Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

I confess. I struggle with daily, personal prayer. When I do prayer, I fight to concentrate and when I do concentrate I often feel like my prayers are rote. It was encouraging to hear Tim Keller share his own struggle with prayer and the way he now has experienced God through a daily prayer life. “The greatness of prayer is nothing but an extension of the greatness and glory of God in our lives” (26). So prayer for Keller and many before him in the Reformed tradition is a reflection of who God is (see 45).Prayer begins by examining two major streams of prayer in the broad Christian tradition—mystical and prophetic. I’ve heard murmurs for years about Keller and mysticism, but regularly in Prayer Keller is critical of mysticism (see 43, 59, and 150). I also wanted to point out that when discussing meditation Keller centers the practice on Jesus. “Meditate on Jesus, who is the ultimate meditation of God” (164 see also 177)—a clear blow to the kind of mindless meditation in some mysticism. He argues prophetic prayer is closer to what we see in Scripture, but also doesn’t reject mystical experiences (not the same as mysticism). Keller notes, “[P]rayer is ultimately a verbal response of faith to a transcendent God’s Word and his grace, not an inward descent to discover we are one with all things and God. . . . [However,] we need to recognize that prayer also can lead regularly to personal encounter with God, which can be indeed a wondrous, mysterious, awe-filled experience” (43 see also 66 and 179-85). This balance of biblical, prophetic rootedness in knowledge of God and a certain expectation of “a wondrous, mysterious, awe-filled experience” with God fills the pages of Prayer.After laying this foundation, Keller explores what prayer should look like—the how of prayer. In this regard especially, Keller paints skillfully on canvas of the Reformed tradition. Primarily the how is rooted in Scripture (64) and discovered through the Psalms, the Reformers broadly as expositors of Scripture, and the prayer life of Jesus. So Prayer can described most aptly as an experiential theology of prayer through the Reformed tradition.This historical rootedness is something sorely missing in many theologies today. It was refreshing to survey how those before us prayed—St. Augustine, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and John Owen—and not just their teaching, but their practice. For instance, Keller shows John Calvin’s rules for prayer:“Calvin’s first rule for prayer is the principle of reverence or the ‘fear of God’” (97).“Calvin’s second rule for prayer is ‘the sense of need that excludes all unreality’” (99).“His third rule is that we should have a submissive trust of God” (101).“[The fourth rule is praying] with confidence and hope” (101).“The fifth rule is actually a major qualification of the very word rule. He says: ‘What I have set forth on the four rules of right praying is not so rigorously required that God will reject those prayers in which he finds neither perfect faith nor repentance, together with a warmth of zeal and petition rightly conceived’” (103).Chapter eight “The Prayer of Prayers” ministered to me most personally. Keller here exposits the Lord’s prayer and teases out the full width and breadth of what Jesus sought to teach in it. Two observation were most helpful. First, as we pray “Our Father” we are not praying to a distant deity, but to a committed and loving Father who we have a relational communion with because of Jesus Christ. Also, he observes that praying for our daily bread also reminds us that we must not take more than our daily bread so that others might also receive their daily bread. “Therefore, to pray ‘give us—all the people of our land—daily bread’ is to pray against ‘wanton exploitation’ in business, trade, and labor, which ‘crushes the poor and deprives them of their daily bread” (114).Prayer ends with the habitus—the daily doing of prayer. He gives four: (1) awe, (2) intimacy, (3) struggle, and (4) practice. In awe, Keller reminds us that we must praise God for who he is, just believing he is great is not enough. We are what we love. In intimacy, Keller leans hard on the forgiveness of sin we have in Christ. He emphasizes its freeness, while also reminding us to kill sin via the instruction of John Owen who encourages Christians to not kill sin with the law, but “‘by the spirit of the gospel’” (217). In struggle, Keller reminds us that many of our prayers our answered by changing our own hearts or giving us the ultimate good (the prayer we would have offered had we known everything God knows). He ends again with Jesus. “We know that God will answer us when we call ‘my God’ because God did not answer Jesus when he made the same petition on the cross” (239). Good news indeed. In practice, Keller connects daily prayer to the life of the church, offers helpful tips, and encourages us that communion with God is within our grasp.Keller’s Prayer was a one of my favorite books of the year. Its depth and breadth will be invaluable for those struggling to pray for two reasons. First, Keller speaks experientially and theologically—a balance through out. Second, he also shows that prayer grows out of Scripture and also points to the fathers of our faith as our teachers and guides. A rare combination for any book dealing with such a practical and important topic.

Hold on! Is it a book about prayer? Another book about prayer? Is there any possible way we can benefit from yet another book on the subject of prayer? Tim Keller’s Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God answers with a decisive yes.Now here’s the interesting thing. There is not much new in this new book. As Keller says, the best books on prayer have already been written. So instead of pursuing novelty (see The Prayer of Jabez or The Circle Maker or a thousand other books) Keller looks to the past, to the deep wells of Christian history, and draws heavily from Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Owen, and Edwards (and, in more recent history, Edmund Clowney). He understands that any new insights on prayer tend to go farther from rather than closer to biblical truth. Instead of looking for new secrets to discover or keys to unlock, Keller looks for fresh ways of saying those old things. Again, there is nothing profoundly new in this new book, but that is its strength, not its weakness.Keller begins his book in an interesting place—the tension between two kinds of prayer. Christians tend to describe prayer in one of two ways: communion-centered or kingdom-centered. Communion-centered prayer is “a means to experience God’s love and to know oneness with him. [Such authors] promise a life of peace and of continual resting in God. [They] often give radiant testimonies of feeling regularly surrounded by the divine presence.” Kingdom-centered prayer “sees the essence of prayer not as inward resting but as calling on God to bring in his kingdom. Prayer is viewed as a wrestling match, often—or perhaps ordinarily—without a clear sense of God’s immediate presence.” He opts to discard the either-or view and will not drive a wedge between the two. Prayer is both conversation and encounter with God.This is not to say he advocates the kind of prayer you might find among the Roman Catholic mystics whose books remain so popular today. In fact, he pushes firmly against mysticism, against meditation as being an emptying of the mind rather than a filling of it, or against rapturous but mindless prayers. But still he leaves plenty of room for true communion with God, and for the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit who may bring Scripture to mind and cause us to understand it better in those times we are prayerfully meditative. Even as he teaches these things, he leans on the Reformers and Puritans.As I began to read, I had thought that Keller’s purpose in the book might be to try to resolve the mysteries of prayer. Over time, though, I came to see that this is not the case. There is much about prayer we cannot understand and may never understand on this side of eternity (and perhaps even after). Keller peers into these mysteries, but he does not attempt to resolve them. He understands that prayer will always be difficult and never over-promises, never lays out a plan that, if followed, will supposedly bring guaranteed or overwhelming results. We can grow in our understanding of prayer and our skill at prayer, but we will never solve it, and will never pray perfectly.One particularly interesting aspect of the book is Keller’s definition of prayer. Few books on prayer pause to actually define prayer, but Keller gives it his best shot. Prayer, he says, is a personal, communicative response to the knowledge of God. This accounts for the universality of prayer—all religions, and very nearly all human beings, pray. They pray because they have some knowledge of God through his creation. But as God awakens the hardened hearts of his people, Christians are now able to pray on the basis of much greater and much more specific knowledge. Thus, for the Christian, “praying is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.”Early in his book Keller critiques most books on prayer as being “primarily theological or devotional or practical, but seldom do they combine the theological, experiential, and methodological all under one cover.” This is what he has attempted to do, and it is exactly what he has done, as displayed in the book’s five parts: Desiring Prayer, Understanding Prayer, Learning Prayer, Deepening Prayer, Doing Prayer. He has written a winsome, well-rounded book that leads through theory and into practice. It is one of the strongest books on prayer I have ever read and it receives my highest recommendation.