Mr. McFarland
speaker
52 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Oct 2024
Mr. McFarland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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The second is the Ten Commands. And the third is the Apostles' Creed. Then Dr. Luther went on to explain that once Peter knew these things by heart, he could use them to help himself pray. For example, Dr. Luther said, you begin by praying through the Lord's Prayer. Peter asked, do you mean that all I have to do is just pray the Lord's Prayer every night?
No, Dr. Luther said, that's not what I mean. It's a wonderful thing to do. But what I mean by praying through the Lord's Prayer is doing something like this. Think about the first petition in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. When you think about these words, allow your mind and your heart to give careful attention to what these words say.
And let them move you to deeper prayer. Say the first line of the prayer and then begin to pray like this. Oh God, it's hard for me to believe that you are really willing to be my Heavenly Father. In our family, we have our father whom we love, but you are the father of all of us who put our faith in Jesus.
It's because Jesus is your son and through him you have adopted us into your family that we have the privilege to pray to you as our father. We know that you don't have an address here in our village, but you reside in heaven itself. You're not our earthly father. You are our Heavenly Father, and you are the one who owns the whole world.
It's a wonderful thing that we have a Father who owns everything to whom I can come in my prayer. Jesus taught us to say, Hallowed be your name. Father, help me to understand that there's nothing more important in my life and in my prayer than to give reverence and worship to your name.
Lord, guard my tongue, that I may never use your name in a foolish or corrupt manner, but that when I speak of you and when I think of you, my heart will be moved to respect and adore you. Dr. Luther said to Peter, Do you understand what I mean by praying through the Lord's Prayer? You can pray through these parts of the Lord's Prayer every day and never make the same prayer twice.
You can think about one portion of it and give your attention to that, and your prayers will rise in excitement and in joy. Then Dr. Luther said, Now think about praying through the Ten Commandments. The first commandment says, you shall have no other gods before me. You can pray something like this.
Lord God, we know that the world is filled with people who worship idols and statues, who believe in many gods, and yet you and you alone are God. Sometimes there are things in my life that I put ahead of you, things that become my idols. Forgive me when I do that. Help me not to allow myself to have any other gods in your sight. Master Peter was very excited. I see what you mean, he said.
Dr. Luther grinned. You can go through each one of the Ten Commandments in that manner, he said, or you can turn your attention to the Apostles' Creed. It begins with, I believe in God the Father Almighty. As you begin to think about that, you begin to think of the power God has, the strength that He displays.
Our children think that we, as their earthly fathers, are so strong that we can do anything. But we are complete weaklings compared to God because He is almighty. And we love Him not just for what He can do for us, but for who he is. So we can pray and pray and never get tired of praying.
We can never run out of things to pray about if we focus our attention on the Lord's Prayer, on the Ten Commandments, and on the Apostles' Creed. Master Peter could not thank Dr. Luther enough for teaching him the secret to a simple way to pray.
When Mr. McFarland ended his story, he said to his children, Do you see why every night during our devotions I want to make sure that you are learning the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed? From now on in our devotions, when you pray, I'm going to ask you to practice praying in the simple way that Dr. Luther taught his barber.
Delaney said, Thank you for telling us that story, Daddy. I can hardly wait to try Dr. Luther's way to pray. In fact, can we have family devotions again tonight so we can try it? The other children said, oh yes, Daddy, please. Mr. McFarland was delighted to see his children's new interest in prayer. He said with a smile, let's pray.
In the time that's left on our broadcast today, I've asked Chris Larson to be with me in the studio so that we can discuss some of the application of this story. Thank you, Chris, for being with us today, and let's just get right into it.
Chris, it was many, many years ago. I've spent a lot of time studying the life of Luther, and one of the things that I found striking in his ministry was was how deeply dedicated he was to prayer. I mean, he would pray for at least an hour every day, and sometimes two and three hours a day.
He had first learned that discipline while he was in the monastery, and after he came out of the monastery, he never abandoned it, and it was with him for his entire life.
Well, my good friend Archie Parish, who's the president of Serve International, goes around the country and does clinics in churches on what he calls kingdom-focused prayer. And Archie is himself a prayer warrior extraordinaire. And he and I were having a conversation once at dinner about Luther and his prayer life and about the episode in which he taught his barber how to pray.
And so we came up with the idea of republishing that little book of Luther's, A Simple Way to Pray, with some introduction to it. And we did that. And Archie and I did that together. And Archie has used that all over the country in the churches and for pastors. And frankly, that method that Luther taught the barbers, a method I've used myself, and I find it absolutely exciting and incredible.
And I was thinking this, Chris, let me just back up a little bit. People in the church, in many cases, are overwhelmed with guilt because of their ineffective prayer lives. And pastors are always saying, you need to pray, you need to pray, you need to pray more. And people just feel more and more and more guilty. because nobody teaches them how to pray.
The disciples themselves were in that bind, and they came to Jesus, and they didn't say, teach us how to turn water into wine or how to walk on the water or calm the storm, but they said, teach us how to pray, because they saw the connection between Jesus' power and his own prayer life.
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