Prayer With My Family

O My Soul:

I have never sweat blood during prayer but leading my wife and children in prayer comes close.

It is something I know I should do but I can not count the ways that delay, interfere, and eventually bring family prayer to an end.

Here are a few things I have done to make it a routine:

1.  8:00 a.m. is family prayer time.  It helps that the two youngest children are not homeschooled this year and need to be at the elementary school at 8:30.  So at 8:00 we all sit in the living room.

2. I follow a very, very simple order of service:

Invocation, Psalm, Apostles' Creed, Prayer Requests, Lord's Prayer, Blessing.

And then we go about the rest of our day.


Hope in Christ &
God Bless You,

-oms

Prayer

O My Soul:

I have noticed that I have been praying the Matin Prayer Service regularly for well over a year.  It has become part of my daily schedule along with breakfast and bathroom breaks.  I've been praying it Monday through Thursday without many misses.  I schedule it on the church calendar, vest, and speak the whole service aloud including lesson from the Daily Lectionary.  Aloud, so I can hear the texts and the prayers.  Usually a time of silence during the additional collects just to listen, ponder, or add my own requests.  It takes up to a half-hour.  Sometimes congregation members join.  Sometimes not.

I started at the suggestion of my pastor.

At first it bored me to tears.  It was just hard work.  My ears had been closed to the gospel.  I didn't get anything out of it.  It seemed like a waste of time.  But it was on the schedule so I kept at it.

I still battle depression (obviously) but I am hearing the Gospel.

I receive benefits from Christ's death more and more and more.

I reflect on those benefits off and on throughout the day.

It is a blessing in the midst of the darkness that comes and goes (almost at random).

But, it is now hard for me to imagine going weeks or even days without listening to my Lord and my God.  And it is definitely not a waste of time.

Open my lips O Lord and my mouth will declare Your praise.

He has and I am.


Hope in Christ &
God be with you, too

-oms

Prayer and the Family

O My Soul:

Nice post on Prayer and the Family at Lutheran Logomaniac.

-oms

Luther on Prayer

O My Soul:

The 16th century reformer, Dr. Martin Luther, wrote this on prayer (my emphasis is in italics):

“Where there is a Christian, there is the Holy Ghost, who is always engaged in prayer. For though the Christian does not continually move his lips to utter words, nevertheless the heart is beating and pulsating, like the arteries and the heart in the body, unceasingly sighing: O dear Father, may Thy name be hallowed, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done among us and all people, etc.

And as the attacks, trials, and troubles press and crowd harder, also such sighing and begging becomes more urgent, even audible.

So, then, you cannot find a Christian who is not always praying, as little as a living person is without a pulse, which never rests, but beats continuously, though the person may be sleeping or is occupied otherwise, so that he is not aware of its beating.” (St. L. VIII:363.)

What then is needed for prayer? Luther says:

“Without communion with Christ no one can pray even one word which would count before God or be pleasing to Him.

The prayers of the Turks, Jews, monks, and hypocrites are of that kind.”

Speaking of this prerequisite of prayer, Luther says:

“The Spirit of grace brings it to pass that we can and may, yea, must, begin to pray.

Hence Christ here means to say: If you believe in Me and have received the Spirit, your hearts having thus become sure of God’s grace, as He had said above, ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,’ then your prayer will follow as a matter of course. For this is the true and proper work of Christians, and of the Christian only.

For before we become Christians and believe, we do not know what and how we should pray. And though a man prays most fervently , still the Spirit of grace is not there. The natural heart can only speak thus: Dear Lord, do Thou regard how virtuously I live, how much I suffer; or take into consideration the merit of this and that saint, the intercession and good works of pious people. Here there is no faith in divine grace and mercy for Christ’s sake; here the heart always remains uncertain and cannot know that it is certainly heard; it wants to deal with God only on the basis of man’s own holiness or that of others, without Christ, as though God ought to humble Himself before such a man and be forced to bestow His grace or help and thus become our Debtor and Servant. Such an attitude does not merit grace, but wrath; it is not prayer, but a mocking of God.”


Concerning the Lord’s Prayer, taught by Christ Himself, Luther says in his Large Catechism:

“Besides this we should be incited and drawn to prayer because in addition to this commandment and promise

God anticipates us and Himself arranges the words and form of prayer for us, and places them upon our lips as to how and what we should pray, that we may see how heartily He pities us in our distress, and may never doubt that such prayer is pleasing to Him and shall certainly be answered;

which prayer has a great advantage indeed over all other prayers that we might compose ourselves. For in them the conscience would ever be in doubt and say: I have prayed, but who knows how it pleases Him, or whether I have hit upon the right proportions and form? Hence there is no nobler prayer to be found upon earth than the Lord’s Prayer, which we daily pray, because it testifies excellently that God loves to hear it, which we ought not to surrender for all the riches of the world.” (Trigl. 703, Large Cat., Lord’s Prayer, 22 f.)

My summary on these notes:

I am learning that Christ has been praying for me and with me all along.

Depression is causing me to pray more earnestly and audibly. I am finding joy in daily prayers handed down to me from the church of old. (Matins and Vespers)

When I'm unable to intentionally pray Matins or Vespers (whose form is taken from a rich understand of Scripture), I am glad that the Lord's Prayer is always pleasing to God.

I am thankful to audibly hear God speak to me in His Word and Sacrament which leads me back to Him (even if it is my mouth He uses or that of friends or brother pastors.)

Those are a few notes for today. Thank you Dr. Luther for teaching me and thank you to the readers for remembering me in your prayers, comments, and phone call.

God bless you, too.

-oms

Repost: On Praying in your Marriage Written by Todd Peperkorn on March 8th, 2010

O My Soul:

I'm reposting this post from the Rev. Todd Pepperkorn on prayer in marriage. Enjoy.



“And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12 ESV)

One of the many benefits which my wife and I have received from the DOXOLOGY training program has been the gift of prayer. Kathryn and I were able to have a wonderful dinner and conversation with an Australian pastor and theologian named Dr. John Kleinig. He is best known in our parish for his delightful book, Grace Upon Grace.

As Kathryn and I sat and talked with him, he asked me about my book, and specifically about the struggle that I had with prayer while I was sick and on disability. We talked, and then he told us what he and his wife have been doing for many years. They’ve made several resolutions about their common life together. Here are some of them:

1. Always go to bed at the same time. This insures that eventually or generally, you end up on the same wake/sleep schedule. It helps a marriage if you aren’t two ships passing in the night, living parallel lives.

2. Talk about the day, especially that made you rejoice, and what challenges or temptations you had. This helps you to stay focused on one another and your actually needs, not simply on talking about the weather, the children, the schedule, etc.

3. Finally, pray out loud for one another each night in the presence of your spouse. The point of this is that it focuses your life upon the life of your spouse. You know that your needs are heard by your spouse and by God Himself. It helps you to know what to actually do to help your spouse, because they have told you what is going on.

So Kathryn and I started doing this in September 2009, and I can hardly begin to tell you what kind of a blessing it has been to our marriage and our family. We are more aware of one another, we are more relaxed, and we know that for at least one little snippet of time each day, we are together and in Christ. It has helped us to focus on the needs of each of our children, of our family at large and on our brothers and sisters here at Messiah.

Why not try it? It doesn’t have to be long or complicated. It can be as simple as “God bless Kathryn. Give her a night of sleep. Help our children to rest so that they and we may rise in the morning to serve you.” You may be amazed at what God can do.

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Peperkorn



Thank you Pastor Peperkorn.

-oms

Prayer initiated by the Father

O My Soul:

Prayer is a conversation with God that He begins with Baptized souls in His Word.

This understanding of prayer is not popular, taught much, or trusted even by the baptized soul. I often thought prayer started with me talking to God. I think that's why I often quit, felt distracted, and bored with my own thoughts.

The unbaptized soul is dead to God. (alive to his neighbor but dead to God) And dead men don't talk. So God is pleased to give life to the dead through His gift of water and Word.

Since my soul is baptized, what then is prayer?

Prayer is a conversation God our Father initiates with the baptized through His Word. My soul responds. First by listening. Then by speaking a little bit. And then by listening some more. I am learning His vocabulary; His thoughts.

This understanding of prayer has been a blessing to my soul.

When depression strikes, I feel so utterly alone. But I am not alone. I am in Christ who is my advocate with the Father. He invites me into His prayers for me and for others as well.

The appointed prayer of the week from the historic lectionary is a prayer passed down over the centuries and has been a daily blessing to my soul this past week.

Here it is. May it be a blessing to your soul as well:


O God, You see that of ourselves we have no strength. By Your mighty power defend us from all adversities that may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.