“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Strangely, I hesitated to bring in prayer as one of those means. One reason is that I do not consider myself a really great pray-er. I do not find myself asking for a lot. I kind of have to make myself ask. I have been given much, but I think that more of that comes from an ingrained sense of self-sufficiency that makes the humility of asking foreign to me. I am working on it.
Another reason for not involving prayer in the introduction to knowing God is that prayer is so easily misconstrued for other things. Although scriptural meditation and contemplation have their places in the realm of prayer, prayer is most fundamentally asking. Prayer without request is not Christian prayer. Certainly asking can be simply directed toward the fulfillment of my desires, but it also encompasses interceding and confessing. The point is that it is directed to God and not merely to a state of mind. The many fashions and misunderstandings of prayer make it a minefield when seeking God at first. Not everything "spiritual" is good.
Also, prayer is so common and subjective that it is difficult to hear God initially amid the many other inner voices and feelings. My prayer needs a lot of help from the outside. I need the Bible, the church, and the creation in order to find and hear God. Without them, I would find prayer to be very confusing and disheartening.
That being said, without prayer, the Bible, the church, and the creation are extremely limited in their own ability to present the knowledge of God. They may present many facts and even truth, but without prayer, they are a table set without a feast. Jesus sets the table that I might be nourished and filled, yes. Even more, though, he sets the table that I might be filled with the company of God himself. Such a feast is designed to be shared, not merely hoarded or admired.
This sharing of the feast is what spiritual exercises are about. They are the ways in which each person can partake of the means that Jesus has provided for our friendship with himself and the Father. In essence each spiritual exercise is one of prayer and one of practice.
Spiritual exercises are all prayer in that they are yearning for God. Without the yearning and asking for God and his good gifts, spiritual exercises are useless and possibly harmful. Whatever is done is done for the sake of knowing God and Jesus, whom he sent. This is the fundamental reason for Christian spiritual exercises.
The "classic" exercises of solitude, silence, fasting, study, worship, etc. are the tried and true methods with thousands of years of practice behind them. They are the means for feasting with God. Each can be used to serve other purposes which can widely be understood as looking good or feeling good. These are covered in the Bible by Jesus when he says, "Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness to be seen by men. If you do you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." (Matthew 6:1) James covers the other aspect of incorrect motives by saying, "You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." (James 4:2-3)
This does not mean that spiritual exercises are all drudgery. They are feasting with God and should be understood that way. On the way, a person may find that they "look good" or "feel good," but these are not the primary motives. When they take the place of seeking and knowing God and his goodness, then they become diversions and shows for other people. Jesus' advice on prayer can be used with spiritual exercise in general: "Go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is unseen, will reward you." and "Do not keep babbling on like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." Talking about spiritual exercises is dangerous if it does not lead to practicing them. Doing spiritual exercises for the sake of reporting to them instead of seeking God is dangerous. What is exciting is that God rewards those who seek him and he knows my needs deeply and intimately, so that I so not need to try to secure rewards and pleasures from other people or my own impulsive desires.
So if I practice silence, it is with the hope and expectation that God will be with me. If I study the Bible or creation, it is with the hope that I will hear God and know him more fully. If I serve other people, it is with the goal of them seeing what I do and praising God for it. The only thing that enables me to get through the "dry" times is the goal of seeking the best for God in each circumstance (that would be his "glory"). If I slip into seeking pleasure or others appreciation, then spiritual exercises quickly fade.
Most importantly, prayer depends on God. The Holy Spirit is who enables all actions toward God. The "burden" of seeking God and knowing him is too much for any person to carry on their own. Asking God through prayer for his help makes the burden "easy and light" because he is at the other end doing most of the lifting. My task is small in term of lifting the yoke, but necessary in term of shouldering the yoke and putting in my own effort. The yoke of spiritual exercise is "easy and light" because it is performed in and through prayer, but spiritual exercises are a yoke because they take genuine effort.
This effort component to spiritual exercise is practice. The most dangerous kinds of "spiritual exercises" are ones that remain mere topics of conversation or interest. It is tempting to remain a spectator in the sport of spiritual exercises. People can talk about them, study them, and even admire them, but without practice they will not really be spiritual exercises, but only spiritual wall hangings in a person's life.
It is necessary to talk about them and think through them, but only as a precursor to doing them. The talk and thoughts of a person intending on making a trip around the world is different from a person who just talks about going around the world. The first one plans while the second one merely wishes or pretends. Intention takes the vision of spiritual exercise and turns it into action.
Another part of practice is starting small. While inaction is on the major causes for failure in the practice of spiritual exercise, not far behind is the tendency to do something "big." It is not enough to be still five minutes in a day, I must try to spend eight hours in silence. It is not enough to study and memorize Psalm 23, I must outline the whole book of Psalms. Usually, this tendency to do "great" things stems from more pride than devotion. This is not to say that moving toward eight hours of silence is not good, but it takes practice to do this successfully and usually, starting with what a person can do rather than what they think they should do.
My own experience in memorizing scripture demonstrates this. When I started my kids on the task of memorizing Bible passages, I did not start with Romans 8 or the Sermon on the Mount. We started with Psalm 23. Just like when I first started to memorize scripture recently, I found one of my main difficulties was knowing that I could and that the effort was good. I had been not merely saved by grace, but paralyzed by it, thinking that all effort was seeking to earn God's favor. This came from a misunderstanding about spiritual exercises being merely works of the flesh or natural human ability. I found that what made them works of the flesh was not that they were work, but when they were merely of the flesh. Depending solely on my own abilities and talents when performing such work meant that I was not doing them in prayer but by sheer "willpower" or pride nor was I practicing them as much as performing them.
Rest is trust. Rest is humility. Rest is effort in the right direction for the right things. Fortunately, rest is possible because God is always at work. The heart of rest is prayer for grace, asking God to do what I cannot do. Such rest only comes through practice, since even grace freely given must be received. In this way when Jesus calls me to rest, he calls me to pray to him and practice life with him under his yoke of grace.
Wow. I never thought that the yoke Jesus was talking about was grace, but now I see it clearly. It is the favor of God that I might work with Jesus, learning to be gentle and lowly of heart through practice. Also, it is taking on his burdens and resting from my own. Finally, it is continually relying on and asking for the favor of his strength to do what I cannot, bear the yoke. And so grace is the easy yoke of Jesus: resting from my work, practicing his work, and praying for his continual lift in the process.
Lord, please let me take this yoke and leave my own behind. Let me shoulder your grace, which is your rest, your work, and your salvation for my hungry soul. When I say, "Give me your grace" or "Have mercy on me," help me to remember taking on this yoke that you offer to the weary and heavy-laden. That is what I am, so this is what I so desperately need. Amen.
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