Luther Gives Prayer Advice to His Barber

Luther's barber, Peter, inquired of him how he, an ordinary guy, might pray without being distracted by worldly thoughts and occupations. In part, here is Luther's reply:

Dear Master Peter: I will tell you as best I can what I do personally when I pray. May our dear Lord grant to you and to everybody to do it better than I! Amen. 

First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer), I take my little psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do. 

It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last of the night. Guard yourself carefully against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, 'Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.' Such thoughts get you away from prayer into other affairs which so hold your attention and involve you that nothing comes of prayer for that day. 

It may well be that you may have some tasks which are as good or better than prayer, especially in an emergency. . . . Yet we must be careful not to break the habit of true prayer and imagine other works to be necessary which, after all, are nothing of the kind. Thus at the end we become lax and lazy, cool and listless toward prayer. The devil who besets us is not lazy or careless, and our flesh is too ready and eager to sin and is disinclined to the spirit of prayer.

Luther then goes on to provide examples of how to pray the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed. His examples may be found in the book below, from which the above was taken.

 —Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 41-42.