Beloved,
All of us have been in a conversation that was a monologue. It is a pretty miserable thing, unless you are the one doing the talking! In a monologue, an individual talks and talks and talks, not even stopping to breathe, and giving no opportunity for the one they are communicating with to respond. It is a one-sided ordeal, and it leaves the most patient of us feeling irritated and unloved. True communication is never monologish (yep, I just made up a word). For conversation to be healthy it requires a dialogue wherein both parties receive communication and respond with communication.
In our adult Sunday school class last year on Reformed worship, we looked at the dialogical principle. We saw that worship happens within the context of a two-way, covenantal communication between God and His people. If anyone was ever warranted to engage in monologue, it would be God! But through His word, He gives us the amazing invitation to speak back to Him. That is why there is a back-and-off rhythm to our liturgy on Sundays as God speaks to us and we then receive that gracious communication and respond in believing communication. As I said in our Sunday school class, “We affectionately exalt God by receiving His self-communication to us through His word and sacraments and by responding in confession, prayer, praise, consecration, and giving.” This back-and-forth giving and receiving between us and God takes us to the essence of worship and the essence of the covenant of grace (which is a loving communion bond between us and God through the Mediator).
What is true of public worship is likewise true of private worship. What was it that drove Daniel to communicate to God in repentant agony and ravenous appetite through prayer and fasting (Dan. 9:3-19)? It was the believing reception of God’s word through the prophet Jeremiah (Dan. 9:2). God communicated to Daniel through the Scriptures, and receiving that communication in faith, Daniel could not help but communicate himself back to God in prayer. As we will see this coming Sunday, no sooner had Daniel begun praying to God, did God then receive that communication and send a gracious revelatory response (Dan. 9:21-23). God communicated to Daniel through Jeremiah. Receiving that in faith, Daniel then communicated to God in prayer. Receiving that in grace, God then communicated back to Daniel through an angelic revelation (the prophecy of the 70 weeks which we will be looking at this coming Lord’s Day).
Do you see the back-and-forth, dialogical dynamic? It is really important as we think about our own private worship because it teaches us that to read and meditate upon God’s word without prayer or praise may be evidence that the word hasn’t really reached our hearts. Furthermore, to pray and praise without reading and mediating upon God’s word often results in our prayers being misguided and lacking in zeal (it was the conviction and hope of God’s word that led Daniel to pray as he did). If we would engage in private worship as we ought, it cannot be monologish!
Here is what the dialogical principle looks like in my own private worship:
- I begin with a short prayer for illumination as I come to my Bible reading (often just, “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things from your law!”). This is my way of communicating up front my entire dependence upon God to give me a hearing and seeing heart.
- Trusting that God has received that prayer, I then open my Bible and read my chapters for the day, seeking to listen as carefully and closely to God’s word as I can. Ordinarily, something will stick out to me in my reading (either a verse or a truth), and I will make that my meditation as I chew on it and apply it to my heart and life.
- Having received God’s word in faith and repentance, I then move into prayer which ordinarily begins with adoration, confession, and thanksgiving. I try to allow my meditation to be a springboard to prayer so that my prayers are shaped by the word I have just read and then I petition God for many things, praying in ever-broadening concentric circles (from my family to the nations).
I share that with you, not to give you the model you must follow, but to give you an example of what the dialogical principle looks like in the secret place. For this back-and-forth communication is the essence of communion, and if our private worship falls short of communion with God, then it is not worthy of being called worship. Whatever that dialogue looks like, dialogue there must be.
The goal of private worship, of course, is to prepare us to walk throughout the entire day in a worshipful spirit. With the word of Jesus Christ dwelling in us richly and prevailing upon our minds and hearts, we then live in continual mediation and ceaseless prayer and praise all unto God’s glory and our blessedness.
Is your relationship with God dialogical? Or is it a one-sided stream of words without a reciprocal response?
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick