my joy may indeed be made full.
For now, let my mind meditate on this joy. Let my tongue
speak of it. Let my heart love it exclusively. Let my conversation
focus on it. Let my soul hunger for it. Let my flesh
thirst for it. Let my whole being desire it until I finally enter
the joy of my Lord, who is the triune and one God, blessed
forever and ever. Amen.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, tell us a little bit more about Bonaventure. He’s might be a name that some people have heard before but they might not know much about him. It’s even an interesting name that he has. What do we know about him?
Jonathan Arnold
Probably where most people know the name is from the Catholic university that’s named for him that every once in a while around this time of the year they’ll usually have a team that gets into March Madness. So people will hear St. Bonaventure’s, which is very much named for him. He is a Franciscan friar who did most of his work, at least his academic work, at the University of Paris, which was the university of the day. His dates are from 1221–1274 or thereabouts. He was very influential in his contemporaries’ lives. He’s written a ton of theological works. He interacted with Anselm, as he does in this prayer, he interacted with Augustine and his writing largely in an Augustine tradition, but he also was very focused on the pastoral side of theology. Really seeing how the even more academic theology could be applied in life and how that shows in the average Christian’s ability to engage with God. So he’s writing at the height of the medieval church, and so it has all of the trappings of the medieval church, which is for both good and for bad. There are some obvious problems that come out in that era. But as he’s writing these prayers and as he’s writing his particular works, he writes a very influential commentary on the book of Luke that is still quoted regularly. It has remained a significant work in that field ever since he wrote it. So that’s 800 years on now. But he is ultimately seen as extraordinarily significant, given the title of a doctor in the church by a pope in the sixteenth century, so recognizing that there was some significance to his legacy. But significantly, he also shows up in Protestant literature—people who are coming later on and have turned their back on the Roman Catholic Church. And we know that story, hopefully. But they still see the benefit of what Bonaventure was doing and the fact that Bonaventure really gets at the heart of what Augustine had seen as the gospel and what the remnant had always seen as the gospel in the life of the church. And he’s able to pull that in in the midst of a highly academic and a very brilliant mind and yet one that was very encouraged by seeing the average lay person being able to understand the truths of what was going on in the theological tradition.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, if you had to pick just one line from this prayer, which one would it be?
Jonathan Arnold
It’s hard to pick a line, but I think the ending to this particular prayer is absolutely beautiful. He says, "For now, let my mind meditate on this joy. Let my tongue speak of it. Let my heart love it exclusively. Let my conversation focus on it. Let my soul hunger for it. Let my flesh thirst for it. Let my whole being desire it until I finally enter the joy of my Lord."
Matt Tully
That’s beautiful. Let’s turn to the Reformation era, probably an era that most of our listeners will be most familiar with. We’ve got some of the major figures like the Luther and the Calvin. But I wonder, Zach, if you could pick a prayer out of this section that might be from a lesser known person, somebody that we’re not quite as familiar with.
Zach Carter
I assume you don’t want Luther or Calvin because they are so well known, so I’m going to turn our attention to a guy named Henry Skougal. This is prayer 89, Prayer of Sanctification. Skougal’s interesting because he isn’t really known to us, but people who are immensely influenced by him are probably known by almost all of your listeners. George Whitfield, Charles Wesley, John Wesley—these were individuals who had Skougal’s work. Skougal had written a defense of the Christian faith and kind of a manual for spiritual piety was universally praised by the figureheads of the First Great Awakening. Even though Skougal lived in the mid seventeenth century, dying around 1678 and the First Great Awakening isn’t until the next century, but his work is very influential for them because Skougal holds up this idea of knowledge of God and knowledge of our failings and our knowledge of that their genuine Christian life is one which is moved by God in piety. Those would be feelings of adoration, feelings of affection, and then a desire to do holy works. That would be probably the quickest way to summarize. So his Prayer of Sanctification is probably the best one because it reveals that theology within his thought, which is that we have to know who God is to know how unholy we are, and then we need God’s help to be made holy like he is.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that prayer together.
Prayer for Sanctification
Henry Scougal (1650–1678)
Most gracious God, Father and fountain of mercy and goodness,
who has blessed us with the knowledge of our salvation
and the way that leads to it: Make our hearts excited with the
pursuit of that knowledge and that way because many things
endeavor to distract us.
Let us not presume on our own strength or resist your
divine assistance. While we are working to confirm our salvation diligently,
teach us to depend on you for success. Open our eyes, oh God,
and teach us from your law. Bless us with a diligent and tender
sense of duty to it and a knowledge to
discern things contrary to it. Direct us to keep your statutes
so that we are not ashamed when we examine whether we
have kept your commandments.
Fill our thoughts with a robust and holy disdain for the
trivial entertainment with which the world attempts to allure
us. Fill them to an extent that the strife would not be able to
cloud our judgment or betray us to sin. Turn our eyes away
from desiring worthless things, and make us alive in your law.
Fill our souls with such a deep sense and full persuasion of the
gospel truth that you revealed that it would regulate our lives,
especially our interactions with others. Fill us so that the life we
live in the flesh we would live through faith in the Son of God.
Oh, that the infinite perfections of your blessed nature and
the astonishing expressions of your goodness and love would
conquer and overpower our hearts! That our thoughts would
be constantly rising toward you like flames of devout affection
and would increase in sincere and active love toward all the
world, for your sake! That we would wash away all filthiness
of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in reverence, without
which we can never hope to behold and enjoy you!
Finally, O God, grant that consideration of what you are
compared to what we are in order to keep us both humble and
meek before you, but also stir in us the strongest and most ardent
aspirations toward you. We resign and give ourselves to the
direction of your Holy Spirit. Lead us in your truth, and teach
us, for you are the God of our salvation. Guide us with your
wisdom. And then, receive us in your glory, to the credit and
because of the intercession of your blessed Son, our Savior. Amen.
Matt Tully
Zach, if you had to pick a line out of this, or maybe multiple lines out of this prayer, which ones stand out to you the most?
Zach Carter
Probably just his prayer right in the middle where he asks, "Direct us to keep your statutes so that we are not ashamed when we examine whether we have kept your commandments. Fill our thoughts with a robust and holy disdain for the trivial entertainment with which the world attempts to allure us." And I think that captures the single-minded focus of the First Great Awakening and its emphasis on turning away from the trivialities of the world, and an intense white-hot, pure dedication to the things of the Lord. I think that the germ of that is certainly here in this prayer. It matures, for sure, in the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield.
Matt Tully
I wonder if other people are feeling what I’m feeling right now. As I hear some of these prayers, the full text, even a line like the one you just shared, they can feel so relevant today. These are prayers that are written hundreds of years ago, and yet a prayer that God would fill our thoughts with a holy disdain for trivial entertainments with which the world attempts to allure us—what person living today in our social media age, completely blanketed by entertainment of all kinds and distractions and temptations, we all feel the triviality of the entertainment world around us and how it can distract us from the Lord and from what he’s called us to do and be. And so, again, so many of these prayers can feel so timely today.
Zach Carter
It’s Scougal’s Neil Postman 1.0, right? The idea that the world is distracting is, of course, a biblical one. To go back to what Jonathan said at the very beginning about why this project is so valuable, when Christians have an ahistorical perspective on their faith, and they can’t see the superintending providence of God’s work preserving saints over time, what we miss is that the same temptation—I think Jonathan said specifically that we don’t feel like we have to reinvent the wheel. We face the exact same temptations to be distracted. The medium has changed, but there were distractions since Scougal’s age. And so the battle for the Christian from the beginning has been to not look at the apple, whatever the apple is in your day and age. Let not the typologist get too obsessed with the fact that there are apples that we’re actually looking at all the time. But, certainly, we do need to be comforted by the fact that Christians have been faithful, and God has kept a people for himself for generations. Even just revisiting some of these, I just feel so comforted, remembering that God is so kind to keep for himself a people. And the same things that we are battling, he has kept people through in the past.
Matt Tully
I think sometimes we can tend to think that the situations that we’re facing today in the modern world are distinct and they’re unique from what maybe previous generations or eras of Christians have faced. And I think there is something comforting and encouraging and even motivating—a bit of a kick in the pants—to know that actually, fundamentally, we’re not facing new things. Christians have always been called to faithfulness in the midst of many of the same temptations and challenges that past generations have felt. Let’s go to this last era of church history, the modern period. Jonathan, I wonder if you could share a last prayer for us from that period that really stood out to you.
Jonathan Arnold
There’s one by William Jay, who’s another one of these figures that is probably often overlooked in our own era, but in his day was extraordinarily well known, largely for his preaching ability, his ability to command a pulpit and to provide exegetical exposition in a way that was accessible to his congregation, which included a whole host of very well-to-do people as well as the lower class that were able to engage together. But his prayer that we have in number 95, labeled a Prayer for Right Perspective, is one that, again, is one of these timeless ones that fits well in our world.
Matt Tully
Let’s listen to that one together.
Prayer for Right Perspective
William Jay (1769–1853)
Oh Lord, help us remember that gratitude is more fitting
to us than complaint. Our afflictions, indeed, have
been light compared to our guilt. They have been few
compared to the sufferings of others. They have all been
attended with innumerable alleviations. They have all been
necessary, all given to us with a regard for our welfare,
all designed to work together for our good. We bless you
for what is past, and we trust you for what is to come.
Indeed, we cast all our cares upon you, knowing that you
care for us.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, tell us a little bit more about William Jay. For those of us who aren’t as familiar with him, where did he live, and what was his occupation?
Jonathan Arnold
Jay was a pastor. He was an independent pastor, so he was not part of the Church of England, but was, at a time when the evangelical movement was really just getting started, he’s one of these influential figures that’s at the beginning of the broadening of that evangelical movement. And he worked with some of the major figures of the day, or maybe a better way to say it is they worked with him, because he was one that was more well known and had a large platform for his day. So he worked with people like William Wilberforce, John Ryland, some of these names that your audience may very well be familiar with. But in their day, they saw the network that he had, the ability that he had to bring the gospel to places that it had never been before, and even to make church and church going as part of a spiritual formation movement, even outside of the requirement of going to the state church. Seeing that as part of everybody’s desire to grow and to engage their own Christian tradition is a significant one. So he’s working in Bath, England, and that’s where he spends almost all of his time. He’s the minister at Argyle Chapel, which was a very significant chapel there as the evangelical movement, at least the modern version of the evangelical movement, really got going. He was very focused in his time. He dies in 1853, so he overlaps Charles Spurgeon by a little bit, but basically his predecessor, as far as a major preacher in England. But one of his focuses was on the catechetical understanding or training of the family. And so he produces prayer books and he produces handbooks for his congregants to use in their homes, specifically for the father to use as the major discipler of children. So he produces a work called The Domestic Minister’s Assistant, and the domestic minister, then, is the father in this case that is supposed to be responsible for the whole household. He puts himself in a long tradition. This is not new to him. People like Richard Baxter in the Puritan era, Martin Luther had produced a very similar type of work, all focusing on the work of the father as the one who is responsible for the religious stewardship. But Jay carries that on and really produces some of the finest work in that genre over the entire of church history. So it’s still well worth getting, for people who are interested in making sure that their family is well discipled. And even for your own soul, it’s a great work. And he’s got several of those kinds of collections.
Matt Tully
And that’s another great example of the way that sometimes we can think of the modern world, where the idea of a family devotional or a family resource for parents to use with their children, it feels maybe very modern. But actually, throughout church history, some of these resources that today feel perhaps a little bit inaccessible or intimidating, they were designed for very similar practical reasons—trying to help God’s people to teach the Bible, to teach the truths of the faith, to teach people how to pray. It’s all meant to be very practical.
Jonathan Arnold
And to recognize that the stewardship of those that are closest to you and the ones that God has placed under you really falls on you as the father, as the parents, and as those that are in the household. That it’s not to be given out to other sources alone. It’s always great to have the church come alongside and help disciple your children. I’ve got a great church here that has a great youth program, and I’m very grateful for it. But ultimately, my children need to hear and be discipled by me and my wife rather than primarily by the youth minister and the leaders there. But the church has always had that thought in mind. And like you said, it goes all the way back, and we could find examples earlier than Martin Luther and all the way through of people who focused on that idea of stewardship and of passing on the faith to the next generation starts primarily in the nuclear family. It goes elsewhere from there, but starts there.
Matt Tully
Maybe a final question for each of you. Zach, maybe you can start us off. Is there any prayer that you came across, that you recorded, or you wrote down and you just couldn’t fit it in the book for some reason? It didn’t make the cut, but you felt really bad that you had to actually cut this one out because you love it so much.
Zach Carter
Oh, there were honestly so many. And I think that probably the best example of some just because of copyright law and either inaccessibility in translation, there are dozens of works that I would have loved to have seen put in. Even one of the works that is featured but there are other prayers in it that couldn’t make the cut, Isaac Watts has an entire directory. He produced a manual very much like William Jay did. And Isaac Watts’ book contains a ton of those. There’s a figure, Lewis Bailey, who wrote a book called The Practice of Piety, and it’s a manual which predates these. It’s more in the era of Skougal, and none of his prayers are in there, but he has prayers for before you open up Scripture to do your private devotionals, here’s a prayer to pray. And so there are dozens of these prayers that live on in a Clippings document on my desktop.
Matt Tully
Jonathan, how about you? Is there any single prayer that stands out to you that you wish could have been in here, but it just didn’t quite make the cut?
Jonathan Arnold
Yeah, there were, like Zach said, there were several that I think kind of stand out. We’ve got a couple from the pen of Elizabeth I, who was very involved, especially early in her life, in theological writings and was obviously involved in the theological debates of the day as as the Church of England was coming about and was coming to its final formation. And so she leaves behind a couple of just beautiful prayers that demonstrate her own faith in the middle of those crises, or even early on before she’s even crowned Queen, that have been left to us. We would love to be able to include all of those kinds of things, but those stand out to me. I kind of come back around to those. I live in that era in my own historical studies, and so it often shows up just as a reminder of where those various crowns were and how that played out in their own personal life as well.
Matt Tully
That’s great. Jonathan and Zach, thank you so much for taking the time today to help us understand a little bit more what you’re doing in this really wonderful little book—to just remind us all, perhaps, of the riches of church history, the riches of our own heritage as Christians, and what we can draw from that heritage.
Jonathan Arnold
Thanks for having us. This has been wonderful.
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