Show Notes
In this episode, Derek Vreeland discusses the importance of prayer in maintaining an active relationship with God. He introduces the Jesus prayer, a simple 10-word prayer that has been used in the Eastern Orthodox tradition for centuries. Vreeland explains the four strands of the Jesus prayer: the cry for mercy, the discipline of repetition, the quest for stillness, and the veneration of the Holy Name. He emphasizes the power of this prayer in bringing calm, peace, and a focus on Jesus in our daily lives.
Books mentioned in this episode:
The Jesus Prayer by Kallistos Ware
The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God by Frederica Mathewes-Green
Scriptures mentioned in this episode:
Matthew 6:7
Mark 10:46-48
Did you find this episode helpful on your spiritual journey? Consider helping us out!
Leave a review
Share it with your friends
Give us a 5 Star rating on your podcast app of choice
Get to know your host: https://derekvreeland.com
Interact with your host on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.
Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host. Derek Vreeland, and I hope you are having a good day today. I don’t know what the day looks like for you, but I’m excited for this episode because we’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects and it’s a topic I think is going to help you today. Thank you so much for those of you who have been leaving reviews and subscribing. And if you are not a subscriber and you are somehow following along, you got this episode downloaded. Would you go ahead and subscribe? That helps let other people know about our podcast. Also, you can leave a rating or review. All of that helps. Thank you so much for following along. But today I want to talk about again one of my favorite topics. I have been a pastor for over 25 years now. And as a pastor, I find myself talking about, well, of course, Jesus. Jesus is always the main topic, it seems But outside of that, I end up talking to people a lot about their spiritual life. And today’s episode is going to be about prayer. And as I’m talking to people about their spiritual life, about their relationship with God, I think that prayer is foundational. I don’t think a person can maintain an active relationship with God without prayer. You know, any kind of relationship requires healthy communication and time spent together So whether it’s with your spouse or with your kids or even with a friend, the only way to maintain that relationship Is time spent together and some form of communication. And the main way that we communicate to God and with God is through prayer. Now what I have found over the years is that most followers of Jesus know that they ought to pray. And sometimes they feel a bit guilty that they don’t pray more often or that they don’t pray with any kind of rhythm or consistency. And as I’ve talked with those people over the years, they’ll come back to me saying, you know, I would pray more often if I knew what to say. Of course, we all know we can pray with requests that are on our hearts, right? We have a list. Friends that we know going through cancer, a family that just lost a loved one. There all are always needs that we can lift up to the Lord. But outside of that, most people don’t know what to do in prayer because they don’t know what to say. And I will admit that as a pastor, I went through a long season of my life where I felt the exact same way. I didn’t pray with any kind of consistency because I didn’t know what to say, which might sound surprising because, again, vocationally I get paid to pray And I had no problem praying in public. I could pray at church. I could visit someone in the hospital and pray with them at their bedside. I could pray with my family at home. But if I was really honest back in those days, I would have revealed that I didn’t pray consistently on my own. I wasn’t really cultivating my relationship with God because I didn’t know what to say in prayer when it was just me and God alone. And maybe 10, 12 years ago, things began to change when I learned how to pray by praying prayers that were already written down My background is in the Southern Baptist world. I came to faith in a Baptist church And all of my uh years as a pastor has been in non-denominational contemporary kind of churches. And both for Baptists and for non-denominational Christians What is most valued in prayer is our spontaneity, right? So you can’t plan out your prayers, you just pray from your heart And while that seems to be the value, it doesn’t work for a lot of people. It didn’t work for me When I depended on myself to come up with all of my own prayers, the end result of that was, well, I just didn’t pray very much. And I didn’t talk about it because I was deeply embarrassed. And maybe you feel a little bit like that. Maybe you feel embarrassed, or maybe you can feel a little guilty. that you don’t pray more often and maybe it’s because you don’t know how to pray. Well, if you find yourself in that position. uh you have found the right podcast episode. Because I want to teach you today a very simple prayer that I learned a long time ago that has been so powerful. It’s simple. It’s only ten words. It is a simple little prayer, but it is a prayer that has sustained me not only from day to day in prayer, but this is a prayer that I pray all throughout the day And it is perhaps the oldest and most ancient of all Christian prayers, and it’s called the Jesus Prayer And it has 10 words. So maybe you are not good at memorizing. I promise you you can memorize this prayer by the end of this podcast episode But the Jesus prayer, very simply, is this: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me That’s it. And see, you were all worried that it was going to be some complex, very religious-sounding prayer. No, this one’s pretty simple. Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God, have mercy on me. This prayer comes to us from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Perhaps you are aware that there is a divide in the Church between Catholics and Protestants But there is an older divide between the Western Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church. And I have found that a lot of American Christians are unaware of the Orthodox Church and the Orthodox tradition. Some people assume that they are just another version of the Catholic Church, but there’s a deep history in why the Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East split, but they are active all throughout the world. Most people would know the Orthodox Church from their cultural expressions, the Russian Orthodox Church or the Greek Orthodox Church. There is an Orthodox Church of America. And so there are Orthodox cathedrals peppered all throughout the United States. And I didn’t know about the Orthodox tradition until I was probably in my twenties. And discovering that there’s this whole other branch of the Christian faith. was really helpful for my own faith. Well, in the Orthodox tradition, they would say that their entire spirituality Their entire understanding of prayer is all rooted in the Jesus prayer, in this simple 10-word prayer. And it is a prayer to be memorized and to pray just as it is And so for resources, we look to Orthodox teachers. And one of my favorite Orthodox teachers. is Calistos Ware. Calistos Ware died recently, actually died in August of 2022. He was 87 years old. uh Clistos Ware is British. He was an Anglican convert to Orthodoxy, so he grew up in the Church of England, but then converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, and he was a bishop. In fact, before his death, he was given the title Metropolitan, which is like a archbishop. It’s like a bishop of bishops. So he was a leader in the Orthodox Church, but he was a kind-hearted man with an ecumenical spirit. Callistos Ware loved the whole church. And as you know, Christians can get pretty let’s say proud of their traditions, right? So Baptists get pretty proud that they’re a Baptist or Lutherans or pretty proud that they call themselves Lutherans or Presbyterians or Methodists or Catholics and certainly the Orthodox And sometimes that can turn us off a little bit, because if you’re not Presbyterian or you’re not Orthodox and you hear people talking about how great their tradition is, it can make you feel a little bit like you’re on the outside. But Calistos Ware loved the whole church. He wrote a book in the 1970s called The Orthodox Way. where he sums up the distinctives of uh Orthodox theology, how the Eastern Orthodox think about God, how they interpret Scripture. That was that’s been a very important and influential book in my life And Clistosware also wrote a little bitty book called The Jesus Prayer, where he describes. um what the Jesus prayer is all about. And it’s a little teeny tiny little book, which I highly recommend. You can get it on Kindle or in paperback version. But in that little book, Rare talks about four strands to this prayer. So he thinks of the Jesus prayer as a rope that keeps us connected to God, tethered to God. And so if the Jesus prayer is a rope, it’s a rope that’s made up of four strands. And he speaks of those four strands as the cry for mercy, That’s the request in the prayer, the cry for mercy. Number two, the discipline of repetition. Number three, the quest for stillness and for the veneration of the holy name. So if you don’t have the opportunity to read where, I encourage you go to YouTube and find some of his interviews or sermons or lectures because he really is funny. I mean, as funny as a British Orthodox bishop can be uh but he’s a keen theologian. He loved Jesus and honestly um I miss him uh you know he passed away just a couple years ago but i still go back to youtube every once in a while and i’ll listen to him teach And of all the things I’ve learned from Callistos Ware, I think his teaching on the Jesus prayer is maybe his greatest contribution to the church So let’s look at those four strands together and examine this ten word prayer. And again, here are those four strands. The cry for mercy, that’s number one, the discipline of repetition, The quest for stillness and the veneration of the holy name. Let’s talk about those four. Let’s start with the first one, the cry for mercy. This is the request that’s in the prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. Have you noticed in the Gospels how many times people cry out to Jesus for mercy? For example, think about blind Bartimaeus. Now we call him blind Bartimaeus, but he did end up getting healed by Jesus, so maybe we should call him healed Bartimaeus. But nevertheless, we know him as blind Bartimaeus, and he is a beggar on the side of the road, blind from birth. Jesus and his disciples are walking by, and he begins to cry out to Jesus. And he says, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. And at first, Jesus doesn’t even hear him, then the disciples are trying to quiet him down, but he continues to cry out, Son of David, have mercy on me. And that’s repeated throughout the Gospels. When people like Blind Bartimaeus cried out to Jesus for mercy They weren’t crying out necessarily for forgiveness. Because when we think about mercy and asking God for mercy, we’re thinking, God be merciful on us, forgive us of our sins. And I think the request for mercy includes that, and sometimes it certainly can mean that. But in the Gospels, when people cried out for mercy, what they were asking for was help. That’s what this request is all about. When I pray this prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me Sometimes I’ll pray it in the plural, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Whenever I’m praying that prayer and asking for mercy, what I’m asking for is help. And I need to pray that prayer multiple times throughout the day because my besetting sin is the sin of self-sufficiency. I over and over again lack the intuition to ask for help because I think I can do it on my own. And very often I have realized that I can’t do life on my own. I need other people. I need help. When do I need help? I need help every day And so I pray this prayer a few times in the morning, and then all throughout the day, I’ll just run to that prayer, it becomes for me a reminder that I need God’s help as well as the help of other people Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. And when we’re asking God for mercy, we’re not begging God to do something that God isn’t already willing to do. Rather, we are opening ourselves up to the mercy of God by praying this prayer. Frederica Matthews Green is an Orthodox teacher, and in her book on the Jesus Prayer, she writes. God doesn’t need us to remind Him to be merciful. He is merciful all the time, even when we don’t ask But unless we make a habit of asking for mercy, we forget that we need it. Ego builds a cardboard fortress that humility must every day tear down. I love that quote, particularly the image of that cardboard fortress. Again, she says that ego And for me, that’s my own selfish pride, my own self-sufficiency, my own self-centeredness Ego builds a cardboard fortress. So I’m trying to keep people out of my fortress, but it’s a flimsy cardboard fortress. Ego builds a cardboard fortress that humility must every day tear down. So in praying the Jesus prayer I’m tearing down that flimsy cardboard fortress, allowing other people in, and allowing the mercy of God in. So this is the first of the four strands, the cry of mercy. Number two is the discipline of repetition. In the Orthodox tradition, they pray this prayer repeatedly. They pray this prayer in repetition tens, hundreds, even thousands of times. Now, I don’t have the time in my day to pray it that often. There are seasons of my life where I have routines of praying through the Jesus prayer twenty times, twenty-five times, even a hundred times. And that is a little bit surprising and even off-putting for American Christians because Some people will ask, well, why pray the same thing over and over? Didn’t Jesus tell us not to do that? I mean, what about Jesus warning about vain repetition in Matthew 6, 7? And perhaps you know that verse where Jesus is about ready to teach the Lord’s Prayer, but he warns his disciples not to be like. the Gentiles who seem to heap up empty phrases in a very vain way, thinking that God will hear them if they just keep talking over and over and over. Well, the English translation, vain repetition, is only in the King James Version, and It’s a translation of a very unique Greek word, which means to babble. A lot of more modern translations, instead of translating it vain repetition, Will translate it, heap up empty phrases. And I think the warning here from Jesus is not warning us that praying a prayer over and over repeatedly is problematic. What’s problematic is when our prayers are empty, when it’s vain. So It’s not the repetition that Jesus is critiquing as much as the vanity or the emptiness of prayer And if you think about the ten words of the Jesus prayer, there is nothing vain or empty about any of these words. It starts with the word Lord. That Jesus is King, that He is our master, that He’s the one ruling and reigning. Lord. That’s the first word. And then the next two words are Jesus Christ. nothing vain or empty about the name and title of our Lord, Lord Jesus Christ, then the next phrase is Son of God. A reminder that Jesus is the son of the Father who shows us what the Father is like. Have mercy Well, we’ve talked about mercy. That’s what we need every day. And then the final phrase, on me, well, we are creatures created in the image of God, and we are the object of God’s love and devotion. So certainly you can pray this very simple prayer in an empty way. And so part of the work of praying this prayer and praying any kind of memorized prayer is to let it just roll off your tongue without putting any kind of intentionality to it. And that’s the real work of this prayer is to keep your attention on each word So when I pray it, and sometimes I’ll pray it just walking through the house or walking through the church. I’ll just kind of whisper it out loud. But when I do it, I try to pay attention to each word and to pray it slowly, Lord. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. Sometimes when I pray that prayer, I’ll kind of beat my chest on the have mercy on me part Remember, Jesus taught us that there were two people who went to the temple to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector. And the Pharisee is boasting and bragging and thanking God. That he’s not like this poor sinner, this poor tax collector. But the tax collector stands in the corner of the temple and he beats his chest and he prays, Have mercy on me. So the discipline of repetition, I think, is valuable to recognize that it’s okay to pray this prayer. Multiple times in a row, or even multiple times throughout the day, because again, it’s this rope that’s connecting us to God. What about the third strand? The third strand is the quest for stillness. The goal in the Orthodox Church for praying the Jesus Prayer. is to reach a place of quietness and stillness within your soul Imagine a perfectly still lake or pond where there is no current, there is no wind. There’s nothing but the surface of the water looks like glass. If you can imagine what that looks like, in the Orthodox tradition, they would say that is a picture of your soul. after praying this prayer. And I will be one that testifies that it’s true. That praying this prayer and sometimes praying this prayer repeatedly brings a kind of calm to my mind and a peace to my soul that I really can’t explain, but it happens. Calistos Ware in his book talks about Orthodox monks who will pray the Jesus Prayer so many times during the day that they’ll wake themselves up at night praying this prayer. Well, I’m no monk and I’ve never woken up in the middle of the night praying. Some people will say that I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt bothered by something, so I start praying. That’s not me. I wake up in the middle of the night agitated that I am not sleeping. Um and I’ve gone through a season where I’ve had trouble going back to sleep after I wake up in the middle of the night. And so I’ve developed this little habit that if I wake up, let’s say it’s like two o’clock in the morning, and I can’t instantly fall back to sleep, and my mind starts racing with things I have to do the next day. What I’ll start doing is I’ll start praying the Jesus prayer. Sometimes it’s just in my head, but sometimes I’ll pray it out loud, just quietly, as a whisper So there I am laying in my bed next to my wife in the middle of the night in the dark, and I start whispering out, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. And I don’t have to pray that prayer, but maybe four, five, six times, and I fall back asleep. How does that work? I don’t know. But I trust Orthodox teachers like Calistas Wear that in praying this prayer, it brings us to a place of stillness and peace. All right, let’s get to the last strand. The last strand of this prayer, which is like a rope keeping us tethered to God, is the veneration of the holy name So this is a prayer that is prayed to Jesus. Now, if you will remember, Jesus taught us to pray our Father. So Jesus taught us to pray to God our Father in the name of Jesus. And this is primarily how we pray as Christians. It’s primarily how I pray. But the church from really the beginning recognized that because Jesus is fully God, we can pray to Jesus directly So we can pray to the Father in Jesus’ name. We can also pray to the Holy Spirit, who is fully God, but it’s completely acceptable. To pray directly to Jesus. And so this is a prayer to Jesus, and it is a veneration. That’s a traditional word for a way of showing respect and honor. In a world that treats the name of Jesus as profanity, we who love Jesus want to honor that name. to venerate that name, to keep that name holy. And so this prayer, the Jesus Prayer, addressed to Jesus, Not only allows us to respect his name, but it keeps my attention on Jesus. I think what is most needed for Christians right now, today Is that we keep Jesus at the center of everything that we do. And so one of the ways that we keep Jesus centered in our prayer life Is to pray this prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. And so I find when I pray it all throughout the day, When I find myself distracted, hurried, or busy, that praying this prayer gets my thoughts back on Jesus It reminds me of Jesus’ Great Promise, where Jesus said, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. And if we can remind ourselves that Jesus is here, that Jesus is with us, then we know everything’s going to be alright. We might be going through the worst challenge of our life. But if we know that Jesus is with us, we know we’re going to make it. And praying this prayer not only honors the name of Jesus, but it helps us to focus on the presence of Jesus with us. So I want to challenge you. Take just the next four or five days. If you want to write this prayer down, go ahead and write it down. But spend the next four to five days. finding ways to insert this prayer throughout your day. Maybe if you have a form of prayer, add this prayer in there. Pray it before meals, pray it before bedtime, pray it before you open up your phone at night and start doom scrolling. But find ways over the next couple days to incorporate this prayer into your day and see if you don’t find the peace and the quietness and the stillness. That comes from praying this ancient prayer. Well, that’s it. That’s all we have for today. Thanks for listening. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.