Victory from Trials

As I'm preparing for Compass Night this Thursday evening @ 6:15 (please pray for me about this!!!), I have been reading a number of books and wanted to share this line from Bill Thrasher's A Journey to Victorious Praying--a book I can so far recommend though I haven't finished it yet. He wrote:

"Many times great difficulties precede special works of God. You can even say that God wins His greatest victories in the midst of apparent defeat. This can be clearly demonstrated in the life of our Lord on earth. When Jesus was crucified and placed in the tomb, it looked like the forces of unrighteousness had triumphed. However, it was in this time of apparent defeat that our victory for our salvation was won."

Think about how this is true over and over again in the Scriptures and then bring that truth into your own life. I don't know what you're going through, but take heart. God has not and will never abandoned you (see Matt 28:20, Phil 4:5 & Heb 13:5) and will bring victory from the what looks like defeat (Rom 8:28).

Get to Know David Brainerd

You will never regret taking an hour to listen to John Piper's biography of the unstoppably passionate missionary to American Indians in the 1700s David Brainerd (click here to read or listen or download it). It is amazing to read how many pioneering, paradigm shifting missionaries his life deeply impacted.

Let me leave you with this insights from Brainerd's journal, which Jonathan Edwards published, and Piper's message...

"He was gripped with by the apostolic admonition: "Redeem the time for the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:16) He embodied the counsel: "Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due time we shall reap if we do not faint." (Gal. 6:9) He strove to be, as Paul says, "abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58)."

April 17, 1747. "O I longed to fill the remaining moments all for God! Though my body was so feeble, and wearied with preaching and much private conversation, yet I wanted to sit up all night to do something for God. To God the giver of these refreshments, be glory forever and ever; Amen." (p. 246) February 21, 1746. "My soul was refreshed and comforted, and I could not but bless God, who had enabled me in some good measure to be faithful in the day past. Oh, how sweet it is to be spent and worn out for God!" (p. 366)

Among all the means that Brainerd used for pursuing greater and greater holiness and usefulness prayer and fasting stand out above all. We read of him spending whole days in prayer (p. 172), and sometimes setting aside six times in the day to pray, (p. 280), and sometimes seeking out a family or friend to pray with. He prayed for his own sanctification. He prayed for the conversion and purity of his Indians. He prayed for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ around the world and especially in America. Sometimes the spirit of prayer would hold him so deeply that he could scarcely stop.

Once, visiting in a home with friends, he got alone to pray: "I continued wrestling with God in prayer for my dear little flock here; and more especially for the Indians elsewhere; as well as for dear friends in one place and another; till it was bed time and I feared I should hinder the family, etc. But oh, with what reluctancy did I find myself obliged to consume time in sleep!" (p. 402)

Praying for Your Pastor

People often ask me how they can help me, and just so you know, the most important and most downplayed way anyone can help their pastor is to pray for him.

To help you do that, I came across this blog post. If you're going to do for me what this blog says--and I PRAY that you would--just know that I don't preach on Sunday's, but on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Also, for my own preaching and the preaching of the pastors at Compass that I serve with, I use the acrostic CAPPPP to pray for them. It stands for...

• Clear -- no confusion from what I say, a structure that flows and makes sense
• Accurate -- explains what the text says, which comes from prayer and good study time
• Passionate -- not a lecture, but a sermon for changing the heart
• Pursuasive -- that the audience would be convinced intellectually by the text
• Practical -- that it will be easy to see how to live the text
• Powerful -- that God's Spirit would save the lost and sanctify the believers present
  

So, please add these words to #4 from the blog post above. Thank you so so much!!!

Anxiety and Prayer

I'm preaching on Philippians 4:4-9 this coming weekend, and while commenting on verse 6 ("Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God"), D.A. Carson writes, "I have yet to meet a chronic worrier who enjoys an excellent prayer life" (Basics for Believers 112).

Lord, may that characterize me, please!

Thoughts from The Valley

I read this in a collection of Puritan prayers calledThe Valley of Vision today and had to share it here:

"Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities, burning into me by experience the things I know ... Grant me to know that I truly live only when I live to thee, that all else is trifling" (235)

I need these reminders constantly, daily. That is why I thank God for this book, and the riches compiled therein.

E.M. Bounds Free Download

This month christianaudio.com is giving away E.M. Bounds' classic Power Through Prayer.

Follow the directions here and you can download this audiobook for free.

Pray for Dr. Harold O.J. Brown

I just found out here that one of my professors and a great man, Dr. Harold O.J. Brown, is quite ill with cancer and in need of healing and wisdom for what to do now.

Please pray for him and his sweet wife Grace.

Prayer & Modern Christians

In his excellent book, Above All Earthly Pow'rs, David Wells writes:

"In premodern societies, the sacred was a matter-of-fact part of life; in modern societies, God has been excluded from public life, pushed to the margins of relevance, and made to live out his life, as it were, underground and out of sight" (27).

I tend to point my finger at the our American culture and say "This your problem," but I've recently been thinking that this is a real problem in the American church.

The reason I say this is because of the American church's lack of prayer. We have our programs, our strategies, our books, our technology, our marketing, our training and hundreds of other things that most people in history and most people in the world do not have, and never will have.

So many of these things take care of so many of our problems that we don't pray, and lack of prayer demonstrates a lack of dependence on God, and a lack of dependence on God is pride.

The blessings of our modern world have led us to replace God with those blessings, and as a result, prayer meetings are empty and SELF-help books fill our shelves. I long for the day when God sends us a prayer revival, but I'm afraid of what it will take for that to happen.

Sense and Nonsense in Prayer by Lehman Strauss (Pt 2)

These are the final two points from my study of Sense of Nonsense in Prayer by Lehman Strauss. I read the book while studying and praying through 2 Timothy, which should explain the biographical portions:

4. The believer’s prayer book should be the Bible alone (pp. 7, 55-56, 65-67, 86).

Interspersed throughout the book is the critical connection between prayer and the Bible. It is Strauss’ assertion that the believer who knows his Bible little, knows little of prayer; therefore, encouraging the church in “the biblical way of praying” (p. 7) was one of the reasons he wrote the book. He asserts that the prayer lives of many Christians are not a success because they have not disciplined themselves to read, study, meditate on and obey the Bible.

Strauss drove the importance of biblical prayer home to my heart when he remarked, “what God says to me is infinitely more important than anything I could say to Him” (p. 66). My thinking on this subject was distorted early in my Christian life when I was weaned on books by Richard Foster who acknowledges the Bible, but sees it as ancillary to the discipline of prayer. Therefore, most of my Christian life prayer was divorced from Bible study.

Strauss helped me see that reading and studying the Bible prayerfully is the key to productive prayer so that meditating on a verse a day from 2 Timothy is the central focus of my prayer time today.

5. Christians need to pray after God answers (p. 111)

For the past seven years, my prayer life has been sporadic. I pray fervently when there is a crisis in my life, but when things are peaceful prayer is tragically the last thing on my mind.

When Strauss was recounting Jesus’ miracle of the feeding of the 5000 (Matt 14; Mark 6; John 6), an event permeated with prayer, he points out that the story climaxes with Jesus praying after God blesses His ministry.

Jesus example here is very instructive. His prayer continued even though His request had already been realized. Strauss’ analysis of this passage was convicting because rather than imitating Christ, I ended up being like the modern Christians he describes who “grab the handout and say, ‘So long, God. I’ll be back when I need more’” (p. 111).

To incorporate this principle into my prayers and nip this erratic prayer trend in the bud, I have been and am now committed to continuing the discipline of daily prayer for the rest of my life. Only time will tell if I relapse into irregular prayer tendencies or persist in it every day.

Sense and Nonsense in Prayer by Lehman Strauss (Pt 1)

While in seminary I took a class on prayer. We were given a list of books to do a book report that was meant to summarize five ways the book was helpful in building your life of prayer.

What follows is what I learned about prayer from Lehman Strauss' Sense and Nonsense in Prayer, a book I rather enjoyed reading. Please keep in mind as you read that much of this review is biographical and refers to my life from February 2003.

1. God is silent when sin breaks the communion between Him and the believer (pp. 20-24, 49, 64-65, 101).

Believers are not only united with Christ, but John 15:1-8 teaches that they also have a special communion with Him (pp. 63-68). But, while the believer’s union with Christ will never change, their sweet communion with Him can be broken. Believers can erect “a barrier” (pp. 21, 101) or put an “obstacle” (p. 49) or “cut the lifeline” (p. 21) between them and God by sinning.

Experientially, I knew this. There have been times where the weight of my sin was so heavy that it felt like God was far away from me. However, I did not know of any biblical support for my feelings, which left me confused until Strauss’ biblical references on the separating effects of sin hit me squarely on the chin (see Ps 66:18; Isa 1:13-15; 59:1-2).

Understanding that “[I] am responsible for God’s silence” (p. 21) is driving me to seek a deeper level of righteousness. Taking this principle seriously, I am currently tracking someone down who I sinned against many years ago to ask her for forgiveness so my prayers will “accomplish much” (Jas 5:16).

2. There is a direct correlation between the believer’s concept of God and his prayers (pp. 35, 39).

In the context of praying in Jesus’ name (pp. 35-41), Strauss asserts that “prayer rises or falls with one’s concept of Jesus Christ” (p. 35), a principle that would have been even stronger had he incorporated verses like Hosea 4:6; 6:6 and Jeremiah 4:23 into his discourse.

While I generally agree with this statement, I would clarify it by saying prayer rises or falls with the believer’s concept of God because, as Strauss teaches later in the book (pp. 120-21) we do not pray only to Jesus, but to all the persons of the Trinity. He goes on to say that anyone “who holds a light view of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot have a worthwhile prayer life” (35).

The believer who does not know what Jesus is like cannot pray to Him as they ought. He is not able to trust Him freely, or love Him deeply, or ascribe to Him the glory He deserves. After a while, these prayers disrespect the King, making it so that the ignorant believer has “no right to expect God to answer his prayers” (39).

Because of this principle I am now incorporating the Bible into my prayers by meditating on a verse of 2 Timothy every day before praying. The verse I turn over in my mind than becomes my springboard into praise/thanks, confession, etc. This way, I am learning about God as I pray and therefore, I am able to pray according to that knowledge.

3. It is “rude imposition” (p. 58) to ask God for anything without an attitude of thanksgiving (pp. 57-62).

Asking God for anything must be saturated by praise/thanksgiving for everything. I grew up ignorantly treating God like a cosmic bellhop who was supposed to jump at my requests. It was only in the past few years that I realized I deserve nothing good from God and therefore, “whenever [I] approach God for anything, [I] should not fail to thank Him for those blessings and mercies [I] have already received” (pp. 58).

According to Psalm 100:4, the right way to approach God’s throne is with praise/thanksgiving and blessings. This biblical teaching in Strauss’ book and the discipline of daily prayer has taught me that my prayers are very self-centered.

For instance, when I was in 2 Timothy 2:25 a few weeks ago I desperately cried out to God for my grandpa’s salvation after my grandma died. However, my prayers of praise/thanksgiving for his receiving Christ still lack the same fervency and urgency of my entreaties for his salvation (prayers God graciously answered in December 2006).

Therefore, Strauss’ insights have been driving me to begin my prayer time with praise/thanks to God for an attribute of His character related to the verse I am studying in 2 Timothy (e.g., mercy in 2:25) as passionately and intentionally as I petition Him.

I'll finish this book review in the next post.

Three Martyrs in Turkey

I want to thank James White for posting this story, which the BBC gives just the facts about, concerning three Christian Bible publishers who were tortured before being murdered by their Muslim captors.

Dr. White also posted on this article, which is an unedited English translation from the terrorist forces in Iraq.

Please take the time to read these articles, and add the persecuted church in Muslim lands to your prayer list.

Praying for Non-Christians

Do you pray for specific unbelievers to be saved?

After reading a short section of Augustine's Confession, I was struck with these words that I hope to incorporate into my prayers for unbelievers (if you like, read it in context here ch. 8, para. 12):

"It was pleasing in Your sight to reform my deformity, and by inward stings You didst disturb me so that I was impatient until You were made clear to my inward sight."

I want God to "disturb" the unbelievers I pray for, along with convicting them of "sin, righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8) and putting gospel-sharing believers around them so that He will be made clear to their inward sight, something I think only happens after salvation (cf. Romans 1:18-23, 8:5-8; 1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 4:17-18).

The Pastor's Public Prayer

As you can see on the right, one of the books I'm currently reading is Charles Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students. While I've loved the book so far, I must admit at the outset that when I saw the chapter entitled "Our Public Prayer" I was not excited in the least to read it.

However, like King David I stand rebuked and corrected. This was a great chapter. In fact, it was so good I thought I'd share some of his almost 150 year old insights with you.

He begins by asserting what I think would be a controversial subject in our day, the fact that listening to a sermon is an act of worship:

"if the observation be meant to imply that the hearing of sermons is not worshipping God, it is founded on a gross mistake, for rightly to listen to the gospel is one of the noblest parts of the adoration of the Most High. ... True preaching is an acceptable adoration of God by the manifestation of his gracious attributes: the testimony of his gospel, which pre-eminently glorifies him, and the obedient hearing of revealed truth, are an acceptable form of worship to the Most High, and perhaps one of the most spiritual in which the human mind can be engaged" (59-60).

I'm sure many in our day would disagree with him because, sadly, the last thing they hear is true preaching so they can't possibly imagine that what they hear can equate with worship.

His purpose in giving this lecture to his pastor's college students was to caution them "against spoiling your services by your prayers" (60). So, to accomplish this goal Spurgeon gives 17 instructions for public prayer. I'm just going to deal here with some of the highlights, which will make this--I hope--applicable to pastors and non-pastors alike.

In #2, he tells his students why public prayers can become so empty:

"The secret is that we are not so really devout at heart as we should be. Habitual communion with God must be maintained, or our public prayers will be vapid or formal. If there be no melting of the glacier high up in the ravines of the mountain there will be no descending rivulets to cheer the plain" (61).

In #3, he argues for a "heavenly frame of mind" in prayer saying:

"In supplication we are peculiarly before the throne of the Infinite, and as the courier in the king's palace puts on another mien [= a facial expression] and another manner than that which he exhibits to his fellow courtiers, so should it be with us. ... we must put our shoes from off our feet, for the place whereon we stand is holy ground" (61, 62).

My favorite part of the chapter, favorite because the same thing rubs me the wrong way, is caution #6, the avoiding at all costs of "an unhallowed and sickening superabundance of endearing words," by which he means:

"When 'Dear Lord,' and 'Blessed Lord,' and 'Sweet Lord,' come over and over again as vain repetitions, they are among the worst of blots. ... The strongest objection exists to the constant repetition of the word 'Lord' ... The words, 'Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Oh Lord!' grieve us when we hear them so perpetually repeated. ... God's name is not a stop-gap to make up for our want of words. Take care to use most reverently the name of the infinite Jehovah" (63).

I'd never thought of this before, but what he says in #9 is quite intriguing. I'm not sure I agree with what he says here, but his argumentation above leads to the conclusion that:

"...it is my solemn conviction that the prayer is one of the most weighty, useful, and honourable parts of the service and that it ought to be even more considered than the sermon. ... Let the sermon be slurred sooner than the approach to heaven" (65).

Throughout the chapter, I marked out important quotes and what I called "Keys to Prayer," which are:

1. "Remember the people in your prayers, but do not mould your supplications to win their esteem; look up, look up with both eyes" (62).
2. "Better far, however, for us to amend our own blunders than find fault with others" (66).
3. "You cannot pray too long in private. ... The more you are on your knees alone the better" (68).
4. The pastor is to pray the congregation "into a good frame of mind" and not "out of it again" by droning on and on and on (68).
5. "It is necessary in prayer to draw near unto God, but it is not required of you to prolong your speech till everyone is longing to hear the word 'Amen'" (69).
6. "I feel, my brethren, that we ought to prepare ourselves by private prayer for public praying" (77).
7. To help your prayers, memorize "the Psalms and parts of Scripture containing promises, supplications, praises, and confessions," and he'd add make sure to memorize them correctly (69-74), "such as may be helpful in the act of prayer" (77).

I conclude with what I thought applicable to my own heart and life. As I read these I asked myself "Does this describe you? Do you want it to? Do you not want it to? What are doing now to make sure it describes you in the future if not now?":

1. "Praying in the Holy Ghost is not universal among us, neither do all pray with the understanding as well as with the heart" (60). -- What about me?
   
2. Concerning Jesus' prayers, "they so impressed his disciples that they said, 'Lord, teach us to pray'" (61). -- What about mine?
   
3. "Habitual communion with God must be maintained, or our public prayers will be vapid or formal" (61). -- Are my prayers vapid or formal?
   
4. "...beware of becoming rhetorical to please the listeners" (62). -- Do I do this?
   
5. "'No man in his time spoke with such evidence and power of the Spirit'" (67). -- Do I want this said of me? What am I doing so that God would be pleased to have this be said of me?
   

Call to Prayer

Alister Begg just announced here that he has prostate cancer.

Please pray for wisdom in treatment options, a speedy recovery, and grace to grow from this experience.