Discipline of Prayer

Welcome to The Student Podcast. This is where two guys get together and we discuss and learn how to be students of Jesus Christ. So good to have you today. Now I've got to get all my junk organized. Junk. I hope the book's not junk and my Bible's not junk. All my stuff. I always felt so bad as a kid throwing away my Bible. You threw away your Bible? Yeah. Because I had a really ratty, tatty Bible. The cover was falling off and everything. My mom was so sweet. She would iron the pages. Are you serious?
Like, you know, how kids Bibles get bunched up and scrambled and everything. And she would put it on low. Did you say that's how kids Bibles get? That's how my Bible gets. Well, it was, yeah, it was bad. The bottom quarter and the top quarter of each page were intelligible at Genesis and Revelation. Yeah. Um, yeah, there's certain pages of my Bible that are, Very messed up, but that's good. That means, exactly. It means- Find the old paths. Exactly, exactly. Well, let's see. It's been about 17,236 years since we've met. Children have come into the world. Yep, yep. And so- I'm a father experientially now. There you go, yeah.
But I think I told you this, I went through and looked at what our most popular download was on Sermon Audio, and our conversation about the discipline of marriage was by and far the most downloaded recording of all the recordings from this past year. So, uh, so there's something I think that people actually enjoy about having honest conversations.
They may have to wait a long time in between episodes, but that's okay. That's okay. Because we're both with bated breath. But we're both fathers with busy lives, and sometimes we just meet, and we're just gonna meet because we just wanna talk and not record things. And that's good. Well, hey, you wanna pray for us to start? Sure.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank you just for another day of life, an opportunity to... Have breath in our lungs, Lord, to live for you. We pray, Lord, that you would bless this time, that it would be honoring to you, that you would open our eyes to see great and wondrous things out of your law. Lord, that you would use this book through our confused, Lord, to encourage us and to build us up in Christ.
We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, we've moved into a new section as we Went into the section on soul. Uh, and so last two times we talked was on discipline of the mind. Uh, today he moves us into the discipline of devotion. Um, it's kind of a blurry line where this chapter and the next chapter on prayer. Yeah. I wondered if you picked that up too. Yeah.
Cause he was talking about, praying God's word and all these things and worshiping. And I think even like the acronym acts, you know, adoration confession, like, okay, I think it helps set the backdrop for maybe a more detailed discussion of prayer. Just because I think, I think what he's trying to do is set the basics in place of what is our heart of interacting with God, period. whether that's in public, whether that's in private, whether that's prayer, reading, meditation, like what is, what does that look like nuts and bolts? Cause it doesn't just look like getting down on your knees, muttering words and getting up or opening the Bible to whatever page reading and getting up. And I think, I think that might be his intent, but I was confused too. Cause I was like, Oh, we've got prayer next and, um, worship after that, you know, so. Yeah, I almost feel like it was just like a good introduction to setting the scene for what's going to come next in the subsequent chapters.
And so, I mean, he just kind of really jumps into it with prayer right at the front, and it's about our personal character. Just thinking confessionally, you know, what is prayer? Prayer is an offering of our desires unto God for things that are agreeable to His will.
Oh, shoot. In the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies. Hey, boom shakalaka, man. Wow. That was great. That's a flash from the past. Yeah, right? That's good. So Westminster Shorter Catechism drilled into you. Good. Now the larger. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You don't have to. Yeah. That's, that's not as far back, but it's harder. Yeah.
I wouldn't be able to quote it to, uh, largely the same, just expand it. Um, but, uh, I thought it was helpful that, uh, the, uh, Arkin Hughes, specifically talked about it being Christ in us and also moving us toward Christ. I thought that that was helpful.
Lois from the Washington congregation was giving her update on South Sudan, and she was just talking about how in South Sudan it became very important to her to make sure that she was spending, you know, at least one hour to an hour and a half every day just reading her Bible and praying. And she was saying it was that three months in South Sudan, one because there's just by nature of it less things you can do. You know, her walk with the Lord became that much more sweet to her, like Christ became that much more to her, and she recognized more of the things that God was doing because she was praying more. She was like, you know, when I was in the States, I never imagined that I could spend an hour and a half doing my devotions, and she was like, now I can't imagine ever doing less.
It's kind of like, mission accomplished. That's great. I just thought it was a great testimony from a young Christian woman coming back from the mission field for what that looked like. The sad reality, though, is what he points out with professional clerics.
Do pastors pray? Yeah. Yeah. Well, who knows if they do or don't? You know, and I think, you know, you wonder why the church, generally speaking, evangelically in America is how it is. And, you know, a pastor's not necessarily publicly accountable to his congregation for laboring in prayer. But I think a lot of the fruit that is or is not seen might be attributed to that. So, two quick stories from this. One from this morning, one from a while back.
This morning I was downstairs, and the kids were doing their schoolwork, and I had been praying for different people in the congregation, so I was sitting there in my chair, eyes closed, praying, you know, I didn't hear if the kids were going to make any fusses or get in trouble. And so I just had my eyes closed and I was specifically praying for the pillings. They're going on a trip, and then all of a sudden, somehow Olivia snuck in the room and she kissed me while I was praying. It's like a lightning bolt from heaven, you know, I was not expecting that because she had come home and like she wasn't, it was really funny. That was the quickest I had ever stopped. But I'll never forget one time I was kind of struggling spiritually and really wrestling with some things and I went to a Presbyterian event. I'm Matthew Sexton, who's a pastor out in western Kansas.
I just remember he's got these piercing blue eyes, and he's just a very straight person. And he just asked me very gently, he said, Are you still praying, Brian? And I realized, well, yes, I was praying. The zeal for prayer had begun to wane. I was enjoying long, uninterrupted times with the Lord. Busy schedule and not prioritizing my life had kind of squeezed that down to where it was just, yeah. I pray, but kind of like what he was actually saying here, you know, you are sort of okay, and I guess I am too. That struck a chord with me that I was like, as a pastor, like, it's just as easy for a pastor to get so busy doing stuff that forgets that the primary things of the ministry is word and prayer. And so, just two stories that I thought of as I was reading this. One very recently. I think, man, if every one of my prayers ended with Olivia kissing me, I might pray a lot more. That sounded really blasphemous. I really didn't mean it that way.
But in the next paragraph after he talks about this, What are some of the reasons why he says that men don't pray? And this is a book for men. So, what are some reasons generally why men don't pray? Yeah. Well, he correlates it to men not going to church as much and not reading as much. He says they're not as spiritually sensitive and open as women. And we as men tend to be very time focused, very task focused with our, the work ethos of our culture of like, um, you know, work, work now. So you can play later, but the duties of home and family and self, um, are not, um, emphasized.
Yeah, and so what he wants to do in this section is kind of cultivate a prayer life. Let me just ask, if you don't mind being vulnerable, what are some of the things that you have found that have made it difficult to pray? Yeah, I think not praying. And that sounds trite, but the more you don't pray, the more you don't pray. And I found myself, especially with the busyness of life, it's easy to make an excuse one day, and then it's even easier to make a lamer excuse the next day. And before you know it, you've gone days without prayer. And you're like, why do I feel this way? Why do I feel distant from God? Why is this happening? And you look back, well, That was a dumb excuse. That was an even dumber excuse. So I think just as we're creatures of habit, not making it a habit. Because if it's a habit, it's not going to happen on a one-off. And if it does, it's not going to be the product of cultivated wrestling with the Lord.
So I think that's one thing. And I think just formalism, too, where you can have a prayer list and be like, OK, I'm going to pray for leaders, and I'm going to pray for friends and needs and praises and whatnot, and you get into a friend, those are those things are great. And we should be praying for those things. But to go into prayer and say, like, 10 items later, amen, constitutes prayer is missing the mark, versus coming into prayer and understanding it as true communion with the living God and being in his throne room through the intercession. Coming to it with a very impersonal bent really sucks away the blessing that is offered in prayer, I think, in my experience.
Yeah, I'm going to just go ahead and jump to the end of the chapter with this. Martin Luther in his little book, How to Pray, Dr. Martin does barber, he actually talks about this method of prayer. He'll go through the Lord's Prayer petition by petition, and then he'll go through the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments, and he'll go through what's required and what things he has broken. And after going through all this, at one point in this little book, he says, but sometimes you only get to the second petition, and it so grips your soul. that you stand there before the holy place of God, and that is all you can dwell on. And you pray more at that time than as if you had gone through this entire method.
So, I think that's what you're getting at, right? We can bring all of our supplications to the Lord, but sometimes there's periods of adoration that just your soul is so gripped that that's the most real prayer you've had, and you just had one thing.
I know some people who almost kind of like crisis times in their lives, and they're really only praying for one thing, but they've never prayed more with what the Lord says about the Holy Spirit praying for us with words beyond groaning, you know? And so, I was really appreciative that he even brings this up, right? We must also be cautioned against imagining from the outline we're using, meditation, confession, adoration, submission, petition, that there is a prescribed order for devotion, for there is not and never has been.
I like the acts model. I love praying the Lord's prayer using that as I've before used the 10 commandments when I'm going through, you know, confession and examining my heart and praying. Uh, but sometimes you can get so sucked into your prayer matrix. Got the exact same sheet. Yeah. Uh, that then you actually end up, it's just a checklist rather than, I mean, I can pull out my prayer calendar for the month, too, for January. It can happen with any prayer list.
And I don't think that that means it's necessarily bad, you know, because that can turn into an excuse. Or, well, I just don't want it to be a list, so I just might, so I'm just not going to pray. Like, it's such an incoherent thought, but I think all of us do that. We're like, well, you know, I don't really want to go to this prayer meeting because all we do is it seems like we just pray for a whole bunch of people who are sick and stuff, and I'm just not sure it's worth my time. You just said it's not worth your time to pray with and for others.
Yeah. Um, it needs to be so spontaneous that it only happens once a year. Yeah. But there are times where it's like your prayer is so palpable. It's like the, the, the heavens have opened up and you, you've, you experientially feel like you are truly sitting in the throne room of God. Um, and I think those are sweet times, but to imagine that our prayer lives are always going to be like that. Mm. I think can set people up for failure as well. So he starts off with this idea of cultivating devotion to God with meditation.
What did you think about this whole God digging out an ear? That was interesting. I hadn't heard that rendering of Psalm 40 verse 6 before. My understanding was it was a servant having his ear bored as a mark of ownership. But this is interesting where he talks about God. basically taking a blockhead like us sinners and opening our ears and giving us a way to hear him, which is interesting.
He says that the words of God are not merely to be read, but to be heard and to go to the heart. And maybe I would qualify that even not just to be heard, but to be listened to. I think we all know the difference between hearing and listening. Yeah, Olivia will tell me that. I know you heard me, but you didn't listen.
But this is Jesus' exact point, right? He who has an ear, let him hear. This is the reality that you need to actually lean in. And I'm jumping down to the submission part, but actually submit yourself to my teachings, submit yourself to my word. So yeah, listening, right? Taking it to heart.
He didn't quote this, but I was thinking about Hebrews chapter 4, about the Lord's Word being sharper than any two-edged sword. When we are truly listening, it's like a surgeon's scalpel. It's piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow. It's the center of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It's when it seems the Holy Spirit is doing that to my heart that I'm most convicted and my prayers are most alive.
And so, that's what he means. He gets first in meditation by listening to God. Interestingly, he didn't point out here preaching. I was just curious, you know, have there been points in your Christian experience when you have heard preaching that has brought you to prayer or brought you to doxology?
Yeah, many times. Yeah. I was thinking about that with my pastor, like there are times I have wept in a pew and the only thing I can do is pray and praise. And I was just, I'm glad it wasn't just me. Yeah, no. I wonder if he's talking more about personal devotion here is maybe the backdrop of this. Which I guess that's not outside the realm of personal devotion. But yeah, I wonder if that was more of his thought going into it. Yeah, I'm sure it is, but I think part of personal devotion, I was just talking to someone about this on Sunday, you know, to make non-negotiable priorities in your life and talking with this person about trying to make sure that being at worship is one of those non-negotiable priorities in their life, you know, just like I was telling them, Try to think about anything that's vying for your time or attention.
I hope you take a shower regularly. That's a non-negotiable in your life. Why? Because you know that for your own hygiene you need this. Well, for your spiritual hygiene, you need to be under the preach word. You need to be admonished by other saints. You need to be worshiping God, singing His praises. And so, I think sometimes we think of corporate worship as something outside of our personal devotion, but I think public worship is both the start and the culmination of our private devotion.
This is when we've read the Word by ourself, we've prayed it with our family, we've sung it individually, and now we get to come together and do it together. But it's still deeply personal as well. It was just something, this is a rabbit trail off of Ken Hughes' book, but I thought you know, when Jesus says this, he's speaking to people and these letters, like what he's saying is going to be read and preached. And so, sorry, that's just a pastor's comment maybe, but it's one of the things that the Lord used in my heart I mean, I was a Christian far more years than I've been a pastor, and the preacher word was huge. I think even too of singing God's word, and I've definitely fallen into the rut of coming together, we sing God's word together, and that's what it is. rather than taking each line and meditating on it as I'm singing it or putting it back to the Lord as I'm singing it, taking a corporate experience and having a personal element to that makes it much more just a formal group thing that we do, but a truly soul enriching I get to be adoring and worshiping and being convicted by the Lord with his people and community, you know?
And maybe it's just over-sentimental, Brian, and that's fine. But I think it's wonderful that there's times where I'm going through a season in my life, and I'm the one who picks out the Psalms. And sometimes we'll get to a point in a Psalm where the words are so thick and palpable that I can't—I'm weeping and trying to get them out of my mouth. I was just like, thank you, Lord. These words are too good to be true.
And so, that's what I'm saying, is like this—sometimes we take corporate worship and we remove it from the—like, it is both corporate, but we're living stones each built upon each other. There's an individual aspect of corporate nature. Man, we're like jumping two chapters ahead or something like that, but that's okay. Okay, we're going to get off this rabbit trail.
It's just very dear to me to hear and sing God's word in the assembly. Let's get to the second part of meditation. This is what we normally think about with Psalm 1, for instance. What does he mean by muttering? Yeah, he talks about using our mind and our mouth to have God's Word continually before us because someone obviously says meditates on it day and night.
But he pulls from this that one of the elements of this that's inferred is memorizing God's Word, having it stored in our heart so that we can pull it out in the middle of the night and mull it over all the time. book up there, top shelf, middle of the very top shelf, it's a kind of a fiction section I keep out of the reach of the kids.
Not all the books on there are age-appropriate, and actually one of them is the one I'm talking about. My name is Asher Lev. Chaim Potok is one of my favorite authors. And in that book, I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but it's a Jewish boy and at night his mother is standing by a window and it's raining and he sees the streetlight illuminating his mother and as he's sitting there drawing with charcoal his mother, he sees her mouth moving.
And so he kind of leans in to try to figure out why is her mouth moving? Who's she talking to? And I think he might actually use this word, he says, she was muttering the Psalms. He might have said she was chanting them, but she was saying the Psalms to herself over and over, as she was anxiously waiting for her husband to return home from work.
And I think we might have lost some of that. I might have in the evangelical church, I think a large number of people have lost this idea of God's word being on their lips. Because it takes work. Why is it so hard to memorize God's word? I'm asking you, mister, you've studied the brain man. For me, it's hard just because it takes time. And, you know, memories are best encoded when you're exposed to it, a certain time elapses where you forget it, partially, and you relearn it. And if that time between exposures is too long, you're actually relearning it from scratch rather than reinforcing and constructing the memory better.
And- You still speak perfect Spanish, right? No. But I found that even trying to get into hundreds of verses that I would love to have on a regular basis, I don't get to them as frequently as I want. what on earth is this passage even about? You know, like, oh, yeah, this word's here. And then all the, you know, everything else is, you have to learn it from scratch.
And so I think just the time to keep it repetitive. I mean, just from a sheerly biological standpoint, and neurology standpoint, you need to do that to effectively learn anything, whether it's Spanish or the Bible. And I think that work, especially for when he calls out men who are more interested in time and working hard enough to have leisure doing things that aren't constructive like this, that gets put on the back burner. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And just some Just because we're talking, you know, some very practical, helpful things.
I think it's the Bible memory app. You know, I use it, Olivia uses it, Nathan uses it when he tries to memorize. We set stuff to song, like every memory verse that we'd go through the topical memory system with the kids as part of their homeschool. And so they memorize between one and three verses, sometimes four verses a week, you know, if it's a whole chunk.
And we try to find songs for every, I think there's a teaching tool for it, you know. But it still takes a lot of work and just, you know, working with the kids and working with the kids and even the Shorter Catechism. We do one catechism question a week, and we purposely have the ones that are set to song. And so, I think it's Holly Dutton has recorded all the Westminster Shorter Catechism with song and just listening to it and listening to it. So, we listen through it two times, morning and evening.
But I just know, like, When I was in seminary, I took a whole class on memorizing Hebrew, and Dr. Williams had us memorize Psalm 1, as well as the Shema in Deuteronomy. And Psalm 1, if I could get it going, I could probably move for a while. But with the Shema, I found a kind of, Dr. Williams said it was more of a pop type song than it was like a rabbi singing. But I mean, literally I could, this is, six years ago now.
Because you get a cadence and a rhythm. And so I think there's part of memorizing that. For me, it's helpful when it comes to God's word. I think this is one of the beautiful things about singing the Psalms. And this is one of the reasons why people get so upset about changing psalters, right? People think, oh, it's just preference. No, if you've sung a psalm for 30 years and you have that psalm memorized in your heart by that tune, there's an argument to have, you know, whether that's good or bad, whatever.
But the point is that tune is tied to those words and it's helpful in that way. I mean, but the kids know the Shema now. my five-year-old can say the Shema because she can sing it, because I sing it to them at night before they go to bed, you know? And so, you know, Daniel always goes, "'Meh-oh-deh-hah!" Because he knows the strength of variness, you know? And so, I think setting these things to song, and I think one of the most pedagogical things for memorizing scripture is putting things to song. and trying to have it regularly going.
When I first became a Christian and coming into the RP world especially, oh man, I'm dating myself here, but I would get CDs and I just, I played four CDs in a row that were from the Red Psalters just so I could start washing myself with the singing of the Psalms and get familiar with how does this work and kind of burying these things in my heart.
It's my friend Sam Robb who just gave me these CDs and said, I think this would be helpful to you. And they were. Olivia and I, that's all we listened to for like the first two years that we were married. Get in the car and turn on the Psalms. So, I know you have to memorize vast amounts of information. Give me some memorization tips that you might give someone if they wanted to try to memorize scripture. Oh, shoot. Well, I know my wife finds the singing very helpful.
I'm more of just a brute. Let's get right through this. Okay. Don't give me a song. Yeah. I found it helpful in a busy schedule. I'm trying to memorize some of Philippians and it's like, I don't have time for this. I've got other stuff. You do have time. I have a 15-minute bus ride most days to and from. And the nice thing about memory, Rick is memorize as far as you can. You don't need anything, right? Like you, it's good to check yourself, but if you have a couple of verses, you know, you've got down, Sam, you know, find that time and you don't need your phone. You don't need anything to Sam.
Um, and then on those down moments, you know, everyone's got lunchtime or something you're scrolling through, um, pull it up, just do one verse, do half a verse at a time. And I've found it helpful to, do it, you know, do one verse, get that down, one verse, add one verse, and then always build off of something that you know. So that's not just brand new, isolated verse every single time if you're trying to memorize a chunk of verses. And, and just keep repeating the part, you know, and adding one part, you know, and adding one. And just doing that, doing that. And I found, you know, read it through a couple times. and then try the first part by yourself and then read the last part, you know, and then stretch yourself a little bit more each time. That's the way I find it helpful. Like I said, it's more just like a brute, get it into your head type model. No, no, that's fine, man. I remember even if you could buddy up or partner with someone and challenge them with this.
I remember when I was moving home from Virginia, so home, California, My mom actually drove with me from Virginia to California, like a five day or six day road trip or something out of it. And I was like, mom, I've never memorized the Ten Commandments word for word. And so I was like, so on this trip, we're going to memorize, I was like, mom, we're going to memorize the Ten Commandments. I'm sure she was like, oh my goodness. And so, and so by the time we pulled, wonderful time, by the time we pulled into Las Vegas, I had gotten it, word perfect.
So, I mean, it was like, I mean, literally from, you know, I am the Lord thy God, you shall not make, you know, no, sorry, that's the second commandment. But just, that was the first time that I was like, but that helpfulness of like moving from one commandment to the next, to the next. And so, the Beatitudes was the same way over COVID, the Bible study in Burlington when we were meeting. Well, we still meet, but when we were meeting virtually, I was amazed how helpful it was to memorize the Beatitudes, just one building off another, off another, off another. And so, he talks about some of those, you know, the Lord's Prayer is one that's great to memorize, Ten Commandments, Beatitudes, saying it out, hearing it out, acting it out, singing it out. You know, these are different things I wrote down.
But what's the effects, right? So we've talked a whole lot about the mechanics of this type of stuff. Why would you meditate on God's word? What are the effects? Yeah, he highlights three effects, and I'm sure there's more, but he talks about revival. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. Wisdom is all throughout Psalm 119. And then increasing our faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
Okay. So here's where I'm going to, again, ask you to be honest and be, I'm just, I'm putting you on the spot today, man. Do you find those things to actually be true? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I just think about the first one here, revival, um, and the times that I felt driest in my life with the Lord are almost always characterized by times of absence from his word. Um, and you find yourself, you know, why did I get where I'm at? And you look back like, oh, okay, that's missing.
And not always, but the Lord brings blessing with his word in short order. And sometimes there's laboring with the Lord for that. But there is a promise blessing in coming to his word of reviving the soul. It's not the law of the Lord might be perfect for some and revive the soul of some if you really work at it. No, this is how it is.
You know, Um, so I've definitely found that experientially in my life. Um, what about, yeah, wisdom for you? How, how has God's word provided wisdom for you? Oh man. You know, uh, wisdom's this tricky, tricky thing, right? Um, how do you know the right thing to do and be able to actually accomplish that? Um, I'm going to answer this one way, but then another way, right?
One way in which I'm so thankful is, and this might sound really silly, but as a pastor, the more I have God's Word stored in my heart, as one, I heard one pastor say this, you know, memorizing God's Word is like having a dollar in your pocket. You never know when you're going to need it. But you're going to be happy it's there when you do.
I can't tell you how many times doing counseling, just sitting down with someone, going into a nursing home, being with people when their family ones, when their loved ones are dying. And even, you know me, I rarely preach from a manuscript. I'm an outline type guy.
The Lord uses the words that are buried in my heart from His Word that it's like, oh, I was just memorizing this verse, and it comes out, or it comes out in praying with people. It's as if the Lord gives me words to speak that I didn't know that I would need those words, but because they're there, they're ready. So, in that sense, I'd say, you know, leaning on the Lord for knowing how to speak His word and when to use those verses. But making wisers, making me wise, making wise the simple, you know, your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.
I don't want to sound like a lie-who in the book of Job. In many ways, I don't feel like the wise person. But if part of wisdom is learning to make principled decisions, principled decisions based on godliness, you know, having God's Word as a compass of my heart, you know. Bersie didn't mention it from Psalm 119, 9-11, you know, that how shall a young man keep his way pure?
I've meditated on your word, right? It's a lamp unto my feet. It's a light unto my path. Your word I've hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you. And so in that way, it's kind of defining it negatively, but learning These were the paths of death that I used to gleefully go down in my youth, and the Lord teaching me by—I mean, this is where it initially started for me, from Bible memorization. Memorizing, when I first became a Christian, Matthew chapter 5, you know, if you're right, I cause you sin, gouge it out. Learning specific verses that would teach me, no, flee from sexual immorality, Brian. Get out of there right away.
And being able to use God's Word to direct my steps away from the path of death that I was so trained to walk down. That's probably how I would answer it, but I have so much more to learn and so much. When your job is teaching and counseling by God's word, the failure is always on me. when I fall short. And so, that's a hard thing for me, you know, because I want to know God's Word, but the reality is I need His Holy Spirit to attend to the reading of His Word, to the meditation of His Word, to know what are the right things to say at the right time and prayerfully. And so, that was a good question, man.
And I just gave you like a 16-minute answer. So he's kind of talked about how to, how to memorize it. You know, um, we've, we've kind of gone through that. Um, I've done three by five. I, I, I'm just a big fan of however you get it in. There have been times where I've had to use a whiteboard and I have to outline a verse to get it in to see what the internal structure is. There's times that I've literally taped, uh, this is probably dumb.
I'll either tape an index, a three by five index card to my steering wheel, or I'll put it over the speedometer. Just so I could barely see the 55, you know, hit cruise control. We live on country roads, so I don't need to see the speedometer too much. Just as long as I'm not speeding. I'm kind of like, yeah, whatever. It's even backlit at night. But just having it in front of my face and just saying it, I'm just a big fan. I don't care what method somebody uses.
There's no, like we all learn differently, and there's portions of scripture that are more difficult to memorize than others. There's some that roll off the tongue and stick on the mind, and then there are others where it's like you're eating rocks and you don't know how to digest this. You know, I have to, with four kids trying to memorize Bible verses, you know, it's kind of like, I see them. Some of them, we play games.
I mean, I'll literally go through and I'll erase one word at a time off the chalkboard. So, say it, okay, then I erase a random verb. Say it, and then I erase, you know, a noun. Say it, and then I erase a preposition. And I just go through and just erase and erase, erase. For other kids, you know, Olivia and I have put all the words on pieces of paper and jumbled up the paper and made them put the papers in order with the different words to build it themselves.
Cause they're more tactile. Whatever. Right. However you memorize, just memorize, get it, get it into your heart. Right. It's a blessing. Yeah. you're invest, you know, if you invest in a 401k, why would you not invest in your soul? Yeah. You don't let me preach like that, man. Shut up.
Let's keep going. Okay. Uh, well, uh, do we have time to move on to confession? Um, probably have another 25 minutes. Okay. Let's do confession because adoration and submission are some of my favorites after that, like an hour and 50 minutes for whoever's okay. So confession. All right. So, uh, here we go. This is, this is practical application time.
Tell me about your spontaneous confession. Spontaneous confession? I'm just kidding. I'm not going to put you on the record. I have to be honest, Ryan. I didn't read this part. I'm just kidding. Really? No. You wanted a spontaneous confession, right? Okay. Hey, there you go. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. I was going to say, we could just stop it a few minutes ago and just pick it up. Well, no, I think it was helpful.
What's the difference that he makes between spontaneous confession and systematic confession? He talks about if there's sins that come to light, either from the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts or God's Word pulling it to light, to just confess it to God right then and there. wait till the sea and acts or whatever. Don't wait till the end of the day when you have your time with God. Don't stay away from God's promise of forgiveness, that if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I love—how do you not love Isaiah chapter 6? You know, woe is me.
I think this ties into his next, which is why we're not going to go there tonight, but the more we see the absolute holiness of God—like, this is one of the reasons why I need to be in my Bible. because the more I am devoted to God in his word, the more holy he is and the more utterly terrifying sin is. And recognizing each of those stories, this is one of the big mind shifts that I've had to do is not read myself into the heroes of the story.
I think we've talked about this before multiple times, but You know, when you read a man through Genesis right now, you know, read through the Genesis account and you get to Noah, and all of us wouldn't be like, oh yeah, yeah, I would be on the boat. No, there were only eight. The vast majority of people were not on the boat. And I would be one of those not on the boat.
I mean, that's the more and more I read the stories and realize, hold on, I'm no better than when David sins. I'm no better than when Noah gets drunk. I'm no better than when Adam ate the fruit. I'm no better in what I would want to do. And I see it in my own heart with Lamech, you know, I'll repay 70 times sevenfold, you know. When I realized I have that same sinful heart, Then I, it's at those moments when God is most holy to me that Isaiah chapter six is more my experience. But I, woe is me. I'm undone. Yeah.
And I think, I mean, I think that's telling that That is Isaiah's response in the context of being in God's presence, because I think it's only when we truly understand God for who he is, like Isaiah did, when we're in his presence, that sin takes on its true nature.
If God isn't who he said he is, then sin makes sense. But if you understand that God is holy, if you understand the truth of the gospel that God hated sin so much that he sent his own son to die for it, then sin in its true nature comes out. And if we just think confessing is saying sorry to God, or if we're not hating our sin the way we should, I think the question to ask is, are we in God's presence? Are we coming to him in prayer? And are we truly, like you said, meditating on his holiness and being in awe of who he is?
Because that's where it comes into its true light, not just a bad, remorseful feeling of like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Now, yeah, and this is where, you know, theological language for contrition, you know, I think true contrition comes from an understanding of who the Holy One of Israel is. And he gets to that in the systematic confession. The first thing he talks about is ontological confession.
What in the world is he talking about ontological confessing? talks about just confessing who we are by nature as sinners, people who cannot do any good apart from God, understanding that the best we bring to God is filthy rags in His sight. Knowing that that's who we are, but then also from that, what have we done? And we've broken God's law and we haven't just We've broken it categorically as law breakers, but we've also broken specific laws. And because of that, we should be confessing our sins specifically.
So those are kind of those two aspects of confession here. I love that the Westminster standards don't let us off. I don't remember the exact language. It's either confessing specific sins specifically or it's particular sins particularly. But the point is, am I getting nitty gritty with my soul? Am I actually evaluating?
I tell our kids this when we do family worship. We go youngest to oldest and they're to thank God for one thing and ask God for one thing. And they'll say, God, thank you for a good day. And if they've said that like two or three nights in a row, some people might think I'm mean for saying that. They'll say, you know, we should not pray dumb prayers. And I know some people are going to be, but my thought with my reason for saying it, it's a dumb prayer. It's a thoughtless prayer.
No, no. What are you actually thankful for? What did God do that you can actually thank him for? And I think we can do that even with our confessions. Lord, forgive me for my sins. Well, how did you sin? What did you do? What did you think? What did you say? What did you feel that was wrong? What was your tone with your wife? Were you impatient with your newborn baby son? What was it?
And this is where I think Martin Luther is very helpful. And some people do not like the larger catechism because of its exhaustive treatment. I would argue it's not actually exhaustive, but it can feel at times exhaustive treatment of the Ten Commandments. But if you're ever wrestling with how to confess specific sins specifically, I would. There's a reason why the larger catechisms, literally sitting on my desk, like dead serious, when there are times when I'm struggling with what do I confess when I get into this rut, I'll do what Luther said and go meditate on the Ten Commandments.
And I realize, whoa. I am way off the mark in my marriage, in my discipling the children, in my care for God's people, et cetera, et cetera. Just a practical help if somebody's struggling. I know sometimes I do. There's other helps that I have on my shelf for when I'm struggling with adoration, but we'll get there next time, we'll get there next time.
So be specific about specific sins. I love this quote, unconfessed sin makes the heavens seem like brass. So once we get off the air, I'll have you tell me all your specific sins. And I'll give you absolute pardon, don't worry. Just call me Father. No, no, that's a joke. That's a joke. Give you a 401k for it. Okay, we need to stop. I'm going to pray for us before we get too loopy here.
Lord, thank you so much. Father, for you are a holy, holy, holy God. Lord, before you, the entire earth quakes. For you are our master, you are our creator. Father, we confess to you that we are not devoted as we ought to be, for we are fickle and weak children in desperate need of your Holy Spirit. God, I plead with you for myself and for Simon, that we might be devoted men, devoted to your word, devoted to prayer, devoted to actually confessing our sins, both to you and to each other. Lord, that you might receive the glory, that you might build us up in our faith and conform us more and more to the image and likeness of Christ. Lord, we need your Holy Spirit to do it.
We cannot do these things on our own. So please, Lord, watch over our souls. Sanctify us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, man. You want to say bye? Until next time. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Student Podcast. Feel free to go over to the website SharonHarrPC.org backslash student and find more information and other shows. Also, don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcast. We appreciate it. Have a great day.