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Podcast: A Guide for Weary Pray-ers (Doug O’Donnell)

October 07, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

How Liturgy Shapes Your Faith

In this episode, Doug O’Donnell discusses the new Daily Liturgy Devotional, sharing how he really wrote the book for himself first and foremost, and how it has impacted his devotional life recently.

Daily Liturgy Devotional

Daily Liturgy Devotional

Douglas Sean O'Donnell

Helping believers make a habit of daily connection with the Lord, the Daily Liturgy Devotional offers 40 reflective daily readings filled with content for prayer, worship, and Scripture reading.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:16 - Liturgy Isn’t a Bad Word

Matt Tully
Doug, thanks so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Doug O’Donnell
Great to be with you, Matt.

Matt Tully
In my experience, and I would imagine this is true for you as well as a pastor, many of us Christians are constantly on the lookout for resources that will help us to be more consistent in our Bible reading, our Bible study, and our prayer life. Those are probably two areas that many of us as christians know it’s so important for us, but we also can feel this low-grade guilt all the time because we’re not doing it as well as we wish we were. Obviously, that’s where this whole idea of a devotional comes in. There’s a huge market for devotionals out there—many of them not very good. And so you’ve created a unique devotional resource that tries to serve Christians in those same ways, but it does it in a unique, really interesting way. It’s called the Daily Liturgy Devotional. And I want to focus right now on that middle word, liturgy. First, what is liturgy? How would you define that term? And then second, what’s the connection between liturgy and our daily devotions?

Doug O’Donnell
It’s interesting you ask that question. In the introduction—and this was actually Erika Allen, who I know you interviewed—she said, “You need to sort of explain what liturgy is or why it’s not a bad word.”

Matt Tully
There can be associations with that word for certain Christians.

Doug O’Donnell
Exactly. Leitourgia is the Greek word. So one of the things I say is it’s actually a Bible word. It’s used a number of times, and it’s translated as service, ministry, or worship within different contexts. And those are helpful words. Service is typically the one that’s familiar. It’s an order of service or an order of prayer. But I also like thinking of the words ministry—both God ministering to us and us ministering to others—and then, of course, worship. So one of the lines I have here in the introduction is, “Think of this Daily Liturgical Devotional, with its various set prayers and forms, not as boring or mechanical but as exciting and life giving. A book that will serve”—there’s one of the words—“you so that you might better worship God”—there’s another word—“and minister”—there’s the third—“to others.” So don’t let the word liturgy scare you in this book if you’re coming from a certain background. I’m coming from a Roman Catholic background. A lot of times, converts from Roman Catholicism want nothing to do with liturgy anymore because it was seen as dry and dead. Other people have grown up in maybe just a Bible church or a charismatic church, and the word liturgy seems like it’s a bad word. That’s not going to help me devotionally. And so I want to say, first of all, it’s a Bible word, and if used appropriately, it can help us worship God, serve God, serve one another, and be helpful for us in forming holy habits.

Matt Tully
And you would acknowledge that some forms of liturgy or the way that liturgy is done in some contexts could be pretty bad, right?

Doug O’Donnell
I’ve used this line when I’ve shared my testimony sometimes. It may be shocking to the listeners, but I say, “The liturgy saved me.” And I have to explain that, but what I mean is when I was converted at nineteen, I then eventually left the Catholic church. But I started to hate the Catholic church, because I thought, Why didn’t they teach me this? Why were all these rote rituals doing nothing for me?

Matt Tully
Meaningless rituals.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. And I just felt like, and this is a lot of people’s experience who’ve gone through what I’ve gone through, you’re mad at your parents, you’re mad at your priest. You say, “Why didn’t you tell me the gospel?” These sorts of things. But years later, as I reflected on how God worked in my life, I thought, Well, I had the liturgy. And what I mean by that is every Sunday I was saying the Sanctus: “Holy Lord God almighty, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” All Bible stuff. We sang that. I said the Lord’s Prayer, which teaches about forgiveness. We said the creeds—the Nicene Creed, which is so full of the person of Jesus and the works of Jesus. So just think of those creeds and prayers that I said every Sunday. I learned that God is holy. I learned I’m a sinner in need of forgiveness. And I learned the person to go to is Jesus, who he is and what he’s done for us. So I wish someone would have put that all together for me, but the Holy Spirit put it all together. But I say that phrase, “The liturgy saved me,” because God used—and there’s tons of Scripture reading in a Catholic liturgy, as in many liturgies. So I think even if you’ve had a bad experience with liturgy as a kid or as a teenager or whenever or are right now having a bad experience, I do encourage you to look for what might be actually the good things in that liturgy that God can use and does use to shape your faith. And that’s a little bit related to the book. I thought about what were some of the things I found most valuable in my own devotional life that I could help other people with. There’s really two impetus for the book. One was that I had a friend out in California who eldered to church, was a Christian leader, and he was just going through a dry season. He said, “I don’t even know where to start with prayer.” And I said, “Well, I just start with a set prayer. Pray the Lord’s Prayer, pray a song, or pray ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on me.’ It’s a prayer of confession. Really short. Ones you can memorize." And that got me thinking, What if I was to write a book for someone like him, but it also could help like a young Christian who doesn’t know how to pray either? And so I think it fits both categories. It could be a Christian leader who’s a bit dry and wants something new. I think we all come back to that prayer that the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, teach me to pray.” And this is a book to say, “Here’s my effort at helping people devotionally with some things that I’ve done.” So that’s one side of it. I think it’s like helping a friend that was the impetus. The other side was really personal. What would I want that would be really helpful for me? Because as you said to start out with, we all struggle with prayer and devotions and morning devotions. And so what do I want to say to God? What should I be saying to God? How might these prayers and songs and readings form me in a way that would make me grow as a Christian, even in my middle age and knowledge of Scripture and all these things? And so I was trying to create I guess three categories. One is a new believer. What might be a little helpful book to give to a new believer? The second is an older believer who just needs to be refreshed and have something new to look at. And then the third category is someone like me who if I was to write what I think are the best prayers and the best Scripture readings to form you in forty days, this is what I would put in a book. So that’s what you get with this book.

08:26 - Developing a New Habit

Matt Tully
I love how you boil it down at one point in the introduction. You write, “If you struggle to pray, read God’s word, or meditate upon what you’ve read, then this devotional will guide you.” That’s what it’s actually trying to do and accomplish. And I suppose that’s maybe one of the dangers or one of the things that we can struggle with with liturgy sometimes is when we think that the liturgy itself is the point. Just saying the words is the point rather than viewing it as a doorway, an invitation, or a spark towards truly communing with God in prayer and through his word. So I think that’s a helpful way to think about it. Let’s talk about the book itself. It’s designed to be used over the course of forty days. Why forty days?

Doug O’Donnell
I think two reasons. One, it’s a biblical number.

Matt Tully
One of the things I love about you, Doug, is you’re so immersed in Scripture. You know especially the Gospels, but all over Scripture, and you often have these connections in your mind that go back to Scripture in some way.

Doug O’Donnell
That’s funny. Yeah, it had to be twelve, forty, or144,000, and I didn’t want to write that many chapters. So with forty, honestly, that’s a good biblical number. I think also instead of thirty for a month or thirty-one or something like that, I did say I wanted forty because of a Bible number. And then the second thing was in my own life with developing habits, it takes forty to sixty days to develop a habit, and that’s what I want this book to do. So use this book—whether you use it daily or weekly, however you use it—use it habitually, and I think it will help you develop a good habit. I know the book Atomic Habits is a bestseller, and there are good reasons for that, but a lot of those atomic habits have been what I do in my life. Whether it was when I was a basketball player or, with exercise now, or something I need to press myself on physically, or Bible reading or things like that. And so it is developing these atomic habits. I think the forty helps you. If you can get to that forty, you’ll have a new habit. And so that was my goal. And it’s a small book. I’ve got it in my hand right now. It’s a little over 200 pages. It’s a really nice size. It’s not intimidating. I’ve gone through it twice myself. Once I went through just fast. I would do it in about five minutes, so I’m skipping over some things. And then now I’m going the second time and I’m doing it as slow as possible. I have some little cues like, “Pray this prayer of adoration, but then also thank God for who he is and what he does.” Well, that could take as long as you want it to. And then I’ll say, “Pray the Lord’s Prayer, but then also as you think of these petitions, pray other petitions.” Or thanksgiving: “List some things you’re thankful for—what circumstances or people or events in your life?” And so you spend a few more minutes thinking about those things and praying about those things. And at the end, there’s a hymn.

Matt Tully
So the forty days are divided up into eight groupings of five days each. Why is that? And what are those eight groupings?

Doug O’Donnell
I wanted to pick eight topics that I thought were essential. This kind of goes back to the new convert or someone saying, “Teach me about Christian discipleship. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?” And so I start with the gospel. That’s the first five. What is the gospel? I pick five different Bible texts and prayers that form around those texts that explain the gospel. I have a concise commentary after that. And again, that’s me teaching you, “This is what Romans 1 says about how it defines the gospel.” And then we moved to faith after that. So it’s progressing intentionally thematically. “Oh, that’s the gospel. I should believe in Jesus.” And then the third thing is love—the great Christian virtue. “This is how I start to live as a Christian.” And so faith, hope, and love are the first three that we cover in the virtues. And then I go to wisdom, because the more you grow as a Christian, the more you pray James 1:5, “Give me wisdom, God.” And so there’s five days on wisdom. And then holiness, so getting into sanctification. And then it ends with perseverance, which is one of the most important themes, I think, in the New Testament that is often not talked about. But I want Christians to know perseverance is hard, perseverance is necessary. And if I had to pick eight things you need to know about the Christian life, perseverance is one of them. And then the final thing is witness. So this isn’t just something we’re growing in, but we’re actually sharing what we believe about the gospel— back to the first theme—in the last five days. So I picked what I think are just really foundational themes within the Bible that are most important for every Christian to know and to grow in. And I wanted it to be like if you went to these five sections on love, this would be like Doug O’Donnell saying, “These are the texts to look at. And I want you to know these.” I have a memory verse in each of these too. So there’s forty days, but there’s only a memory verse for each of those five days. So eight total memory verses, if I did my math right.

Matt Tully
Every one of those five days, you’re practicing the same one.

Doug O’Donnell
The same one, yeah.

Matt Tully
So how I’m thinking you would use it is every week for eight weeks, skipping weekends. Monday through Friday, you’re reading through it.

Doug O’Donnell
Right. Exactly.

14:17 - Elements of a Devotional Liturgy

Matt Tully
Doug, you’ve already given us a little bit of a hint, a preview, of what’s in each of these days’ devotions. So I wonder if you could just walk us through the elements that every day has. How did you think through the ordering of those elements?

Doug O’Donnell
Each new section—day one, day six, and so on and so forth—has similar prayers. So the Gloria Patri—“Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;” Agnus Dei—“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world;” and the Lord’s Prayer. The order is a prayer of illumination, Scripture reading, commentary, a little prayer prompt, the memory verse, and then the hymn. So I start with those three prayers that are all the same so that people might memorize them over time. And so I’m saying they’re that important of a prayer that I want you to know them by heart.

Matt Tully
And these are historical prayers.

Doug O’Donnell
These are historical. Obviously, the Lord’s Prayer is in the Bible from Jesus, and the other two are historical prayers based on Scripture. And then the other days I follow the ACTS model, which was developed by Origen of Alexandria back in the second century. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. And again, this is to help you, whether you use the exact prayers I have there or develop your own, or after you’re done with this book, you’ve at least got a formula where you say, “That’s a pretty good way to pray.” That’s why Christians still pray it today. Start with adoration. Then, who are you, God? Why should I thank you? This is how many of the Psalms start. And then move to confession. What are some things I need to confess? And then move to thanksgiving. What do you thank God for? And then finally, supplications. We often start with supplication and that’s our whole devotional. “God, I need this or help me with this.” Which at times can be absolutely fine, but it sort of orders our priorities, if you will, where the last thing we’re doing is asking God to help us with something or give us something we need. And then within those, there are all different types of prayers. And so I wanted to, number one, represent what I think are some of the best Christian prayers ever.

Matt Tully
From church history.

Doug O’Donnell
From church history. Second, I wanted to write some of my own prayers based on Scripture. And so some of them are paraphrases of Ephesians 1 or some other places like Jonah, when he prays in the belly, or Nehemiah 9, or Daniel’s prayer—some of these beautiful prayers that are in the Bible. Just rewording them a little bit and using some of the actual language of Scripture to formulate a thanksgiving prayer or something like that. So part of that is my own thing. I wanted to be creative. I’ve done this my whole life as a pastor asking, “How can I use this prayer to write a new prayer based on God’s word and letting God’s word inform us?” So there’s some of those in there. And then I tried to, as far as the best prayers throughout Christian history, I’ve also tried to be as diverse as possible. Diverse mostly in the sense of different ages of Christianity. So from the first century to the middle ages, to the Reformation, to someone who is still living, or someone like John Stott who recently died. So representing all of the ages. And then as best I can within translations of English—the gospel from Augustine Hippo in Africa to someone in England, someone in America, someone in France, like John Calvin. And so that kind of diversity, I think, is intentionally represented throughout the book to make us aware that we’re part of something bigger than just us. And we should pray prayers from other people because those people have helped help many Christians throughout their life formulate what we should say and how we should think about God.

18:07 - A Case for Praying Written Prayers

Matt Tully
Some listeners right now may come from church traditions that really emphasize extemporaneous praying. And maybe they’re a little bit skeptical of prepared prayers, written prayers that then you’re reading. What would you say to the person who’s in that position right now, who is asking, “Is this really the way that we’re intended to pray?”

Doug O’Donnell
I think, in some sense, I would say—or maybe in a lot of sense—I would say it is biblical. When Jesus was asked, “Lord, teach us to pray,” he gave us a prayer. “When you pray, pray like this . . . .” That doesn’t mean you can only pray the Lord’s Prayer. He was giving us a model prayer. But Christians throughout history have prayed that prayer.

Matt Tully
That’s clearly okay.

Doug O’Donnell
That’s clearly okay, and we have the book of Psalms, which are written prayers. So God gave his people a psalter, a hymn book that throughout the ages Jews and Christians have prayed because these are the words that we know God is okay for us to say these things and to express the whole range of emotions that are expressed in the Psalms. In Acts 2, it says they were devoted to the apostles teaching and “the prayers.” It’s a definite article. So not just praying, but they were praying certain prayers. A Jewish liturgical prayer. Maybe the Psalms, maybe some other prayer. We know a number of Jewish prayers are still in print today that likely Jesus and his disciples would have prayed. And so it is not some new thing that Christians would pray set prayers straight from the Scripture. And so much of what you have in this book is straight from the Scripture in various forms—paraphrase or direct. And so that whole concept, I think, should be okay with Christians. It’s not a bad thing to have set prayers. But I do think praying what’s on your heart is so important for our devotional life. So after the reading and then the short commentary, I give a prayer prompt, which is not me telling you what exactly to pray, but what you should be praying next. Prompting you to pray. So it’s in that tradition. But also with the other things, in each of those categories, I say, “Take some time to thank God.” I list some possible things, but I just say “people.” I don’t list all the people.

Matt Tully
It’s a prompt.

Doug O’Donnell
It’s a prompt. So there are a number of prompts that are intended to help you go off on your own in prayer as long as you want. So to me, it’s a blend of the best of both traditions of prayer.

Matt Tully
And you mentioned this already, but I think it’s so true. I found this to be true for myself that so often we can struggle to know what to pray, to know how to get started. We might feel like early in the morning when I’m sitting there with my Bible, the motivation, the mental acuity is not there. And it can be hard to get going in prayer. And I’ve just found that sometimes reading a really thoughtful, theologically rich, beautifully written prayer as the beginning of my prayer time is actually a wonderful jumpstart. And then it even flows naturally into extemporaneous prayer that’s just kind of coming from my own heart and my own life. And so I think it’s great to emphasize that it’s not an either/or.

Doug O’Donnell
And I think there’s a teaching component. I remember when I was in college and I really started to get into writing. Well, I also really got into reading great writers. And one of my professors said, “How did you become such a good writer?” And I said, “Well, I read a lot, and here’s who I’m reading.” And they’re like, “Oh, that makes sense.” I’m just imitating. And so the same as with prayer. If all you sort of fill your head with and your mouth with in the morning are really beautiful, great prayers—not that God can’t take a simple prayer like, “Help me, Lord!”—but it forms the way you should think and talk about God. And so it matures you in that way. And I don’t think any of these prayers are fancy prayers. They’re just really thoughtful, good prayers. I love paradox and things like that, so there are some prayers that it’s beautiful how he shows the excellencies of Christ with all of these paradoxes in this beautifully written prayer. But I’m trying to help us also to, because we struggle with what to say, why don’t we say things that we know are from God’s word and that are set in a way that are beautiful to our beautiful and glorious God?

22:43 - Commentary Isn’t a Scary Word

Matt Tully
We’ve all been in church and heard someone pray, perhaps our pastor, and just the intentionality and the thoughtfulness of the prayer itself lifts us up into it. It is a truly obvious way to commune with God through that. Let’s talk a little bit about that brief commentary section. So each day has a scripture reading—not too long. And then there’s a relatively brief section of commentary on that, explaining what the text means and how it could be applied. Where did that come from, and what’s the goal behind that section?

Doug O’Donnell
Like liturgy, the word commentary can scare some people. But it is intended to be less than a one-page explanation of the passage. I think if you do this book over and over, you can skip the commentary over time, or even the Scripture reading and do a different Scripture reading. But what I do for a living is write commentary, so it's natural for me to throw in a little commentary. But it’s basically just an explanation of what the passage is and a little bit of application of that passage to your life. So nothing daunting.

Matt Tully
No Greek words in there.

Doug O’Donnell
No Greek words that I’m aware of. And it should be a helpful thing, especially for new believers who are trying to figure out what exactly is the gospel. Well, he’s given me these five really short commentaries on these five short passages that help me understand and say, “Oh, okay. That’s what the gospel is.”

Matt Tully
I like to think of it as it’s almost like a little mini sermon. It’s like you read a passage, and then you get this skilled expositor, skilled preacher come alongside you for just a few paragraphs, helping you to understand what it is that I just read.

Doug O’Donnell
That’s a great summary.

24:29 - Hymns You Should Know

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about the last element that’s included in every devotion every day. You’ve included a hymn alongside each of those 40 days. So what were you going for with that? Why include a hymn, and how did you pick the hymns?

Doug O’Donnell
I’ve always loved music. I became a Christian at nineteen, and then eventually went to a church that sang a lot of hymns. I didn’t really like it at first, and then I grew to love it.

Matt Tully
Can you explain that change? I imagine there are people who are on both sides of that coin right now.

Doug O’Donnell
I was studying Bible theology, and so I began to appreciate the richness of a text. And so I thought, Oh! In this hymn there’s a lot going on here that’s really deep theologically. With a few words they’ve said quite a bit, and they’ve said it beautifully with the rhyme scheme or whatever they’re doing. The other thing is just the music and sort of the richness. So whether you sing hymns or not, you probably know “Holy! Holy! Holy!” Well, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” is maybe the greatest hymn ever. And there’s reasons for that. I think it’s that it’s straight from the biblical texts of Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, but it’s the music that goes with it that makes it so grand and so fitting. So, does the text fit the tune? For great hymns, the text fits the tune well. So part of it was I asked myself, What do I think are the beautiful songs, if I had to pick forty in classic Christian hymnody? I love some of the songs that have been created in the last twenty years, but In classic Christian hymnody within the English speaking world, what are the ones I think everybody should know and sing and that are beautiful? And then the other one was more like, for hymns like “Amazing Grace,” Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” “Holy! Holy! Holy!”—I don’t care if your church or you never sing hymns, but I just want you as a Christian to know these exist and that you’re at least reading them. You may be curious about and ask, “What was that tune? I don’t read music, but what does it actually sound like?”

Matt Tully
Because you include a line of music—a melody line.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah, just the line of music, the melody line. That’s like if someone knows music or they just need a reminder, they’re able to see where the notes are jumping up and down, and it triggers in there. The other thing is it just looks pretty.

Matt Tully
It is nice. It’s an elegant little touch.

Doug O’Donnell
Yes. A nice addition to the book. Our design team, as you know, Matt, is amazing, so it’s a beautiful book that they’ve created. And so forty different hymns, and all of this is intentional. You should know these forty hymns and memorize these forty hymns. And so if you keep using this book, you will do that. But what I’m doing now is I’m either singing them through or I’m just humming them and looking at the words. And that’s kind of what I hope people do. If they’re a singer, they go ahead and sing it. I think it’s so good for our bodies to, in the morning or whenever you do devotions, actually sing. And then I think it’s good because you memorize things better if you sing them. So for those who read music, you can say, "Oh! That’s what the song is." But it’s the age of the cell phone, so I assume most people who do the hymn part of it will just look up and sing along with someone.

Matt Tully
That’s the thing I love about the inclusion of these hymns too. Even if someone is listening and they aren’t musical and they can’t read the music, or they aren’t that familiar with the hymn, or maybe they have a bad association with a big organ and it sounds dour and not the same. Even just reading the texts that you’ve included for the whole hymn, some of these are just the most—I almost think sometimes the music, as wonderful as it can be, it can obscure the beauty of the text, where you see this incredibly theologically rich poetry, really, that is actually quite wonderful to read aloud and meditate on itself. That’s something I think I gained from seeing the text of these hymns just set in such a simple way in this book.

Doug O’Donnell
Thank you. That’s exactly right. I think because I valued them from my own spiritual growth and they helped me so much, I want others to see the beauty of them. Even if it’s just the beauty of the lyrics when they just read them. Or, like I said, just humming along and reading them, it’s been such a good thing for me to do. But it’s also a book I think you can use for your family too. You can use it devotionally, where maybe you got a few copies—or a hymnal—so at the end you actually, as a family, sing the hymn in there. And maybe mom or dad reads the Scripture reading or prays one of the prayers. I’ve done some of this with my family. I’ve said, "Hey, this is a prayer from this day. I’m working on this book, and I just think it’s beautiful. And before we eat, I’m going to pray that prayer." But then you could also include, "After we eat, we’re going to sing this song, and we’ll listen on YouTube or Spotify." Or we’ll just find a piano accompaniment. Or in my house, my wife plays piano very well. So Emily sits down at the piano, and we can sing it together. That sort of thing. We don’t do that very well, but we could do it.

Matt Tully
and that’s the thing I do love about this book. We’ve spent a lot of time talking through the different components and the elements that are there and how it flows. And I think people could probably walk away from hearing us talk and think, *Wow! That’s probably a 20 page thing. Each of these devotions is just this big investment. It’s going to take me two hours to do all of this." But it really isn’t that long. All of these move very quickly as you do it. It’s pretty easy to even decide how much you want to do as you go.

Doug O’Donnell
And in the introduction, I really do stress flexibility. Use this however you want to use it. And that includes, like I said, I went through the five minute version and also the half an hour version. And what I just said about family devotions, pick one prayer and sing the song. Well, what does that take? Four minutes? And it’s only about five to six pages, I think, per day. So it’s not overwhelming.

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. And I think you’re right that there is that connection, the application, both to our personal lives as believers but then even to our families, sitting around the dinner table together with our kids, with our spouses. There’s just a lot of richness here that could be used in all those contexts. Doug, thank you so much for helping us understand what you’re doing in this wonderful new resource and for creating something like this for us as we seek to be more consistent, more faithful in our Bible reading and our prayer life and just meditating on what God has done for us.

Doug O’Donnell
Thanks, Matt. It’s my joy to help, and it’s always good to talk with you.

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