Pastor Eileen’s Musings on Prayer…

As we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, one of the ways I am marking this special year is to participate in the “Luther Reading Challenge.” A large community of people have come together on an internet site to read various pieces of Luther’s writings and to share comments and insights about them.

Sometimes Luther’s writings are very wordy and very complicated and require a bit of work to unravel. But others are quite straightforward. They reflect the deep desire Luther had to teach people to live faithfully.

I am sharing one of Luther’s writings with you today in the hope that you will find it enlightening and encouraging.

Blessings on your week! Pr. Eileen Smith Le Van

“A Simple Way to Pray” – By Martin Luther

Dr. Martin Luther -- teacher, theologian and reformer, depended mightily on prayer.

Dr. Martin Luther — teacher, theologian and reformer, depended mightily on prayer.

1) I will tell you as best I can what I do personally when I pray. May our dear Lord grant to you and to everybody to do it better than I! Amen.

2) First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer), I take my little psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.

3) It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night. Guard yourself carefully against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, “Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.” Such thoughts get you away from prayer into other affairs which so hold your attention and involve you that nothing comes of prayer for that day.

4) It may well be that you may have some tasks which are as good or better than prayer, especially in an emergency. There is a saying ascribed to St. Jerome that everything a believer does is prayer and a proverb, “He who works faithfully prays twice.” This can be said because a believer fears and honors God in his work and remembers the commandment not to wrong anyone, or to try to steal, defraud, or cheat. Such thoughts and such faith undoubtedly transform his work into prayer and a sacrifice of praise.

5) On the other hand it is also true that the work of an unbeliever is outright cursing and so he who works faithlessly curses twice. While he does his work his thoughts are occupied with a neglect of God and violation of his law, how to take advantage of his neighbor, how to steal from him and defraud him. What else can such thoughts be but out and out curses against God and man, which makes one’s work and effort a double curse by which a man curses himself. In the end they are beggars and bunglers. It is of such continual prayer that Christ says in Luke 11, “Pray without ceasing,” because one must unceasingly guard against sin and wrong-doing, something one cannot do unless one fears God and keeps his commandment in mind, as Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is he who meditates upon his law day and night.”

6) Yet we must be careful not to break the habit of true prayer and imagine other works to be necessary which, after all, are nothing of the kind. Thus at the end we become lax and lazy, cool and listless toward prayer. The devil who besets us is not lazy or careless, and our flesh is too ready and eager to sin and is disinclined to the spirit of prayer. 

From Luther’s Works 43:193–195

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