The Discipline of Intimacy: The Joy and Awe of Walking with God

By Charlie Cleverly

People who pray are those who break through, who hold on, who stand in the gap, who will not be silent, and even who change history. But they are also those who wait in the silence, sometimes in the sorrows, who contemplate His beauty, and stand in awe. The Discipline of Intimacy looks at the dynamic paradox of prayer: knowing how to be still and silent but also how to plead and speak. Knowing how to let go but also how to hold on.
 
For individuals and church groups, The Discipline of Intimacy is for anyone seeking help to develop their relationship with God, particularly where once-passionate hearts may have lost their spark. With accompanying videos and questions for reflection and discussion, readers and participants will be introduced to practical and biblically-rooted ways to experience the intimacy with God they have longed for, and will have the tools to cultivate a life that is characterized by this closeness.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: David C Cook
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780830778560

Book preview

What people are saying about …

The Discipline of Intimacy

‘The only ministry that lasts is founded in the work of the Holy Spirit, and that requires prayer. Charlie Cleverly has led powerful ministries in France and England, amongst all types of people. His experience of prayer springs from the day-to-day engagement with the mission of God. Such experience needs listening to! At best it will revive your prayer, at worst you will think more deeply.’

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

‘Charlie Cleverly is a man passionate about prayer and the spiritual life. And the times in which we live provoke us to prayer. I have throughout my ministry as Archbishop of York called people back to prayer, especially during my six-month walk throughout York Diocese on a Pilgrimage of Prayer, Witness and Blessing, and now through the Thy Kingdom Come initiative. I commend to you with all my heart this new edition of The Discipline of Intimacy. Read this book and its careful, biblical examples and pray that you too will catch the fire that burns within its pages.’

John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

‘The Discipline of Intimacy is an important theme for everyone, and for Charlie Cleverly it is his life message. When he and Anita moved from an inner-city congregation in Paris to lead St Aldates, Oxford, they immediately declared the church a house of prayer for all nations. They are prayerful and passionate people. In person Charlie Cleverly is gentle, thoughtful and kind. In the pulpit he is winsome and passionate. In the city of Oxford he is a catalyst for Christian unity.’

Pete Greig, 24-7 Prayer International and Emmaus Rd, Guildford

‘At a time when the Spirit is stirring the Church to deeper prayer, we need guides and encouragers who have answered that call and pressed into the joy of intimacy with God. Charlie is one such person and you won’t be able to read this book without something of his passion being ignited in you too!’

Paul Harcourt, National Leader, New Wine England

‘When you read Charlie Cleverly on prayer, you are being taught by one who speaks from experience deeply allied to biblical revelation. Intimacy in prayer, not to be confused with legalistic religiousness, requires a jealous discipline based on love and delight in God. Read and be freshly motivated by Charlie’s inspiring insights.’

Terry Virgo, Founder, Newfrontiers family of churches

‘There is, deep in the heart of every human being (though we do not always recognise it), a desperate longing for God. In this extraordinary book, Charlie Cleverly – himself a man of prayer with sometimes painful honesty, as well as demonstrating a profound experience of the need among young people today, even in Oxford’s secular winter – shows that a life of prayer is within reach of absolutely everybody. The Discipline of Intimacy ought to be widely read, especially by those who think that God is not for them.’

Fr Nicholas King SJ, Tutor in New Testament, University of Oxford

‘Charlie Cleverly understands that closeness to God is the chief desire and only haven of the human heart. Rooted in Scripture and drawing from saints both ancient and modern, his book The Discipline of Intimacy is a wise pastor’s roadmap for how varied and rich practices of prayer are the pathway bringing us near unto God. For the new believer or the mature Christian, I heartily recommend this new edition!’

Sam Ferguson, Rector, The Falls Church Anglican, Falls Church, VA

‘When it comes to prayer, you never arrive! There is always another level of intimacy, and this book will help you experience it. You’ll be challenged and encouraged by its message!’

Mark Batterson, Lead Pastor, National Community Church Washington DC

‘Over the last few years I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Charlie Cleverly. The more time I spend with him, the more I’ve become aware of how much his life encapsulates the message of this book, The Discipline of Intimacy. As you read and digest Charlie’s life message, may God awaken and re-kindle in you a similar desire, discipline and delight in prayer that will transform your life and that of many others around you.’

Dave Smith, Senior Leader, KingsGate Community Church

‘This book challenges us to find a new level of fluency in prayer, expressed from a deeper place of intimacy with God. Charlie is a man of prayer, with a passion for our nation, and this is infectious. Let this book, which blends personal experience, prophetic insights and sound theology, awaken in you a fresh desire for more.’

Rachel Hickson, Founding Director, Heartcry for Change

Commendations from the First Edition:

‘My heart was kindled and warmed as I read the chapters, and yours will be too. Not only are the theological truths clearly stated, but also these truths have been demonstrated and proved in the author’s experience in ministry, church planting and calling a nation to prayer. Read the book and reread it. Apply its truths and teach them to somebody else. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.’

Campbell McAlpine, author

‘Very moving, practical, helpful, inspiring – and impossible to put down.’

Bishop Sandy Millar, Former Leader, HTB, London, home of the Alpha course

‘A beautifully written, easily digestible, biblically based inspiration to press on in prayer. Charlie Cleverly offers us a timely classic.’

Bishop David Pytches, Founder, New Wine Conferences

THE DISCIPLINE OF INTIMACY

Published by David C Cook

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Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

Integrity Music Limited, a Division of David C Cook

Brighton, East Sussex BN1 2RE, England

The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

without written permission from the publisher.

The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of David C Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked

ASV

are taken from the American Standard Version. (Public Domain);

ESV

are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved;

KJV

are taken from The Authorised (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorised Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press;

NKJV

are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved;

NLT

are taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. The author has added italics to Scripture quotations for emphasis.

ISBN 978-0-8307-7855-3

eISBN 978-0-8307-7856-0

© 2019 Charlie Cleverly

First edition published by Kingsway/David C Cook in 2002 © Charlie Cleverly, ISBN 978-1-8429-1049-8

The Team: Ian Matthews, Jennie Pollock, Amy Konyndyk, Nick Lee, Susan Murdock

Cover Design: Mark Prentice at beatroot.media

Cover Image: Ji Pak on Unsplash

Printed in the United Kingdom

Second Edition 2019

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

053119

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Part 1: Prayer as Our First Love

Introduction: Nostalgia for Heaven

1. John on Patmos: ‘First Love Christianity’

2. Jesus: The Master Plan of Prayer

3. Prayer as a ‘Rule of Life’

Part 2: Prophetic Prayer

4. Abraham: Prayer as Pleading with God

5. Hannah: Prayer Bringing to Birth

6. Joel: Calling Leaders and People

7. Joel: Restoring Family Prayer

8. Isaiah: Praying for Nations

Part 3: Exile Prayer

9. Set Apart and Seeking God: Scenes from the Prayer Life of Daniel

10. Lamentations: Learning a Language of Lament

11. Esther: ‘For Such a Time as This’

Part 4: Prayer as Abiding and Asking

12. Paul: Caught Up into Heaven with His Feet on the Ground

13. Seven Prayer Burdens of Christ

14. Prayer When God Is Silent

Notes

For Further Reading

Foreword

When Charlie Cleverly arrived in Oxford in 2002 to lead our church, St Aldates, we both read the newly published The Discipline of Intimacy. Our hearts were immediately drawn not only to Charlie himself but also much more importantly into a deeper walk with God. This book challenged, encouraged and inspired us to pursue a greater intimacy with God, the only treasure in life worth pursuing.

As the years have passed, our love and appreciation for Charlie as our pastor and now dear friend have grown. We have seen and experienced his passion for prayer and the way it can shape a church – it has been remarkable to see a new generation of the church pursue prayer. The Discipline of Intimacy is not a theoretical tome but rather a love letter to the church from a father of the church.

Whether you have just begun your walk with Jesus or you are many years into your journey, we commend this edition, with its new chapters to you. Drink deeply, read slowly and allow the Holy Spirit to draw you, through prayer, into a new intimacy with the living God.

Anne and Michael Ramsden

Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics / RZIM

Acknowledgements

I dedicate this book to Simon Ponsonby and Mark Brickman – ‘my brothers and companions in the kingdom and suffering and patient endurance that are ours in Christ Jesus’.

And to my beloved grandchildren. May you too discover, in your time and God willing, ‘the joy and awe of walking with God’.

When Ian Matthews of David C Cook walked into our offices, he began a ministry of encouragement that has not yet stopped. This is, in my experience, a rare gift in publishing! Thanks to his vision this book – first published nearly twenty years ago – is seeing the light of day again but in a completely new and revised form.

I thank the amazing team at Cook – Wendi Lord leading in the USA, and in the UK Ian Matthews, Jennie Pollock and Jack Campbell for their vision, encouragement and attention to detail. Thanks to my assistant Flo Judson for long-suffering, servant-hearted admin as well as great flair in researching writing on the Rule of Life.

I thank two churches where we have served for the past almost thirty years: the Eglise Réformée de Belleville, Paris – that glorious, multicultural mix of Asians West Africans, Europeans, Middle and Far Eastern peoples and North and South Americans, plus the fearless French majority – who taught us to pray and hold on. I thank the ‘greenhouse community,’ which is St Aldates – a house of prayer for all nations at the heart of Oxford. You are a wonderful, contagious company of Christians who know your need of God. Young and old, brilliant and broken – you came on a journey of prayer with us over the past 18 years into the presence of God. I am so grateful for the privilege of serving among you.

I thank our fellow beloved pastors in Oxford from many different churches, Grady and Cindy Reid, Steve Jones, Vaughan Roberts, Andrew Wingfield-Digby, Dan Heyward, Matt Partridge, Dupe Adefala, Memory Tapfumaneyi, Eric Bossward, Derek and Hilary Walker, Marcus Roberts, Andrew Myatt, Phil Herklots, Bruce Gillingham, Rachel Gibson, Dan Steel and many others who have brought the Love Oxford movement into being through prayer. I also thank my Bishop, Steven Croft, and all those who have kindly written endorsements – particularly Archbishop Justin Welby for his kindness.

I thank the many young pastors of St Aldates who have been a serious inspiration, and particularly the senior team at St Aldates – Mark Brickman and Simon Ponsonby, Jenny Corps and Anita Cleverly as well as Chris Gillies and Mark Withers for your constant kindness, ceaseless stretching and careful challenges to walk closer with God and to serve Him.

I thank my wife Anita who knew about prayer long before I did, and who has kept me encouraged when the going has been tough and been such a kind, careful and wonderful companion for the journey.

Using The Discipline of Intimacy for Individual or Group Study

We have created a series of companion videos for The Discipline of Intimacy in which Charlie Cleverly unpacks the theme of each chapter. The videos can be used in your personal devotions or as an introduction if you’re using this book as a group study. The videos are available to stream from www.DisciplineofIntimacy.com.

When using this book in a group, we suggest encouraging people to read the corresponding chapter before arriving each session. In order to make leading a group through The Discipline of Intimacy an easy task, we recommend using the following structure:

1. Welcome and icebreaker. If your group all know each other well, this is the easy part. However, if you have new people or a new group, then spend a little time encouraging participants to introduce themselves. A welcoming refreshment and some quiet worship music played in the background can help to make people feel comfortable.

2. Play the video. Play the video from that week’s chapter to the group, either streaming to your set-top box or smart TV or, if that isn’t possible, playing through a laptop or a similar device.

3. Discussion questions. Lead the group in a discussion using the study questions provided at the end of each chapter as a guide. Encourage people to contribute, watching out for those who may want to share something but are nervous or shy, and not allowing the more confident participants to dominate the discussion.

4. Prayer and refreshments. Give time at the end of each session for prayer if that is something your group is comfortable with. There may be those who have been moved or inspired to act on something following the discussion and are seeking support; there may be some who feel stirred to seek God and His will for them. Finish with refreshments and a time of fellowship.

Part 1

Prayer as Our

First Love

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

Introduction

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

…

Engine against the Almighty, sinner’s tower,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

…

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,

…

The land of spices; something understood.

- George Herbert

But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’

- Genesis 32:26

But which of them has stood in the council of the L

ORD

to see or to hear his word?

Who has listened and heard his word?

- Jeremiah 23:18

Nostalgia for Heaven

The brilliant priest and scholar George Herbert chose Prayer as the subject matter of his greatest writing. He describes it as a banquet, the age of angels, the breath of God returning man to a new birth. He calls it an ‘engine against the Almighty’, then ‘softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss’. It is as if he runs out of adjectives of sweetness! Prayer bridges the gap between God and humankind. Later he sums it up, saying it is: ‘Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed’. Here there is a glimpse of prayer not as being something we do to reach a distant God, but as something that God also does, meeting us halfway. ¹

This insight – we reach up, and he reaches down – helps us to understand the longing in the human heart for prayer and communion with God – and also the grace to enjoy it.

This is a book about ‘open hands’ – abandoning ourselves to divine providence and giving up all our will to him. It is also a book about connection with God and how people throughout history have held on to him and not let him go till he blesses.

People who pray fall often into one of two camps: those who wait, who stand ‘in the council of the L

ORD

’ (Jer. 23:18), who may even say they don’t really pray – they contemplate; and those who want to break through, who hold on, who stand in the gap, who will not be silent.

These two gifted groups of people would do well if they can learn from one another.

For I believe this is the eternal paradox of prayer: knowing how to be still and silent but also how to plead and speak. Knowing how to let go but also how to hold on. Some prefer activism or what Timothy Keller has called ‘prophetic prayer’. ² Others prefer silence and abandonment in the presence of God – what Henri Nouwen calls praying ‘with open hands’.

I write for both.

I write for all those who have a nostalgia for heaven, hardly knowing how to find their way home; for those who are searching for an anchor to the Source of Life.

I write for those who are parched and thirsty in a desert of ceaseless activity, who know that there is a river but cannot find their way to it. It is a question of survival; it is a question of desperation. The fact is, there is a well which becomes a stream of inner renewal that can be unblocked.

In the years since the first version of The Discipline of Intimacy was written, Anita and I moved from Paris, France, to lead St Aldates Church – the wonderful, large, creative company of called-out people at the heart of Oxford in the UK. Oxford is a crossroads of the nations, an ‘Antioch’ where people can have Epiphany encounters with God and go on to change the world. It is also a ‘normal city’ of families and single people – of rich and poor and many homeless.

It is a kind of ‘greenhouse community,’ of people incubating and warming up in God’s presence to bring hopeful transformation and change for the world. And this includes hundreds of young people discovering prayer.

But while this warming up goes on, Europe is in the middle of winter: atheism and anti-Christian sentiment bring their icy blast and Oxford is sometimes a leader in this field – the home of the new atheism and a place where people don’t hesitate to speak against the things of God. This too is a paradox – and your situation may be too.

I write for those who know that something is tugging on their heart calling them to pray. Deep is calling to deep. Like the sleeping Bride of the Song of Songs, you have awoken in the night to the sound of your Beloved and you want to let him in!

I write for all those who are weary and heavy laden and who long to find rest daily in him.

Hope in a Place of Paradox

The twenty-first-century post-modern, post-Christian world is a place of paradox. Despite more ‘connectivity’ than ever before in history, this is a disconnected world. Isolation abounds. We may have perfectly designed scandi coffee shops and public spaces but the private space of people’s hearts may be crumbling with mental health issues, breakdown or lack of relationships, and geographical disconnection. There is a longing for intimacy – but a fear of real intimacy – ‘ghosting’ on dating apps, and phobias concerning commitment. All of this is spiritual and to do with the alienation of humankind from God. All can be healed if we understand prayer!

We live in a culture searching and longing for spirituality. Education Authorities are opening the door to prayer spaces in schools, and Health Centres are investing in mindfulness therapies which are close to contemplative prayer practices, as we will discover.

Ever since our ancestors walked with God in the garden of paradise, there has been a Holy Longing for connection with God. Ever since the mythic story of the Fall, we could say that the whole of the story of the Bible speaks of this longing in humankind to find a way back home to a ‘promised land’ where there is connection to God.

Alienation and sadness resulting from separation from God describe our human history. And the Bible tells of God’s own desire to find a people for himself, and for that people to know their God and be in his presence. Ultimately when Jesus came, he broke down the dividing wall of hostility to bring us communion with God. Through the cross we have access to the presence of the Father.

The delight of union and communion with the living God is called prayer.

For ten years I lived and worked in Paris: a particularly fiercely secular environment. Jean-Paul Sartre said, ‘I caught the Holy Spirit in the basement of my mind and flung him out of there.’ Yet this didn’t bring the freedom he sought: ‘Atheism is a long and cruel business. I believe I’ve been through it to the end. For the last years I’ve been like a man who no longer has any reason to live.’ ³ Many have done as Sartre. Any vestige of God-ward impulse they have uprooted in a desire to be bravely modern in a brave new world. But the Maker’s genetic code cannot be so easily uprooted. People find their hearts restless, for something that is lacking.

Novelist Julian Barnes put it like this: ‘I don’t believe in God … but I miss him’. Many young people go dancing, raving, keeping awake with cocaine or the latest drug but they do not find the life they are nostalgic for. Some are paid-up members of ‘Generation Sensible’ but find their careful plans for life and advancement leave them empty too.

Others want to live consciously non-religious lives, but they are shrivelling up daily in an urban desert, ‘Living, living and partly living,’ as T.S. Eliot put it. ⁴ Even atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell admitted his malaise: ‘That God is dead, that I cannot deny. But that my whole being cries out for God: that I can never forget’.

This is the paradox that defines the world.

But in the depth of this spiritual winter, I have had the joy of seeing a new generation of young people catch hold of the spirit of prayer. In fact, all over the world the Spirit of God is awakening people to pray.

God is stretching out his hands both to those who are not seeking him, and to Christians who are not in touch with him. The kindness and mercy of God is that, despite our turning away from him, he pours out his Spirit again and again throughout the world. By this I mean that he mercifully visits us with the Spirit of Jesus, as at the day of Pentecost. Many people get caught up in these visitations, which are like previews of heaven on earth, and I pray for a new Great Awakening – a new Reformation.

How are we to understand this time? I believe the prophecy of Zechariah 12:10 is helpful: ‘And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication.’ There is a spirit of prayer (supplication), and the grace, i.e. the energy, the enabling, the easy yoke with which to fulfil it.

This book is written with the conviction that every Christian is called to pray. Paul did not in his letters have a separate section for intercessors; he asked all the church to pray. Jesus did not clear the temple and pronounce it a house of prayer for the ‘elite intercessors’: no! He called for a house of prayer for all nations … (Mark 11:17). He did not call one or two disciples aside to teach them to pray, but he included the whole group. And it was the whole group who asked him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’

This said, many stumble and falter in prayer. This is another of the great paradoxes of prayer: It is easy and it is hard!

The great writer on prayer E.M. Bounds sums it all up: ‘Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside the range of human possibilities … Few Christians have anything but a vague idea of the power of prayer; fewer still have any experience of that power. The Church seems almost wholly unaware of the power God puts into her hand.… To graduate in the school of prayer is to master the whole course of religious life.’ ⁵

This book is an attempt to help us at last graduate in the school