To get started, the leader had us sit still and quiet for 20 minutes, instructing us to empty our minds. Each person chose a “sacred word” to use whenever our mind began to drift. Repeating it would guide us back to an empty, centered place. We were told to let go of our thoughts, treating them like boats floating by on a river.

So, there I sat, trying to let go of my thoughts, then hoping my stomach would quit growling, then remembering to let go, then wondering if I was properly centering, then remembering to let go…

Before attending this retreat, I had read some books and articles on centering prayer. I had even practiced it for several months. I wanted to be generous, because I love contemplative spirituality. At the same time, I wondered whether centered prayer aligned with Scripture. Books about spiritual practices can be vague, so I came to the retreat seeking a definitive introduction to the practice.

Like any meditative practice, centering prayer can make us more thoughtful people. One writer says it can help us become observers of our thoughts rather than victims of them. Centering prayer can slow us down and encourage us to live more intentionally. Who doesn’t need that? There is nothing wrong, of course, with quieting our minds. But that’s not why I had come to this retreat. I questioned whether a practice should belong to the Christian contemplative tradition if it takes away the object of contemplation. Put simply: is centering prayer… prayer?

What Is Centering Prayer?

Tomas Keating is considered the father of centering prayer. In the 1970s, he pieced together different elements from various spiritual traditions and repackaged them for the modern age. Others, such as Richard Rohr, picked up the practice, and it’s become part of today’s renaissance of contemplative spirituality. In fact, if you search for contemplative prayer on the internet, centering prayer will likely be the only option you find. There aren’t just books and retreats, but also online prayer groups and spiritual directors who teach the practice.

All you need for centering prayer is your sacred word, a good place to sit, and an empty mind. Imagine your “prayer closet” as a physical place in your heart. During discursive prayer, you go there to talk with God. Centering prayer teaches you to simply open the door of that closet and let God in. Contemplative spirituality has always found value in stillness and silence, but centering prayer goes further. It teaches us to turn away from our perceptions and intentions.

In centering prayer, you don’t talk to God, love him, or even think about him. Focusing on God requires thought, which centering prayer tries to go beyond. As Martin Laird says, “The thinking mind dominates awareness with clenching fists that constantly search for something to grasp.” Centering prayer wants to open those clenched fists, and treats even pious thoughts as distractions. Thomas Keating was famous for saying that “If Mary appears to you, tell her you are busy.”

The Object of Contemplation

Revelation 4 pictures God’s throne and the living creatures who contemplate him. They are the ultimate contemplatives, whose minds are filled with God’s glory. And, because they see and experience God, they erupt in continual praise. Isaiah saw that scene, and was overcome with his own sin (Isa. 6:1–7). Ezekiel saw it and collapsed as though dead (Ezek. 1:4–28).

With both the heavenly creatures and the prophets, the key to their experience wasn’t an empty mind, but their encounter with the One who sat on the throne. Their experiences were responses, which were the result of a personal interaction. That’s what has always differentiated Christian forms of contemplation from things like Eastern mysticism. Christians have someone to contemplate.

Jean Gerson, a French mystic, describes having “experiential knowledge of God attained through the union of spiritual affection with him.” The puritan Thomas Watson, meanwhile, compares Christian meditation to artists meditating on a painting. He “views the [portrait] . . he observes the symmetry and proportion, he minds every shadow and color.” Regardless of the tradition, Christians mostly agree that the quality of our contemplation is based on the God we contemplate.

Similarly, Paul taught us to be suspicious of a spiritual method that undermines our conscious experience of God.

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. (1 Cor. 14:14–15)

It feels “spiritual” to empty our minds, just like it’s probably exhilarating to pray in a mystical tongue, but those practices should never disconnect our hearts and minds from our Lord.

The Western Church has sometimes put too much confidence in rational religion, and reduced the mysteries of God to things we can comprehend. That’s what centering prayer is reacting against. Yet that’s the fault of our hubris, not a shortcoming of prayer. Can you imagine Isaiah or Ezekiel trying to empty their minds while they were in the presence of God? They would have been fools. And every believer who prays, encounters that same presence.

Silence and Spiritual Experience

Advocates for centering prayer often refer to Psalm 131, because it’s the prayer of someone who decides that they can pray better by not talking. But the psalmist didn’t practice centering prayer. His heart was content because it was enveloped in the love and presence of God (131:2). Our minds can be full even when our mouths are shut, and that is contemplative prayer. It’s not subtracting our perception of God; it’s enjoying him.

This is where centering prayer goes wrong, and why it shouldn’t be considered prayer. It this spiritual silence with thoughtlessness. Throughout Scripture we find silence is part of the spiritual experience. The most famous instance is Psalm 46:10. It is similar to Exodus 14:14, where God reveals his power and we have only to be still and silent. Psalm 62:1 introduces the practice of silence as a form of waiting: “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” Meanwhile, Psalm 123:2 pictures someone doing more watching than talking.

The common theme in all these passages is what centering prayer leaves out. Christian silence is never empty, never mindless. It’s expectant. Christian contemplation clings to God, waits for him, and enjoys him. Any spiritual technique that directs us away from connecting to God should not be considered prayer. It’s biblical to be still and silent in the presence of God, but the whole point of contemplation is to meet him.

My personal theory is that The Way of the Pilgrim is fictional, and that it may have been an indictment against the lumbering and ineffective clergy in the Russian Orthodox Church of that era. (Father Zosima plays a similar role in The Brothers Karamazov, written about the same time.) Either way, this book popularized the Jesus Prayer among the common people of the Orthodox Church, and introduced it to spiritual wanderers like myself.

Delightful stories aside, the Jesus Prayer is incredibly important in the history of Christian spirituality. It is also profoundly biblical, ancient, and useful for today.

The Jesus Prayer

The prayer has many variations, but the most familiar is:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Fragments of the prayer can be found throughout the New Testament, but it is primarily rooted in two prayers from Luke 18. The first is the tax collector who stood at a distance and prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:13) The second comes from the exchange between Jesus and a blind beggar. As Jesus made his way to Jericho, the beggar cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Lk 18:38)

Whenever I pray the Jesus Prayer, I often feel the urgency of the blind man. He cried out to God by asking Jesus not to pass him by. Something about that scene captures my imagination and sets the tone for my use of the prayer. I don’t imagine myself in his shoes, but I do feel that I am the inheritor of his desperate search and need for God.

An Ancient Prayer

Besides Scripture, the Jesus Prayer dates back to the earliest days of Christian monasticism. The very first monks used it in the early 400’s, when they pursued a life of contemplation in the deserts of Upper Egypt. It has even been found inscribed on a wall among the ruins of some nameless monk’s cell. But the prayer didn’t stay in Egypt. It became the fundamental ingredient to the spirituality practiced by the monks on Mount Athos, a reclusive peninsula in modern Greece that is populated by hermits and Orthodox monasteries.

Those ancient Egyptian monks prayed the Psalms, of course, but the Jesus Prayer was a tool they used to bury prayer deep into their hearts. They called it the prayer of the heart. The idea was that constantly meditating on this simple prayer would make prayer unconscious and ongoing. It was how they hoped to achieve Paul’s admonition to be constant in prayer (Rom 12:12; 1Thes 5:17). They would also use the Jesus Prayer, their posture, and their breath to enter a mystical state of consciousness. Thus Christian mysticism was born.

Full disclosure, the mystique of the Jesus Prayer was what originally appealed to me: the monks of Egypt and Mount Athos, the anonymous spiritual writings by a Russian peasant, and the hope of a mystical experience. I was infatuated with the prayer. I orbited around it, but rarely devoted myself to humbly praying it. I thought I was praying because I read the works, knew the history, and was in love with the idea of it. When I talk about wasting years trying to be a contemplative Christian, it is this that I’m referring to.

A Useful Prayer

My relationship with the Jesus Prayer is now, thankfully, more healthy. It is the prayer I pray most often, mostly because it’s so flexible. Much like the psalter, it provides a script that can guide our hearts to God. Unlike the psalter, the Jesus Prayer is so simple that we can use it in two, very different ways.

First, it is portable. It is a great prayer when you have dull moments to fill. Sitting at stoplights or on the subway, this prayer can slip neatly into your daily life and provide you with a moment of connection with God. Think of the Jesus Prayer as a country path. Nothing about it is mystical, and it holds no power in itself, but it points in a great direction. You can step onto that path and walk that direction anytime you want, for as long or as short as you like.

Second, is the contemplative use. Because it’s simple, this prayer can direct you to God, but it can also gently fade into the background as you sit at the feet of your Lord. I use it daily for this purpose. I connect my breath to the words and it becomes a powerful way to concentrate on God. I inhale with, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. I exhale with, Have mercy on me, a sinner. I usually just think of the words, but I sometimes mouth them or even speak them out loud. Occasionally, I shorten it: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Regardless, I always continue to breathe slowly, and tether my heart and mind to God.

That’s the real purpose of this prayer: connecting to God. There is nothing special about the prayer itself, and I have never had what I would call a mystical experience. Those monks were starving themselves and meditating for hours. Anyone who does that will experience something mystical, whether they believe in God or not. That’s not the point. The point is that we get to sit at the Lord’s feet and adore him. That is the true mystery.

The Jesus Prayer is close to my heart because it charts the course of my romance with the Christian religion but, far more importantly, it is a place where God and I have routinely met. When I first started praying it, I was veering far outside the evangelical norm, but that was thirty years ago and things have changed. I hope you can utilize it without feeling weird. I also hope that, if you are like me, you can set aside the romance in order to actually fall in love with God.

1. This essay contains spoilers for Anna Karenina

2. This is a hot take and I may be misreading Tolstoy.

3. If I am, correct me in the comments.

Years ago, while I struggled to read War and Peace, I ran across a comment that said something like, Tolstoy wrote more about society, while Dostoyevsky wrote more about the inner human struggle. That was all it took. I put down War and Peace, picked up Notes from the Underground, and I never looked back.

This summer, however, I decided to give Anna Karenina a try. I’ve read enough Dostoyevsky that I now understand how Russian novels work and, of course, the novel couldn’t be more highly recommended. It’s regularly considered one of the greatest novels of all time, and I have even heard it described as the best illustration of the gospel in all of literature. Unfortunately, I spent most of the 800+ pages wondering why.

Of course, Tolstoy is a great writer. I think he’s better than Dostoyevsky. But from a gospel perspective, I didn’t get it. I didn’t see much gospel. People say it gets better with multiple readings, but it doesn’t warrant one from me. It’s certainly no Brothers Karamazov, which is my pick for the-best-illustration-of-the-gosple-in-all-of-literature. I’ve wondered if there aren’t just two kinds of people in the world: those who see the gospel in Tolstoy, and those who see it in Dostoyevsky. Here’s why I side with the latter.

Anna and Polite Society

Anna is a hot mess. She follows her heart only to find herself imprisoned by the consequences. She sometimes comes across as just a spoiled white girl who tells off her husband, chases her boy-toy, and ends up strung out on morphine.

But she’s also honest. When she tells off her husband, I get the feeling that other women in the novel would have liked to say the same thing to theirs. Anna simply has the force of personality to try and reshape the world to her liking. Like any society defined by a rigid social order, Anna’s world was rife with hypocrisy and double standards. She sees through it and tries to be free.

Maybe I’ve read too much Dostoyevsky, but I kept expecting Tolstoy to do something meaningful with this. When she breaks free of society, I expect some aspect of society to be exposed. I didn’t approve of Anna’s behavior, but I expected her to cause the reader to re-evaluate our cultural norms. But that’s not what happens. Polite society is an immovable force that crushes her with hardly a thought. Tolstoy could have treated her like a prophet, but she was never given much voice.

It’s probably unfair to keep waiting for an aristocrat like Tolstoy to see the world like the commoner Dostoyevsky, but the difference couldn’t be more pronounced. Anna reminded me of Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Myshkin lands like an alien in polite Russian society. He doesn’t play by their rules because he doesn’t understand them. Myshkin simply tells the truth, and polite society wasn’t ready. He threw himself against convention and flamed out like Anna, but he held up a mirror as he went.

Dostoyevsky turned Prince Myshkin into a sacrificial lamb, while Tolstoy treated Anna like a cautionary tale. Anna doesn’t cause anyone to look in the mirror or question their own worldview. When Dolly visits Anna, she envies her until she sees her life. But Dolly doesn’t learn anything about herself other than it’s nice to have stability. Dolly’s husband still cheats on her, but Tolstoy celebrates her false sense of security. Others pity Anna, or are momentarily beguiled by her, but no one—ever—identifies with her. She challenges no one and changes nothing.

The Gospel and Polite Society

Tolstoy can write startling descriptions of the Gospel. The self-debasement of Alexei Karenin might truly be one of the best illustrations of the gospel I’ve read in literature. So my greatest frustration wasn’t about Tolstoy’s portrayal of the gospel as much as where he put it.

I kept waiting for Anna to have a Christ-experience that overshadowed that of her husband’s. She fell so far that I expected her rise to be unmatched. But she doesn’t. Again, I admit my unfair expectations, but I’m used to Dostoyevsky.

The hardest part for me was that it was Levin’s Christ-experience that closes out the book. I loved Levin, but his coming to faith means that the very best person—the most naturally compassionate and sober-minded—suppliments his upstanding-ness with a Christ-experience. After reading so much Dostoyevsky, not to mention the New Testament, that came as a shock.

The spiritual genius and societal commentary in Dostoyevsky is that it’s the Anna’s of the world who meet God. With Dostoyevsky, God moves independent of the natural order of polite society. Meanwhile, Anna Karenina reminded me of the Left Behind movies, where the sinners all had tattoos and the Christians all had their shirts tucked in. It reinforced the idea that good things happen to good people.

Maybe that’s why Tolstoy left Anna lying dead on the tracks and redirected our attention toward Levin. Maybe he had to. Is it possible that his theological vision was limited to the plausibility structures and safe confines of polite society? Levin had everything: a beautiful wife, a happy child, and a wonderful country home. Unfortunately, those are the only sorts of people who find God in this novel. And that made me sad. It’s why I love my Dostoyevsky. He would have never left Anna on the tracks.

I have not read his most recent book, but I did hear him speak last summer on his US speaking tour. In speeches, writing, and interviews, Isaac is calling on Christians and social activists to join him in seeking justice for the people of Gaza. After I heard Isaac speak, I felt compelled to do something in response. The fact that it’s taken me this long to publish an essay that I wrote almost a year ago shows my hesitancy.

Isaac doesn’t see this conflict as complicated, but Americans like myself often do. There is no doubt about the horrors unfolding in Gaza, but there is also a long history of cruelty on both sides. Then there’s the fact that Munther Isaac is a firebrand, and says things that can come across as extreme. I don’t always agree with him, believing he sometimes sounds more like student protesters on college campuses than a faith leader calling for peace. I don’t want to align myself with Isaac’s more inflammatory statements, yet I’m in a unique position to write about him. And, frankly, I’m less worried about keeping my hands clean, because what is happening in Gaza is a stench that clings to humanity itself.

My Friend

Isaac has been challenging my perspective for a long time. I didn’t go to hear him speak last summer because I’m an activist, but because he is an old friend of mine. I knew him before the Christ-in-the-Rubble sermon and before his interviews on CNN. I met him twenty years ago, when we both attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

Isaac was the first Palestinian Christian I’d ever met. Our first class together was a Hebrew language intensive and I remember wondering if his knowledge of modern Hebrew gave him an advantage in the class that I was almost failing. It wasn’t long, however, before he started to make a more meaningful impression on me. Isaac has an uncanny way of affecting how people see the world, and it’s that story I would like to share.

During one of our practical theology classes, Isaac mentioned that we should think twice before placing an American flag in the sanctuary of our churches. He said something like, “Until you’ve been on the other side of that flag you, might not know all the implications of flying it.”

I had grown up thinking that patriotism was a fruit of the Spirit. By the time I got to seminary, I could imagine a situation where America wasn’t always the hero, but I had never heard a firsthand account of it. I never considered the fact that the American flag would be a source of pain for a fellow believer. But Isaac wanted us to see the flag from his perspective, where our nation had foot the bill for the sufferings of his people.

The Other Side of the Flag

Westminster was always teaching us to check our presuppositions. Professors talked about how we often mistake our interpretation of a truth for the truth itself, and how we sometimes think that our perspective is the only perspective. The seminary has been teaching that since its inception back the 1920’s, but Isaac taught that lesson as well as any of my professors.

What perspective do you have when it comes to Israel and Palestine? Who is the “us” and who is the “them?” Is that the only way to see it? Where did you get that perspective?

The perspective of Israel comes naturally to most Americans. Israel is a cultural and strategic ally of the United States in a region where we’ve had few. Not only do they have the money and technology to broadcast their perspective to the Western world, most Israelis are fluent in English and have similar interests to our own.

To hear the Palestinian perspective, however, you almost have to cross an invisible line. Entertaining the Palestinian narrative means signing up for a different interpretation. It means questioning the reality that feels natural, and doubting the system that we usually take for granted. Will you have to start watching Al Jazeera or hanging out with activists and revolutionaries? It’s not the kind of thing normal evangelicals do. It feels radical.

The Palestinian perspective is nothing more than the perspective of our fellow human beings, but listening to that narrative is almost a political statement. Isaac would say that’s because the Palestinian story is happening on the other side of the American flag. He asks if we are willing to pay attention.

The Other Side of the Wall

Isaac once again entered my life several years after seminary. I was on a guided tour of the Holy Land and we were making plans to hang out. My only form of transportation was a tour bus, so it made sense that he should come visit me in my hotel. "Are you staying in Bethlehem or Jerusalem?” he asked. “Jerusalem,” I said…

Bethlehem is only about 6 miles from Jerusalem but was a world away from my hotel. Isaac said something I found almost incomprehensible: “I can’t come to your hotel because I’m not allowed in that part of Jerusalem.” He wasn’t allowed! He went on to explain that Bethlehem was part of Palestine and my tourist hotel was in Israel. I crossed between the borders without even noticing, but Isaac would need a special permit and then have a potentially difficult exchange at a checkpoint.

Munther Isaac has a masters degree from an evangelical seminary and a PhD from Oxford in Christian missions. Isaac is a believer. He is a pastor. He is even a seminary professor. He has earned every right to walk through any door he wants within American society, yet he can’t get in his car and drive six miles. That is what it looks like to be oppressed, to have your life determined by those who are in power. That power looms over him and his family. It treats him as a threat even when he just wants to see a friend from seminary. That power cares nothing for his interests or his credentials, and it disqualifies him based on its own (mostly ethnic) bias.

Isaac says that the Israeli occupation has dehumanized the Palestinian people. During a blockade in the late 2000’s, the Israeli government counted the calories that were shipped into Gaza in order to put pressure on Hamas. This was long before the mass starvation that we see today. According to Israel’s own defense ministry, the goal of that calorie count was to send enough food to “avoid malnutrition.” They probably intended it to be humanitarian, but it shows how inhumane politics can become. The Israeli government willingly leveraged the lives of fellow human beings, keeping them on the edge of starvation, to put pressure on its enemy.

That event, which was one of many, didn’t happen outside of Israel’s jurisdiction. Gaza is a region where Israel has control of everything that comes in and out of the territory. The calories are a testament to how granular and absolute their control can be. To hear Isaac describe it, Israel wants control but they aren’t interested in taking moral responsibility. No government should ever have one without the other.

However, most of us didn’t hear about that calorie count because we only get the Israeli perspective. Isaac made sure I knew that before I left the Holy Land. He gave me an assignment while I was sightseeing in Jerusalem: “Ask your tour guide to show you The Wall.” Not the Western Wall, where Jewish people go to pray, but the West Bank Barrier. The Israeli government constructed it in an act of self-defense, but it separates West Bank towns and Palestinian loved ones from each other. It’s not unlike what the Berlin Wall did in Germany.

My tour guide just laughed. He admitted that the Israeli government didn’t want me to see that part of Israel. That's why Isaac mentioned it. He wanted me to watch Israel curate the narrative.

The Other Side of Theology

Israel has its own rationale for the wall and many other defense measures. The current situation is the result of countless bombings of busses and restaurants in Israel. Israel has its own perspective just like Isaac has his. If this were just an essay about global equality, then I wouldn’t be writing it. I’m writing this essay because the American Church is partly to blame for the problems that are plaguing that region.

Like many Christians from the American South, I grew up a religious Zionist. My home church taught that the current state of Israel was the direct fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. We interpreted large portions of the Bible through the lens of modern Israel with the hope of rebuilding the temple. Implicit within that view was the idea that any person of Jewish ethnicity had a God-given right to inhabit the land that was given to Abraham. We took this ideology for granted, drinking in the water and breathing it in the air.

It never occurred to me that there were disturbing ramifications to that theology. It certainly never occurred to me that there was a different way to understand those Old Testament promises. Zionism focusses the believer solely on Israel, ignoring the other people who are living there and even those Christians who share our faith. Worse still, Zionism teaches that people with a certain ethnicity have a God-given priority over other people with a different ethnicity. No matter how Christians may try and explain that, to the Palestinian this sounds like divinely sanctioned racism.

There are countless well-meaning evangelicals in America who have not been introduced to the consequences of this theology. The hardships faced by Isaac and the members of his church is a consequence. The New Testament is emphatic, that the only ethnicity that matters in the kingdom of God is the divine ethnicity: people who are “born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

The Palestinian Christian is just as “chosen” as anyone else who belongs to Christ. No one has priority over them. For “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:28-29, emphasis added).

Yet Zionism continues to be taught in our churches, consumed through Christian entertainment, and voted for during each election. The result is that Israel, with American support, claims more and more Palestinian land for itself. In fact, there were 60,000 Americans living in these Jewish settlements as far back as 2012. These settlements are illegal under international law because they are being constructed on land that officially belongs to Palestinians. It is theft, and it is ongoing. Israel planned to build another 4,000 units on Palestinian land just before the war broke out in Gaza. Isaac tells the heartbreaking story of elderly Palestinians who still have keys to the homes that they lost when Zionists displaced them.

What Can American Christians Do?

Israeli citizens and Jewish Americans are often less Zionistic than the average American evangelical and Israel’s hardline government. For that reason, we Christians have a right and responsibility to act. Believers should talk to their pastors about this teaching and churches can explore less troublesome alternatives. If any of us hold a theological position that requires us to abandon a central teaching in the gospel, then perhaps we are interpreting the Bible the wrong way.

Isaac also encouraged the American Christian to listen to our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ and break the taboo associated with seeing things from their perspective. We need to have the wisdom and the heart to consider what it looks like on the other side. At the very least we need to have the courage to face the moral and human cost of the theology of Zion.

I believe the current state of Israel has the right to exist and defend itself. I believe Israeli citizens have the right to pursue their lives without the threat of terrorist attack. Yet I also believe that the Israeli state is nothing more than an earthly government and, as such, it is subject to human and international law. They should not be free to pursue a Zionist agenda, at least not with American Christians voting to foot the bill.

The atrocities and justifications of this conflict repeat themselves year after year. October 7th and its aftermath are just an intensification. But Munther Isaac offers us the chance to see it from a different perspective. I cannot imagine the day-to-day experience of my friend, but I am grateful that he is speaking out. When Isaac got his PhD and then published his first book, I remember thinking that he was on “the fast track.” Little did I know that his track couldn’t go six miles.

As an activist for social change, Isaac is out there fighting for justice, even when his language is problematic. But I believe that, as a Christian, Isaac’s ultimate hope is not in politics but in Christ and the Church. With that in mind, it only seems appropriate to conclude with Isaac’s message to fellow believers:

It is time for the church to produce a theology that is a blessing to both peoples in the land. Promote a culture of peace. Be peacemakers yourselves. It is possible! Empowered by the Spirit and by our radical obedience to the teachings of Jesus, we can make a difference. The world is in desperate need of crazy and radical people like us, who hope and work for a better reality and who preach peace and good news.

The Bible speaks of praying continually but that is never really our goal, even if it is a worthy standard. God himself is always our goal, but he can sometimes be obscured by our spiritual disciplines. As a result, there are pitfalls when it comes to reciting prayers, and it’s those I’d like to explore in Part 2 of this series. But stick around, because there are some helpful tools to be discovered in this installment on recitation.

Psalm 70:1

The first time I ever tried to recite a prayer, it was Psalm 70:1. I discovered it while doing an independent study in college on contemplative prayer. According to ancient sources, this may have been one of the first simple prayers that ancient monks recited to try and “pray without ceasing” (1Thes 5:17). Paul may have spoken of ceaseless prayer as hyperbole, but those first monks took him literally. They wanted every single moment of their day to be a moment of prayer, and they recited this verse to help them get there. This is my story of trying to follow in their footsteps.

It's easy to see why they landed on this verse in particular. It is a cry to God from a needy heart and represents one of the most basic forms of prayer.

Make haste, O God, to deliver me!

O Lord, make haste to help me!

One of those ancient monks, John Cassian, proposed repeating this phrase over and over to achieve "perpetual awareness of God." He went on to show just how versatile Psalm 70:1 could be. This prayer can comfort us in our fear and anxiety because it cries to God for a saving remedy. At the same time, Cassian said that the prayer is a warning against pride, since it admits our need for deliverance. He thought of it as the perfect prayer: it is heartening for those downcast and humbling for those puffed up.

I was taken with Cassian's description of the prayer and the ancient monks who used it, so I threw myself into reciting it with all the vigor and foolishness of a guy in his early twenties. Eventually I got to the point where I was trying to pray Psalm 70:1 with every waking breath. There were plenty of nights when I woke up in the middle of the night and I could tell that I had also been reciting the prayer in my sleep.

But far from relieving my anxiety, Psa 70:1 just became the soundtrack for it. My nerves were shattered by the nonstop mental noise of constantly repeating a prayer, not to mention the pressure of having to remember to pray it. I don't know how long that season lasted, but I don't consider it a healthy time of life.

My foray into continual prayer, however, wasn’t a complete disaster. I learned some valuable lessons that are with me still. First among those lessons was that prayer is not prayer unless you are actively talking to God. Truth be told, I hardly ever really prayed during that spiritual project. I recited words but I didn’t speak with God. Maybe I thought I would “be heard for my many words” (Matt 6:7). In Part 1, I mentioned that reciting prayers was not a tool we use just to turn off our brains, but certainly I proved you can do that if you try. Empty words are empty words, no matter how many times you say them.

Second, I realized that Psalm 70:1 is one-dimensional, and my spirituality reflected that. I had made that verse the sole diet of my spiritual life so I could see how insufficient it could be. If all you ever do is cry out to God for deliverance, then you only ever think about yourself. I used that prayer to obsess about my feelings, my needs, my fears, my sins, etc. Modern believers need to delivered from ourselves, not drawn deeper in. We are already hyper-focussed on ourselves and we hardly need any encouragement. There is a place for introspection, of course, but salvation comes from the outside—a place we seldom look. (Salvation from the outside is actually the point of Psalm 70:1, but I instinctively make most things about myself.)

Lastly, this was probably the first time I saw just how much a spiritual endeavor could be filled with fleshly intentions. I constantly repeated this prayer because I wanted an experience. I wanted an achievement. I wanted to redraw the lines on what it meant to be a serious and observant believer. I had long since quit talking to God while repeating the verse, and there was no gospel in what I was doing. It wasn’t the repetition that was the problem—it was my heart.

Psalm 70:1 & Intercession

With so much baggage attached to Psalm 70:1, it's a small wonder that it has once again become an important feature of my spiritual life. Now that I'm a bit more mature and a whole lot more healthy, I have been able to come back to that little prayer. I no longer recite it with every waking breath, but I have discovered that I can recite it when I pray for others. Nowadays, Psalm 70:1 is how I talk to God about the needs of people in my life.

Make haste, O God, to deliver John Doe!

O Lord, make haste to help him!

You have your prayer list, or maybe someone randomly asks you to pray for them; what better way than to recite this simple prayer? No matter how well you know that person, this prayer is sufficient. Of course, there are times I elaborate, but that is usually because I need to process things with God. For the most part, neither God nor others need me to say all that much. God knows what they need long before I ask (Matt 6:8).

The truth is, even if I have lots to say, I’m not sure I can do much better than Psalm 70:1. Isn’t that what our friends and loved ones need most? They need God to come quickly to deliver them, to help them. I often recite these words while thinking about the specifics that burden my heart, but limiting myself to this verse actually reminds me that I’m not in charge—God is. Too often our prayers come across as us being a board of directors who direct God as to how he should act. Psalm 70:1 leaves all that up to God. The one thing we know he must do is deliver and help those we love. Without that, they are lost. So maybe John Cassian was right after all. Maybe Psalm 70:1 actually is the perfect prayer!

In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about the things of heaven. We considered the creatures who pray while encircling the throne of God. Their prayers are saturated with God's glory. As wonderful as that is, we still deal with the stuff on this earth. We need deliverance. We need help. We need it soon. Psalm 70:1 is the counterweight to Revelation 4:8.

Back when I prayed Psalm 70:1 all the time, the verse starved me of the things of heaven. I was problem-obsessed and earthly-oriented, and I needed a more heavenly perspective. But when it comes to dealing with the problems of this earth, I don't know that we can do much better.

When my heart is burdened with need, Psalm 70:1 is my guide. Sometimes I simply plug in someone’s name and other times I add to it. Here is an example using my daughter, who will spend this summer in Kathmandu. I'm not sure she needs more than Psalm 70:1, but I need to pray more for my own peace of mind.

Make haste, O God, to deliver my daughter!

O Lord, make haste to help her!

Make haste, O God, to keep her safe!

O Lord, make haste to help her!

Make haste, O God, to bring her Christian a fellowship!

O Lord make haste to help her!

As with any spiritual discipline, there are lots of ways to misuse recited prayers. Sometimes our greatest temptation isn’t to stop our spiritual practice, but rather to take God completely out of it. I did that with continual prayer. I have not given up my dream of seeking the Lord’s presence continually (Psa 105:4), I just know that it will be a process of growing in love and dependence and not because of some verbal gimmick.

Next Time

In Part 3 of this series we will take a look at the Jesus Prayer, which has been one of the most recited prayers throughout the history of the church. It isn't a magic formula, but it is a nice combination of Revelation 4: 8 and Psalm 70:1.

NOTE: I cannot recommend this book highly enough. What follows are the questions I had, but in no way takes away from this fantastic piece of literature.

James really got me thinking. It challenged and encouraged me in ways that made me reflect on questions I have about redemption and modern society. What does it mean to be redeemed? When we strip away the Sunday school answers, what is our true hope for human destiny?

Enlightenment in a Darkened World

James is a retelling of Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of Huck’s companion, Jim—the runaway slave. The book is funny, beautiful, and provocative. Like any story set against the backdrop of slavery, it forces the reader to confront one of America’s greatest sins. While many books about slavery are bleak and filled with despair, James is different—it’s more subtle.

Everett invites us to reconsider slavery from a modern perspective by making one of the slaves a contemporary figure. James is, in essence, a 21st-century secular humanist inhabiting the body of the slave Jim. He’s one of us—he could be any of us. He can read and write. He quotes Locke and Rousseau while strategizing like Hannibal. Jim is his alter ego, performing the act of the stereotypical “dumb” slave to placate the white man and ensure his own safety. The story is comedic, and we, as readers, are in on the joke. It’s amusing to know that the man who speaks pidgin English around white people is actually the smartest person on the Mississippi River. But the tragedy lies in the fact that this was most certainly the case for many black people in that era.

The idea of owning another person is an abomination. But Everett reminds us that those who were owned were just like us—people with potential. James embodies this absurdity, forcing us to face the reality that the only thing standing between a white man and his black slave was opportunity and education. Many black men and women who could have been scientists or doctors in our day were instead forced to pick cotton and sing slave songs. Everett is almost screaming his message in the book, but he delivers that message almost as a whisper—for that reason alone this book is a masterpiece.

James and the Question of Faith

Despite the brilliance of the book, one aspect left me unsettled: Everett’s portrayal of faith. I’m usually unphased by critiques of religion in literature, but this was different. It wasn’t a direct assault; it was subtle, much like the rest of the novel.

Everett depicts slaves who pretended to be what their slavers wanted them to be—dumb and Christian. Faith becomes part of the ruse. While this is historically accurate, as slaves had to act subservient to protect themselves, what struck me wasn’t just the pretense of Christianity—it was the portrayal of faith itself. Everett seems to suggest that these slaves knew better than to believe in God. Faith, in his depiction, was the invention of the ignorant white man. He presents the slaves as secular humanists, too enlightened for belief.

Given Everett’s project, this portrayal makes sense. You can’t write a story about a closeted secular humanist in a slave’s body and then expect that character to have a thirst for God.

However, this view seemed to undermine the faith of many black believers. The black church, after all, rose from the ashes of slavery and flourished despite the odds. It has long been a powerful force, maintaining its distinct voice and resisting the tide of secularism. It’s a church that believes, while the white church often compromises. In contrast, Everett's book feels like a ridicule not just of white Christianity, but of black Christianity too—churches that were born out of suffering and perseverance.

Everett had every right to critique the white church for its complicity in racial injustice, but he chose to mock Christians in general. In doing so, he seems to look down on the very people whose faith helped them endure unimaginable suffering. Everett’s portrayal of secular humanism as enlightenment feels elitist, as if he is elevating intellectualism over the very people he seeks to honor.

Enlightenment and Me

This leads me to reflect on my own attitudes. If I’m honest, I often place more value on “enlightened” culture than simple faith in God. I tend to assume that artists and intellectuals are more spiritually aware than those without such education. I find myself often thinking that thinkers like Locke and Rousseau offer a more valuable enlightenment than that of the Spirit of God.

Perhaps Everett’s hierarchy resonates with me precisely because he’s forcing us to question this. In a story like James, faith is always under fire because faith is perceived as naïve. Faith doesn’t know—it believes. Faith doesn’t invent—it receives. Faith isn’t enlightened—it searches. If Everett had depicted James as anything other than a secular humanist, we might have questioned whether he was still under the white man’s thumb.

Our desire for freedom often stems from the impulse to break away from influence and weakness. We want to command our own ships, shed convention, and laugh at those we perceive as less enlightened. This brings me back to the question of redemption. What does it mean to transcend? Is it to move deeper into faith, or to ascend the heights of the intellectual and cultural elite? Is my hope for human destiny rooted in the “enlightenment” of the world, or in the eternal hope that comes from knowing Christ?

In the end, how would I envision a liberated James? I hope faith would still be central. James would still need to be the smartest man on the Mississippi, of course, but I’d to imagine that he could still look up at the stars and encounter the mysteries of God.

Somehow, the practice has been mostly lost in evangelical circles. With that in mind, this series will survey some recite-able prayers that you might consider trying. This first installment will also act as an introduction to recitation in general.

The Throne of God

When Isaiah had a vision of heaven, he saw the Lord seated in His temple. Surrounding God’s throne were heavenly creatures that called out to one another…

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

It was a sight that stretched the limit of human vocabulary, and each biblical writer who had such a vision struggled to describe it. John had one that he recorded in Revelation 4, and the reader can watch him try to fit words to things he couldn’t comprehend. John sees God’s throne and describes the creatures around it. He also hears them praying, and it’s their prayer that matters to us. The creatures in John’s vision pray essentially the same prayer that they did in Isaiah 6.

‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!’”

Assuming that we can tie these visions to normal time and space, then it means the heavenly creatures were up there praying this very same prayer for the hundreds of years between Isaiah and John. John hints at this when he says, “Day and night they never cease to say…” (Rev 4:8). They are probably up there right now, saying the same thing.

This prayer is possibly the original prayer. Before God created this world and started listening to us, these were the prayers he heard. And when this earth gives out, the heavens will last and these prayers will remain. If you need permission to repeat a single phrase as a prayer to God, then the living creatures provide it.

Meanwhile, Protestants sometimes argue that repeating the same prayer over and over is too Catholic, even though heaven would prove otherwise. Still others warn that repeating a single phrase is a way to turn off our minds, but the creatures whose minds are saturated with God repeat prayers quite naturally. Perhaps repeated prayers are even God’s preference, since he created creatures to do it, gave his people the Shema, and had his Son teach believers a repeatable prayer.

For that reason, I believe Christians should practice reciting prayers. It is a way to pray when we don’t have much to say. It is also a way to connect with God in small doses throughout our day.

Learning to Recite

Set aside a few moments before or after you read Scripture, or during your normal prayer time. Recite the prayer a few times—maybe three or even ten. Let your voice match those of the living creatures even though you can’t hear them. Let the words guide you into worship and adoration, not thinking about those people you are supposed to pray for. Feel free to pray the words slowly and meditate on them, or pray them quickly to flood your mind. Different people may be wired to pray in different ways.

Another advantage of recitation is that you can weave it into the fabric of your daily life. I don’t stick with the same thing all the time, but I go through seasons where I recite prayers when I do certain tasks. For years I recited prayers while I sat waiting at stoplights. Sometimes the recitation forced me to quit thinking about other things and consider God for a few seconds. Other times my mind blended whatever I was thinking about with the prayer, so it became a moment of intercession.

Scripture refers to praying continually (Psa 105:4; Rom 12:12; Eph 6:18; 1Thes 5:17). We need not read those verses legalistically, but we should at least take them seriously. God wants us to move about this world while connecting with him. Reciting prayers can provide us with the avenue to make God’s presence part of our everyday lives.

There is nothing mystical about the words we recite. Unlike a mantra, Christians don’t believe the words have any power within themselves. This was likely the error that Jesus warned against when he told his disciples not to pray like the Gentiles (Matt 6:7). No, any prayer you recite will be full of normal human words. What they offer is a connection between our hearts and God, and it is God who has the power.

There are other prayers to recite and we will consider them in the future. For now, simply repeat this prayer as you go about your daily routines. Repeat it as you walk your dog or wait for the bus. Use it to worship while you fold the laundry or even pray it when you go to the bathroom! Be like one of the living creatures who, day and night, they never cease to say…

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,

who was and is and is to come!