A Simple Way to Pray: The Ten Commandments

Exodus 20:3-17 (The Message)
“No other gods, only me.
No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am GOD, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.
No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to GOD, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days GOD made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore GOD blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.
Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
No murder.
No adultery.
No stealing.
No lies about your neighbor.
No lusting after your neighbor’s house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Introduction

In the last post, I wrote about Martin Luther’s little essay, "A Simple Way to Pray." Martin Luther was a Catholic monk who became the leader of a movement of renewal and reformation that spawned the Protestant churches. He was a pastor and a theologian and all of his writings had the intent of helping other people experience a deep spiritual life. His essay, "A Simple Way to Pray," was written for his barber, who had asked him for practical instructions on prayer.

Luther encouraged his barber to take prayer seriously. In order to do so, he said his barber should clear himself of distractions. No cutting people’s hair with one hand while holding a prayer book in the other. Rather, a barber should cut hair when he is at work and give a separate time every morning and evening for a short and simple prayer. There is wisdom in this. As much as we can and
should make our whole lives an act of prayer, this life-prayer is sustained by regular periods of focused prayer.

Luther said that true prayer only happens when the heart is properly inclined to it. In other words, there is a communion of Spirit and flesh that takes place in prayer and we can’t short-cut it by removing the Spirit. That would not be real prayer. So we are to ask God to listen to our prayers and have faith that God does. That God listens to our prayers is not magic, it is not some power that we hold over God and we can order God around. It is God’s act of free grace that we respond to with humility and gratitude.

Luther told his barber that better than trying to sound all religious in his prayers was to simply respond to what the church affirms as God’s teaching. Luther gives three specific examples: 1) The Lord’s Prayer, which we looked at last time; 2) The Ten Commandments, which we will look at today; and, 3) the Creed, which we will look at next week.

Luther recommended the Lord’s Prayer as a starting point because it was the prayer taught by Jesus. Rather than merely repeating the Lord’s Prayer, Luther said that he would meditate on the Lord’s Prayer by repeating a phrase from the prayer and then adding his own prayer; then he would move on to the next phrase and add his own prayer, and so on. In this way, the form prayer Jesus taught became the foundation for personal prayer. The words of Scripture led Luther to reflect on them and to apply them in his own prayers by expanding them to include the people and events of his own life.

The Ten Commandments

In the second part of his essay, Luther encourages his barber to use the Ten Commandments as a basis of prayer. This might sound like an odd suggestion to our contemporary ears, but the Ten Commandments have a long tradition in prayer and worship.

Luther proposes one way to turn the Ten Commandments into a guide for prayer that can give your own prayer direction and content while making the Ten Commandments applicable and personal.

If you have time to go through the Lord’s Prayer, you can move on to the Ten Commandments. Luther says that each commandment can be divided into four parts.

• First, there is instruction, which is what the commandments were intended to be. 
• Second, you could turn the Ten Commandments into a thanksgiving. 
• Third, a confession; 
• and fourth, a prayer. All of this is to be done in your own words.

So, when you are praying, repeat the words:

“No other gods, only Me.” 

The first commandment. Now, meditate on these words and what God is teaching you.

       Your reflection on this teaching might go along these lines:

God wants to be your one and only, your beloved, because God desires to love you and be in relationship with you. In this first commandment, God is trying to teach you that the best way to go through life is to do so in radical trust in God. Our bodies will fail, our bank accounts can empty, prestige and power are fleeting, and all of our human relationships can fall apart. God is the only firm foundation for living, loving and trusting.

Because of this, we can give thanks to God who is infinite and eternal, and, yet, wants to be known and loved by us. So we turn to the second application of the commandment, gratitude:

God’s compassion comes to us without our asking for it and without our earning it. God comes to us as our refuge and strength in every time of need, and for this we can express our gratitude to God in prayer. 

Turning to the third application, we can examine our lives to see if we have an undo longing for anything that is idolatrous. This is confession: 

The commandment to have “no other gods” before God invites us to confess the way we trample on God’s desire to love us. We can confess our ingratitude and our tendency toward idolatry. Whenever we place our trust in something over and above complete trust in God, we are worshiping an idol. The little voices in my head are always yearning

for something more. More influence over others, more control of my life. We can find ourselves striving and wanting and desiring the next big thing. With all of that striving, wanting and desiring it can be really difficult to have an uncluttered Spirit, a heart that is open to following God’s leading. And we might say implicitly, “once I get this job, which I really need, then I will rebalance my life and clear out the clutter.” This is a way of saying that there are gods that supersede a life of trusting God alone. So we can confess this idolatry.

Fourth, form out of your meditations on the first commandment a prayer asking God to apply it to your life in new ways. Luther suggests this prayer:

"O my God and Lord, help me by thy grace to learn and understand thy commandments
more fully every day and to live by them in sincere confidence. Preserve my heart so that I shall never again become forgetful and ungrateful, that I may never seek after other gods or other consolation on earth or in any creature, but cling truly and solely to thee, my only God. Amen, dear Lord God and Father. Amen" (Luther, "A Simple Way to Pray," 5).

Luther here prays that the first commandment would become a greater part of his spiritual life and that he would be more faithful in integrating it into his life.

Then, if you have time, you can move on to the second commandment, likewise in the four strands of teaching, giving thanks, confessing, and praying:

“No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.”

     First, in terms of teaching, we see that God is due honor, that God is holy, that God is beautiful and not to be taken flippantly. This commandment teaches us not to diminish God for the purpose of advancing ourselves, but to be humble before God.

     Second, in terms of gratitude, we can be thankful that a holy God has chosen to be made known to us. God has bestowed God’s name on us, and in that relationship we can glory in God’s name and be called God’s servants. So we can be grateful that God has made known God’s holy name to us and that we can be counted among God’s followers.

     Third, in terms of confession, we can acknowledge that we have not always treated God with reverence and that we have often failed to fully live into our new identity as children of God.

     Fourth, in terms of prayer, we can ask for help and strength to learn this commandment and to be preserved from such ingratitude and superficiality. We can pray that our lives will be one of ongoing worship and reverence.

There is no reason to be dogmatic or rigid about the ordering of this prayer. It might be, and probably will be, that in the midst of your meditations the Holy Spirit will begin to preach in your heart with rich thoughts. If so, honor the activity of the Holy Spirit by letting go of this format and being still before the Spirit. You can’t do any better than letting the Spirit pray in and through you.

In this way, Luther proposes praying through and meditating upon the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are plain, straightforward, and almost boring, but in this fourfold approach of teaching, gratitude, confession and prayer, I hope they can serve as a springboard for your prayers.

Luther said he thinks of the Ten Commandments as a “school text, song book, penitential book, and prayer book. They are intended to help the heart come to itself and grow zealous in prayer. Take care, however, not to undertake all of this or so much that one becomes weary in spirit” (Luther, "A Simple Way to Pray," 10). 

     Those are good and freeing words, especially to a barber who has had a long day at work or to any of us.

In exercise there is a mode of training called HIIT, High-Intensity Interval Training. The goal of this type of exercise is to perform short bursts of vigorous exercise rather than long and low-intensity workouts. So in HIIT training, the person would perform 15 minutes of 30 second, all out sprints instead of a plodding 26 miles. Luther encourages this to be your approach to prayer. “A good prayer should not be lengthy or drawn out, but frequent and ardent. It is enough to consider one section or half a section which kindles a fire in the heart.”

Most of all, Luther says that prayer can’t be forced but is most valuable when it comes from the clearing of our hearts and the inspiration of the Spirit.