The Jesus Prayer

When you really know Jesus Christ, you can’t help but want to be in His presence. The problem for me is that I sometimes get confused on how this is achieved. When I think it’s about me and my self-righteous works, I am in a bad spot that keeps me from seeing Jesus for who He is and what He’s really done for me. But when I think about how undeserving I really am to be in His presence and look to Him for help, I am exactly where Jesus wants me to be so that I’m ready to experience His mercies in a fresh way for each moment of the day and point others to the same.

A few years into my experience of pastoral ministry, as I was looking for healthy disciplines that would support me spending time with Jesus, I came across an ancient practice some refer to as - the Jesus prayer. It is practiced by breathing in as you pray “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God…” and then as you breathe out “have mercy on me a sinner.” This prayer is repeated over and over as I breathe in the truth about who Jesus is and breathe out the reality of my need for His continued mercy to change things. The prayer only works well as a whisper in the sense that I can’t verbalize it loudly while breathing in. But the one part I can exclaim very loudly as I’m breathing out is my desperate cry “have mercy on me a sinner.” 

In our text this week, we see some of this prayer taught in Jesus’ parable as He describes the tax collector praying, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” In that prayer, the tax collector is justified because he sees the truth that it is only by God’s mercy that he will ever be brought into life-saving communion with God. Jesus’ parable offers a powerful reminder for those like me that have a problem with sometimes trusting in ourselves and our own work. Jesus’ reminder is that it is only by God’s mercy that anyone will ever be able to come peacefully into His presence.

May we be a people that do not trust in ourselves but in the One who is Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. May we urgently pursue the truth of the Gospel as much as we pursue the air we need for our lungs. And may we experience the peace and mercy achieved through Jesus by which sinners like us are now called saints in His Kingdom to the praise of His glory!

Grateful & Hopeful in Christ,

Jon