midnight at the bottom of a well
Midnight at the Bottom of a Well is a preaching series in the Winter of 2010 in which we are seeking to allow the book of Psalms to shape our prayer at Seven Mile Road.
Study Guide
Intro Video
Dear Heavenly Father.
I pray… um… uh… will you… I mean… I ask that… wait, no… er… hmm.
Amen. I guess.
The people of God have always been a people of prayer, both corporately and individually. The many pages of Scripture are littered with scenes both of gathered communities and solitary saints praying. Jesus himself spent hours and hours in prayerful conversation with the Father. Just spend ten minutes reading your Bible and it seems that prayer is everywhere.
As lovers of Christ who have, through the work of the Spirit, intimately experienced the redemptive grace of our loving Father, you would imagine that we, too, would have this prayer thing nailed down.
And yet for some reason, when it comes down to it, we really struggle here. We know we should pray, but we stumble over the whole enterprise. Unanswered questions abound in our minds. What is our/my prayer supposed to look like? What words are the right ones? Or at least good ones? What emotions are appropriate? What about tone? Who do I address? How long do I pray? What time? Where? Aaargh.
Sadly, our voices and souls can easily become muted, and we can walk through what is supposed to be a joyful, God-drenched, Spirit-empowered life prayerless, powerless and downhearted.
Thankfully, God has not left us without any help. Centered in our Bibles (seriously, flip to the middle and see where you land) is a book of prayer that we call the Psalms. For centuries God’s people have run to the 150 poetically beautiful, emotionally rich and lyrically powerful prayers recorded here as a place where they could learn to pray. In fact, as evidenced in the Gospels, even the Lord allowed the vocabulary and tone of the Psalms to shape His prayer life.
And so, as a community who needs to mature in our prayer life together in so many ways, we are going to spend the next two months allowing the prayers of the Psalms to shape the prayers of
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Rather than jumping all over the 150-Psalms-map, we are going to zero in on the “40’s”, preaching eight sermons from Psalms 41-50. As we do this, you will notice four elements to the series:
1, we are seeking to allow the words of the Psalms to shape the words that we use in prayer.
True Christian prayer is certainly not an exercise in choosing the “right words.” And yet, as Scripture teaches repeatedly, words are very powerful and quite important in our pursuit not only of apprehending truth but in responding to it. And so we long for the words that we use back to God in prayer to be in line with the words that He inspired in Scripture. As we study these Psalms, the vocabulary we read and hear should inform the vocabulary that we employ in prayer.
To foster this, we will be reading and re-reading the Psalm for the week multiple times through the service so that we are immersed in its language. We would encourage everyone at
2, we are seeking to allowing the tone of the Psalms to shape the tone we use in prayer.
While Christian prayer should never be flippant or overly familiar (we, are after all, communicating with an infinitely holy, sovereign, transcendent, triune GOD), it should also never be tedious or dull. Too often our prayers pack no more emotional punch that when a tollbooth collector counts your change. God intends for us to engage Him in the circumstances of our lives with our entire being, emotions included. The Psalms are poetry and not prose for this very reason. Prose cannot capture the emotional depth appropriate in prayer. We need forms that capture the glorious highs and awful lows of our human experience. Prayer is so much than insipid, monotonous, religious babble: it is soul-level connection with the living God.
And so be prepared for some drama (no, no, no, I don’t mean skits) in the pulpit in this series. A faithful preacher not only communicates the theological truth in a text, but also captures effectively the context that the inspired words were written in. Since the Psalms cross the gamut of human emotion, there will be some intense sermons over the next two months. Be ready. And be ready to pray with your emotions fully engaged.
3, we are seeking to allow the polarity of the Psalms to shape our prayers in life’s varied circumstances.
Buckle up tight, because this series is going to feel like a roller coaster ride. Back and forth, back and forth we will go, finding appropriate response in every possible situation. We will start by yelling at heaven, frustrated and bewildered, as God allows us to be abandoned in the streets, even though we have not strayed away from Him. Next week we will find ourselves praying safe and sound inside a fortress, fiercely confessing the faithfulness of God in hard times. After that, we’ll be whispering prayers of desperation as we flat-line in an ICU, dying as our enemies look on and laugh. Then we’ll be feasting and celebrating the majesty of God the King in His sanctuary. After nearly dying of thirst at midnight at the bottom of a dry well with God nowhere in sight, we’ll be dancing in the streets in exultation at the nearness of God. Once we’ve meditated on the splendor of God’s glory in His great City, we’ll tremble before the fiery tempest of His judgment. And these are only 8 of the Psalms!
The point is this: the Bible teaches us to pray in all circumstances. Corporately, that includes things from the frustrating funk we are in with overcrowding and no space solution in sight to the raucous joys we’ve experienced in seeing soulcare communities multiply and disciples being made. Individually, that includes the dozen Seven Milers who had babies born this year and the nearly as many who lost babies through miscarriage. Wherever, whenever, whatever, Psalms provides instruction for how we can respond to God in prayer.
4, we are seeking to allow the Psalms to unveil for us the glorious grace of the Gospel.
In a myriad of ways, the Psalms are the story of the Jesus’ Gospel. We will see his suffering here (in very disturbing ways): his betrayal, his denial and his brutally bloody death on a cross. And we will also see his glory (in very breathtaking ways): His resurrection, His ascension and His current and coming reign as the King of all the kings. In prayer, we will suffer with Christ, and die with Christ, and rise with Christ together. And we will find life there, in His person and work, with the prayers of the Psalms providing the framework for us to respond well to these realities of His Gospel.
Be ready to hear. Be ready to believe. Be ready to respond. Be ready to pray.
