Should We Pray Written Prayers? The Surprising Scriptural Basis for Scripted Prayer

Over the previous a number of a long time, evangelicals have more and more accepted written (i.e., scripted) prayers from liturgical traditions. This reception is partly as a result of affect of the ecumenical movement of the 20th century, partly because of their perceived novelty, but additionally partly as a result of evangelicals are rediscovering the true worth of scripted prayers.

But for evangelicals, the query naturally arises: Does the Bible assist the usage of written prayers, or should prayers at all times be extemporaneous?

I need to argue that the Bible’s personal theology of prayer ought to lead us to honor each scripted prayer and extemporaneous prayer. Somewhat than claiming that written prayer is most popular over extemporaneous prayer, my declare is extra merely that scripted prayer is foundational to all prayer—together with extemporaneous prayer.

In brief, scripted prayer serves to elicit extemporaneous prayer within the hearts of all God’s folks. Written prayers prepare our hearts to name on God’s title by the gospel (John Calvin, Institutes 3.20.1) in order that in the long run, all prayer, be it prewritten or extemporaneous, entails merely asking God to ship on what he has already promised, as he has supplied it to us in his impressed scripts.

However what does the Bible say?

Given evangelicals’ dedication to the authority of Scripture for religion and observe, a trademark of evangelicalism is its concern for the biblical foundations for our convictions and practices—particularly worship, together with the prayers we use in it.

But this seek for such biblical foundations doesn’t at all times end in a single united discover—like lastly finding Waldo. As an example, though the Protestant Reformation’s formal (bedrock) principal was the factors, “What does the Bible say?” even probably the most ardent defenders of sola Scriptura didn’t at all times agree on what the Bible has to say on a given topic.

That is no much less true for written prayers. One can go as far again to the Act of Uniformity (1662) in England to see that those that took Scripture as their final authority, like Anglicans, believed scripted prayers have been supported by Scripture. Alternatively, the Puritans most popular jail to praying scripted prayers as a result of they didn’t imagine the Bible permitted them.

Luminaries as vital as John Owen and John Bunyan noticed actual prayer as mainly inward, unscripted, and as an affectionate pouring out of the center and calling on the title of Yahweh by the gospel. They argued this based mostly on Scripture. Scripted prayer, they believed, violated the regulative principle of worship, was a return to the previous covenant, and quenched the Spirit. They argued such issues from Scripture.

These variations in interpretation lead us to ask, “What does the Bible precise say about written prayers?”

Are written prayers useless repetition?

Maybe one of many chief arguments in opposition to written prayer comes from Jesus’s instructing in Matthew 6:

And once you pray, don’t heap up empty phrases because the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they are going to be heard for his or her many phrases. Don’t be like them, to your Father is aware of what you want earlier than you ask him. (Matt 6:7–8)

Are written prayers a violation of this instructing? Does utilizing written prayers contain the very exercise Jesus evidently condemns; particularly, repeating our prayers?

A more in-depth have a look at what Jesus teaches right here exhibits why this isn’t the case. First, we all know Jesus is just not in opposition to repetition as a result of repeating prayer is instantly inspired by Jesus within the bigger context of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:7–8 (see the parallel in Luke 11:9–10):

Ask, and it is going to be given to you; search, and you can find; knock, and it is going to be opened to you. For everybody who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it is going to be opened.

The Lukan account of this triplet of “ask, search, knock” (Luke 11:9–10) has a parabolic analogue in Luke 11, which dramatically captures one good friend visiting one other who actually retains asking, searching for, and knocking till his good friend supplies what he wants (Luke 11:11–12). Chapters later, the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18:1–8 exhibits that the identical request provided time and again will finally be answered. Jesus we see is adamantly for repetition!

Second, an interpretive key in Matthew 6 is Christ’s reference to the gentiles, which is the type of prayer he condemns. A transparent instance of gentile prayer is present in 1 Kings 18 the place the prophets of Baal are discovered dancing across the altar, shouting and repeating mantras, sacrificing animals, and slicing themselves hoping to be heard. That is the kind of prayer Jesus has in thoughts in Matthew 6 as a result of it pertains to God by magic and manipulation and fails to acknowledge that our God is aware of what we’d like even earlier than we ask (Matt 6:8). We’re heard not as a result of we prayed the appropriate phrases however as a result of Jesus’s Father is the God who hears the cries of his folks, and by being in covenant with them has promised to by no means go away them or forsake them (Deut 31:6; Josh 1:5).

Repetition, comparable to repeating the phrases of written prayers, is just not about saying the appropriate phrases to be able to “manipulate” God, however it’s about coaching the center to rightly interact God with persistence. Written prayer, on this sense, has the potential to turn out to be the soil wherein free prayer grows, which evangelicals traditionally ought to have nice esteem for.

Our reformational heritage

Nearly all of English-speaking Christians take as a right the galvanizing affect that scripted prayer has had on Christianity within the West.

Previous to the Reformation, clergy and laity relied completely on missals and breviaries that contained written prayers in Latin. The laity trusted clergy and solely acquired what the clergy gave them, which was prayer not of their native tongue. Overseas speech hid overseas doctrines that the Scriptures didn’t educate, therefore the motion often called the Protestant Reformation.

Thus when Thomas Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer, he was not solely giving the folks of God their first ebook of prayers of their language, he was additionally rooting their prayers in Scripture. Doctrine and devotion have been being reunited and reformed in keeping with Holy Scripture.

This reunion and reformation of doctrine and devotion was based mostly on the retrieval of a precept from the fifth century. Within the works of a disciple of Augustine of Hippo named Prosper of Aquitaine, we discover the Latin phrase, Lex orandi, lex credendi—“the regulation of what’s prayed is the regulation of what’s believed.” Whereas this precept has deeply influenced a lot of the Christian custom all through church historical past, it has sadly had little have an effect on on American Christianity. In essence, this precept teaches that prayer and perception ought to be integral to one another, which is why scripted prayer is a form of theology in itself, because it seeks to align the center and the thoughts with the truths of Holy Scripture.

For instance, in case you research the scripted prayers of the E book of Widespread Prayer, you will notice that they’re so wealthy in biblical theology that as you pray these prayers, you’ll be praying Scripture. Scholars have frequently noted that all the prayers within the E book of Widespread Prayer are both direct quotations of Scripture or oblique reflections on Scripture. This is the reason J. I. Packer is said to have defined scripted prayers as “the Bible organized for worship.” Scripted on this sense simply means Scripture put within the language of the center.

The Psalms and lyrical prayer

Maybe the clearest proof of scripted prayer are the Psalms themselves.

The Psalter is the most important ebook of the Bible. It’s a assortment of written prayers gathered for Israel explicitly meant for company prayer. Many occasions the Psalms start with prefaces that embody feedback, comparable to:

• “To the choirmaster”
• “With stringed devices”
• “For the flutes”
• “To the tune of the lilies”
• “In accordance with the Sheminith,” “the Gittith,” or “the Muth-Laben”

These notes are sometimes fully missed, however they’re liturgical directions for the one main the meeting of the gathered saints in praying a specific Psalm in keeping with a specific tune, for a specific event, time of day, or season. These directions, in different phrases, present us that the Psalms have been prayer scripts for gathered worship that have been to be adopted.

Augustine allegedly mentioned, “he who sings prays twice.” This intuition to inhabit singing as prayer is the spirit of the Psalter and is why in additional liturgical traditions there may be distinction however not a distinction in praying and singing. So when the Psalmist says, “Sing to the Lord a brand new tune” (Ps 96:1 NIV), he’s saying put your individual prayers to music and allow them to be “the prayers” of the folks.

Theologically skilled musicians rightly be aware that all Christian hymnody is actually written prayer for the church. Thus, even trendy worship with its excessive worth on spontaneous prayer can’t get away from scripted prayer when it sings its favourite worship songs.

Jesus’s personal scripted piety

We now have clear proof from the New Testomony that Jesus lived within the Psalms and knew these written prayers by coronary heart (see desk under).

Use Logos’s New Testomony Use of the Previous Testomony Interactive to find each of Jesus’s use of the Psalms.

In different phrases, the piety of Jesus we’ve from the Psalms was a scripted piety.

This doesn’t imply that Jesus solely ever prayed the Psalms. It merely implies that Jesus relied on and was shaped by these scripted prayers to such an extent that they formed his personal identification and life with God. On many events, we learn within the New Testomony that Jesus departed to be by himself together with his Father in personal prayer (Matt 14:13; 14:23; Mark 1:35; 6:46; 14:32; Luke 6:12–13). We have no idea what he prayed in these moments, besides in these cases the place his disciples have been shut sufficient to listen to him (e.g., Mark 14:36). However we’d think about these moments of solitude as involving extra intimate, inward, unscripted, and affectionate pouring out of the center and calling on the title of Yahweh—the kind of prayer that Owen and Bunyan valued. The Psalms have been the scripts Jesus prayed that knowledgeable and gave rise to those extemporaneous prayers.

The Psalms as Christian prayers

However past Jesus’s personal use of the Psalms, we additionally observe Jesus claiming that the Psalms are actually about him. Jesus says in Luke 24:44, “These are my phrases that I spoke to you whereas I used to be nonetheless with you, that all the things written about me within the Legislation of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms have to be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to know the Scriptures” (emphasis added). Moreover, he tells the Pharisees in John 5:39 that they’re looking the Scriptures, such because the Psalms, in useless if they don’t seem to be discovering Christ in them.

The hermeneutical cash out right here is vitally vital. The Psalms function the silhouette of Christ and so our engagement with them is engagement with Christ.

Because of this, as Christ-centered scripted prayer, the Psalms’s prayers stay related for us right this moment. In reality, as fulfilled in Christ, they’re even extra our prayers than they have been for any previous covenant believer. This is the reason nonetheless in some traditions the Psalms are said, sung, or chanted each time God’s new covenant folks collect.

Jesus, a king who leads us in prayer

However the Psalter not solely supplies us written prayers. It additionally teaches, or fashions for us, easy methods to pray—a operate Jesus likewise fulfills.

Although David didn’t write all of the Psalms, many are linked with him because the king of Israel. And so when Jesus’s disciples requested him to show them easy methods to pray, like King David did for Israel, so Jesus does for the church: “Pray then like this …” (Matt 6:9). In line with the Psalms, Jesus, the true David, provides his folks precise phrases to say—the Our Father, in any other case often called the Lord’s Prayer (see Matt 6:5–13).

This scripted prayer is so easy that many kids come to understand it by coronary heart, but so deep that whole catechism lessons are based mostly on its content material. It’s a scripted prayer to be prayed and it’s a scripted prayer that teaches us easy methods to pray.

The apostolic sample: “the prayers”

Corroborating this observe of Jesus, we are able to see this identical scripted piety persevering with into within the earliest days of his followers, the church. It’s attention-grabbing to notice that in Acts 2:42 the early church was dedicated to 4 issues:

1. the apostles’ instructing
2. the fellowship
3. the breaking of bread
4. the prayers

The particular article (“the”) earlier than every of those is critical. This appears to means that Luke intends to emphasise explicit instructing, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers (e.g., not simply “prayers” however “the prayers”). This appears to counsel that the early church was dedicated to explicit established prayers.

Maybe in the identical vein of Israel within the temple, would possibly the early church have continued to wish the Psalms as Christian prayers within the the eucharistic assembly? It’s not with out purpose, then, that many traditions passionately recite, sing, or chant the Psalms each time God’s new covenant folks collect.

On the very least we are able to think about the church’s devotion to “the prayers” as involving the usage of scripted prayers, making such a observe devoted to Scripture and never a departure from it.

Spirit-guided prayers of the church

This use of scripted prayer, although, factors us to maybe the best reward Jesus gave us: the Holy Spirit of prayer. The Spirit not solely prays for us once we do not need the phrases to wish (Rom 8:26), however the Spirit is each the reply to prayer (Luke 11:13) and extra amazingly the giver of precise phrases to wish (John 16:14–15).

Within the higher room on his ultimate evening, Jesus envisions the Spirit as his very personal presence with us upon his departure (John 14–16), and he sanctions the very prayers we utter in his name. In John 14:12–14, Jesus says, “Actually, really, I say to you, whoever believes in me may also do the works that I do; and higher works than these will he do, as a result of I’m going to the Father. No matter you ask in my title, this I’ll do, that the Father could also be glorified within the Son. When you ask me something in my title, I’ll do it.”

Thus, when the church faithfully crafts prayers for the folks of God, within the Spirit, in keeping with Scripture and in Jesus’s title, we’re to obtain these prayers because the “fruit of the Spirit’s instructing exercise from the ages as God’s folks have sought understanding of Scripture.”

Studying our scripts

So we return to our authentic query: What does the Bible say? May there be one thing in the way in which of propriety to be taught from its testimony? Sure.

Does this counsel that each one written prayers have sanctioned standing? In no way. Written prayers are “not infallible, however neither [are they] negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard [them].”

Really helpful assets from Bedell

The Book of Common Prayer by Anglican Home Publishers

Educate Us to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer, Catechesis, and Ritual Reform within the Sixteenth Century

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Abba: Meditations Primarily based on the Lord’s Prayer

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