By Dr. Latayne C. Scott
When my son Ryan and I read through the Old Testament when he was in high school, we used The Narrated Bible (now re-titled as The Daily Bible). We read a section out loud every morning. Old Testament names can be tongue-twisters. But I insisted we sound them out and say them. "After all," I reasoned, "if God honored someone by having their name in His eternal Word, we should at least say them aloud." We named the names. Something similar happened when I began to read The Gulag Archipelago, the memoir of Alexander Solzhenitsyn that Time Magazine called "the best book of the 20th Century." I read the abridged version (I’m a wimp—the three-volume original version is a bazillion pages long) and kept getting characters mixed up in my mind. Finally, I realized that I needed to read the unfamiliar sounds of the Russian names out loud. I did this for the whole book. After a while, the cadences and inflections of the Russian language helped me see patterns in names and consistency. I named the names. In a way I may never fully understand, naming the Name of Jesus has power beyond its syllables and sounds. (I capitalize the word Name, because its identification with God partakes of His holiness—see Acts 5:41). The Bible repeats over and over the idea of calling on His Name. For the last year, a prayer practice of naming the Name has become an essential part of my daily life. And for at least 1600 years (that we have documentation of), my brothers and sisters of Church history have prayed a simple prayer known as The Jesus Prayer. "Repetition" to many Protestants is irretrievably linked to the word "vain”, as if all repetitions are meaningless. (They don’t know what to do with Psalm 136 and others, I guess.) The Jesus Prayer is simple: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. For my students, this is the Agent/Patient relationship in its purest form. It is anthropology and supernatural cosmology in a single sentence. For unnumbered Christians for millennia, it has become as natural as breath, and as ever present. What effect has it had on others? I hear stories. But I have one of my own. I’ve never had a problem with wanting to access porn. (I’ve got plenty of other sins; that just happens to be one that doesn’t tempt me). But one day I was reading a news report that described the kind of porn that is being depicted in library books for students in the public schools. The description was of an act I hadn’t thought about before. Then I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Here’s a good thing about getting older. Whereas I was able in the past to mentally juggle several lines of thought and activity in my head, now I’m basically two-tracks. I can do physical things, but my mind has only two other tracks. And the act, played out in my mind, became like background music. I didn’t want it to. But it did. So with two tracks available to me, I did this: Something physical like walking or unloading the dishwasher or even listening to an audiobook—and when that act came into my mind, I prayed the Jesus Prayer. I found I was functioning in the physical activity. I was following and enjoying the audiobook. And with the Jesus Prayer crowding out the "act," there was no mental room for anything else. It took me a week, but that thought was kicked downstairs, so many floors, so repeatedly, that a door closed to a hellish basement. I named The Name. And it helped. Can this ancient prayer help you? Blessings to you, Latayne
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A maskil of David. When he was in the cave. A prayer.I cry aloud to the Lord;
I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk people have hidden a snare for me. Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. I cry to you, Lord; I say, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.” Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me. If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, ‘If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God.’ The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’ For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.
From Mere Christianity Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” |