Category: The Church

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Why You Need Prayers from Church History

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.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

• A Case for the Use of Historical Prayers
• An Anthology of Prayers and Petitions
• Prayer for Godly Singing and Speaking
• Prayer to Know Christ
• Prayer for Sanctification
• Prayer for Right Perspective

00:59 - A Case for the Use of Historical Prayers

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.

19:01 - An Anthology of Prayers and Petitions

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.

23:25 - Prayer for Godly Singing and Speaking

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.

28:29 - Prayer to Know Christ

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."

35:05 - Prayer for Sanctification

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.

43:05 - Prayer for Right Perspective

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.

Zach Carter
Thank you.

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