Jesus said: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23)
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Christian discipleship, using David Watson's book Discipleship as our starting point and guide. After the more theoretical chapters at the beginning of the book, from this point on Watson turns to more practical aspects of discipleship. Today we look at chapters 6 and 7 of the book on the crucial Christian disciplines of prayer and reading the Bible.
Prayer
Watson begins his chapter on prayer by reminding us of how central prayer was in the everyday lives of Christ and his apostles. He also mentions some Christian "giants" like Whitefield, Wesley, Luther and Wilberforce and how they would normally spend 2-3 hours daily in prayer. Watson then goes on to say that it is not hard for us to feel real failures in prayer by comparison. I have to confess that I am not the best "pray-er" in the world. Stories of Christians spending hours each day in prayer make my paltry 5-10 minutes most days look terrible. Prayer is definitely something I know I could do better in.
Does prayer work? Watson - along with the biblical writers to be fair - doesn't spend a lot of time answering this. It is just assumed that prayer does work and is something we should do. There is a good quote from William Temple on this: "When I pray, coincidences happen; when I don't, they don't." Many Christians would testify to this truth: prayer is effective. But more than that, we have a clear assurance from God's word that this is the case: "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16).
Yet the real reason to pray is not because it works as such but because of what it is: it is meeting with and speaking with almighty God. Watson says that prayer is a sign of living in complete and constant dependence upon God. It is spending time with our Father, not just "talking to God".
So how do we go about prayer? Watson gives some useful guidelines here. First, he begins by pointing out the need for the Holy Spirit to help us if we are to pray as we ought. Even if we can only pray with groans and sighs, the Holy Spirit can take that and interpret it, taking our innermost thoughts and feelings and turning them into prayers before the throne of God in heaven. Second, he stresses the need for times of silence and reflection in prayer. Our prayer life needs to be a two-way conversation, not a monologue from us. In silence we need to listen to God. Third, he briefly discusses posture and correctly points out that we can pray in any position, but suggests sitting comfortably and relaxed in a chair may be the best "normal" position. Fourth, he mentions the need for prayer to begin and end with worship and thanksgiving towards God, and not just be a "shopping list" of things we want God to do. Fifth, Watson discusses when we should pray and makes a number of suggestions on this including: morning and evening, before making big decisions, when busy in life, when concerned for others, when tempted, when in pain and when facing death.
Interestingly, Watson does not just look at all these "how to" aspects of prayer. He also focuses attention on the right character of those who come in prayer to God. Here he mentions nine character traits: humility, surrender, realism, honesty, sympathy, expectancy, persistence, forgiveness and unity (when praying with others). There was a lovely quotation from Michel Quoist regarding our need to surrender to God and come to him like little children: "You must surrender yourself to me. You must realise that you are neither big enough nor strong enough...But you must be very, very little, for the Father carries only little children."
The importance of prayer is summed up Watson's words near the end of the chapter:
Ideally, of course, our whole life should become a life of prayer. When we wake, eat, walk, work, rest, chat or retire for the night, we should cultivate enjoying the Father's presence: rejoicing in him, praising him, thanking him, talking to him, listening to him, saying sorry, keeping silent.Seeing prayer almost as an attitude we carry through the day rather than a special activity we do has certainly challenged and encouraged me to pray.
The Word of God
In the next chapter, Watson turns to the absolutely central place of the Word of God in the life of the Christian disciple. He quotes Jesus' words (himself quoting the Old Testament): "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4, NKJV).
The Word of God is the most important thing in the world, Watson says. But what is the Word of God? Many evangelicals simply believe that the Word of God is the Bible. But Watson defines God's Word in a wider way as "God's total revelation of himself, God speaking to man[kind] in words - ways that make sense." (p.140).
Watson therefore regards the Word of God as something including but wider than the text of the Bible. In fact as he makes clear later in the chapter.
To begin with, Watson looks at what he calls hindrances to God's Word, or to the effectiveness of God's Word in the believer's life. Among those hindrances mentioned are: materialism (putting trust in material things), activism (being so busy doing that we cannot hear God) and humanism (thinking that human beings are the centre of the universe).
Then he mentions something that he calls "textualism" which is a fault that evangelical Christians who value the Bible are particularly susceptible to. It is being so concerned with the Bible that we actually lose sight of God! It is what A. W. Tozer called "orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost." According to Watson, the Bible in a sense becomes the Word of God when read in the power of the Holy Spirit. So in a sense we don't have God's Word "until the Holy Spirit illumines our dull minds and warms our cold hearts." (p.143). It is only when the Holy Spirit activates the biblical text that we receive God's revealed truth. As I wrote in a hymn:
With the Holy Spirit's help,The text, great though it is, is not enough. We need more than the text, the God the text points towards.
The ancient words are dead,
But spring to life when he is there:
The Word and Spirit wed.
Another hindrance Watson examines is literalism (the view that the biblical text needs to be taken absolutely literally), and then he talks about "intellectualism" (where we become over concerned with approaching Scripture as an intellectual discipline rather than a spiritual one). Watson comments:
In the West we have often embraced the Greek concepts of truth and knowledge to the exclusion of the Hebrew concepts. The Greeks saw truth in terms of propositions, statements and words; whereas in Hebrew thought, truth was seen in terms of deep personal relationships.Equally, "anti-intellectualism" is also a potential problem, where scholarship is denigrated and wild and fanciful interpretations of Scripture are taught merely on the basis of mystical "promptings of the Holy Spirit."
After the section on hindrances to God's Word, Watson talks about actually hearing the Word of God. Here he comes back to the notion of God's Word as being a wider category than merely the Bible. He talks about the Word of God in three senses:
- The Personal Word - Jesus
- The Written Word - The Bible
- The Spoken Word - Preaching, teaching, witnessing and prophecy
Watson's charismatic views are evident here, for he views New Testament prophecy as a continuing gift to the Church, but he also marks out a number of scriptural tests and boundaries for it. But the spoken Word specifically explained and applied to a particular group of the Lord's people in preaching or in another medium, is a valid way of considering God's Word, though it is always derivative from the first two senses.
The final section in the chapter on the Word of God looks at understanding God's Word. Watson stresses the importance of correctly interpreting the Bible. It is a vital link between the Word outside us and the Word of God actually living in our hearts. Two key questions need to be asked whenever we come to the Bible to understand it. First, what did it mean to the first audience? Second, what does it mean for us today? To answer these two questions correctly we need to look at a number of aspects within and surrounding the text itself including the meaning of the words used (and here a good, accurate translation, or more than one, is indispensable to most of us), the context, the literary form of the passage, and the culture in which it was first written.
It is hard to overemphasise the importance of the Word of God to living as a Christian disciple. Our whole lives are to be steeped in the Word of God and we need to orientate our lives around the Word, and not the other way round. We need to constantly and faithfully apply ourselves in three key actions towards the Word of God: listening to God's Word, studying God's word and obeying God's word. When we do that, week-in-week-out, we will surely grow not only in knowledge but in faith and love as we are transformed by God's holy Word.
Next time we will look at the important subject of spiritual warfare, which is discussed in chapter 8 of Watson's book.
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