Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Paul’s Prayer (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 29, 1993. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. We tend to think of faith as a personal matter, a relationship that's just between us and God, but the Bible presents a much bigger vision, one in which God brings people into a relationship with himself and brings them together into a new kind of community with each other. This month, we continue going through an extended series of teachings from Tim Keller that explore the core truths of the Christian faith and what they reveal about God's purposes for our lives together.

Ephesians 3, 14 to 21. And Paul said, for this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit and your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp

how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Now, what we were talking about last week when we looked at this was that, that Paul is holding out for us a prospect. We described it, and I'll just briefly describe it again. He is talking here not simply about believing God or even just obeying God. He's saying there is

something for Christians that's available beyond just believing and obeying God. We can actually experience God. And in the letter, it's really saying we can experience His personal. We can experience his presence. We can experience his love. We can experience his glory. The sum total impact of his excellence. We can experience his glory, the accumulated perfections of his being. We can actually experience God. We saw that because, you see, in verse 17, it says he is praying that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, but he's praying to Christians. And we wrestle with that a little bit last week, and we said a thoughtful person, studying this would immediately be confused because he's he is praying that Christians would have Christ dwell in their hearts by faith, and yet

everywhere in the New Testament, it's assumed that a Christian, by definition, is somebody who already has Christ dwelling in their hearts by faith, through faith. By definition, you can see it in Romans 8, John 14, in places too numerous to mention. It's a definition. So it appears that Paul is praying for something that's already true. And then we began to realize what it must mean is this, that just as there's a difference between having a zillion dollars in a bank account and actually drawing on it so that it affects the way you live. So it's one thing to have God as Father and Jesus Christ as your brother and your lover. And it's another thing to draw on it. It's another thing to experience it. It's another thing to not only know Christ is present within you, but to

experience his presence. Not only know Christ loves you, but to be rooted and grounded and inundated and surrounded by his love. Not just to know God is glorious, but to be filled with all the fullness of his glory. And last week we spent most, we spent the whole time, let's face it, just talking about the reality, just trying to wet your appetite in reading accounts for men and women throughout the history of the church that proves that this is something that's available. Not just to super saints, real experience. The thing that most of us in this room, probably, no matter how long we've been Christians, the thing that's most lacking. everybody knows that it's not enough just to believe in God, but you have to go beyond that to

real obedience and follow through. But very few people seem to realize that God wants more than that. He doesn't just want knowledge and just want behavior. He wants you to experience him. And we read accounts like this. Remember Dwight Moody? This happened to him in New York City. Remember we said it can happen even in New York City? He said, he says one day in the city of New York I can hardly describe it. I seldom refer to it. It's almost too sacred and experienced the name. I can only say that God revealed himself to me,

and I had such an experience of his love that I had to ask him to stay his hand. And another journal from another minister, he said, the freeness and riches of God's everlasting love broke in with such power upon my soul that I was awed into silence and could not sleep. And we talked about how all these people, both men and women we looked at last week from every century practically throughout the last

two thousand years talked about an experience of God's love and presence and the features were so they were so parallel they were so similar it's very clear that there here is something that energized and transformed these men and women and that most of us don't know much about and after we talked about the reality of it and saw that Paul was praying this for everybody, we finally got done after getting our appetites all wet and we realized that now what we have to do is talk about how do you actually do this. Practically speaking, how do you actually move ahead and experience what we called last week communion with God?

Or as St. Augustine puts it, the ascent of the soul into God. How does that happen? How do you seek it? How do you go about it? And that's what we have to do tonight. And I've got to be as practical as I possibly can. And I've also got to finish tonight, because we've really got to finish this chapter and Ephesians and all that.

And so what I'm going to do is lay out two principles. If you're going to find this communion with God and experience this assent of the soul into God, there is a dynamic you must understand. And secondly, a discipline you must develop. A dynamic you have to understand and a discipline to develop. Theory and practice, that's always important. You know, if somebody tells you a practice without giving you the underlying theory,

you might not know how to use the practice. You'll be a rigid person. You'll use the steps without any understanding. You won't know how to adapt. On the other hand, if you get theory without practice, what good is it? It's just a theory and you don't know how to apply it. You have to have both. So, as we'll see from here, there's a dynamic to understand.

understand, that's a theory and a discipline to develop. And then we'll close with some very practical qualifications and warnings. Try to be as practical as I possibly can. First, there's a discipline to understand. There's a dynamic to understand. And the dynamic to understand we mentioned at the very end of last week. That dynamic is something that Martin Lloyd-Jones, the preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones describes as the truth begins to shine. Another way to put it is, it's the descent of the mind into the heart. We mentioned both of those last week. And essentially, communion with God is that.

The truth begins to shine because the mind descends into the heart. That's the dynamic. You have to understand what that means. If you want to understand it, you take a look at the passage, and you see, in the translation that we have in front of us, it says, I am praying that you might be strengthened with power so that what? And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, have power together with all the saints to grasp.

Now, if you have the old authorized version, the King James Bible, it says power to comprehend. And whenever you get fairly divergent kinds of words in translations, it means that there's some Greek word here that is not easy to translate into one single English word, and that's what we have. And it's a very fascinating word. The Greek word that's used here is Catalamano, which actually means usually, means to be ambushed. For example, in 1st Thessalonians 5, verse 4, it says, beware unless judgment day, catalambanoes you, grasps you, surprises you, amazes you, jumps on you, surrounds you. You don't want to be ambushed. It means to surround and capture people who are amazed and

surprised. However, the word is also used with an intellectual, in an intellectual sense. For example, in Acts chapter 10 verse 34, Peter uses it of himself. And he's talking, this is in chapter 10. After, pardon me, before the incident in chapter 10, Peter was very loath to admit Gentiles into the church. As we often say around here, You know, today, the question always comes up, should a Jewish person be a Christian? But in the very beginning of the church, the real question was, can a Gentile person be a Christian? Because the early church, of course, was a movement of Jewish people. And Peter was a person who was loath to let the Gentiles in, and he was taken by God

to the house of Cornelius, a Roman officer, and he saw Cornelius and his household gloriously converted. And the upshot of it was that Peter realized God was trying to be. to get through to him. And in verse 34, Peter said, now I realize, that's what it'll say in most translations, now I realize that God does not play favorites. Now I realize that it's not Jew or Gentiles anybody. Now, let's leave that aside. We're not talking about the Jew-Gentile thing at all. We're trying to see how he uses that word. That word realize again, just like this word grass, this is better. But this is a hard word to translate into English with the kind of power it needs. But what Peter is saying there is he says, I'm thunderstruck. A truth that I really didn't know

has come in and ambushed me. It's knocked the wind out of my sails. I'm thunderstruck. The truth has conquered me. I'll never forget this. I'll never be the same again. That's what he's saying. Paul here then is saying, Christians, you know that God loves you. I want you to be thunderstruck that God loves you. I want you to be conquered. I want you to be ambushed. I want you to be ambushed. I want you to be amazed. You are not experiencing God until you're amazed. You know, I love to quote that, you know, that, when people ask me, what is worship?

Worship is always, real worship, always has an element of surprise in it. You're ambushed by the truth. And there's that great line in one of the hymns that says, sometimes a light surprises the Christian as he sings. It is the sun who rises with healing in his wings. Sometimes the light surprises the Christian as you sing. Hasn't that happened to you?

Have you, hopefully, you know, if you're worshipping, it always happens. Did it happen tonight? I mean, it was pretty good singing tonight. And there are times of which I thought I saw lights going on. Yes, I believe this. This is great. This is true. And see, what Paul is saying is the dynamic that you have to understand,

if you understand what it means to have a soul ascend to God, if you want to experience what Moody and Whitfield and all these people that we were talking about before, If you want to understand this and move beyond a mechanical Christianity into real experiential Christianity, you have to understand that's what's actually going on. The truth ambushes you. The truth conquers you. The truth, you're thunderstruck.

And that means that the Word of God, the truths of the Scripture, have the ability to explode inside of your heart, the way combustion goes on inside the cylinders of a combustion. energy thereby giving the engine and the vehicle its speed and its power. Think of that. Think of your soul as a combustion engine with all the cylinders and what you're actually doing when you read the Bible is you're supposed to be throwing it in there and seeking to have it combusts, you know, seeking to have combustion going on. So you see, what Peter was saying is, I knew, but I didn't really know, his mind descends into a source. He's. He's going to his heart. Now there's hundreds of illustrations of this and I don't go on because I, because we've

at various times touched on this, but I just want to show you the impact of the word and what really is going on. It's the truth beginning to shine. It's the mind descending into the heart. You can say to one of your kids, you can say, now listen, you know, around here we're tolerant of that, but if you do that with other people, that is antisocial behavior. Somebody's going to knock your block off. Now, I can keep your brothers from hitting you for that sort of thing. Don't do it. so the kid registers it it's not like he doesn't believe he said yeah i know i know but how well does he know and one day he comes back missing two of his teeth you know hopefully his baby teeth if he's young enough and he comes back and he says i did it and they and they they punched me in the face and we said

oh that's bad they should never have done that but we i know i know now i really know ah the mind is descended into the heart i'll never do that again i've experienced the truth you see it That's actually the way it works. Only here we're talking about, not daddy's truths of social behavior, but the Lord's truths about the nature of ultimate reality. You know, and that's really what we're talking about. And that's what you need.

You know, before we move into the discipline of it, that's just, that's what you need. This dynamic is what you need. Why is it that you, you say, I believe God loves me, and yet, look, you have a few setbacks last week, and you feel abandoned, and you're discouraged. Why? You know, but you don't know.

And just to give you one more, illustration of this, Clark Pinnock, who's a teacher at a graduate school of theology, I think still in Canada, uses a great illustration to explain the relationship between the spirit and the truth

and the human heart that happens when real communion with God happens, when real, when the soul really begins to experience God. He says, think of a piece of film. It's a photographic film. And then think of the treatment, the chemical treatment of the film to make it sensitive to light.

And then light bounces off of objects and comes in through the shutter and strikes the now sensitized film. And what appears on the film? Images created by the light. Now I said, use that analogy to understand what happens in communion with God. Your heart, your heart is that film. but without the Spirit of God, chemically treating it, all of the truth, all the things you hear, all the Bible studies you hear, all the Bible stories you hear, all the truths that actually can be taught to you not just through church, but even through life, all these truths just do not make

any impact. But when the Spirit of God sensitizes your heart, the truth, when the truth comes in, a verse of the Bible, a truth of God, something like that, It leaves an impact, a permanent change on the heart. Ah, but what are the images? This is what Clark Pinnock says and what Jonathan Edwards says too. The images are not ideas. The ideas, you're like Jesus died for you, the ideas are the light. What are the images?

Here's what the images are. It's what Jonathan Edwards calls the affections. And unfortunately, we don't have, we don't use that word anymore. Affections are not emotions. St. Augustine says, when communion with God happens what really changes is you get feelings yes

but that's not really what happens on that plate that's not what the images are in this analogy what actually happens is the flow of your love begins to change when I was a little kid one of the hobbies of our you know all the kids in my neighborhood was to go to what was called the creek

now if you know what a creek is that means you're probably from Pennsylvania it's a creek okay but I don't know why they called a crick and my wife and I figured out that that's dialect western Pennsylvania same as eastern Pennsylvania used to go to a creek when you go to the creek one of the most fun things to do with the creek was you were changing the flow you'd make a dam over here and you'd send it out over there it's the same amount of water the same amount of flow but was all we would create ponds you know so we could actually dive into them by making sure that we

diverted all the water into this one central section and dammed up to their sides or we could create it, we could actually spread it out so that it was like hardly a half an inch deep all the way, so you could always walk across it without actually getting wet and so on. What actually happens, Jonathan Edwards says, when the truth is actually shining, when it's actually beginning to descend into your heart, is that your motives change because your love flows toward new things, new objects. You begin to desire what God desires. Things of the earth grow strangely dim. things that were so important to you that your love was attached to. Now, there's a dam up here, and your love begins to flow toward God's things and toward different things.

And therefore, what Jonathan Edwards calls the affections are the things that begin to develop on the heart when the truth is hitting it through communion with God and the Spirit. Because what Edwards means by the affections, he means love, joy, zeal, humility, peace, courage. The truth gets down into the heart, and it really changes. your heart, the form of your heart, and the way in which you behave. Oh, there's so many people that seem to come to church and get emotional. And there's nothing wrong with that. Boy, I'll tell you, if I'm ever, if you ever see the staff here kind of saying, we want you to be more emotional, we want you to be less emotional, boy, you've got to let things flow. And we don't

sit here and say, you should act emotional. Yeah, you better not. We don't do that. But there's another one with emotion, but there is something amiss when you're having emotional experience to the church and your life's not changing. I won't forget years ago at some kind of revival service where a guy got up and said, this is true, by the way, because the minister told me about this. One guy got up and said, I'm having an experience of God's glory. And the wife got up and said every year he gets an experience of God's glory and he's no better a husband. It's true story. And the minister said, then that's not an experience of God's glory. You're just getting, you're having an emotional experience.

Because when the truth descends into the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, what happens down there are not emotions and not even ideas, affections, what you love changes, and therefore how you behave changes.

So there is, it's very important to see what the dynamic is. That's what's going on when the soul ascends. That's what's going on when these guys were talking about, I got a love that came in and I couldn't even, I had to ask God to stop it. It changed my life forever. And you say, I want that. It's not an emotion only. Emotion is involved, always involved. Emotions always involved. You can't claim communion with God.

Some people say, claim it. What do you mean claim it? If you're having it, you know it. It's not less than emotional, but it's so much more. So much. So there's a dynamic to understand. But secondly, there's a discipline to develop. I don't even want to say a discipline to master. because that really sounds like you really get it down. Some people are masters of it. No, no, no, no. That's just not the way Christianity works. But the essential discipline for what we're talking about here,

the essential discipline for communion with God is the art of meditation. And here in this very last sermon on this book of Ephesians, I want to talk about that in a way I haven't really talked before. Meditation is the, is the, the essential discipline of all the disciplines. Meditation is not Bible study and it is not prayer. It is a compound of both which is neither. Exactly. As well I'm going to show you as we move through what Augustine and John Owen and these other great masters of communion with God would say, meditation includes both and it's, but on the other hand, it's really more of a compound of the two.

Meditation starts with Bible studies we're going to see but goes beyond it. And meditation is interpenetrated by prayer. It begins with prayer, and it always results in tremendous prayer. But meditation is a combination of Bible study and prayer. It's taking the truth and praying it down into your soul until it catches fire. You've heard me say that before. That's a term I got from Richard Baxter. Meditation is praying the truth into the soul until it catches fire,

which means you begin to see that truth in its personal connection. and you actually begin to experience the power of the truth and therefore the presence of God. Wiven into our slogans, songs, and social media feeds are the stories that our culture tells us about life's biggest questions, like, what gives my life meaning? Can I have a happy and fulfilling life? And why is there so much suffering in the world? We don't really choose these stories, but our culture is telling them to us every day. So what are these stories our culture tells us about who we are? And do they actually deliver what they promise? Tim Keller and his son Michael Keller explore this in a brand new book, The Stories We Live By. Tim began this book before his death, compiling hundreds of pages of

notes and collaborating with Michael before giving it to him to complete. In it, they explore some of our culture's most prominent narratives about topics like identity, freedom, happiness, and progress, unmasking how these narratives shape our lives. They examine why these stories resonate with us so deeply, and yet how these narratives ultimately aren't able to help us through the hardships and sufferings of life. The stories we live by offers a challenge to skeptics and to Christians alike to examine the underlying narratives that drive our lives and an invitation to discover a story that's big enough to make sense of the beauty and the brokenness of the world. When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of September,

we'll send you this new book, The Stories We Live By, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love, of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give, because the gospel truly changes everything. See, for years I missed this, and I'll come right out and say that many of you probably are too.

I always heard you have to have daily devotions. That's where you meet God. So I would go from Bible study. I study the Bible. You have to start that way. And I would write down what the Bible passages taught, and I would learn what it. And I said, that's very interesting.

Then I'd move to prayer. And in prayer, I would go to my own confession. I confessed the sins of the day before. And I would go to my list of things that I was praying for, and that's all very important. I'd move from Bible study to prayer. But meditation comes in the middle, and I missed it completely. Because in meditation, you don't move from Bible study to prayer in meditation. You take the Bible study, and you pray it into your soul.

And when it's done, when it's caught fire down there, then you can move on to petition and adoration and confession. you see in proper, you know, just plain prayer. Meditation is taking the scripture, the truth that you read, talking about it to God, praying it in. Now, it's not the same thing as either Bible study or prayer. It is a combination, I would say, or a compound of both. Now, let me, in order to try to work this out, and the closest analogy, by the way, to meditating is the way you read your love letters.

you read your love letters very differently than your textbooks getting ready to for an exam and you read your textbooks for information oh and you read them very well and you may outline them and you may you know may memorize them and i did you know because i knew i've got to know this stuff and i've got to reproduce it on the essay you read a love letter differently you weigh every word and you say what did she mean by that right and the and the point of the parts that are confusing, you agonize over, my gosh, I hope she didn't mean that. And you want to be formed by it, and you want to drink it in, and you don't want to forget it, and you relish it, and you taste it. And the parts that you do understand, and that are so wonderful and glorious

and great, you just, you let it form you. That's the way you meditate, not the way you read a textbook. And they're very different ways to read the Bible. Now, St. Augustine, who was a great leader in the early church, lived in the fourth and fifth century, and he was a great leader of the African Church, which in North Africa was very strong back then. Unlike the later Catholic mystics, of course he was a, you know, Catholic theologian, unlike the later Catholic mystics, he understood that meditation has to start and be based on the word of God and the truth. The later Catholic mystics had a tendency to start with your hand or start with a tree and meditate, and we'll show how you do that, but starting with anything. And, you know,

Augustine realized the heart was wicked and deceitful, and you better make sure it's guided by the truth. Meditation, according to Augustine, is an absolute command. It's there in Psalm 1. You might say the Locust Classicus, the classical text on it, it says in Psalm 1, the godly man, the lights in the law of the Lord, and upon that law doth he meditate day and night. Nothing can be clearer. meditate. The Hebrew word there for meditate is the same word used to describe a cow chewing its cut.

Constantly re-digesting. Constantly going over and redigesting until it completely works itself into the physical system. And that's a command. And notice the meditation is based on the law

of the Lord, the Word of God. Now Augustine came up with three parts to it. He believed that the process of meditation, or what he called, the ascent of the soul and the God, had three parts. And in the Latin, those three parts come out this way. Retentio, contemplatio, dialectio. And what's fascinating is that what Augustine does and how he lays them out is, again, it's parallel to many other men and women, great Christians of the ages, and it also works for me. and so I hope it works for you.

Three parts to meditation, retentio, contemplatio, and dialectio. By retentio, he means this. He means the distillation of the truths of Scripture and holding them centrally in the mind. In other words, it's a fancy name for Bible study. The first step in meditation is to actually get a grasp of the truth

and put it centrally in your mind, retentio. Now, this is actually a whole subject in its own. But when it comes to your personal first action, remember, meditation moves from Bible study into meditation and then into prayer. And this is a very important discipline if you want to experience the ascent of the soul and the God. For personal Bible studies, a number of ways to do it. What I like to do, I give you three methods. One is I like to paraphrase the passage, the paragraph. Paraphyp, put it in my own words, write it out.

You may think you know, this little five-verse paragraph, may think you understand it until you try to paraphrase it. You try it. Try to put it totally in your own words, and you'll see that you'll have to wrestle with what some of the things mean. A second method is to outline it by taking the sentences and the clauses in the sentences, and if you outline them, it forces you to look at the relationship between them. Then the third way to do it, I very often find, is if you take a sentence, take out one word and say, how does that change the meaning? see one of the ways you can break down a verse is to remove or in another way is to emphasize one particular word and say what does this word bring to the meaning of the passage if i take it out what is lost that's the reason why you can say uh one way i've always learned to meditate would be take a verse like follow me and i will make you to become fishers of men what does it mean follow me and i will

make you become fishes of men do what christ does follow me and i will make you to become fishers of men do what christ do does. Follow me and I will make you become fissures of men. That means don't follow a set of rules and regulations but a person, Jesus Christ, follow me and I will. There's a, it's definite. It's a promise. No ends, no buts. If I follow him, something will happen definitely and I will make you to become. Ah, it's a process. See, by taking every single one of the words and by emphasizing it or even removing it and saying, what does this word add to it, you get the principles out. And so the first step, Figure out what it says. Figure out what the passage says.

Get a nice clear view of it and write down the principles. But, secondly, according to Augustine, you must move from Retensio into contemplation. And what that means is this. You must gaze at God through the truth. Now, gazing at God through the truth is going to be a little hard to explain if you don't know what I'm talking about, but if you've ever tasted it, hopefully this was going to, you know,

coagulate, it's going to make more sense. The actual purpose of meditation is to move from the side of the brain that does analysis to the side of the brain that does intuition, move from breaking down the truth into standing back and seeing the whole. It's a difference between kind of studying the music and even, you know, studying the parts and singing the parts and then standing back and listening to the hole. It's the difference between cutting the diamond and working like crazy just to cut it really carefully and standing back and letting it take your breath away. You don't want in meditation to simply know about God, but you want to actually see God through the truth.

And the way that happens is by asking questions. I'm going to give you eight questions. I never use them all. I can't. And if you don't, I mean, you listen to the questions if you say, well, what's the secret about that? if you don't see the power on these questions, you haven't asked them, you haven't used them. I'll give you eight. One.

All right. I'm going to go through them from more general to more specific. The first main question in some ways is the basic question is, what does this tell me about God? What does it reveal about him? I want to see God through this truth. Secondly, how can I praise him on the basis of this verse? What does this verse tell me that helps me adore him? How can I adore him through the verse?

Thirdly, how can I humble myself before him through this verse? What does it show me about me? You know, what kind of sin do I need to confess? Let me go a little deeper. Fourthly, if He is really like this, if God is like this, what difference does it make? What difference does this particular truth make to how I live today? You know, let's just imagine you're doing this in the morning. If he is really like this, what difference will this make?

as to how I live today. What's coming up in my day? Who am I going to see? What am I going to be doing? If I hold this in front of me all day, what difference would it make? Fifth, what wrong behavior, what harmful emotions, and what false attitudes result in me when I forget he is like this. What wrong behavior, what harmful emotions, what false attitudes result in me when I forget he is like this? Sixth, how would my neighborhood, my family, my church, my friends be different? if they understood this. How would it change the corporate bodies that I'm in if this was really understood and practiced?

Seventh, does my life demonstrate that I'm remembering and living out of this all the day? Or here's a good one, Eighth. Lord, what are you trying to tell me about you and why do you want me to know it now? Why are you bringing this up? It's Tuesday morning, you know?

September. the sixth. Why are you telling me this today? Now, what Martin Luther in his great works on meditation, and basically, listen, all the works on meditation say, the whole idea is to take the truth and to move it from analysis into intuition, begin to see the personal connections, begin to see how it relates to you, yearn with all the strength you've got to actually see God through the truth, to behold him, to gaze on him. And the only way to do that is to begin to see it in its personal connections. What does this tell me about him?

What does it tell me about him and me? And what Martin Luther says is what he would do is, every day I would sit down. It might take me one or two hours, but I would start to meditate. And he has questions like this. Every one of these people, everybody who knows how to meditate, works out their own set of questions. Questions that enable you to move from retentio to contemplatio,

from just Bible study, into really taking the truth and gazing at God through it. and what Luther always says is I would ask myself these questions and I would think through them until the Holy Spirit would begin to preach to me and then I write down everything everything that I heard now this is Martin Luther speaking what does he mean I hope some of you know what he means because this is it

what happens is you meditate and you think and you meditate it takes quite a while very many cases but sometimes you actually begin to have the truth begin to shine it begins to disturb you begins to thrill you you start to come into the power of it and you actually feel like you can see him see god not with the eyes of your heart with your physical eyes with the eyes of your heart you feel his reality pressing on you and these attributes that you're looking at these characteristics that you're looking at just start to blaze in front of you so why didn't i see that and in light of this how should i behave today oh my word i was ready to do this that person what's wrong with me that's contemplation you i'm gazing

And then thirdly, dialectio is the thing which means delight, is the thing that you're really not in control of. See, when Martin Luther says, study the text, that's retentio, and then gaze at God through it by asking these questions and meditating through these questions into who God really is, see the whole, see the personal connections. then thirdly he says and when the Holy Spirit begins to really preach to you write everything down that's Delectio and you don't have a whole lot of control over that sometimes it comes in fast sometimes it comes in great sometimes it comes in kind of mild sometimes it doesn't come in sometimes the Holy Spirit never really opens all those things fine come back tomorrow you learned a lot but you see what happens is in deletio is that your soul very often becomes a palate and you actually begin to taste that the Lord is good and you know what's what's kind of ironic about the whole thing is that at this point you come to realize that the Christian life is really an adventure it's a lot like whitewater rafting it takes quite a bit of skill to do whitewater rafting and yet your skill has nothing to do with the fun it's the river it's your skill to get into the river it's your skill to stay on the river it's your skill in a sense to harness the river it's the river that gives you the thrills it's the river that brings you the progress it's the river that brings you the progress

it's the river. Meditation is very much like that. Meditation brings you into the godhead, the deepest sources, puts you into the river. And if I had time, which I really don't, I would show you there's a man named John Owen. It was a great 17th century Puritan Protestant.

Augustine is a fourth and fifth century Catholic. And yet, when you ask John Owen, what does it mean to get up into God? What does it mean to communion with God? You know what he says? This is sort of Puritanese. But listen, it's the same stuff. He says, first comes the actual exercise of the mind,

fixing the thoughts and meditations on spiritual truth. Secondly, next comes the inclination of all the affections toward these things, whereby they cleave to the spiritual truth and make an engagement unto them. And thirdly, he says, finally comes a relish and a savor in which the sweetness and the satisfaction of the spiritual life consists. We then taste that God is gracious, and that the love of Christ is better than wine.

Same three things. And he says, sometimes these meditations fill us with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Sometimes, not always. Delectio, that's the river. You never know. You never know. And finally, by the way, he says, John Owen says, where understanding leaves the affections behind, it ends in formality or atheism.

And where affections outrun your understanding, they sink into the bog of superstars. You see that? Experience without basing it on truth, truth without experiencing it, both are false kinds of Christianity. Now, in conclusion, real fast, and yeah, unfortunately, this is the end, so I've just got to run through it quick. Number one, beware Eastern meditation techniques and Christian meditation techniques aren't the same thing. Oh, I'm not saying Eastern meditation techniques that talk about relaxation. It doesn't mean it's not nice to learn how to relax, but Eastern meditation. meditation and in New York, 99 out of 100 books or booklets or lectures on meditation techniques

will be out of Eastern. Eastern faiths believe that the real problem is that we don't understand that everything is one. All of our problems come to the fact that we don't realize that you are the same as the tree and that everything is one. And therefore the goal of Eastern religion and the goal of Eastern meditation is to help you see that you and God are the same, whereas the goal of Christian meditation is to show you that you and God are utterly different. The problem that you're trying to address in Christian meditation is that you really don't realize how holy he is, how loving he is, how wise he is. And in Christian, in Easter meditation, the whole idea is you're trying to,

the whole idea is to find yourself. In West Christian meditation, it's to find God. In Eastern meditation, to find the sameness between you and God. In Christian meditation, to find the utter difference in which is the great glory and the comfort of the Christian faith. And this is another reason why a lot of meditation techniques talk about visualizing reality. They say, you know, think of yourself hitting a home run. Visualize yourself succeeding, singing that high note. Create your own reality.

Christian meditation always says, don't create your reality. You're out of touch with reality. the reality of who God is submit to the reality of who God is utterly different that's my warning just watch out lastly

how do you ultimately ultimately really find this just keep this in mind this is not something that happens overnight this is not something that you can experience by just one good hard day's worth of work or reading a book but it's possible

to be like blind Bartimaeus in the gospel there was this blind man named Barta Mayas and were told in Mark 10 he knew that Jesus was coming along a certain path he wasn't sure what day was going to be or when it you know but he decided to pitch his tent near the road that Jesus trod and by working at your disciplines by saying I'm going to study I'm going to meditate I'm going to do the disciplines of simplicity the disciplines of purity we were talking about them at the four o'clock to the four o'clock service the disciplines of of service the disciplines of Bible study and of prayer, the disciplines of meditation.

I'm going to do the disciplines of fellowship, of worship, of ministry. I'm going to do those things. What you're doing is you're pitching your tent next to the road. That Jesus is bound to come down. The other thing blind Bartimaeus did was he said, I know Jesus is going to come sometime. I don't know when, but I'm going to pitch my tent and here's where I'm going to stay. So do that, do that. And he'll come.

The other thing Blind Bartemius did was when he heard that Jesus was near, he just started crying out. and Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me. And if you do that, he will. Say, Lord Jesus Christ, I want your reality. I want your presence. I want to experience you. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. And I tell you, he will come.

Because he said, in the Old Testament, he says, you will seek me and find me if you seek me with all your heart. Let's pray. Now, Father, we ask that you would really prepare some people here. to receive you in new ways that you might dwell in their hearts by faith father i pray for those people here who realize that the christianity is far more great and glorious thing than they thought that they see that christianity is not a matter of rules and regulations but the indwelling of the spirit the impartation of new life and i pray if there's

anyone here who is that who is that is just dawning on them that they might not rest until they understand what it means to receive new life and a new bird and i pray that there's any one themselves. But Father, for the rest of us who know that you're dwelling in us, and we realize that, and yet we're not experiencing it, oh, help us to pitch our tents near the roads where you tend to go. And we cry out, have mercy on us, and make us a community of people who find ourselves ascending up into you. Give us the power to grasp with all the saints, what is the height and the width and the breadth and the depth of the love of Christ, and to be filled with all your fullness. We have Ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelonlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.