The Barber Who Wanted to Pray

Today on Renewing Your Mind, a story about a monk, a barber, and prayer. Master Peter put a cloth around the man's neck to keep the whiskers from falling down his shirt, lathered up the man's chin, and began to give the man a shave. The door opened, and a new customer walked into his shop.

Master Peter recognized the man immediately, for he was an outlaw. R.C. Sproul was a master communicator, from the halls of academia to his living room there at the Ligonier Valley Study Center 50 years ago. R.C. loved to bring the truths of Scripture to any audience. But there was one group that brought him a unique joy.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, we're pleased to feature R.C. reading one of his children's books, this one called The Barber Who Wanted to Pray. And while it would be easy to assume this story is just for children, listen to what Andrew shared with us. I'm 86 years old, and I listened to R.C.

Sproul for about ten years. And there was times when I was trying to commit suicide, and he'd come up with one of those children's stories that he wrote to books, and it sort of got me through that. And again at another time, I felt like committing suicide again, because I wanted to give up because my family abandoned me. And again, I heard him do one of those children's stories and got me through the suicide feeling again. And even when I heard that he passed on a year or so ago, or a couple of years ago, I missed some of his stories, and I'm glad they bring him on once again to describe the Bible and the love God has for us. And we're glad to bring this story to you once again.

Here's R.C. reading, The Barber Who Wanted to Pray. Every night at dinner, Mr. McFarland gathered his family together for devotions. Mr. and Mrs. McFarland had six children, two boys and four girls.

The children's names were Donovan, Riley, Molly, Erin-Claire, Delaney, and Shannon. It was Mr. McFarland's practice to read a portion of Scripture every night and give a short explanation of it. Then he would ask each of the children to recite memory verses from the Bible and to answer catechism questions. Finally, Mr. McFarland would lead the family in prayer. Each of the children would participate in the prayers in his or her own way.

One night, just after devotions had ended with the singing of a favorite hymn, the McFarland's daughter Delaney spoke up. "'Daddy,' she said, "'your prayers are beautiful. Sometimes I want to cry for joy when I listen to your prayers, but my prayers seem so simple and weak. I'm almost embarrassed and ashamed to pray out loud. Daddy, can you teach me how to pray in a way that will make Jesus happy and will make me feel more comfortable?'

Mr. McFarland smiled. "'I understand how you feel, Delaney,' he said. "'When I was younger, I felt exactly the same way. I wasn't sure how to pray. About all I knew when I was your age was the table grace. God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for this food. Oh, yes, I also knew my nighttime prayer, and now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. But other than those two simple prayers, about the only thing I could say in prayer was, "'Dear God, please bless Mommy and Daddy and my brother and sister and Uncle Joe and Aunt Sue.' And then my grandfather told me a story that changed everything for me. Do you think you might like to hear the story?' Delaney said, "'Yes, I surely would.'"

The other children who had been listening to the conversation between Delaney and their father nodded eagerly, too. So Mr. McFarland told his children this story. Once upon a time, in a village far across the sea, there lived a barber. Everyone in the town knew him. He not only cut men's hair and shaved their beards, but he could do all sorts of things that people needed to have done. The villagers called him simply Master Peter. One morning, one of the village men came in for a shave. Master Peter put a cloth around the man's neck to keep the whiskers from falling down his shirt, lathered up the man's chin, got out his razor, and began to give the man a shave.

While the barber was shaving the man, the door opened and a new customer walked into his shop. Master Peter recognized the man immediately, for he was an outlaw. The emperor of the land had promised a large reward for anyone who could capture him, dead or alive. Master Peter knew that the authorities would take this man away if they could get their hands on him. When Master Peter finished shaving the first gentleman, he sent him on his way and motioned for the outlaw to have a seat.

Master Peter asked, what can I do for you today, sir? The outlaw said, I would like to have a haircut and a shave. Master Peter began to snip away at the man's hair, trimming it neatly. He then rubbed soap lather on his face to prepare him for a shave. Peter took out his razor, and as he sharpened it on the strop beside the barber chair, his hands began to tremble as he thought about the importance of the man who was sitting in his chair.

He calmed himself down and began to shave the man's face, moving down from his cheeks to his chin to his neck. Peter's razor was pressed very gently against the outlaw's neck. All Peter had to do was press hard on the razor, and he would cut the man's throat, killing him instantly. Then Peter could go to the emperor and say that he had taken care of the outlaw, and he could claim the reward, which would make him rich.

But as his razor touched the man's neck, Master Peter thought to himself, there's not enough money in all the world to make me kill this man. He is my hero. Master Peter knew the story of the man in his chair. The man had been a monk, then a knight, and now he was a world-famous professor at the university in Peter's town. The world had been changed, and the whole church was better because the reformer had been brave enough to stand up for the truth of the gospel of Jesus, as no one had since the days of the apostles. No one had so much courage as he. The name of the outlaw in the chair was Martin Luther, the man whose protest had started the Protestant Reformation and recovered the gospel from darkness. But because his teachings had disturbed some of the authorities, including the emperor himself, those who were opposed to him had convinced the emperor to banish Professor Luther. Now they wanted to capture him and burn him at the stake. But the people who had discovered the truth of the gospel of Jesus because of this man's teaching loved him so much that they would rather lay down their lives than see him captured and executed. Dr. Luther's barber, Master Peter, was one of those people.

Peter would never betray his hero. Suddenly Peter had an idea. He had been struggling with his prayers, and Dr. Luther was famous for his prayer life. He decided to ask Dr. Luther for his advice while he was sitting in the barber chair. Peter said, Dr. Luther, I know who you are. It is a privilege for me to have you in my barbershop today. I wonder whether I may ask you a question.

Dr. Luther said, of course you may. How can I help you? Peter said, I have a problem. I try to pray every night, but sometimes I feel that my prayers never go any further than the ceiling. I know that you pray for hours every day. There's probably no one who knows how to pray better than you do. Dr. Luther, do you think you could help me learn to pray better?

Dr. Luther said, that's a wonderful question, my friend. My students ask me very deep questions all the time about God and the Bible and church life, but rarely do they ask me about how to grow as a Christian. One makes me happier than to learn that you want to pray in a deeper way.

Let me go back to my study and think about it, and perhaps I can write down a few ideas that will help you pray more effectively. Thank you, Dr. Luther, Peter said. Then he quickly finished Dr. Luther's shave. When Dr. Luther got back to his study, he picked up his pen and began to write instructions for Master Peter. Dr. Luther wrote more than 50 books during his lifetime, but perhaps the smallest and shortest book he ever wrote was the one he wrote especially for his barber, Master Peter. In this book, Dr. Luther explained his method for prayer. He called the little book, A Simple Way to Pray.

When the book was finished, Dr. Luther went back to the barber shop and gave the first copy to Master Peter. Peter couldn't believe that the great Martin Luther had taken time to write a book just for him so that he could learn how to pray. Dr. Luther said to begin with, you must learn three things by memory. The first is the Lord's Prayer. The second is the Ten Commandments.

And the third is the Apostles' Creed. Then Dr. Luther went on to explain that once Peter knew these things by heart, he could use them to help himself pray. For example, Dr. Luther said, you begin by praying through the Lord's Prayer. Peter asked, do you mean that all I have to do is just pray the Lord's Prayer every night? No, Dr. Luther said, that's not what I mean.

It's a wonderful thing to do. But what I mean by praying through the Lord's Prayer is doing something like this. Think about the first petition in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. When you think about these words, allow your mind and your heart to give careful attention to what these words say. And let them move you to deeper prayer.

Say the first line of the prayer and then begin to pray like this. Oh God, it's hard for me to believe that you are really willing to be my Heavenly Father. In our family, we have our Father whom we love, but you are the Father of all of us who put our faith in Jesus. It's because Jesus is your Son and through Him you have adopted us into your family that we have the privilege to pray to you as our Father.

We know that you don't have an address here in our village, but you reside in heaven itself. You're not our earthly Father, you're our Heavenly Father, and you are the one who owns the whole world. It's a wonderful thing that we have a Father who owns everything to whom I can come in my prayer. Jesus taught us to say, hallowed be your name. Father, help me to understand that there's nothing more important in my life and in my prayer than to give reverence and worship to your name.

Lord, guard my tongue that I may never use your name in a foolish or corrupt manner, but that when I speak of you and when I think of you, my heart will be moved to respect and adore you. Dr. Luther said to Peter, do you understand what I mean by praying through the Lord's Prayer? You can pray through these parts of the Lord's Prayer every day and never make the same prayer twice.

You can think about one portion of it and give your attention to that, and your prayers will rise in excitement and in joy. Then Dr. Luther said, now think about praying through the Ten Commandments. The First Commandment says, you shall have no other gods before me. You can pray something like this, Lord God, we know that the world is filled with people who worship idols and statues, who believe in many gods, and yet you and you alone are God. Sometimes there are things in my life that I put ahead of you, things that become my idols.

Forgive me when I do that. Help me not to allow myself to have any other gods in your sight. Master Peter was very excited. I see what you mean, he said.

Dr. Luther grinned. You can go through each one of the Ten Commandments in that manner, he said, or you can turn your attention to the Apostles' Creed. It begins with, I believe in God the Father Almighty. As you begin to think about that, you begin to think of the power God has, the strength that He displays. Our children think that we as their earthly fathers are so strong that we could do anything.

But we are complete weaklings compared to God because He is Almighty, and we love Him not just for what He can do for us, but for who He is. So we can pray and pray, never get tired of praying. We can never run out of things to pray about if we focus our attention on the Lord's prayer, on the Ten Commandments, and on the Apostles' Creed. Master Peter could not thank Dr. Luther enough for teaching him the secret to a simple way to pray. When Mr. McFarland ended his story, he said to his children, do you see why every night during our devotions I want to make sure that you are learning the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed? From now on at our devotions, when you pray, I'm going to ask you to practice praying in the simple way that Dr. Luther taught his barber. The lady said, thank you for telling us that story, Daddy. I can hardly wait to try Dr. Luther's way to pray. In fact, can we have family devotions again tonight so we can try it? The other children said, oh yes, Daddy, please.

Mr. McFarland was delighted to see his children's new interest in prayer. He said with a smile, let's pray. In the time that's left on our broadcast today, I've asked Chris Larson to be with me in the studio so that we can discuss some of the application of this story. Thank you, Chris, for being with us today, and let's just get right into it. Thank you, R.C., for reading that story today. Tell us, where did you first hear the story of Master Peter and Martin Luther?

Oh, Chris, it was many, many years ago. I've spent a lot of time studying the life of Luther, and one of the things that I found striking in his ministry was how deeply dedicated he was to prayer. I mean, he would pray for at least an hour every day, and sometimes two and three hours a day.

He had first learned that discipline while he was in the monastery, and after he came out of the monastery, he never abandoned it, and it was with him for his entire life. So what made you decide to write a children's book about Master Peter and Martin Luther? Well, my good friend, Archie Parrish, who's the president of Serve International, goes around the country and does clinics in churches on what he calls kingdom-focused prayer. And Archie is himself a prayer warrior extraordinaire, and he and I were having a conversation once at dinner about Luther and his prayer life and about the episode in which he taught his barber how to pray. And so we came up with the idea of republishing that little book of Luther's, A Simple Way to Pray, with some introduction to it. And we did that, and Archie and I did that together, and Archie has used that all over the country in the churches and for pastors, and frankly, that method that Luther taught the barber is a method I've used myself, and I find it absolutely exciting and incredible.

And I was thinking this, Chris, let me just back up a little bit. People in the church in many cases are overwhelmed with guilt because of their ineffective prayer lives. And pastors are always saying, you need to pray, you need to pray, you need to pray more, and people just feel more and more and more guilty because nobody teaches them how to pray. The disciples themselves were in that bind, and they came to Jesus, and they didn't say teach us how to turn water into wine or how to walk on the water or calm the storm, but they said teach us how to pray because they saw the connection between Jesus' power and His own prayer life. And that's how we got the Lord's Prayer in the first place, not something we were to recite all the time, but it was a model to demonstrate how to pray, how prayer should progress. And it begins with the most important first petition that we would treat the name of God as holy, hallowed be Thy name.

And so I was thinking, this has been so helpful to me and it's been so helpful to adults. Why not for children? Why not children learning this method early on in their lives so that they can build on it as they get older and older? Because there's no end to praying through the Ten Commandments or the Lord's Prayer or the Apostles' Creed as a structure to trigger our thinking and the focus of our meditation. Because, well, our prayers should be more and more and more focused on adoration and on the praise of God and less and less and less on our own interceding for our wants and our needs, you know, where sometimes we bring a laundry list or a Christmas list and think that God is a heavenly Santa Claus, no. The real depth of prayer comes when we are adoring God. So do you advocate for children to be able to have this nighttime habit of prayer? Oh, yes. And so should the parents allow their children to pray these prayers, as you said, maybe not verbatim?

Right. I think that the parents should teach the kids how to do it, just like Luther taught his barber. You know, it's not hard. I mean, children can learn things quickly and they can memorize it with amazing speed and accuracy. It's nothing for children to learn to memorize the Lord's Prayer or the Ten Commandments. I mean, just about every child in church at some point has memorized the Ten Commandments. If you give the adults in the church now a little quiz and say, please name the Ten Commandments in order, not one in ten is able to do that. But if you're praying through the Ten Commandments all the time and focusing your mind and your thinking on it and your meditation on it, then the very law of God takes deep root in your mind and in your heart, and this is something that will be with you your entire life. So for children to be able to hide God's Word in their heart, and this is something that you would advocate?

Very much so. How deep should parents go in their explanation of terms like Protestant Reformation? Well, you know, in the Old Testament the watershed moments of God's redemptive activity, such as the Exodus, was recalled every year at the Passover feast, and it was the custom of the parents to teach the children what God had done and what had taken place. I often say to people, I'm a Protestant who knows what he's protesting, but most Protestants don't. And they have forgotten the awakening that took place in the 16th century when the gospel was brought out of the darkness and into the light. That's a watershed moment in church history, a watershed moment for the people of God.

Our children need to know about the heroes of the 16th century and the price that was paid to recover the gospel for the churches. What about posture? How important is it to teach children about posture in prayer? Well, you know, Calvin thought that the best way to pray was standing up with your eyes open and looking up to the heavens with your arms uplifted. Other people feel more comfortable on their knees.

I love to get down on my stomach, on the ground, on the rug. I think it's important to get comfortable so that you're not thinking about how your body's feeling, but your entire focus is given to the exercise of prayer itself. But the good thing about bowing down, which is a classical method, is you're adopting a posture of adoration while you're involved in prayer. And so what can we as parents or even grandparents be doing to teach children to pray beyond reading this story? Well, I think the most important thing that they can teach their children is to learn these three things that are in this story and learn to memorize the Apostles' Creed, to memorize the Ten Commandments, to memorize the Lord's Prayer, and then demonstrate for them examples of how you focus on the different petitions or the different parts of the prayer itself. Thank you so much for the gift you've given here in this retelling of this story. Oh, it's my privilege, and I'm delighted with these little children's stories, and I think so many times they're more helpful for the parents than they are for the children because every parent can be greatly blessed by learning this simple way to pray for their own prayer life.

Amen. And I hope that any of you parents or grandparents who are listening right now will take to heart what R.C. was saying there about how important it is to emphasize these things to the children in our lives.

It was a privilege to hear R.C. reading The Barber Who Wanted to Pray. We heard some church history. We also learned about prayer directly from the great Reformer himself, Martin Luther.

Dr. Sproul founded Ligonier Ministries because he wanted to make theological instruction accessible. When you give a donation of any amount today, we would like to send you this beautifully illustrated hardbound edition of The Barber Who Wanted to Pray. For you parents and grandparents, it is a wonderful book to have on hand.

Your children will enjoy looking through the pages over and over. You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us. Our number is 800-435-4343. And in advance, let me thank you for your generous donation. Before we go today, I've asked Chris Larson, our president and CEO, to stop by the studio. Chris, we heard from Andrew at the beginning of the program about the profound impact R.C. 's children's stories had on him. He's just one of many listeners who've told us how much they appreciate the teaching that Ligonier is producing.

You're right, Lee. And I want our listeners to be encouraged by these testimonies that have come in, because I know so many of you, our dear listeners, pray for the Word of God as it goes out through Renewing Your Mind and all of Ligonier's outreaches. Listen to this testimony that came in recently from Liz in Wyoming. I remember first hearing Renewing Your Mind on a radio station in 2002. I was so riveted by Dr. Sproul's erudition and explanation of the scriptures and his obvious gift for sound doctrine, I was totally blown away.

I had come from a very abusive childhood and at the time had been self-medicating and had wound up getting addicted to drugs. But after hearing Dr. Sproul and going back every day thereafter to listen to him on the radio on Renewing Your Mind, I started to develop a real hunger for God's Word. And the Holy Spirit came and found me, and I can't go a day without listening to one of his messages, and it's just such a great blessing. And I can't thank you all enough. I love what you're doing and now that I'm going to be 11 years into my sobriety in a couple of weeks, I can look back and really credit Dr. Sproul's inspiration with getting me where I am today. God bless you all and thank you so much. And so I would ask you to continue to pray for this ministry because it is making a difference in the lives of so many people around the world. Thank you, Chris, for stopping by and sharing that with us. And to you, our listeners, we hope you'll join us next week as we have the privilege of hearing Dr. Sproul preach from several New Testament books. It's beginning Monday here on Renewing Your Mind.