Want some advice on prayer? Here.

One of my favorite Protestant preachers, Tim Keller, offers his perspective to RNS: 

RNS: Many people don’t know what to say when they pray? Any advice here?

TK: First, just pray what’s on your heart and don’t worry. God is wise and will hear your desire and answer the request in the best way. Second, use the Lord’s Prayer as a model. Last, remember that if you are a believer, the Holy Spirit will help you as you pray. So go ahead.

RNS: Romans 8 says that when we don’t know how to pray the Holy Spirit “intercedes through us with wordless groans.” What does this mean and what difference does this make?

TK: There’s not complete consensus among bible scholars, but most would agree with what Augustine says about this text. He said this is a promise that if we are Christians, the indwelling Spirit supports our hearts and guides our prayers when we are groaning and confused, and that God will hear our petitions even in their imperfect state.

RNS: You call prayer “the key to everything we need to do and be in life.” Everything? Really?

RNS: I think that is fair to say. Prayer is the main path to true self-knowledge.  You can’t really know yourself without getting the perspective that comes from being in the presence of a holy God. And if Augustine is right that what determines who we are is what we love, then the only way to fundamentally change ourselves is by changing what captures our hearts. That only occurs through worship and prayer. Also, the only way to truly know God–not just know about God–is through prayer. Finally, John Calvin says that it is through prayer that God gives us everything God wants to give us. So, is that everything? Well, it’s everything that’s good.

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And for some great inspiration for a sermon on grief—or, perhaps, for Good Friday—check out Tim Keller’s beautiful reflection that he offered on the five-year anniversary of 9/11:

One of the great themes of the Hebrew scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. There are all these great texts that say things like this: If you oppress the poor, you oppress me. I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the fatherless. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. This is powerful stuff! But Christianity says he goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God’s son, divinity became vulnerable to — and involved in — suffering and death! He didn’t come as a general or emperor. He came as a carpenter. He was born in a manger, no room in the inn.

But it is on the cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock, that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means? John Stott puts it this way. John Stott wrote, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it. And therefore, the cross is an incredibly empowering hint. Okay, it’s only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you. It can give you strength.

Read it all.