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Morning and Evening: Pray like Jesus and his Disciples

I had a very disciplined prayer life 10 years ago. I was confident that I was learning to pray like Jesus. During my gap year I would get up early, eat a big bowl of oatmeal and dig through my bible for new insights. I felt like Jesus or one of the disciples was sitting at the table with me opening my eyes to God’s story in the bible (Like in the story of the Emmaus road or the Ethiopian Eunuch). These formative times with scripture prepared me for my biggest challenge. This was also the example of my grandmother, morning and evening prayer with scripture and for her grandkids.
In the following years I’ve felt the same way on and off. But, somehow it’s seldom felt so visceral. Maybe I’m falling in the golden age thinking criticized by the movie “Midnight in Paris” (Totally recommend it!). Maybe this is just the fog of life introduced by three (update Sept 2017: four children now) beautiful children, an awesome wife and less time than when I was an 18 year old single guy, living at my parents.

Why talk about my prayer life?

A red pocket prayer book with a cross on the cover praying like Jesus includes memorized prayers
In the last six months I’ve meet lots of people who struggle in their prayer lives. They “have never felt connected with God” or feel that they want a guide to the spiritual disciplines. They want to open their ears to God’s spirit and tune out the messages of the world. I’ve felt similar things. Especially in the cross cultural stress and generally mental fogginess caused by living in Manila. God please give me clarity in my mind and focus in my actions.
So, I’ve gone back to discipline. I want to learn to pray like Jesus. That means morning and evening prayer.
I started reflecting through spiritual classics and new books on spiritual practices. My pastor calls them “Sacred Pauses.” I think that’s a nice touch.
I’ve been going through The Celebration of Discipline, Sacred Pauses, Following the Footsteps of Christ (Love love love this book!) and most recently: Day By Day These Things we Pray by Arthur Boers.
Boers book is on my daily reading pile right now and it has inspired me significantly. He writes about awakening the Jewish and early church practice of morning and evening prayer in our lives today.

Pray Like Jesus with Scheduled Prayer

large print prayer book
Scheduled prayer has fallen from popularity in protestantism. Scripted prayer and prayer books have disappeared with it.
Boers opened my eyes to the thousands of years when scheduled prayer was the standard. For the early disciples, scheduled prayer was it. Not spontaneous prayer.

Example of Scheduled Prayer

Jesus and his early disciples followed the Jewish prayer schedule and when we look to scripture we see it point us to this schedule.

Boers wrote,

“People familiar with the Gospels and the book of Acts (especially the older translations like the King James Version) know that some times there are intriguing references to the ‘third’, ‘sixth’ or ‘ninth’ hours. Without clocks, people divided daytime (however long or short) into 12 hours. The third hour was approximately three hours after sunlight, the sixth hour was around noon, and the ninth was associated with three hours after noon. These hours were announced publicly and were a convenient opportunity to gather to pray. In scripture these are the only times specifically and repeatedly associated with prayer. They were the moments every day when Jews prayed.”

In the book of Acts prayer is directly connected to this schedule:

  • Pentecost happened at the “third hour” while the disciples gathered to pray (Acts 2:15 RSV).
  • Peter and John pray at the ninth hour the “Hour of Prayer” (Acts 3:1).
  • Cornelius’ vision to pray for Saul the terrorist before he became the Apostle Paul happened while keeping the ninth hour, “The hour of prayer” (Acts 10:3 RSV).
  • Peter has an amazing vision while praying at the “sixth hour” (Acts 10:9).

Then in Jesus’ life we see his pattern of morning and evening prayer.

Significant events are associated with Morning and Evening Prayer

The Gospel writers even associated the cross and resurrection with these times. Boers suggests that Christian’s started to associate these hours of prayer with some of God’s most significant actions. The early church would remember them as daily reflections and remembrances of God’s acts of salvation.
For example in the Gospels:
These are biblical examples of the discipline of scheduled and scripted prayer (the early church used the Psalms to pray most of the time) rather than unscheduled and spontaneous prayer. I practice both, neither are right or wrong, but I do think both need to be embraced by believers to be best equipped, shaped and listen to our Lord.

Conclusionpray like jesus with memorized morning prayers

Boers final point that encouraged me to morning and evening prayer for more structure was a note about the popular idea to “pray without stopping” written by the Apostle Paul (Romans 12:12). Boers notes that the New Jerusalem Bible translated this instruction to “Keep praying regularly.” This might have been an instruction to keep up with scheduled prayers? Sounds possible to me. Especially after seeing this previous evidence in the Gospels and Acts. Learning to pray like Jesus then includes habitual morning and evening prayers.
Finally, If you’re interested to read more about morning and evening prayer get Arthur Boers book on amazon, and check out the Anabaptist Prayer book produced by Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary under Boers leadership. It’s called Take our Moments and Our Days Part 1 and Part 2.
If you found this article helpful read my other posts about spiritual practices that energise reconciliation.
Update Feb, 2018: The Take our Moments and our Days Prayer books are available as a free android and iOS app here.
Update March, 2023: A lot of people find this post every day. Clearly many people are seeking a connection with God with and through Jesus Christ and his spirit.
In recent years I’ve grown deeper into the Rhythm of praying through prayer books. Prayer books are a blessing for a number of reasons:
  • When I start with a prayer book I’m submitting myself to the wisdom of another community. The author wrote the words, the publisher did the work to publish the words and the church around this person nurtured their spiritual life. If the prayers resonate with me then I’m willing to learn these prayers until they are committed to memory and they grow and change as my own. I do this as a matter of faith in the Spirit and another part of the church.

A number of prayer books I’ve been learning from over the last 5 years:

If you are looking for prayer books to start or continue your journey of learning to pray, all of these are helpful. Would it be helpful for you if I gave some details about each book to decide between them? Let me know if I should take the time to do that.