Listen here.
Welcome to Devotions for Worship where we meditate on the
appointed Scripture readings for the upcoming Sunday. Thank you for being with
me today.
I am Pastor Eric Tritten from Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in
Hudson, OH.
On Fridays I would like to do something a little different
with you during our time together. Most of the time when I do these podcasts
and devotional thoughts in them you are basically getting my thoughts and my
prayers. In a way, this is like you listening to me do devotions.
Obviously, I think that has some value or I wouldn’t be
doing this. Hopefully, you learn something about God’s Word and engage the
Scriptures so that the Holy Spirit works in your life to help you to grow in
faith. I also hope that you learn something about how to nurture your own
spiritual life and develop your own devotional habits. I think this is
important because the style of devotions that I do here is really only a tiny
slice of the whole realm of devotional habits. (In fact, what I do on this
podcast isn’t what I do for my personal devotion time!)
So on Fridays I’d like to explore some other devotional
thoughts, habits, and practices, and I’d like to do that by looking at some
things others have written on devotion, starting with a great document written
by Martin Luther called A Simple Way to Pray.
Before I get to that, though, I should probably pause for a
moment and clarify what I mean by devotion. In my experience when I use the
word, “devotion,” people tend to think of a person with his or her Bible and
maybe a book with inspirational thoughts, a time of quiet reading, and a time
of prayer. Frankly, that was my mental model of devotion for most of my life.
In this model “devotion” is largely disconnected from the rest of the day, or
perhaps acts as a calming or centering moment before or after the day. Devotion,
however, is much broader than that. Devotion is the deep reverence an person has
for a particular teaching of the Christian faith and it can be expressed in a
variety of ways – some contemplative and individual, others active and communal
– all of which showing that the Holy Spirit is at work in that time and place.
I am heavily indebted to Dr. David Schmitt of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis for
this understanding, in fact what I just said is basically a paraphrase of his
definition of devotion in his essay in Inviting
Community, Devotion and
Community: Thresholds of Faith. He helped me to broaden my understanding of
devotional practices and habits.
In this podcast we are moved by reverence for God’s Word and
prayer, both of which are taught and upheld in Scripture, to think about the
upcoming lessons for Sunday, and we are counting on the Spirit to work through
his Word in our lives to both equip us for our day and also to prepare us for
the worship service on the upcoming Sunday. There are other forms of devotion –
service to the poor, care for creation, fasting, solitude, public worship, and
more. Hopefully in the future we will explore some of these.
For now, I’d like for us to focus on devotion to the Word of
God and to prayer to deepen our understanding of why we’re doing what we’re
doing, and also to grow in our ability to hear God’s Word and to speak to him
in prayer. One of the classic masterpieces on the way God’s Word and prayer
weave together is the document I mentioned earlier, Luther’s letter to his
friend and barber, a man named Peter Beskendorf … or just Master Peter. It is
known as A Simple Way to Pray. Luther
titled this letter A Simple Way to Pray
For a Good Friend.
Today I will only read a couple paragraphs, but next week we
will dive a little deeper to learn how Luther taught his friend to pray. I’m
going to be reading from the American Edition of Luther’s
Works, vol. 43. This version of A
Simple Way to Pray was translated by Carl Schindler, and the copyright
belongs to Fortress Press. They have gracious given me permission to share this
with you.
A Simple Way to Pray – paragraphs 1 & 2 – I did not ask
for permission to print A Simple Way to
Pray, but there are many versions available on line. Here is a link to one
of them. A Simple Way
to Pray.
There are three things I would like to highlight for you in
this reading.
First: Did you notice Luther’s humility and gentleness in
these paragraphs? Luther could often be bombastic and harsh, but here we find
him dealing with a subject he feels he has not mastered – although I dare say
he was much more disciplined than most of us! – but feels he must always be
dependent upon God and come to him like a child to hear God speak in the Word
and then respond to God through prayer.
Second: Luther talks about feeling cool and joyless in
prayer. I bring this up because I do not want us to become discouraged in those
times that we ourselves don’t want to follow our own devotional habits. In our
hearts we certainly rejoice in God’s Word and the opportunity to come to him in
prayer. Our sinful nature, on the other hand, will resist this habit which is
so beneficial to us. But what is the cure for this resistance to hear God’s
Word and to pray? It is the Word itself and the Spirit working through it to
warm our hearts and fill us with his life and love.
Third: I wonder if you also caught the words, “as time
permits.” Many times this is the excuse the I hear for not being engaged in
this devotional habit; time. Time matters. We must act as stewards of it if we
are going to live as people who are moved by reverence for God’s teaching –
whether that reverence is directed toward Scripture and prayer, or to another
devotional practice. However, there is a word of grace for us here. As we go
through life we are not always able to set aside time for prayer and devotional
actions as we’d like. Does that make us bad Christians? No! Sometimes the need
of our neighbor is more pressing than our need for quiet time. Sometimes other
demands keep us from doing all that we would like. That’s okay. In fact,
sometimes it’s even better than what we had planned. A devotional life is
rooted in our relationship with God – not merely his doctrines and not only
certain habits. We may be moved by our love for God to study his Word, or to
apply it in other ways in our lives, but we love God because he first loved us
and gave Jesus to redeem us. We want our devotional life to be moved by God’s
love and inspired by his grace.
Prayers –
O God, we thank you for your Word and for the gift of
prayer. We pray that you would help us grow in our devotion to meditating on
your Word and responding to you in prayer, and we ask that our devotion would
be rooted in your love for us and our love for you. We put ourselves, our
friends, our loved ones, and our enemies into your hands. Help us to walk with
you all our days. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Memory Verse: Matthew 16:25 - For whoever would save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matt.
16:25 ESV)
Thank you so much for using Devotions for Worship, I pray
that our time together has blessed you and given you something to meditate on –
some reminder of God’s grace to rattle around in your brain – for the rest of
the day.
Would you do me a favor? If you got something out of this
devotional time, would you like and/or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or
wherever you do social media? That would help me get the word out, and
hopefully help these devotions be a blessing to others.
God bless you!
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