#106 | Praying the Bible | Don Whitney

That there's an almost universal problem in prayer. And it looks like this.

When people do pray, they tend to say the same old things about the same old things, and eventually that tends to become boring. Words without variety often become words without meaning.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And today we're having another one of our.

Deep conversations.

Are you satisfied with your prayer life? How do you pray? I mean, what words do you use?

Do you find yourself repeating yourself over and over again with the same words and the same requests, and you feel like you're just not moving ahead? Is there a way to get out of our prayer rut?

You know, there is, and that's what we're going to talk about today on Apollos Watered with special guest Don Whitney. Now, Don Whitney is professor of biblical spirituality and associate dean at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

He's the founder and president of the center for Biblical Spirituality, and he has some ways that we can thrive in our prayer lives. And that's what we're going to talk about today on Apollo's Watered. Happy listening.

Don Whitney. Welcome to Apollos Watered.

Thank you, Travis. Great to be with you.

Are you ready for the Fast5?

As ready as I'm going to be, I guess.

Okay, here we go. The team that I hate most in.

Major League Baseball is Yankees.

Your favorite team is Cardinals. What is a weird habit that my.

Wife says I have is several volumes of these. I could probably choose from a weird habit. I don't know. Probably something related to my fountain pens.

Fountain pens. You have to elaborate on that.

Well, I'm a pen guy, and I just always enjoyed pens since I can remember, like a sophomore in high school. And so I just really enjoy them. So as it's developed over time in order to. Not just. It's too easy to just keep inking the same pen.

You know, you're in a hurry. I'll just ink this one. So over time, and this is a few decades here, I've developed a little spreadsheet so that I change my pens and inks quarterly.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And so I used to have. I have this little pouch here with four pens in it. Okay. And then. But in.

In the autumn a couple of years ago, I had so many beautiful autumn inks that I wanted to do more than that. So I went to two of these. So I do use eight inks and eight different pens.

And the pens usually in the inks within them kind of match every quarter and then according to the spreadsheet then I change them. And so that's to just kind of ensure that I get to enjoy what I have. I don't collect pens to have a collection.

I can't imagine getting a pen, not, not to use that pen. So. And over the years and I got a lot of these, I enjoy vintage pins a lot.

So I can get a pin somewhere maybe you know, as little as 5 or $10 in some, you know, like an antique store. Yeah, an antique store or flea market, something like that. And then restore it myself or have it restored.

You know, my favorite pen here is, sorry, this, I've got about a hundred plus year old Waterman hard rubber pen with a extra flex nib there. And I use this thing all the time. Love it. And so if I can get something like this, well, Travis is, you know, these are never going to be made again.

I don't want it to be lost to the world. So if I see one at a decent price, I'll grab it even though I don't really need it. And, and so, you know, it's, it's fun.

And so just to make sure that I use them. But in ministry, you know, it's really useful. And I am a writer by the way, and so these are, these are my tools and they're really useful.

And I know I'm probably answering too long here, but in, I tell my students in ministry everybody gets too many junk emails, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But I'll ask my students when was the last time other than special occasions, you got a personal handwritten letter or note? You know what the most common answer is? Never. They never gotten one.

And so I tell them if someone visits your church or your class or whatever it is, and you write just a three line personal note, no matter how bad your handwriting is, number one, you can be sure they'll read it. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's not going to be true of an email or some other thing. You can be sure they'll read it. And it's the height of personal touch.

They'll think you took the time. And it takes no more time than sending an email. It's not boilerplate. And that's what ministry is about, right? You know, personal touch with people.

So fountain pens are useful. They don't take up a lot of space. It's not like Collecting jukeboxes or, you know, 57 Chevys.

And it's useful for ministry, it's useful for writing for so many things. And if you're in many places, if you're ordained minister, they're also tax deductible. How many hobbies are tax deductible? Useful?

And I mean, I've got one of my dad's pens. That means a great deal to me. My dad died in 85 and my grandchildren can use these pens. So, you know, what's not to like about it?

That is probably one of the single best answers that I've ever heard. And I mean that because I have a thing. I don't have your thing for pens, but I have this thing where I can only use a certain kind of pen.

And I have to use it all the time because your personality comes through the pen. And today the kids today, they don't even know how to, how to write. I. I would print when I was in school because I had to make my notes fast.

And then I read. I decided to start using cursive a few years ago and my kids couldn't read it.

I know. Which means they can't read the Declaration of Independence. You know, I mean, sad. Yeah, it's very sad.

All right, here we go. Question number three is because you are a pognophile, I don't know if you know what that is, but most people don't.

But it's people that are fond of beards. And the best beard grooming thing I.

Do for my beard is use a wool beard trimmer.

You have the neatest beard I think I've ever seen on this show. By the way, it is the most lined. I got a little beard in me, a little bit in me. Okay, here we go. Question number four.

What is the all time strangest food you have ever eaten?

Well, you have to understand, I'm not a foodie. I mean, I'm probably the opposite. I have a very selective palate, which is more often referred to as being a picky eater.

So when I was in high school, my senior year, we could bring our lunch for the first time. And I brought the very same lunch every day for a whole year and was happy as a clam with it. I mean, there have been Thanksgiving days.

I mean, one time I got snowed in somewhere, had popcorn for Thanksgiving Day. Man, I was just delighted. So if I do like something, I can eat it every day, but there are not a lot of things that I do like.

So for me, there are a lot of Things that are strange, but the first thing that pops into my head is not really strange. But I was in Argentina on a mission trip, and a woman served a cake she had made and gave me a slice. You know, the cake has, you know, is porous.

And as I was going to eat it, a bug ran over the saucer and into one of the holes. And so I kind of looked around to see where it was. You know, my wife elbowed me, like, you know, don't do this. You're a guest.

And so, you know, I straightened up again. So I thought, okay, what do I do? So she's watching me, see if I'm going to eat this cake she made just for me, you know.

So I ate up to about where I think it ran in. I got one more, one more. On mission trip. We were in Brazil on a mission trip.

And there's, you know, what a cashew is, of course, and it comes from a cashew tree. And the cashew fruit, the cashew nut hangs off the bottom of it. But the fruit itself is. Oh, it's terrible. But they make a juice out of it.

But typically it's something only the very poorest of people will. Will buy and serve because it's just so awful. And so we were doing evangelistic visits all day long in one place to. To the other.

And so we'd go in a place, I remember this had a dirt floor, concrete block walls, you know, open windows and. But they're going to serve you something. You know, they're going to give you their best, even if it's not much.

So we were at this place in the late afternoon, and she brought us cashew fruit juice. Juice. And I don't know how many times I'd already had it that day, and it was horrible to begin with. And of course, I have a selective palate.

And I can still remember holding that up to my nose to try to drink it. And I said, I just can't. I just can't do it this way. She stepped out of the room. I've never done this before or since, but I poured it into a plant.

I like that.

Yeah. Okay.

This is the most adventurous fast five I think I've had in a while. So this is pretty good here. If you were a city, what city.

Would you be and why?

This is your final question.

Oh, no, I have no idea. I'm. Oh, I don't have any clue. Because I really. Even though I live in a city, I've been influenced a lot by someone named Wendell Berry.

And so we first moved to Louisville, we lived out in the country and. And I really enjoyed that. You know, situations changed, I couldn't do that anymore. So. Oh, I don't know. I'm gonna say you pick the country.

You can pick the country.

I'm gonna say Louisville. You know, I love, I love Louisville. So. So it's where we live now.

And God willing, I'll be here the rest of my life, be buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in the seminary plot over there. And so I'm gonna say Louisville, the.

Seminary has a plot.

And yeah, Cave Hill Cemetery is a very famous cemetery. The guy who designed Central park designed it and PBS has done a documentary on it. A very famous and with statues all over the place.

Most famously, Muhammad Ali was buried there a couple of years ago. And you know, everyone, you know, it was popularized, you know, people watched that funeral and so forth.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, we have a plot and so professors, if you serve here 10 years or more, you have the right to be buried in Cave Hill Cemetery.

So that's part of the package, huh? That's part of the deal. That's. I don't think you find that at very, very many seminaries.

No, but that'd be an.

Interesting to learn about and be a part of that negotiation. But that's actually pretty awesome. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool. But let's hear about the Don Donald S. Whitney. What's the S stand for?

Stephen.

Stephen. So where did you give. Grow up? What's your. What's your. Tell us the Don Whitney story.

So I grew up in a little county seat town in northeast Arkansas called Osceola, right on the Mississippi river, about 45 minutes north of Memphis, just south of the Missouri boot heel town of about 8,000 people. Very agricultural county. If they planted cotton, it'd be the number one cotton county in the world to plant soybeans.

It'd be the number one soybeans capital. And so my dad was manager of a small town radio station.

Back in that day, every town of 5,000 people or more had both a radio station and a newspaper. So my dad managed a little radio station I grew up in that started working radio when I was 14. I intended to be a sportscaster.

Once I realized I wasn't going to lead off, play center field with the St. Louis Cardinals. The next best option was sportscasting.

And I had played baseball a little bit at Arkansas State, where I went and I read a biography of Howard Cosell.

And most of your listeners are probably not going to be familiar with that name, but he was one of the first voices on Monday Night football, the first three guys, Frank Gifford and Don Meredith in the 70s. And he said his legal background was the best training he had for his sports casting career.

Howard Cosell left a $30,000 a year job in the Depression. Now think about that, $30,000 in the depression, that was incredible money. He walked away to become a $500 a month sportscaster.

And so in my 21 year old mind, I'd seen a lot of guys get stuck in small town radio.

And so in my 21 year old mind I said I'll go to law school like Cosell, get a law degree and I'll go to a big station and say, I'll be your attorney and your sportscaster. But I went to law school, hated every minute of it.

And during that year I began to struggle again with something that happened my last year of college and it was dealing with a call to preach. So I left law school for grace School, I tell people and you know, went in ministry preparation after a year of law school.

And I've been in ministry ever since. Either pastoral ministry, full apart time, about 24 years. I've been teaching in seminaries, two seminaries for 27 years.

In the two seminaries, besides Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, you were at Midwestern before that, Right?

I went to Chicago suburbs where I pastored a church for 15 years. In 95, went to Midwestern, one of the six Southern Baptist seminaries was there 10 years.

And then came 17 years ago to our oldest and largest seminary, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, best known to a lot of people. Al Mohler is the president here.

Yeah, very well known, very well known. But let's talk about your book, your most recent book, Praying the Bible. And this is a book by Crossway and a gift from our friends at Crossway.

What precipitated this book?

Well, when I was pastoring in the Chicago area in early 85, we had a guest preacher who came up, did a series of meetings Sunday morning through Wednesday night and on the weekday mornings he was doing a Bible study for those who could attend. And he was going through the prayers of Paul in his letters and you know, common series and things I'd heard before. I mean, it was good.

I really like this guy. But there was a point in which on Wednesday morning, I think it was.

Something just clicked that the whole Bible is a prayer book, that we can pray not only the prayers of Paul in Ephesians, we can pray the whole book of Ephesians. And so I started doing that. Before long, I gravitated primarily to the psalms. And over some time I discovered, you know, this is an ancient practice.

This has been going on since the. Since the first century. In fact, it's a biblical practice.

And that Jesus prayed two Psalms on the cross in Acts 4, where they prayed and the place was shaken. They were praying from Psalm 2. And. And so anyway, I just kind of backed into this, and it has.

I mean, this past week, I see lives instantaneously and permanently change right before my very eyes, and I never tire of that. So usually on a Friday night for a couple of hours, I teach for an hour and 15 minutes, give them a chance to do it for about seven minutes.

They come back, and they're never the same simple, permanent biblical solution to the almost universal problem of saying the same old things about the same old things. So I want.

So more and more, Travis, I've come to believe that the main reason God put me on the planet, other than preaching the gospel, was to teach people how to. To pray the Bible. So I wanted to put that in book form. So basically, what I do in a church is exactly what's in this little book.

And here we are today.

It's a book that I found so beneficial simply because I don't think people know how to pray the Bible. And I think also when we're talking about the Bible, especially today, that's become just more rare.

I don't know if you've seen the most recent statistics from the American Bible association about their Bible report, but Bible reading is seeing the biggest drop that they've seen in the last year, 11%. And that's from the engaged reader. And they've seen the disengaged go up 38%.

How do we get the people to pray the Bible when people aren't really reading The Bible. What do we need to do to help people get back to the word of God?

Well, there's no simple solution to that. They're not going to pray the Bible if they're not in it.

And ultimately it's got to be the work of the Holy Spirit and their, their willingness to get into the Bible every day. That's hard for me to imagine anyone in whom the Holy Spirit dwells not having an appetite for the Bible.

The Holy Spirit, when he indwells, someone brings his nature, his holy nature with him. So he gives you an affinity for holy things, the holy word of God. You hunger for the word of God you used to find boring or irrelevant.

You hunger for holy fellowship, to talk with holy ones, the people of God, about God, about the things of God, about his Word. You long to live in a holy and perfect world. You long to live in a body you know without sin anymore, with a mind no longer attracted to temptation.

You long to live in this holy world where there's no more racism or pollution or traffic jams or frustrations. And you long at last to see face to face, the very one the angels call holy, holy, Holy. So the Holy Spirit, we don't just choose this.

The Holy Spirit causes us, we're told to cry out abba Father. So we have this new heavenly orientation, this Father word orientation.

In other words, those indwelled by the Holy Spirit, one mark of that is they really, they want to pray. You know, Abba Father, we don't choose this. Romans and Galatians says he causes that if he's within us.

So but in terms of how to do these things and just some practical things, all reformation begins with teaching, right? You can't expect people to do what they've never been taught to do.

No one is going to be a Christian financial steward if they've never been taught Christian financial stewardship. So if no one has ever been taught or had praying, the Bible modeled for them, unless they stumble into it like I did, they're not going to do it.

So first of all, there has to be the, the affinity, the appetite, the attraction to the holy things of God and to a holy God, to his Word. And then it has to be, you know, your willingness to discipline yourself to get into the word of God. It just has to be a habit in your life.

And you want it to be if you're indwelled by the Spirit and then that leads to praying the Bible.

What, what are some of the things that you do with this? You said you teach students this You've taught it over 600 times. How long of a period are we talking about?

When you're talking to students about this, is it a week intensive? Is it a class through a semester?

Yeah, I'm talking about a class in my typical on campus class, you know, we meet twice a week for 13 weeks and each, each session is an hour and 15 minutes.

And I will spend at least two of those classes and that includes sending them out to walk the campus and pray the Bible for 15 or 20 minutes as a part of that. Then they come back and we debrief. Now in a local church setting, I've usually got 7:00 to 9:00 on Friday night.

I'll do this an hour and 15 minutes, take a break, come back, I give them seven minutes to do this, they come back and we debrief and then I wrap up. So yeah, it's usually about two one hour sessions to make it simple.

Okay, so give us some examples. How do we go about praying the Bible?

Yes, you mentioned the Psalms and there's a lot of imagery, of course, where we're seeing it talking about Israel or we get into the imprecatory psalms, dash their children on the rock, and there's some imagery in there that's a little bit more difficult. People want to understand, they want to grow. How do you help them walk through that and push through some of those barriers?

First thing I do is illustrate it for them and I should back up and say, when I'm in my classes at the seminary, I begin every class by praying through part of a song.

Oh, okay.

So I'll have the students come in.

I teach a concept, it's not original me, called the Psalms of the day, by which that you look at five specific psalms according to the day of the month.

I will pick one of those and read just a few verses, 2, 3, 4, 5 verses, and then pray through that, praying God's blessing upon the class through that particular song. And so I model it for them. They get an idea for every single day even before they've heard me teach on it.

Then after I teach on it, that's kind of what continues the teaching is they hear me as they hear me do it. So when I'm teaching on this, the basic illustration starting point is in Psalm 23 because it's so familiar.

So I say, folks, it looks something like this. You've read your Bible, you say, now I'm going to pray.

I think I'm going to try to pray the Bible like I heard the other day, and I'm going to pray the 23rd Psalm. So you read the Lord is my shepherd and you pray, Lord, I. Something like this. Lord, I thank you that you are my shepherd.

You're a good shepherd and you've shepherded me all my life. But, oh, great shepherd, would you shepherd my family today?

Guide them into the ways of God, guard them from the ways of the world, Lead them not into temptation, deliver them from evil. Oh, Lord, I pray you'd make my family your sheep too. May they love you as their shepherd, as I love you as my shepherd.

And Lord, would you shepherd me through this. Through this decision I have to make. Lord, I want to do what you want me to do. Shepherd me into the way you want me to go.

And Lord, I pray for under shepherds at the church. Please shepherd them as they shepherd us.

And basically, whatever comes to mind when you read the Lord is my shepherd, when nothing else comes to mind, you go to the next line. I shall not want. Lord, you might pray. I thank you. I've never really been in want. I haven't missed many meals.

All that I have, all that I am, is from you. But I know it pleases you. I bring my desires to you. So would you provide those finances that we need for those bills, that car for school?

And the basic idea, Travis, is that you just go through it line by line, talking to God about whatever the text brings to mind. I don't have time to fully explain this, I guess, but, you know, if anyone's ever heard the word hermeneutics before, you know, they're concerned.

Well, wait a minute. You know, you're basically saying you can pray about anything that comes to mind. Yes, I am, because I think I can defend that from the text.

The Bible tells us to pray about everything, right? So everything that comes to mind from a passage is something we ought to pray for.

So we're not interpreting the Bible here, because when we're interpreting the Bible and just about every other kind of coming to the Bible I can think of, other than praying the Bible, our first job is, what does the text say? What does it mean? We have no right to impose meaning on the text.

Right?

But that's not really what we're doing. We're. When we're praying the Bible, we're using the vocabulary of the text to express ourselves to God.

So the extreme illustration I say is if you're in Psalm, what is it? 130. Oh, Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who could stand? And your friend Mark comes to mind. What should you do? Pray for Mark.

You know, you know that's not what the verse means. There's no connection between Mark, your friend and that verse. But Mark came to mind when you read the verb Mark, pray for Mark.

So I, you know, that may raise more questions as answers for people, but I, I've got, you know, I've got the time. And the little book explains all that. But you go through it, letting the text suggest what you pray about.

And if anyone has concern, man, someone might come up with some weird interpretation of the text and thereby infect the church with it. Well, let me say, first of all, I've never known that to happen. Second, I freely admit it could happen.

But third, if it did happen, the Pastoral epistles say it's the job of spiritual leadership to gently correct such a person. But Travis, I'd much rather have a person pray what is suggested to them from the text of Scripture than to pray without the Bible.

Because if people pray without the Bible, I guarantee you they're going to go amiss. When in my first pastorate we had a prayer emphasis in the church, we knelt at the home of a deacon one night, he began to pray.

Oh, Lord, make us free in the Spirit, said amen. Then he said, and make us free in the flesh. You know, I looked, I almost wanted to hit him at that point. Don't pray that, man.

That's the problem around here. That's the way people pray without the Bible.

But when they pray the Bible, their prayers are shaped by the words of the Bible, increasingly by the theology of the Bible.

And I have enough confidence in the Word and in the Spirit that if people pray that way, over time, their prayers are going to be far more biblical than they ever would be just making up their own prayers. And that's what most people do.

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Do you think as you've been a professor and you see some changes as the generations come in, these younger people come in and as you mentioned, yes, we have a longing for the Bible, but it seems that the culture has shifted where there's not as a familiarity in the Bible as it has been in years past.

I mean, if you read, you mentioned the Declaration of Independence, but reading any of the founding fathers, there's biblical references all over the place. It shaped every part of their thought. But the younger people today seem to be growing up in a shift where they're coming more from a vacuum.

Yes, there's some great Christian homes that are teaching the word of God. But have you noticed a shift in some of the younger people where you have to, you have a bit more work ahead of you?

I mean, yes, it's the spirit of God's work to teach them. But as a, as a professor, do you just find yourself going, they don't know this, I have to teach them that, or is that just me in my head?

Well, of course there is increased secularization in society. We know that by experience and by any sort of measurement, you know, studies that have been done. So I can't presume anything.

I mean, I think we have the, we draw the highest quality students in the world at Southern Seminary. But I can't presume anything. I mean, for starters, talk about changes. I mentioned one earlier.

Most of them have never received a personal handwritten letter. Illustrations I used to use years ago, I can't use anymore. Most confessions of faith are very brief, you know, booklet sized.

And I used to say, Travis, that by comparison, I said those confessions were Sunday school quarterly sized books. I had a class this year. I said, how many of you know what a Sunday school quarterly is? 0 raise their hands.

So there are a lot of illustrations and comparisons that I just can't take for granted anymore. So even though we've got high quality Students. Students that often are much farther ahead than I. They.

They've already come reading authors I didn't even know about until I finished seminary. And so it's. It's a strange mix.

I mean, they've already come, maybe already familiar with Albert Mohler, with John Piper, with RC Sproul, with Mark Dever and things like that. And yet, on the other hand, culturally, there's a lot lacking.

But the bottom line is, and we've seen this again and again, you referred to the American Bible Society's report. There is, generally speaking, a decrease in biblical literacy. And so we have many students who are way beyond where I was when I started seminary.

We also have students that are at the opposite extreme. They come. You know, they have very little Bible knowledge.

I found that illustrated when I was. When I went to Gordon Conwell as a seminary. And I remember being in line, and I wanted to go deeper.

I'd been in Bible college and I'd studied and I'd been in ministry. And a lot of the guys that I met had just gotten saved at university. They had no idea.

But I remember one young man talking to him in line, and I said. I said. He goes, where'd you go to college? And I said, moody Bible Institute. He goes, what's that? He had no idea what Moody was.

And I said, well, it's like the Harvard of Bible colleges. And I said, where'd you go? And he goes, harvard.

Yeah.

Harvard of Harvard.

Well, I further illustrate it. We have.

Our Southern Seminary, has the School of Theology, and that's where people go primarily if they're preparing for pastoral ministry or things like that. And then we have another school under the seminary that's called the Billy Graham School of Missions Ministry and Evangelism.

And that's sort of like everything but pastoral ministry. You know, missions, worship leaders, biblical counselors and so forth. And so the Billy Graham center, he was here for the dedication.

You know, he was very supportive of Dr. Moeller when he came here in 93, when, you know, it was a rough time during transition.

And we commonly now have students who have never heard of Billy Graham. That's just inconceivable. You know, here's A man who, 6,070s, 80s, even in the 90s, was sometimes number one on the most admired man in America list.

And they today come. They go to a school with his name on it, and they don't even know who it is. So that makes me feel old. But that just tells you.

Illustrates the shift that you're talking about.

There is A shift. But the one thing it doesn't shift, as you've illustrated and you're talking about, is the word of God. That's the constant.

And Jesus Christ, who's the same yesterday, today and forever. And salvation hasn't changed. The sinfulness of man hasn't changed. None of that's changed, no matter what goes on in our world today.

And that's why I'm a big proponent of praying the Bible, because we do need that biblical basis. We do need to stay within the word, because if we don't, then we've got nothing, nothing at all.

But going back to the praying and praying, Praying the Bible here for a second.

One of the things that you mentioned is you said, when it comes to prayer, when it comes to praying the Bible, you said you can have a meaningful, satisfied prayer life. Now, I talk to a lot of people, and when I hear them talk about their prayer life, everybody kind of hems and haws.

So how would you describe or help someone see whether they have a. This might be a little out there, but a satisfied, meaningful prayer life? Because some people say, well, I'm praying.

Sometimes I feel like God is talking to me. I'm not quite sure if that's the Lord or not. How do I know it's not? My own thoughts, and I'm not sure if I should be satisfied.

I haven't gone through my list because they have this huge list. They feel like they can't get through the list. What words of encouragement would you give them? In talking about how to pray, the.

Bible only raised several issues there. Yeah, there's a lot. My book is predicated on the idea that there's an almost universal problem in prayer. And it looks like this.

When people do pray, they tend to say the same old things about the same old things. And eventually that tends to become boring. Words without variety often become words without meaning.

The problem is not that we pray about the same old thing. That's normal. Because our lives tend to consist primarily of the same old things.

If I ask somehow how to wait, have your viewers or listeners here pray for 10 minutes without any instructions, and when they came back, I said, what did you pray about? I'm pretty sure nearly all of them would have prayed about the same six things.

Their family, their future, their finances, their work or school work, if they're students, their church ministry, Christian concern of some sort, and the current crisis in their life, whatever that may be. Statistically, we all go through a major crisis about once every six months. And if that's true, I'm about 10 years ahead. I don't know about you.

I mean, it can be a good thing or a bad thing. Right. It can be a birth or a death. It can be a job change you want or one you don't want. But it's on the front page of the headlines of your life.

You don't need any prayer list to remember this. Those six things are the big things in your life. And there's nothing in your life that I can think of that doesn't relate to one of them.

Right.

And thankfully those things don't change dramatically every day. Your family doesn't change very often. Right. Your work doesn't change very often. So put that all together.

If you're going to pray and you're going to pray about your life and these six things are, are your life and these six things don't change dramatically very often, that means you're going to pray about the same old things just about every time you pray. That's not the problem. The problem is people tend to say the same old things about the same old things. And that's boring.

When prayer is boring, you don't feel like praying because you know it's going to be boring. You know, it's hard to make yourself do something. You know it's going to be boring. And so when you do pray, it's boring.

When prayer is boring, you tend not to pray. So that's why people say it's not a meaningful, satisfying prayer life. It's just duty, it's just obligation. There's a part of me that wants to.

It's called the work of the Holy Spirit. Yep. But there's another part of me that when I do try to pray, frankly, it's boring. And so they tend to conclude, I guess it's just me.

I guess I'm just a second rate Christian. I don't want prayer to be that way. I know it shouldn't be that way, but it always is that way.

And no matter what I do, what I read, what I hear, it ends up returning to being that way. I'm just a second class Christian, Travis. I think that's an almost universal feeling.

But if there's a solution, and I believe there is, it's got to be simple. Because God has children all over the world from 9 to 99.

Low IQs, high IQs, very little education, great deal of education, very few Christian privileges. Because I want a mission trip once to Kenya, not even the pastor had a Bible.

And then there are people like everyone listening to this, who have many Christian privileges. Right, right. They've got Bible preaching churches hopefully to go to if that's not possible.

They've got Christian radio, we're going to hear Bible preaching. If they're not near Christian radio station, they can get online. They can.

There are countless YouTube videos, you know, Bible is preached and on and on and on. Christian books they can have in their hand in 30 seconds, you know, if they've got an iPad or Kindle.

And so if all of them, all across that spectrum are to do the same thing, namely pray, it's got to be fundamentally simple. And so I believe it is.

Because if it's not, I mean, you're basically saying if the people listening to this can't have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life, then what about our brothers and sisters in the middle of India, in the middle of China who have none of your Christian privileges? You prepared to say they can't have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life? No, none would say that.

They just say, look, I don't know about people in the middle of China, I don't know about people in the middle of India. I just know that for me, when I pray, it's boring. So I guess I'm just a second rate Christian. So it's got to be simple. And I think it is.

When you pray, pray the Bible and you talked about, you know, when I pray, sometimes I think I hear God speaking to me, sometimes I don't. Well, Travis, you know, I'm trying to hold up a Bible here, but you know, the Bible is God speaking, right? That is God speaking.

And God speaks in verse one and says, you know, I'm your shepherd. And like a real conversation with a real person, you respond, lord, I thank you that you're my shepherd. You're a good shepherd.

Would you shepherd me in this? Would you shepherd my family in that? And then like a real conversation with a real person. When you said everything you want to say, what do you do?

You listen, right? You let the other person speak. And that's called read verse two and that's God speaking in verse two.

And maybe like a real conversation with a real person, What God says in verse two doesn't prompt a response from you. So God continues speaking verse 3, verse 4, verse 5. And then maybe in verse 5, he says something in which you want to reenter the conversation.

God is willing to have that conversation with you as long as you want.

And so I really believe one of the great things about this is when you pray the Bible, you experience prayer for what it really is, namely a real conversation with a real person. We're not imagining God saying these things to us. Away with that kind of mysticism. This, the Bible is God speaking, he's.

Speaking to us, which is something that's really, really encouraging.

And when we feel like the whole burden of the conversation is on us, then we tend to say the same old things because we're going to be talking about the same things with the Lord every day, pretty much. And who has the time or the creative energy to come up with new ways every day to talk about the same things?

So the default is we go to the same old things. And that's boring. Travis, let's say that I said, you know, may give you one of the Fast 5 questions here.

Who's the one person you don't have to answer. This is rhetorical, you know, if I said, who's the one person in the whole planet?

If you could have an hour conversation with, who would you want it to be? It could be a religious figure, political figure, some world leader, some athlete, some author, you know, who would it be?

And you tell me, and I say, good news tomorrow morning at your location, I've got it arranged. You're going to have a one hour conversation with that person and you can talk about whatever you want.

Well, you would hardly be able to sleep tonight with anticipation of that. The event happens tomorrow at 8 o'clock and it's everything you hoped it would be. And then after that, I say, I have more good news for you, Travis.

Tomorrow morning at 8:00, you get to have another one hour conversation with a person. But the only caveat is tomorrow morning both of you have to say exactly the same things you said today.

Well, I mean, you might pick up a few things tomorrow that you missed today, but how long would it be before you would rather. What if you had to have that same conversation every day for the rest of your natural life?

How long would it be before you'd rather die than have that conversation again? Whereas tonight you could hardly sleep with anticipation.

Travis, we can be talking with God himself and be bored to death if we say the same old things every time. And that's what we tend to do if we are responsible for the whole conversation. Praying the Bible changes all that.

God initiates the conversation through his Word. God holds up, sustains the conversation through his Word. You simply respond to what God has to say.

And by that means, every day's conversation is different. Even though you talk about pray about the same old things. When you pray about Your family through the lens of Psalm 23. Shepherd my family.

That's very different than when you pray about your family from, let's say Psalm 51. Oh, Lord, forgive me for my failings as a husband, as a father. Help me to be better.

And maybe that leads you to confess your sins to family or whatever. So you're praying about the same old things, your family at your life. But you don't say the same old things every day.

And you don't have to think of new things. The text suggests the things you pray for.

Who's been the biggest influence on your prayer life?

You know, I don't know. The first one comes to mind is a man with the Lord. Now, T.W. hunt. He was actually a music professor at Southwestern Seminary, where I went in my day.

In my day, there was only one really conservative option for Southern Baptist and very godly man. Turns out he was from just. He grew up a few miles away from where. Where I grew up. Most prayerful man I ever knew.

And I had him in my church three times when I was in the Chicago area. And he prayed for me every day for decades. And so that was probably the earliest major influence on our prayer life.

Just giving me a vision of what it could be to have a passion for God in prayer. That prayer wasn't just, you know, obligatory list reading before God and just. That was. That was very influential. He was very influential.

You dedicated the book to him, too.

That's right, I did, yeah. And to the man who said, you know, held up the book and said, when you pray, pray the Bible. Yeah, those are the two guys.

So I'm being consistent here, stumbling onto some consistency.

How could people follow you and know more what you're doing?

Well, I do have a website, biblicalspirituality.org and I'm on Twitter and Facebook.

But I've got a bit of a strategic retreat from social media largely, though not completely, but also had some health issues in the last year, but just the time pressures of time. But they can follow me there. I think it's on Whitney on Twitter, it's Don Whitney on Facebook.

And then my website, biblicalspirituality.org well, before.

We close our time today, I'm going to ask if you would pray for our listeners that are wanting to do this. They're feeling this conviction that they want to pray better and perhaps lead their family in worship.

But would you just pray God's blessing upon them, that he would draw them unto himself?

Yeah, I certainly will. And by the way, there's a little app I would point people to called it's free five Psalms. You spell it out F, I, V E Psalms.

And it, it's very helpful in this because it automatically opens up to what I referred to earlier as the psalms of the day. So today happens to be the 12th of this month. Psalm 12 is the first one and then you just, you know, swipe, there's 42 and so forth.

So I will do that from first couple of verses here from very famous passage in Psalm 42 as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Oh Lord, give us this kind of thirst for you.

It's not natural Lord, it's by the presence of your Holy Spirit, whose holy presence, as we said earlier, gives us an appetite, an affinity for the holy God and the holy things of God. Increase that desire in us, Lord, for fellowship with you in prayer.

And Lord, give us a kind of thirst that's not just for more knowledge or more information or more consistency, but for you Lord, an experiential knowledge of you. So increase that desire. We've talked about people here today who who have little of that desire, Lord.

Increase that parch their souls with thirst for you so that it can then be satisfied, Lord, this infinite circle that believers have talked about for a long, long time. It's by thirsting that our souls are satisfied and that satisfied soul makes us want more of you.

It's so thirst quenching, so satisfied that we want more of that. That your presence, the experience of you is addictive that it increases our thirst for more.

Because there's nothing that satisfies like you, Lord, help this to be more of a reality for each one who's listening or watching this today. May it be true for me and for Travis. And Lord, let there be much lasting fruit come from these few minutes together.

I pray that, that you would cause people, through this many, many people, generations of people, to pray the Bible, to practice family worship as a result of just these few random minutes today. I ask this in Jesus name and for your glory. Amen.

Amen and amen. Don, I want to thank you for coming on Apollos water. It's been a delight.

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

I don't know about you, but Don's practical approach is exactly the reminder that I need. Sometimes prayer is not just a one way conversation as if God doesn't care and doesn't want to respond God wants to speak to us.

We know that he speaks to us through the Scriptures, so why wouldn't we incorporate that into our prayer lives?

If we want to hear God speak, we've got to go to the source I want to thank Crossway for sending us a copy of Don's book, and I really recommend that you pick up a copy for yourself. It's practical, it's an easy read, and if you follow Don's recommendations, I guarantee it will make a difference in your prayer life.

We will have a link to the book in the show Notes. Also for our regular supporters, we have a bonus question about family worship. You will get a link in our next newsletter.

If you're not yet a regular supporter, sign up today@apolloswater.org, go to the Support Us box. Click it. Pick the amount that works for you and you will be added to our newsletter and access to our bonus content.

Thanks for listening and if you've been blessed by today's episode, please give us a positive review on your podcast platform and thank you for helping Water Faith around the world. I want to thank our Apollos water team of Kevin, Melissa, Donovan, Eliana, Rebecca and Audrey.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered.

Stay Watered everybody.