Grayson Pope 12/13/18 Grayson Pope 12/13/18

Adorn Yourself with the Peace that Passes Understanding

In Psalm 131, David shows us how he was able to calm and quiet his soul and find the peace that passes understanding.

I careened into the driveway and slammed the engine into park. My breathing was shallow and quick. I was hot and sweaty and felt like the car was closing in on me. I flung open the door and hung my legs out, hunching over on my knees.

What is happening to me? I wondered. I re-traced my day, realizing I had lost myself in a mental spiral about my career. I knew I would soon be looking for another job, though I didn’t know what kind, if I would have to move my family, or what that would even look like.

Fortunately, I was seeing a counselor around that time. I told her what happened, and she asked about my prayer life. “Huh?” I said, confused. “Your prayer life. How is it?” she replied.

Ugh, I thought, knowing it was basically non-existent. “It’s not very good,” I told her.

As we talked, I realized that as my anxiety increased, my prayer decreased. As my inner world became noisier, I filled the prayer space with podcasts, music, and audiobooks—anything to keep me from dealing with my thoughts.

And it was ruining me.

HEARTBURN

The more I hid from my thoughts, the more I felt like David in Psalm 39:

I held my peace to no avail, and my distress grew worse. My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned . . .

I’m guessing you’ve felt the same before. You tie your stomach in knots while planning your next move. You’re not sure if that school is right for the kids: They might excel academically, but what about their influences? You’re wondering what’ll happen if you take that job: Will my family be upset? Will we regret it in a year? You feel exhausted even when you aren’t doing anything physically strenuous. You’re depleted, anxious, uneasy, discontent.

David was no stranger to these emotions. Before he was crowned king, he spent years on the run from Saul, who wanted him dead because Saul knew God had promised David the throne. At one point, David took to hiding in caves. Alone in those damp, dark caverns, he surely had to ask God, What are you doing? I thought I was supposed to be king, but here I am hiding from a madman. Will this ever end? How long, O Lord?!

THE LONGEST PSALM TO LEARN

I wouldn’t be surprised if David eventually worked himself into a tizzy like I did that day in my car. But David didn’t have a counselor to calm him down, so what did he do? He wrote this prayer:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

It may not look like much at first, but Psalm 131 is one of the finest gems in all the Psalms. “It is one of the shortest Psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn,” wrote Charles Spurgeon.

He’s right. I stumbled onto this psalm during those days of inner turmoil and it became a balm to my heart, soul, and mind. These three short verses reached down and plucked me from the cave I was hiding in.

Much like the other Psalms of Ascent, this song starts low but rises to great heights. It can take a wild-minded person and subdue them into an unhurried soul. And it starts with humility.

I DON’T WANT TO BE KING

David starts his appeal by admitting he has been humbled. Verse 1 shows the future king brought low by years of scrambling and surviving. His heart was no longer set on the throne. His eyes stopped gazing up as he daydreamed of ruling. He quit trying to figure out what only God can know.

David rightly connected his heart, eyes, and soul, for “What the heart desires, the eyes look for. Where the desires run, the glances usually follow.”[i]

God wanted David gazing up not at the throne, but at him. So it is with us. God wants us peering up with anticipation, but he wants our gaze fixed on him, not the things of this world.

Too often, I want to understand how the puzzle fits together. I want to know why things happen. I want all the information. But my eyes can only be one place at a time. When I’m fixated on planning my steps, I miss the God who establishes them (Prov. 16:9).

A humble and lowly heart is the beginning of sanctification. God works not with a heart of stone, but with a heart of flesh, softened and made malleable by being brought low. And what starts in the heart continues into the soul.

BE STILL MY SOUL

In verse 2, we see the result of David’s humbled heart—a calm and quiet soul. But this tranquil state didn’t happen on its own. David says, “I have calmed and quieted my soul.” It was an act of the will; in fact, it was a deliberate submission of his will before the Lord.

The word translated calmed can also be rendered composed. “To compose your soul means literally to level it. [To] bulldoze the building site,” writes David Powlison. “To quiet your soul means to silence the noise and tumult. [To say] ‘Sssshhh’ to your desires, fears, opinions, anxieties, agendas, and irritabilities.”[ii]

David stopped trying to control the uncontrollable, quieted his manic thoughts, and was left with a peaceful soul.

A peaceful soul is only possible when it has been hushed into submission. This surely rubs us the wrong way, but David gives us a word-picture to explain. He has calmed and quieted his soul “like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

As a father of four, I’ve learned that an unweaned child frantically roots around for milk when they’re anywhere near their mother. When it comes time to wean the child, they cry their little hearts out, breaking their mother’s in the process.

But the mother stays the course because she knows it’s necessary if the child is ever going to go on to solid food. After a while, the child moves on and is no longer overcome by their former desire. A weaned child can simply enjoy being in his mother’s lap, and this satisfaction is not a matter of food but of the heart.

This is a picture of David’s humbled heart. This infantile contentment leads to a parental concern for others, as seen in verse 3.

WAIT WITH HOPE

A humbled heart is freed to love and care for others. “Pride dies as the humility of faith lives,” writes Powlison.

As David’s pride died, his humble faith began to live, and the overflow of his contentment was to plead with his people not to make the same mistakes. “O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore,” he says.

Stop pursuing impossibilities and start pursuing certainties. Hope in God, who we know is unchanging and good and loving. Don’t get impatient and move forward without him.

Eugene Peterson paraphrased verse 3 this way: “Wait, Israel, for God. Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always!” A humble heart and submissive will allow us to wait with hope. Hope for the next phase, the next doctor’s appointment, the next meeting, the next day, even the next life. That hope then feeds and sustains humility in our hearts and helps us see the wisdom of submitting our souls to the God who formed our innermost parts (Ps. 139).

“When we cease to hanker for the world we begin hoping for the Lord,” wrote Spurgeon. The only way to cease longing for the world is to pick up our cross daily and follow the Lord of hope. That daily dying requires a humble heart, a submitted soul, and a patient hope.

THE PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING

Once I realized I was ruining my soul by trying to control the uncontrollable, I calmed and quieted it instead. I memorized Psalm 131 as ammunition against my anxious thoughts. I fasted from podcasts and other audio while running or walking in the mornings. I deleted social media from my phone and blocked it in my browser.

I was back behind the wheel one morning when I realized I could feel the silence in my soul. I wasn’t inundated with anxieties. I was calm. I was quiet.

I wish I could say that tranquility has lasted, but I’ve relapsed many times since then. I am calmer and quieter than I’ve ever been, but I have a long way to go in turning over my heart, eyes, and soul to the Lord. Maybe you do, too.

If so, David’s last line in the psalm can bring us comfort. Linger over these words: “O believer, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.”

Spurgeon wrote that Psalm 131 is like a pearl that will beautifully adorn the neck of patience. Be patient, brother. Be patient, sister. Hope in the Lord and adorn yourself with the peace that passes understanding.

[i] Charles H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David: Explanatory Notes and Quaint Sayings on Psalm 131, http://www.romans45.org/spurgeon/treasury/ps131.htm.

[ii] David Powlison, “’Peace, be still’: Learning Psalm 131 by Heart,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. 18 No. 3, Spring 2000, https://www.ccef.org/wp-content/uploads/archive/sites/default/files/pdf/dp_psalm131_1803002.pdf.

Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of four, and the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing, check out his website or follow him on Twitter.

Zach Barnhart 12/4/18 Zach Barnhart 12/4/18

God In Our Waiting

Paul once said he had learned the secret of contentment, but he never had to shop at a grocery store. Everyone has their hang-ups, and this is one of my many. Every time I walk through those automatic doors and grab a shopping cart (or “buggy” where I’m from), I know I’m entering a minefield of frustration and impatience.

It's like the engineers who designed the shopping carts didn't consult with the engineers who designed the width of the aisles to allow two shoppers to pass with ease. Some shoppers seem to think their carts are holograms and can be walked through as if they were immaterial. As I shop, thoughts run wild in my head:

Why do five people need to be looking for spices the moment I need to be? Who had the bright idea of putting water pitcher filters in the hardware section? Who goes through self-checkout with 35 items at DMV-level speed?

My shopping experiences sometimes morph into moments of inner rage. I don’t want to be this way.

I want to be grateful I get to shop for food at all, with little concern about having enough to pay for what I need.

I want to see people as God sees them, but then someone forgets how to use their credit card in front of me. It’s a trivial example of a deeper reality of my humanity.

Waiting is not easy.

ALREADY, NOT YET

Paul wrote, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom 7:18). Many theologians have ascribed Paul’s reflections here to the Christian experience. Regardless of what Paul specifically meant in this instance, the sentiment itself could describe how Christians often feel.

We are thankful for the gospel’s promise of adoption and grace extended toward sinners like us (Eph 1:5-6), but we are discouraged when our flesh continually presumes on the riches of his kindness (Rom 2:4). We love the thought of receiving “new wine,” but this old wineskin of a body seems to be the wrong place for it (Mk 2:21-22). We live as a “new creation” right here and now (2 Cor 5:17), but a day will come when we are made new, indeed, sinless (Rev 21:5).

Here lies the already-but-not-yet reality of the Christian life, and the answer is not very satisfying: wait.

Why does God make us wait, specifically as it relates to the presence of sin in our lives? Isn’t he aware of how much we hate waiting? Hasn’t he seen us on the interstate or getting off a plane? We’re living in a push-notification, fast-food, tweet-able, convenience-store world; isn’t it about time he catches up with the rest of us and stops the waiting already? Hasn’t it gone on long enough?

Our microwaves and two-day shipping services have conditioned us to believe that waiting is wasting. But God never wastes our waiting.

LEARNING THROUGH WAITING

In fact, it’s only through our waiting that God can teach us certain aspects of himself. There is a reason God has not eradicated the reality of sin yet in us. To make us wait is not to punish, so much as it is to demonstrate and instruct. There must be something redemptive about waiting, as difficult as the tension might be, for God to deem it necessary for each of us.

Psalm 130 is a window through which we see the goodness of waiting and the “okay-ness” of the already-but-not-yet tension that marks Christian living. This psalm is recognized by Bible scholars as one of the seven Penitential Psalms. It's found right in the heart of the Songs of Ascent, a collection of laments, praises, and prayers that frame a sort of “pilgrim’s progress” toward right worship of God.

There's an emphasis on both the individual and communal aspects of sin and penitence. Therefore, this psalm has something pointed to say both to the Church at large as well as to the individual Christian when it comes to sin and hardship and how they relate to our waiting. In particular, it offers four reminders for the person facing sin and hardship.

1. God meets our misery with mercy (Ps. 130:1-2)

Our Father loves us too much to shield us from being brought to the depths. He is not like the over-protective parent who works tirelessly to keep his children free from struggle. We cannot know we are empty until we truly feel it. He will never coerce us into the wrong decision; rather he knows that it is in the depths that his children abandon all attempts at quick fixes and self-help, and turn their gaze upward.

This first stanza is the first of three instances where the Psalmist uses both “LORD” (Yahweh) and “Lord” (Adonai) to describe God. “Yahweh” was considered too holy of a name to speak when referring to God, and “Adonai” was often used in its place.

But the two names have specific and differing points of emphasis regarding the character of God. “Yahweh” is often used in Scripture to point to the covenant faithfulness of God toward his people, while “Adonai” is often used when describing the power and sovereignty of God.

In verses 1-2, God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that God is both faithful and sovereign in hearing our prayers. Our prayers do not fall on apathetic ears or into incapable hands. He is attentive to our cries for help from the depths of our sin. He mercifully ordains our misery, that he might display his power and faithfulness to us.

2. God meets our confession with forgiveness (Ps. 130:3-4)

One of the main reasons many Christians struggle with confessing wrongdoing is that it is simply humiliating. We feel more exposed than the Emperor with his new clothes, like a tabloid will be telling the world in bright and bold letters what we have done.

But as the psalmist recognizes, we are all exposed in the end. Why should we fear confession when we have all fallen short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23)? In verses 3-4, God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that God is both faithful and sovereign in spite of our personal sins.

When we confess our sins, God clothes us with the garments of salvation (Isa 61:10). It is only through the way of confession that we come to understand being forgiven. And even more so, God allows us to go through the difficulty of confession “that [he] may be feared.” When we confess our sins, God will manifest his forgiving power in our lives, which will spark worship in our hearts.

3. God meets our hope with promises (Ps. 130:5-6)

Our only hope of being rid of the battle with sin once and for all is if God makes it so. It is hopeless for us to attempt in our own selves to finally eliminate sin. God must intervene, and therefore we must wait.

The psalmist says in our waiting for the Lord, we must hope. The way Scripture talks about hope is not the same way the world talks about hope. The world’s hope is frail. It's quasi-confidence, with little to bank on other than chance. I hope the Bears win tonight. I hope I have studied enough. I hope life slows down soon.

But the Christian hope is not a shot in the dark. It is grounded not in sheer luck, but in a person. And not just any person, but Yahweh and Adonai Himself. God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that our hopes aren’t hanging in the air. God not only hears us and forgives us but he has also given us his Word to form our hope.

He is worthy of being trusted with our hopes because he will do what he says he will do. His Word itself is power (Rom. 116), and therefore guarantees it.

4. God meets our world with redemption (Ps. 130:7-8)

The hope we're guaranteed is redemption. God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) are not only applied to us in an individual sense but in a communal sense as well. Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, but he’s more than that. He is also our shared Lord and Savior.

Sin has affected us not only as individuals but also as a community. The Fall ushered in a host of fault lines and distortions in our hearts and in our world. But through the cross, redemption is available to those who trust in him.

And, get this: it’s coming for the world God’s people live in, too. There is “plentiful redemption” available to the community and the nation of Israel, an inside-out “making all things new” that we await (Rev. 21:5).

AND NOW WE WAIT

Waiting isn’t easy. No one said it would be, not even Jesus. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world” (Jn 17:15).

Jesus’s plan for our growth is not escaping or fleeing—it’s going through the refining fire. It’s being exposed of our inabilities, confessing our need for God, trusting that his Word is worthy of our hope, and anticipating the work he intends to do in us and around us. It’s all bound up in the psalmist’s words: “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits.”

Perhaps our best shot at living a life of gospel witness is to choose the way of waiting. To slow down and ignore the shortcuts, to stay the course and fight our sin, to hold fast to his Word, and to endure in the world he is making new. Like watchmen in the black of night, we know our task during the dark is hard, but the dawn of morning is on the way.

The waiting will be worth it.

Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.

Grayson Pope 11/13/18 Grayson Pope 11/13/18

The Hazardous Work of Discipleship

I was slumped over my computer triaging my inbox when a knock broke my concentration.

“There’s a guy asking to speak to a pastor. He’s . . . well, he’s crying. Can you go talk to him?”

I said sure, and inhaled a long, slow breath as I prayed over what lay ahead.

He was sitting with his back to me when I arrived. I recognized him. He thanked me for seeing him, his head slightly bowed like he was in the principal’s office.

He wasn’t sure how it happened. Things had gotten out of hand, one thing had led to another, and somehow he had spent the night in jail. The details were fuzzy. Their flesh wounds were not.

“Something’s got to change with me,” he said. But he had no idea what that meant. “I don’t want it to go on like this. What do I do?”

This is the hazardous work of discipleship. The part no one prepares you for.

when you don’t know what to say

I intentionally say it’s the hazardous work of discipleship—not the pastorate—because sooner or later every disciple-maker finds themselves in conversations they weren’t prepared for. These conversations are loaded with questions that don’t have easy answers and are smeared with the filth of sin.

“When someone’s life is falling apart, we need to offer robust truths that stand the test of time.”

In times like these, disciple-makers need something substantial to grab hold of and to offer to drowning disciples. Flimsy Christian phrases about “seasons of life” and “God having a plan” simply won’t do.

When someone’s life is falling apart, we need to offer robust truths that stand the test of time—truths like those in Psalm 124.

Dangerous Discipleship

Written by David likely after a time of great onslaught and suffering, this psalm “better than any other describes the hazardous work of all discipleship and declares the help that is always experienced at the hand of God,” wrote Eugene Peterson.

The first five verses declare the dangers of discipleship:

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters.

Where would we be without God? In every time and place, the church has faced physical or spiritual persecution, and sometimes both. Beatings, torture, marginalization, spiritual warfare, lust, greed, death; these are commonplace among God’s people.

What believer has not known a threat that rose so steadily and powerfully around them that they thought they might be carried away by the flood? What believer has not known the suffocating pressure applied by people bent on demeaning or destroying their character?

“If it weren’t for an almighty, all-powerful God we would surely be carried away by the raging waters; we would surely be swallowed up.”

But it is in these moments, at just the right time, that our Lord comes to the rescue. “Imagine what would have happened if the Lord had left us, and then see what has happened because he has been faithful to us,” wrote Charles Spurgeon. If it weren’t for an almighty, all-powerful God we would surely be carried away by the raging waters; we would surely be swallowed up.

“This psalm, though, is not about hazards but about help,” Peterson writes. “The hazardous work of discipleship is not the subject of the psalm but only its setting.” The psalm now turns to what happens in such a hazardous setting.

Why the Caged Bird Sings

After calling us to look back and see the Lord’s rescuing hand, David beckons us to celebrate our escape by magnifying the Rescuer.

Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped!

When all our friends and help have evaporated and all hope is lost, then God breaks the snare and sets us free. Our deliverance comes by the hand of God, so we must thank him properly, for he snatched us out of danger like a helpless mouse in the snake’s fangs or a bird who narrowly escapes the snare. “We rob [God] of his due if we do not return thanks to him,” wrote Matthew Henry. “And we are the more obliged to praise him because we had such a narrow escape.”

Spurgeon, in his commentary on these verses, lingers on the bird and snare imagery:

“Our soul is like a bird for many reasons; but in this case the point of likeness is weakness, folly, and the ease with which it is enticed into the snare. Fowlers have many methods of taking small birds, and Satan has many methods of entrapping souls. . . . Fowlers know their birds, and how to take them; but the birds see not the snare so as to avoid it, and they cannot break it so as to escape from it.”

We are helpless, like a caged bird, as much as we wouldn’t like to admit it.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a poet born to emancipated parents in June 1872. He went on to become one of the first influential African-American poets in America. In his poem titled “Sympathy,” he writes of the desperation of being another man’s property:

“I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore — When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!”

Though we are not enslaved to other people today, we have all been slaves to sin (Rom. 6:16). But if you are in Christ, the gate of your cage has burst open and you have been set free! Spurgeon writes,

“Happy is the bird that hath a deliverer strong, and mighty, and ready in the moment of peril: happier still is the soul over which the Lord watches day and night to pluck its feet out of the net. What joy there is in this song, ‘our soul is escaped.’ How the emancipated one sings and soars, and soars and sings again.”

Brothers and sisters, rejoice at your rescue and freedom in Christ! God has snatched you out of the darkness and brought you into his marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). He has grafted you into his family, making you his very own son or daughter (Rom. 11:17). Who is this God who rescues sinners and adopts them as his own?

The Lord Who Made Heaven and Earth

Recently I was teaching a class on what the Bible says about immigrants and refugees. My wife walked in a few minutes late after dropping our kids off, so she sat at a table in the back with one other woman. We paused for discussion and they got to talking.

My wife discovered the woman was here as a refugee after fleeing persecution for her Christian faith in Eritrea. We asked about her family. One of her brothers-in-law is in prison for his faith; the whereabouts of her mentally ill brother are unknown, she told us through tears.

The next day my wife wanted to text her and let her know we’re praying for her. But what do you say in a situation like this?

My wife sent her Psalm 124 and told her we were thanking God that she escaped and was able to come to America. The psalm meant so much to the woman that she read it to a group of Eritrean ex-pats who pray regularly for their country, then they prayed the song for their loved ones back home.

OUR CREATOR AND COMFORTER

The final verse of Psalm 124 tells us, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Yahweh, the great “I Am,” is our rescuer. He is our strength and shield, our shelter from the storm. He is the omnipotent, omniscient one who created heaven and earth. He is not a weak god incapable of saving but an Almighty God with whom all things are possible (Matt. 19:26).

This is who our help is in! Our Creator is our Rescuer. “He made heaven for us, and he will keep us for heaven,” Spurgeon wrote. He will not abandon us forever, though for a short time we may suffer. This is the God—the truth—to whom we point desperate disciples in times of great need and trouble. This is the truth to whom we point ourselves when in desperation or despair.

When we praise the God who made heaven and earth, we start to see our lives in the proper perspective. We begin to realize God is shaping and forming us through our suffering into men and women who look like his Son. When we worship God as Creator, we increase our trust in God as Comforter.

Brianna Lambert 11/11/18 Brianna Lambert 11/11/18

God Rest My Soul: Finding Rest in Service to the Master

After a few minutes of scrolling through social media or flipping through the news, it’s easy to feel overcome by evil in our world. It attacks us on all fronts—politics, natural disasters, crime, injustice, disease—all the way down to our own sin-scarred relationships. As we leave the safety of our slumber each morning, we’re jolted to the reality that sin is not only present and working to make us weary but is entirely against us.

In moments like these, Psalm 123 is a welcome reminder to our tired hearts. When faced with difficulty, these four short verses reminded the Israelites of their true hope and shifted their eyes to the Lord, their Master. We may not be on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as these Israelites were, but the reminder that we are not our own is one we can find great hope in singing each day.

The Hands of Our Master

Perhaps it seems strange that hope can be found in realizing we belong to someone else. Evidence of abusive leadership surrounds us. We’re familiar with jobs where management seems concerned only for themselves, or we’ve worked in environments of instability and poor leadership.

Yet even in these difficult environments, we can find hope. This is exactly what the Israelites did to bolster their strength:

Behold, as the eyes of servants

look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a maidservant

to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the LORD our God,

till he has mercy upon us. (Ps. 123:2)

Male servants looked to their master for direction; maidservants to their mistress. Servants looked to their master not only for work but for protection and livelihood. The psalmist juxtaposes these cultural realities for Israel with their need to gaze toward the Lord their Master and his great mercy.

Along the same lines, we can look with joy at our master because he has shown us his good and perfect character. When we look to his hand, we turn to the hand that has provided for his creation since the beginning of time. He not only supplies for our physical needs (Ps. 104:14) but he revives our hearts by the daily bread of his Word (Deut. 8:2-3). The hand of our Master doesn’t demand anything he won’t graciously supply, because he is the source of strength in our lives (Phil. 4:13; 2 Pet. 1:3).

Like any good master, God not only supplies us with our physical needs and strength but also our safety. Israel was told repeatedly throughout their history not to find protection in their own strength but to rest in knowing that the Lord was with them (Isa. 41:10; Josh. 1:9). He is still this same refuge and strength to our weary hearts today (Ps. 46:1). Amidst a world of uncertainty and change, we can find hope that we are firmly held in the grip of our Father’s hand (John 10:28). If we are in Christ we have been sealed by the Spirit (Eph. 1:13), and we can be confident that the Spirit will carry his work of sanctification in our lives amidst the difficulties (Phil. 1:6).

As we meditate on being a servant of God, we free ourselves from the immense pressure to provide in our own strength and guarantee our own safety. Psalm 123 reminds us we were never meant to carry these burdens in the first place. We are the servant of our Master and it’s his provision and protection we should run to.

Looking to His Hand

The reality of our servanthood also gives us peace of direction. Our world is full of overwhelming choices. It beckons us to tone our bodies, increase our platform, eat organic, travel the world, and make more money. We can often feel guilty for all we can’t do and all we can’t fix. Yet while the world spins with demands, we find peace looking to the direction of our Master.

It is God who “sits enthroned in the heavens” (Ps. 123:1). It’s his directing hand we wait upon. This humble recognition allows us to serve in the tasks God has given us today with faithfulness. We will still grieve over sin and difficulties, but when we look to our Master’s direction, we remember to lay aside our expectations to be the savior we will never be.

Instead, we can walk with faithfulness in the works God has appointed for us (Eph. 2:10), whether that be in taking up a client’s case or taking up a neighbor’s garbage. Looking to the Father’s hand gives dignity to our work, whether that work is preaching a sermon or wiping a child’s face.

Recalling the purpose of serving our Master redirects the heart to a higher perspective and shapes the heart’s posture. The difficult co-worker, the frustrating neighbor, or the needy children are no longer obstacles to our own anxious plans; instead, we can see them as the specific direction of our Lord. We can love her today, forgive them right now, and serve their needs this morning for our Master, who has asked us to.

The Master of Mercy

While we find hope in the God who supplies grace, protection, and direction—these would be nothing if our Master lack mercy. And it’s mercy that the psalmist cries out for and waits expectantly, “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt” (Ps. 123:3).

Matthew Henry remarks on this verse that “God’s people find little mercy with men; but this is their comfort, that with the Lord there is mercy.” The mercy of God is not like the mercy of people. It is far greater! His mercy is our hope as we enter each day. The mercy of the Lord holds us during a day of battling the ornery, sinful will of a stubborn child; it’s our hope when we feel the sting of a friend’s words or when we feel the weight of sorrow as we turn on the news. And this mercy is our only hope when we stand face-to-face with the sin in our own hearts.

We are servants who have failed and servants who will fail again, but our Master is merciful. Mercifully, he provides for our life and breath, and he provided us with eternal life in his own Son (Eph. 2:5). Not only does he give us direction, but he cares enough in his mercy to correct us and keep us from returning to the filth of sin (Heb. 12:6; cf. Jer. 5:10). He is merciful to protect us; more than that, he is merciful to forgive us. When we had nothing but rebellion to offer, Christ in his mercy forgave (Eph. 2:1-10; Tit. 3:5).

LOOKING TO HIS MERCY

Time and time again, the Israelites saw the sovereign provision and steadfast mercy of their God. Despite their utter revolt, their Master would have compassion, restore their fortunes, and gather them back to himself (Deut. 30:3). This song is the hope our hearts need to sing each day!

How has the Lord shown himself good today? How have we seen his faithfulness amidst our specific difficulties? Amid the sinfulness of our world, the answer is not in finding our independence, but instead resting as a dependent servant.

The weight of sin may bear down on us, but let’s lock our eyes on our Master’s hands. Let’s preach his unchanging promises to our hearts, search the scriptures for his faithful character, and commit to the tasks he has given us today.

Above all, let’s join the psalmist in not only waiting for mercy but actively searching for it. Let’s linger in the mercy that is great enough to provide hope for the darkness of sin inside of us and the world around us.

When our soul has had more than enough of conceited disdain (Ps. 123:4), we look to the hands of our humble Master whose scars hold our hope—and the unfailing mercy we need.

Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She has contributed to various online publications such as Morning by Morning and Fathom magazine. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.

Jen Oshman 11/4/18 Jen Oshman 11/4/18

God Will Help You

I once survived a season of life when three of my daughters were ages three and under. It was nonstop sippy cups and naptimes and potty training and diaper changes and “Hey, that’s mine!” and “Share that toy right now or Mommy is going to take it away” My husband was pastoring a community of young adults at the time; he was gone almost every night. My best friend’s husband was a youth pastor and he also was gone almost every night. Her three kids were each two years ahead of mine. So nearly every evening was spent at the park, where two moms wrangled a total of six kids, running the children into exhaustion until we moms crossed the bedtime finish line.

Because my best friend was just ahead of me in the parenting marathon, I had the benefit of watching from behind how she handled the ages ahead. Each evening at the park I saw how she dealt with the fours and fives and sixes of her own kids.

As I watched her interact with her kids at the park, here’s what I heard her say over and over and over: “God will help you.” It was their family’s refrain, her motherly chorus.

A PARENTAL REFRAIN

“But, it's my turn!” God will help you.

“She pushed me!” God will help you.

“No! I don’t want to go home!” God will help you.

It probably sounds a little silly out of context like that. Of course she said many other instructive and helpful words. Of course she gave commands, doled out discipline, lavished warm hugs, and physically removed her children from harm.

“God will help you” wasn’t all she said. But she always said it.

I heard this truth so often that I began picking it up, too. It stuck in my mouth and sunk into my heart because nothing is truer. It’s no pithy, “Be nice . . .” or, “You can do it!” or, “Just obey, kid.” It’s real, robust truth.

There’s nothing I could say to my child, age one or twenty-one, that would be truer than the statement, “God will help you.” It turns out my friend was following the example of the Israelites.

Where Israel’s Help Came From

“God will help you” is the banner of Psalm 121, a Psalm of Ascent, which was corporately rehearsed by the Israelite pilgrims as they ascended the hill to the temple mount in Jerusalem for feasts three times a year.

Together, they sang, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1-2).

As they climbed, they confessed. The Lord—and the Lord alone—was the source of their help. He was there, in the temple above, and they looked up, seeking him, and remembering how he made heaven and earth and that he would help them, too.

Their confession of need and call for help morphed into a reminder of truth to each other. They moved from speaking in the first person to the second person, and proclaiming to each another,

“He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night” (Ps. 121: 3-6).

It’s as if the pilgrims were first reminding themselves, and then one another, this is who our God is! He is our helper. He made the earth. He keeps our feet on the path. He never sleeps. Day and night he keeps us. God will help you.

The benediction is future-focused: “The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Ps. 121:7-8).

Those ascending the hill were rehearsing these truths truth to one another. The Lord has kept you. He is keeping you. He will continue to keep you. He’s not changing. God will help you.

Where Does Our Help Come From?

My friend knew that her children needed the Lord’s help. She knew they were like the Israelites, helpless on their own. She knew that they most centrally needed help from God above, their maker, sustainer, and redeemer.

She knew that if she only demanded good, achievable behavior, then she would raise pharisaical children—children who would become adults who would rely on their own efforts to produce outward results rather than inner change. She knew their human efforts would eventually ring hollow, that they would be unable to do more or try harder. She rehearsed to them from a young age the truth that they would need God’s help. She taught them their help must come from the Lord.

We live in an age of self. Self-help, self-empowerment, do-it-yourself. We want to be self-made men and women who reach down and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

In this self-absorbed and self-reliant age, we need to be reminded that this same reality applies to us. You and I need to return to the truth of Psalm 121. It is God who made us. It is God who made heaven and earth. It is God who keeps us. It is God who will help us.

Self-esteem psychology says look within. The psalmist says look up.

Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28-30). He harkens back to the psalm. The Son’s offer of rest reminds us that he is God saying to us, “I am the maker of heaven and earth. I hold your feet to the path. I keep your life. I never sleep. Come to me.”

Good News for a Weary Age

What do we need help with right now? Where are we striving after with our own efforts and energy? Where have we run dry, come to the end of ourselves? Where do we need to stop looking within and start looking up?

Both this psalm and the gospel of grace say, “behold” (v.4), not “behave.”^[i] The call of Scripture is to look up—look up to where our help comes from. It comes from the Lord.

God, through his Son and by his Spirit, will help you.

The words “God will help you” never grow old and never fall short. They are true and they are able.

To the woman in my church whose husband is unfaithful: God will help you heal. To the young man oppressed by addiction: God will help you be free. To the adult daughter whose mother is dying: God will help you let go. To the pastor whose faith feels burnt-out and dry: God will help you be refreshed. To the lonely single: God will help you rejoice. To the poor, the sick, the needy, the sad, the desperate: God will help you.

As you and I ascend, as we climb, as we journey like pilgrims in this life, let’s remember Israel and her song. Let’s lift our eyes to the hills. Let’s remember that God made heaven and earth. He holds our feet to the path. He does not sleep. He will keep us. He delights to help his children.

In this age of self, let’s return to the rhythms of the covenant community ascending the temple mount. Let’s confess that we are not enough on our own, but the Lord is. Let’s remind ourselves and each other, God will help you.

Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters and has served as a missionary for 17 years on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado where she and her husband serve with Pioneers International, and she encourages her church-planting husband at Redemption Parker. Her passion is leading women to a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview. She writes at www.jenoshman.com.

[i]I am indebted to Jared Wilson’s book The Imperfect Disciple for this phrase.

Jeremy Writebol 10/28/18 Jeremy Writebol 10/28/18

The Blessing of Being Wrong

“YOU’RE WRONG!” Several middle school students I once ministered to competed in regional debate tournaments twice a year. They were well prepared on the topic of debate: they knew the rebuttals and oratory tactics to land their points, and how to demonstrate the logical flaws in their opponents’ arguments. Neatly dressed and armed with little index cards of research—and cut-throat for winning the competitions—these students were preparing for debating and defeating contrasting world-views.

When it was time for a tournament, I would famously offer any student debating in the competition $20 in hard cash if they would, in the midst of their debate, stand up, point at the other side, and yell “YOU’RE WRONG!” and then quietly sit down again, thus ending the debate.

Whether they wanted to avoid the scolding and potential embarrassment of losing the tournament for such a brash tactic, or whether they were unsure of my ability to pay, I don't know. But no one ever took the risk.

Hearing “YOU’RE WRONG!” is an awakening. I for one don’t like it. But I need to hear it. “You’re wrong!” forces me to look at my situation or point of view and assess where I may have missed a turn. Sometimes, being told I’m wrong leads me to hunker down into my convictions and stand my ground. No matter what, it’s always an awakening moment. There’s a blessing in being wrong.

Painfully Aware

The poet of Psalm 120 had a moment of awakening: “In my distress I called out to the Lord.” The weight of discovering he’d been wrong was startling and traumatic; it crushed his soul. He felt misery and anguish, a blend he called “distress.” Before we can appreciate the psalmist’s awakening, we have to understand his story.

Three times a year the Hebrews were required to leave their homes and journey to Jerusalem holy days of festival celebration. Their pilgrimage was an embodiment of the life of faith. Moving to Jerusalem was “ascending the hill of the Lord,” all the while asking, “Who can do this?” (Ps. 15; 24). As they traveled, a liturgy took shape to remind and provide “a guidebook and map” for the journey of faith, as Eugene Peterson would say. This liturgy was captured in fifteen Psalms—Psalms 120-134—affectionately known as the “Psalms of Ascent.”

Every so often I realize that an important date is so quickly approaching that unless I shift into high gear, there is simply no way I’ll be prepared. I’ve never waited to buy Christmas presents until Christmas Eve, but there have been a few close calls for birthdays and other holidays. The thought of missing the date gives me a much-needed awakening.

I imagine there were some busy Jewish families that would share that moment of sheer fright when they realized the festival was merely a day or two away. Pulling together a few essentials and getting out of the house was hectic and hurried. The frustration of living so far away and making the journey is heard in the psalmist’s cries: “I have stayed in Meshech . . . I have lived among the tents of Kedar,” as if to say, “I am so far from the city, so far from God’s place, so far away from being who I should be.”

The journey to Jerusalem was hard and perhaps painful, but necessary. Realizing our distance from God can get us moving. We hear “YOU’RE WRONG!” and realize we’re so far in the wrong direction that unless we get moving right now, we’ll never catch up. Welcome to repentance.

Becoming aware of his distance from God was the only way the psalmist could be changed. Awakening to his reality was the only way he could be moved. This is exactly what God wants for us.

The Refreshment of Repentance

Repentance is described by many as an emotion. We often hear of repentance in terms of sorrow, anguish, or contrition. While the awakened sense of wrongness that comes with repentance does bring true sorrow, repentance isn’t merely an emotional response. In the psalmist’s case, there is anger at his own decisions, disgust over his apathy, and desire for a new life. But his emotions don’t tell us he’s repenting. His actions do.

The singular verb, “called,” of Psalm 120 tells us how to respond to God when awakened to our sin. It directs us to action. After hearing “YOU’RE WRONG!” he realized the sinfulness of his hometown had worn off on him, and he called out for help: “In my distress I called to the Lord.”

Left to himself, he’d always be stuck, always be distant from God, always among those who love war. That was the painful realization of his heart and soul. He longed for peace, for justice, and for nearness to God.

Repentance must be an action for us too. We have restitution to make, changes to implement, steps to take. But repentance cannot and will not be real and refreshing until we make the first step—crying out for help.

So many self-help systems are geared around willpower; washing your face, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and other simple strategies. But growing near to God though takes another path—helplessness. The false notion that “God helps those who help themselves” falls short. God helps those who cannot help themselves, and so they cry out to him in desperation.

The refreshment of repentance is not in the actions we take or the sorrow we feel. The refreshment of repentance starts with the awareness that “YOU’RE WRONG!” coupled with the cry “GOD, HELP!” We can’t fix our wrongness but we can cry out for help.

Promised Reprieve

The full opening verse of Psalm 120 speaks for the whole: “I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me.” He was wrong and weary, misguided and messy. Far from home and far from God. Yet God answered him. This is the blessing of being wrong. But it’s only for those who are aware they are wrong and need some help. God answers those who realize they’re wrong and cry out to him.

What resounding hope and help this is for stagnated and sedentary disciples like you and me! No matter how wrong we are, no matter how painful the awareness of our sinfulness, God is there to meet us when we cry out. He’s there to bring a blessing when we are wrong.

Instead of self-importance or righteousness or religious performance, all we have to offer God is a cry for his help. He meets all our weakness with all his strength. This is the promise for those of us who hear, “YOU’RE WRONG!” and answer, “Yes, it’s true! God help me!” For those who will cry out in need and desperation for help and rescue from their sin, God promises he will answer. His answer gets us moving. His grace silences the shout of “YOU’RE WRONG” and tells us “Come, home!”

What are we waiting for? The loving, open arms of the Father are open to us. Let’s allow the painful awareness of our sin to urge us to cry out for his help, and let’s start on the road to God. He’ll not only meet us on the way, but he will also bring us the whole way there.

Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and That Word Above All Earthly Powers. He writes personally at jwritebol.net. You can read all of Jeremy’s articles for GCD here.

Brianna Lambert 10/21/18 Brianna Lambert 10/21/18

3 Gifts We're Guaranteed Every Time We Pray

As a pastor in Bristol, England, George Müller made it his mission to begin and maintain an orphanage for thousands of children sustained only through prayer. Reading through his story, my kids and I have marveled at God’s provision for this man and the orphanage. Stories like George Müller’s are incredible and inspiring, but it’s so easy to remove them from our daily lives. We believe God can sovereignly do all things, but we realize we shouldn’t expect every single prayer to be answered by faith. Yet this well-meaning reminder can cause us to minimize one of the gifts we are promised as children of God.

Whether we come with the smallest troubles or we repeatedly bring the same request to the throne of grace, we can be sure that we will receive abundantly. While we may not be guaranteed our desired outcome or even an answer at all, there are three gifts we are guaranteed each and every time we pray.

The Gift of Humility

Each time we come to the King’s throne with a petition, we are gifted the chance to sit in our humility. It’s important to remember that we don’t call upon an equal to help us, nor do we come with anything to offer. We come to the maker of heaven and earth (Ps. 121:2), the God who holds all things together (Col. 1:17), and the source of every good gift in this world (Jas. 1:17). Each appeal reminds us of the division between us, the created, and God, the Creator.

And this is always a good place to sit. It is the humble who receive grace (1 Pet. 5:5). Jesus tells us it’s only those who humble themselves like children who will enter the kingdom of God (Mt. 18:3-4). If we choose to come before our Lord sparingly, we are cheating ourselves out of key opportunities to grow in humility and grace.

In his book Teach us to Pray, Gordon Smith echoes this truth saying, “In our praying not only are we asking God to change things, but we are being changed”. One of the ways we change is in our humble recognition of how God is already at work in our lives.

When I’m intentional to pray specific prayers throughout my day, I often start to notice God’s sovereign hand at work more often. Something as simple as a conversation beginning with my husband, or a moment of discipline with my daughter would have been forgotten as I went about my day. I would have continued to see them as my own triumphs or even my own luck. But instead, I see these tiny moments and am forced to realize they are not from my own hand.

Our time in prayer gives us the incredible gift of humbly gazing on God’s power, victory, and glory already present in each of our days.

The Gift of Himself

Though every request won’t be answered, as we stop to pray we get another opportunity to meditate on the abundance God does guarantee. God loves to give gifts to his children. Not only does he tell us to ask, but he tells us to “ask and it will be given to you” (Mt. 7:7). Jesus went on to tell the crowds if evil men know how to give gifts, how much more would our Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Mt. 7:11). These promises don’t mean we will get everything we want, but we know as God’s children he has promised us everything we need (2 Pt. 1:3).

Are we worrying about a child’s struggle over a school subject? God may not give them victory tomorrow, but as we pray we can remember that he does promise us the fruit of patience, a worth not based in parental merits, and even the beautiful gift of the body of Christ to help encourage and give wisdom. Are we exhausted from a burdensome season of difficulty? He may not remove every obstacle, but he does promise us the bread and water of his Word to strengthen, encourage, and revive our weary hearts.

When we offer up our prayers, we are guaranteed something incredible—we are guaranteed Jesus. And this is the gift we need every moment, in the big and small requests. We need his grace, his mercy, his comfort, and his love. And as we come to him in prayer, as sure as the rains come he will give us himself (Hos. 6:3).

The Gift of His Ear

Finally, David Mathis describes prayer in his book, Habits of Grace, as “having God’s ear,” a phrase that proves to be one of the sweetest gifts we receive as we come before the throne. It seems obvious, but the wonder of this statement shouldn’t be lost on us. If God is really the creator of the heavens and earth, we can’t help but marvel that he pays any attention to us (Ps. 8:4). Yet he does. Not only is he “the God who sees” (Gen. 16:13), who saw Hagar’s pain in the wilderness, but he is also a God who hears the cries of his suffering people (Gen. 29:33, 30:17, Ps. 17:6). Every time we pray to God, we pray to the God who listens to our cries.

Not only do we know that God listens, but we can see evidence in the Bible of how he listens to his people. For 430 years the Israelites were held captive by the Egyptians, and their cries went up to God for deliverance. The Lord responded by telling Moses, “I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel . . . and I have remembered my covenant” (Ex. 6:5). Matthew Henry notes that God is “ever mindful” of the promise he made and considers this before any merit of the Israelites’ own.

As we pray we don’t have to fear that God listens in frustration, exhaustion, or impatience. He doesn’t receive our prayers with a sigh. No, he receives them as a merciful father, who sees our union with Christ because of the work of the cross. We don’t have to ever wonder if our lack of answers are for our good because our God is ever mindful of our promised sanctification (Phil. 1:6). When we pray, God remembers us as the bride he purchased with his Son’s blood. And whether we get the answer we want or not, we can marvel in the precious gift of his compassionate and merciful ear.

Remember The Gifts of Prayer

George Müller’s orphanage was successfully funded and expanded to help thousands of orphans. Müller raised what would amount to millions in today’s dollars for his cause—and he never asked a person for a dime. Instead, he asked the Giver of all good things because Müller knew he was listening.

In the busyness of life, let’s not forget the gifts of the Father for his children that call upon his name. Yes, we may never face relief for some requests until we see his face, but our God won’t waste the in-between. We get to grow in humility, behold his working, and receive spiritual blessings in Christ (Eph. 1:3).

We have his ear—and whether we are depending on food for an orphanage, or for the grace to forgive, we will receive miraculous gifts from the Lord when we pray.

Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She has contributed to various online publications such as Morning by Morning and Fathom magazine. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.

John Onwuchekwa 8/30/18 John Onwuchekwa 8/30/18

God's Presence > God's Provision

In the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13), Jesus helps us understand where our requests should begin. After establishing that God is our Father who is as compassionate as he is capable, Jesus reminds us that God’s power aims to advance his agenda, not ours. Jesus shows us that Christian prayer begins with longing for God’s presence before his provision. All of the requests at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer are godward. Take a look: Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9–10).

This removes man from the center of the picture. It displaces our needs and desires, reminding us that the most important things about prayer are not what God gives us by way of his possessions, but what God gives by way of his presence. Throughout the Bible, the people who gain peace and security in this life are the people who long for God’s presence more than his possessions. Jesus teaches us this in his first three petitions.

First Petition: God’s Honor

“Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9) could better be translated for our ears, “I pray that your name will be honored.” In the Old Testament, when people lived against God’s will and design, their wicked deeds were said to profane the name of God.

To pray “hallowed be your name” means being concerned more with the advancement of God’s reputation in the world than your own. It’s praying that God himself would protect his name from being defamed and obscured, so that people don’t accept a wrong picture of him or reject a distorted picture of him.

God’s name is holy. Nothing can change that reality. We’re simply asking him to work in the world so that his name would be treated as such.

The glory of God has come into the world in the person of Jesus. “Hallowed be your name” therefore means praying that everyone would respond appropriately to Jesus. The world we live in is as unimpressed with God as someone who stays seated when the bride walks down the aisle. This is because they’re blinded to the glory of God as revealed in Jesus (see 2 Cor. 4:3–6).

So we begin prayer by pleading that God’s glory would be seen and submitted to in the person of Christ. The beauty of this petition is that we’re asking God to do what he already wants to do.

This request sets the tone for the rest of the prayer. All that we ask of God must flow from this all-consuming desire.

Second Petition: God’s Kingdom Come

“Your kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10) is a prayer for the success of the gospel in the world. We know the gospel has changed us, so we plead for God’s kingdom to be extended through the gospel going out to the ends of the world.

We’re tired of the world we live in, and we long for something better. We want to experience the fullness of the Beatitudes. We long to be where God’s rule is recognized and adored. God has promised this will happen, and his promise stokes our longing.

When a dad promises his daughter that he will take her to Disneyland, the child knows this trip isn’t a matter of if, but when. In her eagerness to receive the fulfillment of her dad’s promise, she constantly asks, “When are we going? You promised!” This is what it’s like for us to pray “your kingdom come.”

We cannot serve two masters. Likewise, two kings—us and God—cannot coexist. Someone’s rule and ambitions have to die. As Christians, our agendas have in fact died, and it’s glorious because ours would have killed us (Gal. 2:20). Praying “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” unifies us because it helps us long for his kingdom. It keeps us from back-biting, from jockeying for position, from longing to establish little kingdoms of our own.

Third Petition: Your Will Be Done

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10) further develops the second request for God’s kingdom to come. We long to see God reign here on earth in the same way he already reigns in heaven.

We don’t want people to submit reluctantly to God’s rule. We want them to joyfully submit because they’re convinced he is good. We pray for God’s will to be accomplished on earth however he determines, even if it means our suffering, sacrifice, and death.

Establishing God’s kingdom on earth means displacing lesser kingdoms, which is what churches do through their gospel work. Local churches, after all, are outposts of God’s kingdom. So praying that his will would be done means praying that God would continue to establish his gospel work through local churches.

This prayer for God’s presence to be seen and enjoyed is quite startling to a world that prefers for God to be an absentee Father that just sends a big child support check each month. Because we’re sinful, we would prefer God to give us our demands while demanding nothing in return. We love to set the agenda. But Jesus teaches us here that God’s presence precedes his provision. His agenda is far better than ours.

When our local churches pray and live in light of these first three petitions, it’s attractive to the watching world because we display a different picture of what God is like. It shows the world how ineffective its kingdoms are. It strengthens our witness.

John Onwuchekwa (MA, Dallas Theological Seminary) serves as pastor of Cornerstone Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Content taken from Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church by John Onwuchekwa, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187,www.crossway.org.

Grayson Pope 7/22/18 Grayson Pope 7/22/18

A Recipe for Gospel-Centered Prayer

I’m a serial people-fixer. As a pastor, husband, and father, I want to see the people I love grow in their faith, make wiser decisions, and feel closer to Jesus.

I listen to people, give suggestions, recommend books, point out errors in thinking, and help them strategize. If they just get what I’m saying and take my advice, I tell myself, then everything will be fine.

Every now and then, someone takes my advice and things get better. But other times, whether someone takes the advice or not, their life just stays the same—or sometimes gets worse.

You probably experience the same thing with people in your church or family. You feel like you listen to the same problems over and over again, and give what seems like wise counsel—but week after week, nothing changes.

When people aren’t “fixed,” I get annoyed with God or the people I’m trying to help because I followed what I thought was the right formula and it just didn’t work.

Over the last couple of years, God has been showing me why I get so frustrated, and why my attempts to fix people keep failing. It’s because I can’t change people.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU CAN’T CHANGE PEOPLE

I can’t make someone love God more. I can’t make someone love their spouse more. I can’t even make myself do those things. That power belongs to God and God alone.

So what can we do for the people we love? Pray for them.

I know—you already know that. You understand prayer is important and it’s something we should do for those we love. But are you doing it? Are you actually praying for the people in your church or community by name? Actually begging God to change them?

For a long time, I wasn’t.

It wasn’t because I didn’t care. It was because I didn’t really know how.

Maybe that’s where you are. You love the people in your life and genuinely want them to change. You’d like to pray for them, but every time you do it seems like you’re bringing up the same minor details about their lives and asking God to make them a little bit happier.

That’s what it used to feel like to me. But one day God, in His grace, brought me to the book of Ephesians and showed me what it looks like to pray for the people I love.

PAUL’S RECIPE FOR GOSPEL-CENTERED PRAYER

In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul wrote what has become for me and many others a model prayer for those we love—people we want to see changed by the power of the gospel. I’ve come to think of it as a recipe for gospel-centered prayer. Here it is:

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe ...” (Eph. 1:15-19a)

Paul wanted the Ephesian believers to taste the fullness of a relationship with Christ. If an abundant life with Christ is the meal Paul hopes they’ll experience, his prayer is that their eyes would be enlightened to three different flavors of that meal: hope, riches, and greatness.

STEP 1: START WITH HOPE

The first ingredient in gospel-centered prayer is that the people we want to see transformed would know the hope to which they are called in Christ. That hope is eternal life in heaven and restoration here on earth. God didn’t just save us from something; he also saved us for something.

Many times, believers come to faith in Christ because they want to secure their eternity in heaven. That’s a very real concern. But at times Christians overplay the eternal aspect of salvation, leaving believers content to coast into eternity without ever realizing the fullness of life in Christ today. We should pray for ourselves and our fellow believers to see that God has redeemed our future and our present.

If people get that they will not only spend eternity with Jesus but that they can actually experience life with him today, they will live differently. The greatest acts in the history of our faith have been carried out by men and women whose hope was fixed on Jesus. If you want to see someone’s life transformed, pray for God to open their eyes to the hope to which they’ve already been called.

STEP 2: ADD THE FULL AMOUNT OF RICHES

Now it’s time to add the second ingredient: “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” The first few times I read this I totally missed whose inheritance Paul was talking about. I assumed it was referring to the believers’ inheritance, but I was misreading the pronouns. Paul prayed that the believers would know the riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the saints.

What can God possibly inherit? The hardest people to buy gifts for are those who have enough money to buy everything they want. What do you get the guy that already has everything? Here’s the crazy answer: you and me—the “saints.”

We are God’s glorious inheritance. That means God expectantly waits for the day when he inherits you and the rest of his adopted sons and daughters.

I work from home now, but I used to work in an office most of the week. My wife once told me our three children would sometimes stare out the window, eagerly anticipating the moment when I pulled in the driveway. They were longing for the moment when they could rush to the back door, throw their arms around me, and welcome me home.

Did you know that God feels that way about you?

Knowing God is giddy to spend eternity with you changes how you live and think. Pray for the people you love to truly know that love God has for them.

STEP 3: STIR IN THE IMMEASURABLE GREATNESS OF GOD’S POWER

The final ingredient in Paul’s gospel-centered prayer is “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” So many of us, myself included, feel so insignificant and powerless to do anything remarkable for God. We want to make a difference with our lives, but don’t see anything special about our skills or talents. That couldn’t be more wrong.

Right after Paul prays for his friends’ eyes to be opened to the immeasurable greatness of God’s power, he reminds them this power is the same power God “worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20).

Think about that. The power God gives to each believer is the same power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand of God.

Do you believe that same power is in you? Do the people in your church or your life think that power is in them? If you lived like that were true, how would it change your heart? How would it change the world?

Pray for those you love to realize the power of the Spirit of God. Pray they would live in the Spirit instead of just reading about him.

CONCLUSION

The three flavors of a life lived fully with Christ are the hope to which we have been called, the riches of God’s inheritance in his people, and the greatness of God’s power for those who believe.

The Holy Spirit who inspired Paul’s words knows tasting a relationship with Jesus is the only way people will ever give their lives to a relationship with Jesus. We won’t experience that relationship without a heart transformation. And we can’t experience a transformed heart without tasting the only thing which has the power to transform it.

Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of three, and the Managing Web Editor at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing check out his website, or follow him on Twitter.

Joseph Dicks 7/3/18 Joseph Dicks 7/3/18

4 Ways to Become A Role Player in Your Church

Anyone who plays or follows sports knows that it takes an entire team to win. Winning teams usually have star players and role players. A team is usually built around one or more stars, relied on to carry the squad. Role players have lesser-known yet still significant roles. They don’t receive all the credit, take all the blame or provide the most influence.

But each role player is vital to the overall success of a team. If they fail to execute their responsibilities, it makes everyone’s job harder. We often don’t realize that role players strengthen the team dynamic, not the stars. Stars have a significant impact, but without an excellent supporting cast willing to follow, sacrifice, and carry out necessary tasks for the benefit of the team, that team will either remain stagnant or eventually crumble into a rebuilding state.

Sports fans also know there’s no greater competitive experience than when your team is firing on all cylinders because everyone is doing their job. If you watched the recent demolition in the 2018 NBA Finals as the Golden State Warriors swept the Cleveland Cavaliers, you understand this illustration very well, but I digress.

A HEALTHY CHURCH

It’s no different in the church. While some may lead out front, and others help make it possible, everyone is necessary. There’s no better feeling than when your church is in sync and everyone is doing their part to make disciples. A church like this is healthy.

“Healthy" doesn't refer to numerical growth, increased staff positions, the number of ministries, even the longevity of a church. All those things are good and can be the fruit of faithful service, but they are not God-promised signs of success.

God's path to success for his church is based more on subtraction than addition. The words of Christ teach us that to gain we must lose; and to live, we must die (Matthew 16:24-26).

This means our churches should forsake worldly passions and pursue Christ. A healthy church progressively reflects the character of God through a constant dying to self so his name may be magnified.

Every church should desire to be healthy in this manner. Mark Dever draws a picture of a healthy church; “I like the word healthy because it communicates the idea of a body that’s living and growing as it should. It may have its share of problems. It’s not been perfected yet. But it’s on the way. It’s doing what it should do because God’s Word is guiding it.”

So even if it’s unpopular, uncomfortable or tedious, continue in steadfast pursuit of what Scripture calls us to in Ephesians 4:11-16, which is to equip the saints, and build up the body of Christ, until we all attain unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Now the question is, “Isn’t building up the church the pastor’s job?” Yes, but the job isn’t theirs alone. Every member is called to take part in building up their particular body. Members are meant to serve in ways that supplement the pastor’s role and make his work a joy and not burdensome.

Here are four ways to become a good role player in your church.

1. DEVELOP A PRAYING SPIRIT

We should pray for church leaders and members, always interceding on their behalf. Paul urges the church in Ephesians 6:18 to at all times make prayers and petitions for all the saints. Often, our default reaction is to criticize or complain about what goes on in the church, regardless of it is right or wrong, big or small. I’ve struggled with this more often than I can say.

However, I was convicted by the words of Puritan preacher John Bunyan, who said, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” Words, thoughts, and works will all be in vain if we don’t first seek the Lord for wisdom.

How much do our critical spirits or excessive complaints build up the church? If we reprogram ourselves to pray instead of criticizing, I believe our attitudes toward the object of our critique will change. Excessive grumbling and objection only lead to quarrels and factions.

Remember what James 4:1-3 says: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

We must be gracious and patient with leaders and other believers. We're in this walk of sanctification together. Pray with your brothers and sisters. Pray for your leaders. Let’s guard our hearts against selfish motives, discouraging words, and critical attitudes by striving to pray for one another instead of preying on one another.

2. PARTICIPATE IN CYCLES OF DISCIPLESHIP

Members should disciple one another, walking alongside each other, teaching and showing each other how to walk faithfully with the Lord. Titus 2:2-8 speaks of older men teaching younger men, and older women teaching younger women. The mature need to invest in the less mature. The Christian life is a life of discipleship, from every angle.

I was oblivious to the concept of discipleship during my younger days in the church. No one ever approached me about reading the Bible together or going through a Christian book. The shallow depth of my Christian relationships was reached between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Sundays.

I had a tough and lonely walk for some years. But years down the road, the Lord placed some godly men in my life willing to teach me how to be a godly man. And it was from that experience that I learned what true discipleship is.

It’s imperative that members do their part by intentionally seeking out others known for their wisdom and maturity, asking him or her to spend some time discipling them. Or seek out a younger, less mature Christian, maybe someone on the fence about membership, and similarly engage them.

Studying the Bible together is a great starting point, but as the relationship builds, begin to step it up a notch and ask tough questions regarding personal holiness, practice confession and repentance, and pray for each other. These practices will eventually lead to mutual Christian accountability (Proverbs 27:17) and a stronger walk with the Lord. As each Christian is built up, so is their church.

3. PRACTICE EVANGELISM

In many churches, stagnant growth is often a mystery or a blemish. Despite faithful preaching of the Word and a pastor living above reproach, some churches remain stuck or are on the decline. The causes can’t always be determined, but one diagnosis often is lack of evangelism by members. The sermon is not, and should not be, the only means of evangelism going on. Every member should be involved in personal evangelism. Scripture mandates that every Christian be equipped for the work of the ministry (Eph. 4:12). Pastors are responsible to equip the saints. If they do the training, members are responsible for receiving that training and putting it into practice.

4. CELEBRATE EACH OTHER

Individually and collectively, public adoration for the faithful living and gospel witness of members should regularly happen. Our churches should thank God for members showing hospitality in their homes, doing mission work, sharing the gospel at their jobs or with their neighbors, serving in children's ministry, and starting ministries or small groups.

Don't be afraid to publicly affirm, with wisdom, the Christian maturity that particular members are displaying, for the blessing they have been to the body. 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4 says, "We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.”

Cultivating the practice of celebrating the work of God in the lives of members will help us think more of others than ourselves and give glory to God.

PLAY YOUR ROLE

Church members who pray, disciple, evangelize and celebrate are blessings to their bodies and pastors. There are other ways to faithfully serve your local church, but for those unsure where to begin, let these four areas be your starting blocks to becoming an excellent role player. This will help strengthen your church and make for a great team win for the Kingdom of God.

No matter what your role is, if you play it well, you will help build up your church until it reaches its full potential.

Joseph Dicks was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, and is a master of divinity student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an assistant campus missionary with the Kentucky Baptist Convention. He is married to Melanie, and is a member of Mosaic Church Lexington. Follow Joseph on Twitter.

David McLemore 6/10/18 David McLemore 6/10/18

Believer, Your Leaders Needs Your Prayers

I saw him stretched out on the floor behind the curtain, his face touching the concrete. The worship music blasted through the speakers while the few congregants sang in response. His sermon was ready, but he wondered what difference it made. The church wasn’t growing. He wasn’t paid. He faced pressure from his friends, his staff, and himself.

Can God do anything through me? he wondered.

Gospel ministry is a glorious weight, and every leader needs help holding it up. Paul, recounting the opposition and sufferings he faced, made a desperate plea to the Corinthians: “You must help us by prayer” (2 Cor. 1:11).

It's hard to ask for prayers from the concrete floor, but your ministry leaders have been there. Some might be there now.

They might not ask, so I’m asking on their behalf: Brothers and sisters, pray for your leaders.

THE LORD’S WORK IN THE LORD’S WAY

Francis Schaeffer opens the fourth chapter of No Little People with these lyrics from a song sung during his seminary graduation:

From ivied walls above the town

The prophet’s school is looking down.

And listening to the human din

From marts and streets and homes of men:

As Jesus viewed with yearning deep,

Jerusalem from Olive’s steep,

O, crucified and risen Lord,

Give tongues of fire to preach thy Word.

It’s fitting for a seminary graduation. Leaders want a burning desire to fuel the Word of God coming from their mouths. But it doesn't take long to realize inner desire isn’t enough. The flesh is no help at all (John 6:63). Only the Holy Spirit can spur you on and sustain you at the same time.

The Spirit’s leading of Jesus during his earthly ministry was the model for how he guides all God’s leaders along the same path: suffering, rejection, crucifixion, resurrection.

You must march through the valley of the shadow of death to find the green pastures beside still waters, the place all leaders want to take their people. It’s here, on resurrection’s path, that ministry makes its mark.

Schaeffer understood the difficulty: “Because the world is hard, confronting it without God’s power is an overwhelming prospect. But tongues of fire are not to be had simply for the asking. The New Testament teaches that certain conditions must exist. In short, they come down to this: we must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.”

With your expectations, conversations, and suggestions, are you helping your leaders do it God’s way? Or is the pressure to perform so high that they’re tempted to take shortcuts to appease the crowd?

Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is a treacherous road. Relying on God alone isn’t more comfortable for your leaders than it is for you—but the church depends on their faithfulness.

A PRAYING CHURCH

Who is sufficient for these things? Not peddlers of God’s word, that’s for sure. Trusting one’s ministry to God alone is for sincere men and women who have been commissioned by God, in whose sight they speak in Christ (2 Cor. 2:17). It's a high calling—and a difficult one.

But difficulty and glory are not enemies of God. Jesus said of Paul, "I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). It was foolishness to the world, even as it was the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:25). Paul’s response was not gloom but joy (Phil. 4:10–13).

But Paul knew Christianity was not his personal religion. It was Jesus’ kingdom movement, calling Jew and Gentile alike into a new family. In a family, everyone’s needs are shared. To fight the good fight, Paul knew he needed his family’s help. He needed a praying church.

To do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way, every leader needs a praying church. I've never met a leader that is too encouraged. Gospel leaders do not assume they are sufficient on their own.

It's likely no one is more discouraged about the state of your church than your leaders. You don't have to tell them everything that's wrong. They know and feel much of it already.

The church must realize it fights on spiritual ground. Maybe your leader needs practical tips—but not before they need your prayers. No ministry is more needed, and no ministry more overlooked, than the ministry of prayer.

A SPIRITUAL BATTLE

“Imagine,” Schaeffer said, “the Devil or a demon entering your room right now. You have a sword by your side; so when you see him you rush at him and stab him. But the sword passes straight through and doesn’t faze him! The most awesome modern weapon you could think of could not destroy him. Whenever we do the Lord’s work in the flesh, our strokes ‘pass right through’ because we do not battle earthly forces; the battle is spiritual and requires spiritual weapons.”

The flesh, the world, and the devil conspire against every leader. They need an army of holy warriors who pray with gospel defiance against the enemy, declaring that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4).

We cannot take a sword to a demon fight, but that doesn’t mean we have to rely on our fists. Scripture tells us we can put on the armor of God himself (Eph. 6:14-17). The individual Christian must put it on, but it must be used for the good of those who lead.

The key that upholds it all is prayer: “Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Eph. 6:18). A personal prayer life keeps God’s armor on the body.

To that end, Paul says, “Keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak” (Eph 6:18-20) .

God’s armor is not just for solo missions. It is for the front-line battle as we stand firm in one Spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the sake of the gospel (Phil. 1:27).

When you pray for your leaders, you are playing no small part in the story of redemption. God uses good soldiers, and he knows every one by name (John 10:3).

MOMENT-BY-MOMENT RELATIONSHIP

Like all Christians, every leader needs a moment-by-moment relationship with God. In our day of professionalized ministry, many assume closeness with God is a given. But talking about God is not the same as walking with God, and the closer you are to ministry, the wider the trap grows. The enemy loves a church leader who treats God as a theory.

Paul fought against theorizing God. He knew the gospel was of first importance (1 Cor. 15:3). Knowing Jesus and him crucified mattered above all (1 Cor. 2:2), walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him was the only life worth living (Col. 1:10).

He also knew to endure to the end, he needed the prayers of his people. So when he wrote to his churches, he asked for prayer to stay faithful (Eph. 6:20), to be delivered (Rom. 15:31, 2 Thess. 3:2), to bear fruit (Col. 4:3, 2 Thess. 3:1).

What Paul wanted most—what every gospel-centered leader wants most—is to serve the Lord with gladness, resist temptation, and do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. If Paul needed the prayers of his people, don’t your local church leaders need yours?

You can put your leader on the floor, or you can lift them up. Which will you choose?

“Brothers and sisters,” Paul pleaded, “pray for us” (1 Thess. 5:25). Your leaders plead the same.

David McLemore is the Director of Teaching Ministries at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons.

Mike Phay 6/3/18 Mike Phay 6/3/18

Lessons From a Prayer Warrior

This is not an article for spiritual giants who spend three hours a day on their knees, attend every prayer meeting, and pack each spare moment with petitions and praises. If this is you, feel free to stop reading now (and pray for the rest of us).

This is an article for those of us who think the word “PRAY” is the most jarring four-letter word uttered in the church. It’s for those of us who struggle to pray, who are afraid to pray, or who feel guilty about our crummy prayer lives.

I get it. I struggle to pray, too. I don’t consider myself a prayer warrior or a prayer giant. I’m more of a prayer toddler.

But I want to learn to pray. Not set any prayer records—just learn to pray. I want to be a man known for prayer. When you don’t know how to do something, you ask an expert. So that’s what I did.

EAVESDROPPING ON A SAINT

A few years ago, I approached one of the matriarchs in our church, a woman twice my age who is considered a prayer warrior both inside and outside our church. “Will you meet with me—regularly—and teach me how to pray?” I asked.

She looked pleased and surprised. “Well, I don’t know about teaching you anything. But how ‘bout we get together, and we’ll talk to Father? I’d like that.”

For a few years she and I met for two hours every week. Talking and praying. Praying and talking. There was no formal agenda, no didactic teaching, no lectures. Just a man enjoying the privilege of being invited into this saint’s conversation with God.

ALWAYS A STUDENT

God taught me some crucial things about prayer in those days, things I’m still learning:

Prayer is about relationship. As Jesus often pointed out, God primarily identifies himself to us as “Father,” which is how my prayer mentor addressed him and talked about him—constantly. His presence as her Father was real. Even in her late 70s she prayed like a child sitting in his lap. She was always overjoyed to be with him. There was nothing better for her.

She has a childlike faith—the kind Jesus told us is a prerequisite for citizens in his kingdom. This has been an important and growing reality for me to grasp. As Paul E. Miller wrote in his excellent book, A Praying Life, “Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God.” When I struggle with prayer, I wonder if I’m even thinking of God at all.

God cares about everything, no matter how small. Because she knew him intimately as “Father,” my prayer mentor would speak with him about everything. Most topics were fairly mundane. I was expecting her to lead me in high and lofty prayers of vision and outreach and mission and world-moving.

Her prayers extended half a world away—to her kids and grandkids in another state, to a missionary in Uganda—but even then, her prayers had dirt on them. They were earthy; smeared with fingerprints and splattered with mud.

But if God is our Father, doesn’t he care about these intimate details? Won’t he meet us in them? And when he does, won’t we truly know he cares?

When I get home from work, my three- and six-year-old girls, can’t wait to tell me about the cat that was in the backyard, the Calico Critter toys they were playing with, and the bird nest they created in their nature study. I can simply write them off and call them to more “important” things, or I can take their hands, get down on my knees, and revel in their childish simplicity.

Thinking God too important for seemingly “simple” things is actually a subtle form of pride. We consider ourselves too important to give him our attention and time—too self-sufficient to ask him for help. But Jesus said to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

Heaven comes to earth in our prayers, therefore our prayers ought to be earthy. Because we are involved in conversation with the God who sovereignly oversees everything, you better believe he cares about what’s important to you and me.

Real, deep prayer is biblical prayer. My prayer mentor is a woman immersed in God’s Word. Her prayers drip with the Bible. She devours it. She spends time in it for hours each day. She speaks and prays the Word.

I’ve known younger, less mature believers with active prayer lives. They talk with God throughout the day. They ask him for simple things and see him answer their prayers. They claim to hear from him, but oftentimes their claims seem unfounded and “out there.”

I have noticed that these dear friends—though attuned to God’s presence in everyday life—haven’t become deeply attuned to God’s Word. They have yet to mature through time spent listening to God in the Scriptures. As they do so, I can’t wait to see the kind of prayer warriors they will become.

My prayer-warrior mentor often claimed to hear from God. But when she told me what she heard, it was so intertwined with the Scriptures it was hard to doubt she was hearing from God Himself.

God often uses unanswered prayers to redirect my prayers toward his heart. My mentor has said numerous times: “Father loves to give good gifts” (see James 1:17). All gifts from God are good—even ones that are painful, unwanted, or unexpected—because they are from a good Father. When we learn to thank God even for the difficult stuff, we come closer to his will.

A friend was recently experiencing a high level of anxiety due to some unusual circumstances. I had been praying the issue would be resolved and her anxiety lessened. When I heard the issue was not resolved as hoped, I was reminded her anxiety would probably increase. Here’s where God took me in prayer: “Father, please use this delay and disappointment as an opportunity for continued growth in trusting you with her anxiety.” I don’t know if I would have seen the situation in the same way years earlier.

Some people pull more weight with God than others. This isn’t a very popular sentiment in our egalitarian society. It doesn’t mean some have better standing before God; we all stand in Christ’s righteousness. It simply means prayer warriors are those who have spent a lot of time with their Father.

As a result, they are increasingly able to love the things he loves. When they pray “your will be done,” they really mean it—they want his will to be done more than anything. And they have a clearer understanding of what that will is, which makes their prayers to the point and more powerful.

Their prayers are answered more often because they’re praying along with God’s heart: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16b). When my prayers go unanswered, I find it’s largely because they were the wrong prayers to begin with. Not that I shouldn’t have prayed them (we have to start where we are), but we become giants in prayer when we are able to untangle our wills from our prayers and instead wrap them up in our Father’s.

FIND A PRAYER MENTOR

I learned all of these things from time spent with a person, not an article or a book. In the end, I have only one piece of advice about prayer: find a prayer mentor.

Look for someone who loves Jesus intensely. They probably have gray hair. Their Bible will be well-used and worn-out. Most likely, they won’t think they can teach you anything.

Don’t let that stop you because they’ll teach you about the most necessary thing (see Luke 10:38-42).

Mike Phay serves as Lead Pastor at FBC Prineville (Oregon) and as a Staff Writer at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He has been married to Keri for over 20 years, and they have five amazing kids. You can follow him on Twitter (@mikephay) or check out his blog.

Gordon T. Smith 4/12/18 Gordon T. Smith 4/12/18

3 Forms of Prayer That End Up Forming Us

Prayer has a formative impact on our lives—the manner or form of our prayers actually shapes the contours and character of our lives. So frequently, it would seem, our prayers begin with our experience: something in our lives occasions a particular prayer, typically a petition or request. And thus the content of our prayers is determined by what is happening in our lives. But perhaps the reverse should actually be the norm. Without doubt, the circumstances of our lives will inform our prayers. But perhaps what should be happening is that our prayers would inform our lives, that our praying would alter our living, that our prayers would shape the contours and content of our daily experience.

PRAYER AS FORMATION

In this way of living and praying, we would allow our deepest convictions—our faith and our theological vision of God, ourselves, and our world—to inform our prayers and be the means by which we know the transforming power of grace in our lives. More particularly, we would choose that the reign of Christ—the kingdom of God—would increasingly be that which defines our lives, our ways of being, living, and responding to our world. We would find that the salvation of God is not merely something that God has done for us—in Christ, on the cross—but also something that God is doing in us.

To this end, our prayers play a crucial role. Indeed, if transformation does not happen through our prayers, it likely does not happen. This is why it is so crucial that we teach new Christians how to pray and that in our patterns and approaches to congregational life we are consistently coming back to the fundamentals of prayer. And this is why all of us, older and newer Christians alike, are always coming back to the basics of the form and structure of formative prayer.

When we pray “thy kingdom come,” should not our prayer be an act of recalibration? Could our praying be an act of intentional alignment and realignment? That is, in our prayer our vision of the kingdom purposes of God will be deepened and broadened; we will be drawn into the reality of Christ risen and now on the throne of the universe. And thus through our prayers we not only pray for the kingdom but also come to increasingly live within the kingdom, under the reign of Christ.

This last point is crucial. So frequently we pray as though God is passive and we are trying to get God to act. But could it be that God is always active? And that in our praying we are aware of how God is actually always at work, bringing his kingdom into effect, and we are seeing and responding to the kingdom even as we pray “thy kingdom come”? In the process, we are increasingly more aligned and in tune with the kingdom, more and more living our lives, individually and in community, in a manner that consistently reflects, in word and deed, the coming kingdom of God.

3 MOVEMENTS IN OUR PRAYERS

Can we do this? Certainly, but only if we are intentional. We need to consider the merits of a very focused and purposeful approach to our prayers. Yes, there is a place for spontaneity. And most certainly there is a place for freeform prayers where we express to God our immediate thoughts and feelings. But when we speak of our formation in Christ and our participation in the kingdom—where the kingdom of God increasingly defines us more than anything else—we should perhaps be focused and purposeful. We can consider the value of consistency and even routine, an approach to prayer that has an order to it. We can even speak of a liturgy, meaning that our prayers have a regular pattern to them so that over time our hearts and minds and lives are increasingly conformed to the very thing for which we are praying.

In this kind of intentionality it is very helpful to think in terms of three movements in our prayers, three forms of prayer by which we respond to and learn to live in the reality that Christ is risen and active in our world—that in and through Christ the reign of God is coming. Three movements, with an intentional sequence.

First, we give thanks. We see and respond with gratitude to the ways in which God is already at work in our world and in our lives. We begin here. We begin by seeing the evidence of the reign of Christ—the ways that God is already at work in our lives and in our world. And we give thanks. We pray “thy kingdom come” in a way that not only acknowledges that God is already at work but celebrates and gives thanks for this work. We cannot pray “thy kingdom come” if we are not grateful for how the kingdom has come and is coming. Thanksgiving is foundational to the Christian life and thus foundational to prayer.

Second, we make confession—the essential realignment of those who long to live under the reign of Christ. We pray “thy kingdom come,” and very soon we also pray—if we follow the sequence of the Lord’s Prayer—“forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” We practice confession. It is clear from Scripture that when the kingdom is announced and when the kingdom is at hand—present, in our midst, and recognized—we respond with confession (Mark 1:15).

Confession is essential if we truly recognize and believe in the coming of the kingdom. If we have kingdom eyes, the genius of our response is that we see where there is a disconnect. We see and feel that our lives are not being lived ina way that is consistent with the kingdom. We cannot pray “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” unless and until we see the ways that our lives are not lived in consistency with the will of God. And so, recognizing the kingdom, we repent: we practice confession. Repentance, then, is not merely a matter of feeling bad about something we have said or done, but rather an act of intentional alignment—or better, realignment—with the coming of the reign of Christ.

And third, we practice discernment—considering where and how God is calling us to speak and act as participants in the kingdom of God. We pray “thy kingdom come” as those who are also called to be full participants, in word and deed, in what God is doing in the world. And so when we pray we of course ask—or better, discern—how we are called in our lives to witness to the kingdom.

We are not merely observers; we are engaged. We are invited—more, actually called as agents of God’s purposes in the world. Our words and our deeds matter. In some mysterious way, even though God and God alone brings about the kingdom, our lives witness to the kingdom—our words, our work. And so when we pray “thy kingdom come,” we also necessarily must pray, How, oh Lord, are you calling me to make a difference in your kingdom purposes for our world?

Gordon T. Smith (PhD, Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University) is the president of Ambrose University and Seminary in Calgary, Alberta, where he also serves as professor of systematic and spiritual theology. He is an ordained minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance and a teaching fellow at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of many books, including Courage and Calling, Called to Be Saints, Spiritual Direction, Consider Your Calling, and The Voice of Jesus.

Joey Zorinsanga 10/26/16 Joey Zorinsanga 10/26/16

Prayer is the Most You Can Do

One of the things that have always captivated me about the life of Jesus is his constant communion with the Father. In one instance, Luke writes: “When Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples came and said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples’” (11: 1). Jesus chose a certain place to pray, but it was not the marketplace. He had a habitual communion with the Father. If Jesus (who knew no sin) needed to pray “in a certain place,” away from the distractions around him, how much more do fragile and weak people in modern societies, with all of its distractions, need to pray?

Prayer wasn’t a religious to-do checklist for Jesus. For him prayer was like breathing. This was not an isolated event. Elsewhere Matthew 14: 13 tells us: “[Jesus] withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.” And Mark 1:35 says, “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”

Or Matthew 14: 23, “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.”

Again Luke 6:12 says that, “He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.” Prayer is communion with the Father. Jesus lived a prayer-saturated life during his ministry on earth. So when the disciples saw him having communion with the Father in this way, they approached him.

Lord, teach us to pray

Looking up to the Lord as a much better (or more qualified) teacher than John the Baptist, they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The disciples had seen John teaching his own disciples to pray, and they had seen Jesus praying to his Father earnestly.

Therefore, when they saw the communion that Jesus had with the Father through prayer they wanted that more than anything else. Ironically, they did not ask, “Lord, teach us to preach, teach us to lead, teach us to disciple and do ministry” although they did all of these things later.

Their ministry would flow out of their relationship with the Father in prayer. And so the first thing Jesus taught was this: “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name” (Lk. 11: 2). We call God “Our Father” by His Spirit because of Jesus who went to the cross. And so Jesus taught his disciples big God-sized global prayers. He taught them to pray for the hallowing of God’s name. And he taught them Kingdom-centered prayer (“Your Kingdom come”).

But why aren’t many of us confident in prayer? In Matthew 7: 9-11, Jesus awakens the disciples and us with a simple logic, when he said,

“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Idols prevent us from praying

Sadly, many of us do not feel the need to pray until disaster strikes in our countries or homes; or unless cancer, physical debilitation, or great destruction shatters our pride to our great need of God. More often than not, it’s our idols that prevent us from praying earnestly, because idols distract us from the more important things— like prayer.

The greatest barriers to living prayerful lives are not always bad things, but good things.

Bad things tend to make us pray, but not good things because bad things are not our most darling idols– good things are. And these good things are blessings from God that we look to in order to give us comfort, security, safety, convenience and ease. We can pull off all our organizations with managerial skills because we are a pragmatic people. But prayer is spiritual so we find it to be the hardest thing to do.

Prayer, as simple as it sounds, is not simple for the vast majority of Christians when it comes to actually doing it, because everyone struggles to pray. Sometimes, we don’t know how unspiritual we are until we start to pray. I sometimes struggle to have prolonged periods of tarrying in prayer unless there’s a desperate need.

By God’s grace, I try to make it a habit to pray silently while in the train, workplace and leisure. And though early morning prayers are often a struggle, the time I enjoy it most is at dawn. Nothing is as revolutionary in the Christian life than to become a person of prayer. But unless we put in prayer times as part of our daily schedule in our calendar, it will become harder for us to pray.

A common widespread misconception

In times of trouble, I’ve often heard people say: “The least we can do is pray.” I have probably said it too. But as a pastor once said: prayer is not the least we can do, but the most we can do. What does prayer do? Prayer tears down our self-reliance, and increases our reliance and confidence on God. As Martin Luther (the reformer) said:

“None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience. It is a great matter when in extreme need to take hold on prayer.”

And he went on to say,

“I know, whenever I have prayed earnestly, that I have been amply heard, and have obtained more than I prayed for. God indeed sometimes delayed, but at last He came.”

Grace frees us from legalistic praying

Again, we pray not to become a righteous person, but because we are already declared righteous by God in Christ (2 Cor. 5: 21). We pray not because we have to, but because we want to. Resisting legalistic praying comes from an overflow of our confidence in Christ. God’s grace frees us from legalistic praying. Grace frees us to come boldly before the Father and confess our sins to one another (Jas. 5: 16). God’s grace frees us to pray for the hallowing of God’s name, as opposed to Pharisaical public praying that seeks to be seen by men (Matt. 6: 5). We pray fervently not to become accepted by God, but because we are already accepted by him in Christ. We pray not to feel better about ourselves and look down on others who don’t pray, but we pray so that we can lift up others who are in need, with love and humility.

Furthermore, we pray because we’re desperately in need of God’s intervention. In Luke 9: 40 a father who had a boy with an unclean spirit approached Jesus with a great sense of helplessness. He said, “I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” The disciples were not able to do anything with this particular case and neither could us. Later on in Mark 9: 28-29 the disciples asked Jesus in private why they couldn’t cast it out, and he replied: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

The point is this: we are helpless and powerless over the kind of work that God is calling us to do. We’re constantly in the middle of warfare (Eph.6). So even in our disciple making, no matter how many hours we spend with people, we cannot aid the work of the Spirit in a person’s life without prayer. This is why: in all that we do, praying is the most we can do.

The purpose of earnest prayer

I Peter 4: 11 says, “Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything (i.e., in all our speaking, disciple-making and serving) God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

The purpose of prayer is that we may repent from self-reliance and be prevented from saying, “We did it with our strength; we were clever and bright.” Or, “We had the credentials and the educational qualifications.” Or that, “We were smart and gifted” or that, “We had the money and power backing us up.” Or that, “We had cleverly devised ideas borrowed from the corporate world.” Or that, "We had the latest strategies on how to grow church.”

We might never confess it out loud, but our attitudes and actions can betray us and reveal where our ultimate confidence really lies. The ultimate purpose of prayer is that we may serve, speak, sing, teach and lead with the strength that God supplies, so that in everything God alone may be glorified.

As Jonathan Edwards said, “There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer.” God’s purpose for us is that we get the joy of seeing him at work in the world through all of our work and prayers, and that He alone gets the glory.

God’s means of recruiting and moving workers for active service

Jesus said in Matt. 9: 37, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Japanese, for instance, are the 2nd largest unreached people group. And Jesus' solution for recruiting workers is verse 38, which says, “Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Jesus is sovereign! He is the Lord of the harvest. There is a massive need for workers and our responsibility is to pray earnestly to God to send out laborers.

There is still a need for more workers, and so great is the harvest of souls around us that no single church, no single denomination, no single organization or a small network of Christian workers can accomplish the task. There is a need for unity for a citywide, nation-wide Gospel-centered movement in Tokyo, Japan and the world.

Prayer is a God-ordained means for birthing that kind of unity and movement.

Moreover, we must also feel desperate in our prayers because there are desperate needs all around us. Desperate situation requires desperate measures and prayer is God’s means for us to feel desperate before him. But when we pray we also rejoice with confidence knowing that Jesus is Lord of the harvest. He’s the Great Farmer! It is his harvest field. The unreached peoples belong to him, and he is patient. As we look around us, and the state of our times, prayer is essential more than ever. With a great burden, Jonathan Edwards wrote in his day:

“The state of the times extremely requires a fullness of the divine Spirit in ministers, and we ought to give ourselves no rest till we have obtained it. And in order to [do] this, I should think ministers, above all persons, ought to be much in secret prayer and fasting, and also much in praying and fasting one with another. It seems to me it would be becoming the circumstances of the present day, if ministers in a neighborhood would often meet together and spend days in fasting and fervent prayer among themselves, earnestly seeking for those extraordinary supplies of divine grace from heaven, that we need at this day.” – Jonathan Edwards

All of us may not go to cross-cultural missions, though I hope many or most of us would. All of us may not be preachers, but all of us can pray “for extraordinary supplies of divine grace.” We have been given the privilege to pray. We’re told in James 5: 16, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” As a people who have been declared righteous in Christ our prayers have “great power as it is working.” How comforting it is to know that some of the most effective prayers were prayers prayed by men with nature like ours, and God answered with incomparable power.

“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not train, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (vv 17, 18).

The goal of my prayer is that God be glorified in sending many into his harvest field among the unreached people groups. Would you join us in praying for the mission fields to bear much Gospel fruit?

—

Joey Zorina is a church planter in an artistic neighborhood in Tokyo, Japan. He writes articles, essays and devotionals for Living Life, and blogs occasionally @outsidecampers and @regeneration). He asks that you please pray for them and the Japanese. You can connect with him at https://twitter.com/JoeyZorina

Brad Watson 6/20/16 Brad Watson 6/20/16

Thy Will Be Done

You don’t have to read the papers, watch the news, or scroll through social media to know this pervasive truth: the world is not as it should be. Society is not right. Culture is corrupt. Institutions are failing. The market is not moral. Humans, in our sin, are destroying the earth as fast as we can, only to be outdone by the destroying of one-another. We abuse; we steal; we kill; we neglect. Earth does not look like heaven. While Jesus prayed, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we point to the grand disparity of earth and the notion of heaven and dispute the existence of God. We often wonder: “If there is a God, when will he do something?”

This doubt transforms into one of the best prayers: “God make our world whole.”

Jesus Is God’s Will on Earth from Heaven

Jesus taught his disciples to pray these words amidst cultural chaos, on land that looked nothing like heaven. Jesus had come proclaiming and demonstrating a world of peace, without sickness, evil, or death. Fresh from petitioning God’s kingdom to come into our lives, into our communities, and into our world, Jesus emphasized this kingdom—God’s will on this earth.

In other words, the kingdom is all about God getting his way. It means God ruling with peace, justice, mercy, grace, and love. God’s will is lasting peace and abundant joy.

Jesus calls us to invoke, in our prayers, an imagination of our world looking exactly how God intended. Our minds, hearts, and vocal chords are to call on God to do and be all that he intended: “God be with us. God take charge.”

The poignancy of this line in the prayer is found in the person praying it: Jesus prays as God’s will on earth from heaven. Jesus, himself, is God’s will on earth. He is with them. He is in charge, commanding the earth, weather, and all material. Jesus is God’s will from heaven.

Paul poetically describes Christ’s laying down of all his divine attributes to take the form of man and enter humanity (Phil 2). Jesus’ birth is the advent of this prayers’ answer: God’s will has come to earth! Heaven has dipped into humanity. God is his own answer to this prayer. In Christ, God’s will is advancing on earth.

What is God’s will? Jesus came into the world to make God’s will plane. God’s will is to reconcile humanity to God. The symptoms of this will are the healing of the sick, the mending of the broken, and expelling of evil.

God’s will is to pour his love generously into the world through Jesus. His will is to defeat sin, death, and evil and make all things new by his own death and resurrection.

When We Pray, It’s a Call for Incarnation

“Prayer is a moment of incarnation—God with us.” — Paul Miller

The act of prayer, any prayer, is one that beckons the will of God on earth. This kind of petitioning is what prayer is. It’s a statement of belief, a realization of God’s presence in earth, a cry to the one who can change earth. Furthermore, prayer itself is an act of submission. Our prayers are always a petition for God to be with us. All prayer is about God and his will being made visible in our world.

Our current American prayer crisis comes, in part, from godless prayer. We don’t seek the presence of God in our lives and world. We seek God’s activity—a to-do list. We are more like the people crowding around Jesus in Mark 3:7–12 than we’d like to admit. They pressed to be close to him to use his power for their healing. Jesus flees from these people into a boat for fear of being crushed.

The people wanted healing, not a healer. They were content to use Jesus like a charm, not welcome him as Christ. In teaching us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus instructs us to welcome God with us. He teaches us to pray centered on his mission.

When we Pray, It is for Home

The gospel message of Christ’s death and resurrection is one that unifies heaven and earth. While the incarnation Christ on earth is God’s will dipping into earth, Jesus’ death and resurrection is the advancement of that will. God creates a new reality of heaven and earth in his resurrection.

“When Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, he rose as the beginning of the new world that Israel’s God had always intended to make. That is the first and perhaps the most important thing to know about the meaning of Easter…the stories of the risen Jesus have a different quality altogether. They seem to be about a person who is equally at home “on earth” and “in heaven.” And that is, in fact, exactly what they are.” — N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

When we pray, “on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for home. We are praying as refugees without a native land we can return to. We are praying for the completeness of resurrection life into our life today, tomorrow, and forevermore. We are praying for resurrection hope.

Prayer orients us toward our rest, the risen Christ whose will is on earth as it is in heaven.

When we pray, It’s for His Will

We pray as people between two worlds. We pray on behalf of the world. Our prayers are invitations to God: bring your will into our city, culture, government, and marketplace. This prayer is certainly one of trust and confidence in his sovereignty. This prayer is also one of compassion, empathy, and desperation in a lost and dying world.

We pray for his resurrection hope in every moment of death. We pray for his great reconciliation in the face of every sin. We pray for his advancement and victory over every kind of evil.

—

Brad Watson (@bradawatson) serves as a pastor of Bread&Wine Communities where he develops and teaches leaders how to form communities that love God and serve the city. Brad is the author of Raised?, Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities, and Sent Together: How the Gospel Sends Leaders to Start Missional Communities. He lives in southeast Portland with his wife and their two daughters. You can read more from Brad at www.bradawatson.com.

Phil Ryken 9/17/15 Phil Ryken 9/17/15

Grace's Humbling Necessity

From the moment we came into the world as helpless babies, right up until this exact second, we are utterly and completely dependent on the grace of God for everything we have, including life itself. What is more, if we have any hope of life after death—eternal life—it is only because of God’s free and undeserved grace for us in Jesus Christ. Until we understand this, it is impossible for us to have the relationship with God that we truly need. But when we do understand this—when we understand our absolute need for Jesus—then his grace changes everything.

PAST EXPERIENCE, PRESENT NEED

Our need for grace may seem obvious at the beginning of the Christian life, when we first put our trust in Jesus. Then we know that if there is anything we contribute to our salvation, it is only the sin that necessitates a Savior. According to the good news of our salvation, Jesus died and rose again so that in him we would receive forgiveness for our sins and enter into everlasting fellowship with the true and living God. We are not saved by anything that we have done, therefore, but only by what Jesus has done. It is all by his grace, not by our works. Yet grace is not something we leave behind once we decide to follow Jesus.Grace is our present need as well as our past experience. The gospel is not just the way into the Christian life; it is also the way on in the Christian life. We continually need to remember that God “saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:9).

In my first chapel address as president of Wheaton College I said something that took some people by surprise, maybe because it’s something that many Christians forget. I said that I don’t know of a college anywhere in the world that needs the gospel more than Wheaton does.

In saying this, I did not mean to imply that there aren’t a lot of Christians at Wheaton. In fact, every student, every professor, and every staff member on campus makes a personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to find unbelievers on campus: in most Christian communities there are at least some people who do not yet have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is not what I meant, however, when I said that Wheaton College needs the gospel. I meant that the gospel is for Christians every bit as much as it is for non-Christians. We never outgrow our need for God’s life-changing grace— the gospel of the cross and the empty tomb.

A SELF-CENTERED PRAYER

The main reason we continue to need the gospel is that we continue to sin. To experience God’s life-changing grace for ourselves, therefore, we need to recognize the deep-seated sin that necessitates our salvation.

One of the best places to see our need for grace, and also the way that God answers that need, is in a story Jesus told “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). In other words, this is a story for people who will not admit their need for grace. It is a story for us, if we are too proud to confess our sins. It goes like this:

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. - Luke 18:10–14

The story opens with a surprise, because in those days everyone knew that tax collectors did not go to the temple and did not pray. Tax collectors were employed by the Roman government, and thus they were considered traitors to the Jewish people. Many practiced extortion. Thus one preacher compared them to “drug pushers and pimps, those who prey on society, and make a living of stealing from others.”1 Make no mistake about it: this tax collector was a crook!

The Pharisee, by contrast, stood for everything that was right and good. The Pharisees were widely regarded as spiritual overachievers. They were theologically orthodox and morally devout. Possibly our respect for this particular Pharisee increases when we overhear his prayer. He comes before God with thanksgiving. He testifies that he is not an extortioner or an adulterer. Rather than taking money for himself, he gives it away to others. He not only prays, but also fasts. In contemporary terms, this man would be a pastor or a theologian—or maybe the president of a Christian college.

Yet for all his devotion, the Pharisee was not righteous in the sight of God. Why not? His most obvious problem was pride. Although he began by addressing God, he spent the rest of his prayer talking about himself. In only two short verses he manages to mention himself five (!) times: I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . . I. It gets worse, because if we translate verse 11 more literally, it reads, “The Pharisee, standing, prayed about himself,” or even “with himself,” in which case he was not talking to God at all! He did not truly ask God for anything or offer God any praise but simply reveled in his own sense of moral superiority. In other words, the Pharisee was exactly like the people listening to Jesus tell this story: confident of his own righteousness. Here is a man, said London’s famous preacher Charles Spurgeon, who thought he was “too good to be saved.”

It is easy to see how self-righteous the Pharisee was, but what we really need to assess is the same attitude in ourselves. If we are living in Christian community, then either we will grow strong in the grace of God or else we will become bigger and bigger hypocrites. So we need to ask ourselves: When am I like the Pharisee in the story Jesus told?

Here are some possible answers: I am a Pharisee when I care more about my religious reputation than about real holiness. I am a Pharisee when I look down on people who are not as committed to the cause of mercy or justice that I am committed to. I am a Pharisee when I look around and say, “Thank God I am not like so-and-so” and then fill in the blank with whatever person in my neighborhood, or student on my campus, or colleague at my workplace, or family in my church, or group in my society that I happen to think is not as whatever it is as I am.

When else am I a Pharisee? I am a Pharisee when I am impressed with how much I am giving to God compared to others. I am a Pharisee when other people’s sins seem worse than my own. I am a Pharisee when I can go all day, or all week, or even all month without confessing any particular sin.

ANOTHER WAY TO PRAY

Thankfully, there is a totally different way to pray—a way that will save your sinful and maybe hypocritical soul. Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector did not count on his own merits but begged for mercy instead: “The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Luke 18:13).

There are three parts to the tax collector’s prayer: God, the sinner, and the merciful grace that comes between them. The man’s prayer started with God, which is where all prayer ought to begin. The first act of prayer is to approach the majestic throne of the awesome and almighty God. When the tax collector made his approach, he refused even to look up to heaven, because he had a right and proper fear of God’s bright, burning holiness.

So the tax collector’s prayer began with God. It ended with himself, the sinner. I say “the” sinner, rather than “a” sinner because the Greek original of this verse uses the definite article. As far as the tax collector was concerned, he was the only sinner that mattered. Rather than comparing himself to others, he measured himself against the perfect holiness of God. And by that standard, he saw himself for what he was: nothing more and nothing less than a guilty sinner before a holy God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wisely wrote, “If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.” One good way to avoid this error and acknowledge the true extent of our sin is to identify ourselves as “the” sinner when we pray, as if we were the biggest, most obvious sinner in our congregation, corporation, family, or dormitory. “It’s me, Lord,” we should say when we begin our prayers. “You know: the sinner.”

AT THE MERCY SEAT

This brings us to the most striking feature of the tax collector’s prayer: in between God’s holiness and his own sinfulness he inserted a prayer for mercy. Like King David, he stood before God and said, “Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my plea for grace” (Ps. 86:6).

When the tax collector prayed, “Have mercy,” he used a Greek verb that essentially means to atone for sin by means of a blood sacrifice. To understand this, we need to go back in the Old Testament to Leviticus 16. Once a year, the high priest would make atonement for the people’s sin. He would take a perfect male goat and sacrifice it as a sin offering. Then he would take its blood into the Most Holy Place of the temple and sprinkle it on the mercy seat.

What did this priestly act signify? The sacrificial goat represented God’s sinful people. In a symbolical way, their sins were transferred or imputed to the animal. Then, having been charged with sin, the animal was put to death. The goat thus served as a substitute, dying in the place of sinners.

Once a sacrifice had been offered, the animal’s blood was the proof that atonement had been made for sin. The sacrificial blood showed that God had already carried out his death penalty against transgression. So the priest took the blood and sprinkled it on the mercy seat, which was the golden lid on the ark of the covenant. This sacred ark was located in the innermost sanctum of the temple— the Most Holy Place. On top of the mercy seat there were golden cherubim, symbolizing the throne of God. Thus the ark served as the earthly location of God’s holy presence. Inside the ark, underneath the mercy seat, was the law of God as a covenant that the people had broken. Sprinkling blood on the mercy seat, therefore, was a way to show that an atoning sacrifice had come between the holy God and his sinful people. The sacrificial blood showed that their sins were covered, that they were protected from the holy wrath of God.

In effect, this is what the tax collector prayed for when he said, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” He was asking God to make blood atonement for his sin. There the man was, praying in the very temple where the sacrificial blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat. When Jesus says that “two men went up to the temple to pray,” this is generally taken to mean that they were there around three o’clock in the afternoon, with the crowds that attended the daily sacrifice. Knowing that he was under God’s judgment because of his sin, the only thing the tax collector could do was ask for mercy to come between his guilt and God’s wrath. So he begged for God to be “mercy-seated” to him. He was asking God to atone for his sins, to cover his guilt, and to protect him from eternal judgment.

The order of the tax collector’s prayer echoes the Old Testament pattern for sacrifice: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” First comes God, who is perfect in his holiness. Last comes the sinner, who deserves to die for his sins. But in between comes the sacrificial blood that saves his sinful soul.

SAVED BY THE BLOOD

This is a good prayer for anyone to pray: “God, be mercy-seated to me, the sinner.” Not counting the Lord’s Prayer, or the words of thanks I give before eating a meal, it is probably the prayer I offer more than any other. It’s short and easy to remember. I pray it first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. I pray it before I preach, or any time I am feeling weighed down by guilt: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”

When I pray this way, I am really praying the gospel. By shedding his blood, Jesus Christ became the atoning sacrifice for my sins. His death is my substitute; his cross is my mercy seat; and the blood that he sprinkled on it is my salvation.

To say that Jesus died for sinners is to say that his sacrifice accomplished what the blood on the mercy seat accomplished. Like the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament, Jesus died in our place. Our sins were transferred or imputed to him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). As a result, our sins are covered; our guilt is taken away. The Scripture says Christ “has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26).

Our mercy seat is the cross of Jesus Christ, where the atoning blood was sprinkled for our salvation. In fact, to explain what Jesus was doing on the cross, the New Testament sometimes uses the noun form of the same verb for mercy that we find in Luke 1. We see this terminology in Romans 3:25, which says that God presented Jesus “as a propitiation by his blood,” and again in Hebrews 2:17, where he is described as a “merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God,” who has made “propitiation for the sins of the people.”

This is mercy-seat vocabulary, which assures us that our plea for grace will always be answered. When we say, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner,” we are making an appeal to the cross. We are asking for the blood of Jesus to cover all our sins.

GOING HOME JUSTIFIED

Has God been mercy-seated to you? What compels me to ask this question is the conclusion to the story Jesus told. Two men went to the temple, where they offered two different prayers and, as a result, met two entirely different destinies.

In the end, the tax collector got what he asked for. His prayers were answered. God was mercy-seated to him. Thus Jesus closed his story by saying that this man (and not the other) was “justified.” In other words— and we will say more about this in a later chapter—the tax collector was counted righteous. He was justified by God’s mercy on the basis of the atoning blood of a perfect sacrifice, which he received by a prayer he asked in faith.

God did not justify the Pharisee, however. This would have come as a total shock to anyone who was listening to this story when it was first told, so Jesus was very specific about it. Although the Pharisee declared his own righteousness, he was never declared righteous by God, and therefore he went home unjustified. Sadly, his righteousness was part of the problem. He was too busy being self-righteous to receive God’s righteousness, which comes only as a gift.

The Pharisee’s prayer was all about what he could do for God: “I thank . . . I am . . . I fast . . . I give.” All his verbs were active, in the first person singular. What made the tax collector’s prayer different was that he was asking God to do something for him. Therefore, the only verb in his prayer is passive: “God, be mercy-seated to me, the sinner.”

Pray this way, and you too will be justified before God. What is more, you will be so humbled by your desperate need for God’s life-changing grace that you will not look down on anyone but live instead with the humility, joy, and gratitude that only grace compels.

—

Philip Graham Ryken (PhD, University of Oxford) is the 8th president of Wheaton College and, prior to that, served as senior minister at Philadelphia’s historic Tenth Presbyterian Church. He has written several books for Crossway, and has lectured and taught at universities and seminaries worldwide. Dr. Ryken and his wife, Lisa, live in Wheaton and have five children.

Excerpted from Phil Ryken’s Grace Transforming, published by Crossway, and used with permission.

Joshua Torrey 9/30/14 Joshua Torrey 9/30/14

Self-Justifying Prayer

Constant and Considerate

After discussing the value of prayer in discipleship in Luke 18:1-8, you would think the subject would be closed. But I do not think it was for Jesus. The concept of the downtrodden and prayerful faithfulness permeates the rest of Luke 18 and it is right after teaching to “pray always” that Jesus presents one of his more famous parables,

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Lk. 18:10-13).

This is a familiar passage to many. And often prayer’s crucial role in the narrative is neglected. But in context it makes sense that the prayers of the parable are worth studying. The lessons learned are not that unlike the parable of the widow but before a new aspect of importance is added. For, Jesus spoke the parable against those “who trusted in themselves” (18:9). But more importantly they were also people who “treated others with contempt.” Ultimately this is always true. Those that trust their works, theology, and experience of God more than a godly humility mistreat the downtrodden. Christian prayer and discipleship must be constant and considerate, as we shall see from this parable. And with this in mind, Jesus proceeds to contrast sharp distinctions within prayer.

Both men went up to the temple (18:10). Let me put it in modern language: they were members of the same church. One was of good standing in the church and the other the type of person that people don’t usually like. But both were together in the same building.

This makes it interesting then that the Pharisee is said to have stood “by himself” (18:11). As his prayer affirms, when it comes to God this guy is in it for himself. He is willing to praise God (All thanks goes to God!). In fact he praises God for all the good that he does. And he does a lot. He abides by the law. He goes beyond the law (his fasting). And he does not keep anything back from God (his tithe).

Self-Justifying Prayer

What then was he guilty of? Jesus tells us at the start of the parable: he trusted himself and had contempt for others. He stands by himself. He is thankful for himself. And none of his works are focused on others. His prayer is both self-focused and degrading to those who are not on his level.

In contrast, the tax collector (who is also by himself) could not lift up his eyes to God. He too prays in a self-focused manner. There is no thankfulness in his voice. He does not trust in himself. He does not degrade others. He lacks any semblance of pride. But he is the one who went home “justified” (18:14). It would be inappropriate to presume that Jesus is here referring solely to the type of soteriological justification that systematic theology is concerned with. Though it is included—it can also indicate that the worship of the man was accepted before God.

And it is this element that I’d like to stress. For the second sin in Scripture was over denigrating a brother’s acceptance before God (Gen 4) and Christ taught the failure of any worship done while there is strife before brothers (Matt 5:24). Christian discipleship and prayer can never turn in trusting in “us” (whether our theology or works) and denigrating our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Prayer as Essential to Christian Discipleship

Since prayer is essential to Christian discipleship, we should learn from this how it gets abused. For in advancement of discipleship there begins anew the opportunity to say “God, I thank you that I am not like …”

Those who don’t study and memorize the Scriptures.
Those who miss church service.
Those who don’t read as many theology books.
Those who don’t pray often.
Those who don’t catechize their children.
Those who don’t attend Bible Studies.

For each Sunday the Christian disciple gets to determine if they will go home justified in their worship before God. And it will be the one who returns to the realization that they have only accomplished what they should have done (Lk 17:10) that will go home justified. But if we proceed in a spirit of demeaning contempt for our brothers then we must repent of our “discipleship.”

—

Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @benNuwn and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

Joshua Torrey 5/25/14 Joshua Torrey 5/25/14

Praying Desperately for Grace

My mother-in-law is a one of a kind pray-er. The type of Godly woman who prays as if God’s head is tilted in her direction ever so yet somehow, just barely, not touching hers. My wife has on occasion admitted to fear when she’s heard the words “I’ll be praying for you” from her mother. I make my apologies in advance. For in all kindness I cannot think of my mother- in-law without hearing the words of Christ echo in my head,

“And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” Luke 18:3-5 (ESV)

Often times the purpose of this parable gets lost because of God’s comparison to an unrighteous judge (18:6-7) or the rhetorical question with which Jesus concludes (18:8). But the purpose of this parable is that Christ’s disciples “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (18:1). As we walk through Luke 18 it should become plain that I take the view that this teaching on prayer permeates the whole of Christ’s teaching in this chapter. Christian prayer is thus utterly essential to Christian discipleship from a multitude of angles.

But what can we learn directly from the first of Christ’s parables? It might be easy to just say, “Pray always.” But it is instructional and encouraging to look at the conditions of the widow in the parable. For starters, she is a widow. She has no husband. And it is evident by her direct interaction with the “judge” (18:2) that she had no son or male representative in her family to rely on for protection. She was down cast and without a redeemer. She was the epitome of the down trodden in this life.

Second, she had an adversary (18:3). Life was already not easy on this widow. She was without a redeemer, but she had enemies. She was without a defense attorney before the judge, but she had an accuser (the word in Greek literally means an opponent in court). She was down trodden with an enemy pushing her deeper down.

Third, the widow’s judge was “unrighteous” (18:6). The downtrodden widow hounded by her enemy must make petitions to a judge with little chance of justice. And yet she does. Repeatedly. And she is the person Jesus Christ uses to model Christian prayer. For even the unrighteous judge can be beat down with constant petitioning.

Desperation for Grace and Deliverance

But Christians have a Righteous Judge (18:7). Isn’t this all the more reason for us to “cry out” throughout the day and night? Luke 18 begins with Christ teaching us that his disciples must practice the trepidation and begging of a widow in distress for there is humility, not pride, in Christian prayer. There is desperation, not pretension. But also ultimately for Christians there is grace and deliverance.

The beauty of Christian pray in discipleship is that everyone, all the times, can practice it. For we are always in need of grace and deliverance. We are always called to prayer. Whether for ourselves or for others downtrodden in this life, the disciplined life in Christ is portrayed as one that batters down the doors of heaven with prayer.

Earlier this year my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. From all outward appearances, she is now a part of the downtrodden in this life. The world would have her join together with others downtrodden as she is. Together they could encourage each other to “pull through.” But her reputation is one of prayer. And her testimony is that she has grown closer to her Savior.

We are all in distress like the widow of Christ’s parable. Some of us are just more aware. Christian discipleship is about crafting a prayer life that matches the true level of our despair. That’s what being a mature disciple of Christ looks like.

—

Joshua Torrey is a New Mexico boy in an Austin, TX world. He is husband to Alaina and father to Kenzie & Judah and spends his free time studying for the edification of his household. These studies include the intricacies of hockey, football, curling, beer, and theology. You can follow him @AustinPreterism and read his theological musings and running commentary of the Scriptures at The Torrey Gazette.

Winfield Bevins 4/13/14 Winfield Bevins 4/13/14

A Season to Fast and Pray

Lent is a time for prayer and fasting. It is a season of spiritual preparation in which we remember Christ’s temptation, suffering, and death. Historically, the church has celebrated Lent as a 40-day period beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding the day before Easter. It is observed in many Christian churches as a time to commemorate the last week of Jesus’ life, his suffering (Passion), and his death, through various observances and services of worship. Many Christians use the 40 days of Lent as time to draw closer to the Lord through prayer, fasting, repentance, and self-denial. We live in a culture of fast food, instant gratification, and self-centeredness. One of the best ways to get our eyes off of ourselves and back onto the Lord is through fasting. However, fasting has practically been disregarded and forgotten in the comforts of the modern church. Fasting didn’t end in Biblical times, there have actually been proclaimed fasts in America. Fasting is nothing new in American history. The pilgrims held three formal periods of fasting before leaving for the New World. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress proclaimed July 20, 1775, as a national day of fasting and prayer in preparation for the war on independence.

What is Fasting?

What does it really mean to fast? According to the Oxford Dictionary, fasting means to abstain from food; especially to eat sparingly or not at all or abstain from certain foods in observance of a religious duty or a token of grief.” Fasting and religious purposes cannot be separated because they are intricately intertwined. The Bible gives us numerous references to individual and corporate fasts. There were even certain days that were designated each year for fasting and prayer. Fasting is a gift that God has given to the church in order to help us persevere in prayer. Fasting draws us closer to God and gives power to our prayers. Our central motivation with this lesson is to teach about the reasons to fast, different types of fasting, and then discuss how to fast.

Reasons for Fasting

People have been fasting since the ancient days of the Bible. The Bible records numerous accounts where people, cities, and nations have turned to God by fasting and praying: Hannah grieved over infertility “wept and did not eat” (1 Samuel 1:7); Anna, who was an elderly widow, saw Jesus in the temple and “served God with fasting and prayer” (Luke 2:37). Saul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, “was three days without sight, neither ate or drank.” (Acts 9:9). Cornelius told Peter, “Four days ago I was fasting until this hour…” (Acts 10:30). Most people fast for religious and spiritual reasons, while others choose to fast for health reasons. There are several specific reasons that the Bible tells us to fast.

To be Christ like. (Matthew 4:1-17; Luke 4:1-13).
To obtain spiritual purity. (Isaiah 58:5-7).
To repent from sins. (See Jonah 3:8; Nehemiah 1:4, 9:1-3; 1 Samuel 14:24).
To influence God. (2 Samuel 12:16-23).
To morn for the dead. (1 Samuel 31:13; 2 Samuel 1:12).
To request God’s help in times of crisis and calamity. (Ezra 8:21-23; Nehemiah 1:4-11).
To strengthen prayer. (Matthew 17:21; Mark 9:17-29; Acts 10:30; 1 Corinthians 7:5).

Types of Fasting

In the same way that God appointed times and seasons to fast, He also designated several types of fasts. Because of certain medical problems, and physical needs, there are different types of fasting. Not everyone can go on an extended 5-7 day fast; in a similar way, not everyone can totally abstain from food and water. A person should exercise wisdom and consult their physician if they have any medical concerns before they fast, otherwise it could actually be harmful to your health. However, there are at least three types of individual fasts: absolute fast, solid food fast, and partial fast.

1. Absolute Fast

An absolute fast is conducted by abstaining from all food and water for a certain period of time. This is also known as the “total fast” because an individual chooses to abstain from all foods and beverages. There are several Biblical examples for the total fast. Moses and Elijah both abstained from food and water for forty days and forty nights. (Deuteronomy 9:9, 10:10, 18:25-29; 1 Kings 19:8). Although the Bible says they fasted for forty days, many people usually only totally abstain from food and water for three days.

2. Solid Food Fast

A solid food fast is where an individual may drink juice and water, but chooses not to eat solid food. Certain scholars and theologians think that Jesus may have drank water while in the wilderness since the Bible doesn’t say that he was thirsty after his forty day fast (see Matthew 4:2). Drinking water while fasting for several days can actually be therapeutic for your body. In any case, you should not fast for more than a week unless you consult a doctor.

3. Partial Fast

To fast simply means to “abstain” from something. A partial fast is where you choose to abstain from certain foods and drinks instead of complete abstinence of food or drink. The Bible tells us that Daniel abstained from bread, water, and wine for twenty-one days (Daniel 10:3). Others may choose to fast from television, computer, newspaper, and hobbies. This will help you free up some time to spend in prayer and reflection.

Jesus and Fasting

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught a lesson about how to fast and how not to fast:

“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your father who is in the secret place; and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:16-28)

We see that it is important to not brag or boast to others about fasting. The Jews of Jesus’ day used fasting and giving to make everyone think that they were more spiritual than others. But Jesus tells us that fasting should be done in secret so that it can’t be used as a way of bringing glory to ourselves. Fasting should make us humble instead of proud. In the end it is not our works, but our hearts that matter to God.

—

Dr. Winfield Bevins serves as lead pastor of Church of the Outer Banks, which he founded in 2005. His life’s passion in ministry is discipleship and helping start new churches. He lives in the beautiful beach community of the Outer Banks with his wife Kay and two daughters where he loves to surf and spend time at the beach with his family and friends. Twitter: @winfieldbevins

(Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Prayer Life by Winfield Bevins available through GCD Books.)

Matt Manry 3/30/14 Matt Manry 3/30/14

4 Ways to Sense God through Suffering

Sensing God Through Suffering

Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt that God was not there? Perhaps a love one died, or maybe you were just going through an extended season of loneliness. Maybe you had a serious illness that you were dealing with, or maybe you were dealing with constant relational issues. Perhaps, the various sufferings you were struggling with have caused you to question the existence of an all-loving God who cares for you deeply. Don’t worry, we’ve all be there. No one is exempt.

Whether you realize it or not, suffering can actually liberate you and help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. Let’s be honest with one another--nobody likes to suffer. There are so many times, because of our cognitive limitations, we just cannot understand why God would put us through such difficult times. However, if we submit ourselves before God and continue walking with him through our pain and suffering, we will begin to sense him more in all areas of life. God has a sovereign purpose in your suffering and he wants you to sense his presence throughout all the various trials you encounter. Do not turn away from him during this trial you are facing. Embrace him during this suffering and walk with him.

The reason that I believe this is because of the suffering that I experienced at the end of 2012. In November of that year, my grandmother passed away and I found out that my mom had cancer. It was one of the loneliest and darkest times of my life. However, it was through these trials that I began to sense God in a deeper and more profound way. It was almost like my “sense of the divine” was suddenly switched on. Ever since then, I have continued to focus on perceiving God within my own life and I hope that sensing God is something that you will put into practice in your own life as well.

As Christians, we must always be prepared and equipped to deal with the various hardships of life. In this post, I am going to discuss four ways that Christians can perceive that God is with them, even when the darkness is ever-present.

1. Sensing God Through the Gospel

When suffering is consistent, there is a need for a consistent message of hope. This message of hope is found in the resounding statement: “It is finished!” The good news of the gospel is the only message that will always be good no matter what season of life you are in. Though your trials may be many, the gospel is a message that can shine light even in the darkest of nights. The message that the Son of God came to seek and save the lost (Lk. 19:10) is a message available for you wherever you are at. Though the pit that you are in right now may be deep, God’s grace and love for you through the gospel of Christ is deeper. The gospel can help you perceive that God is with you during trials because God did not withhold his only Son from you, even when you were at your very worst (Rom. 5:8; Rom. 8:32). So go ahead and try preaching the gospel to yourself. The good news might help you sense the presence of your mighty Comforter right where you are.

2. Sensing God Through His Word

If you want to know what God is like, then you must read your Bible. It is just that plain and simple. However, all to often when pain is present we turn away from the living word of God. Why do we do this though when the Bible is in fact words given to us from the almighty God (2 Tim. 3:16-17)? Why do we find satisfaction in the pleasures of this world and not in the life-changing word of the God of the universe? When darkness closes in and despair is very near, you must plant your feet on God’s word. Just by reading the Scriptures aloud, you will begin to sense the joy and hope of your Father in Heaven through his all-comforting Word and the work of the Spirit.

3. Sensing God Through Prayer

When Jesus Christ was in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the cross in his sight, he prayed (Matt. 26:36-46). None of us will ever be able to comprehend the anxiety and stress he was facing at that moment. However, we can learn from Jesus that communion with God through prayer is indispensable, especially in times of struggle. By praying to our Father, we are able to experience him in a more intimate way (look at how David openly prayed and lamented in the Psalms). Perceiving that God hears you when you pray is what will embolden you to interact with him more and more. When trials of many kinds are present, do not hesitate to pray and enter into God’s presence.

4. Sensing God Through Worship

Have you ever realized that worship can be used as a weapon when you are suffering? What did Paul and Silas do when they were in prison (Acts 16: 25)? They worshiped. They did this because their hearts and minds were on things above. Even though their circumstances should have caused them to despair (imagine being in a prison in the first century), they instead chose to worship and sing praises to the one true God. Praising the name of the Lord even in the darkest moments of life will allow you to sense that God is in your midst.

Implications For Discipleship

There is no doubt--God uses our sufferings to make us mature in Christ Jesus. All believers are called to press on through the sufferings of life because it cultivates perseverance within us (Js. 1:2-4). Remember, there is no crown of glory without going the way of the cross. Another beautiful thing about suffering is it helps us empathize with those who suffer after us (Eph. 4:2). Realizing that God is faithful through our trials, helps us to share the unshakeable hope of Christ with others when they are suffering. Maturing as a believer in Christ Jesus requires us to recall the faithfulness of God and praise him even when life doesn’t make sense (Job 1:21). When we are in the furnace, we must keep our eyes on our Savior and try to perceive that his grace and love is near. We do that through the gospel, his Word, prayer, and worship.

Matt Manry is the Director of Discipleship at Life Bible Church in Canton, Georgia. He is a student at Reformed Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary. He also works on the editorial team for Credo Magazine and Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He blogs regularly at gospelglory.net.