Prayer and obedience

In Romans 1:5 Paul notes that there is a relationship between obedience and faith. The NIV translates the phrase as “obedience that comes from faith”. The literal rendering is “in obedience of faith”. The meaning being that faith produces obedience. But can obedience also produce faith? I would argue the two are so intimately linked that they sharpen each other, so much so that obedience to God increases our faith and provides FUEL to our prayers.

Often times we think of obedience as merely outward acts. We might say faith on the inside produces obedience on the outside. However, that idea of obedience is lacking, since obedience to God begins with inward conformity to Christlikeness.

I would argue this understanding of obedience is what Jesus had in mind when he summed up the laws in Matthew 22:37 saying, “Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. Obedience to the Law comes from within. Therefore, obedience to God is love for God stirred in the heart and soul and mind long before it is manifested in any outwardly obedient acts (Can any obedient act not founded upon a love for God ever be a truly obedient act?)

What is the point? If there is an inextricable relationship between faith and obedience in the heart that feeds upon one other, then the result must affect how we pray. Rather than see faith as a one way street that produces obedience,  obedience can actually feed faith.

This is E.M. Bounds point when he writes, “Obedience to God helps faith as no other attribute possibly can. . . the difficulty in our praying is not with FAITH, but with OBEDIENCE, which is faith’s foundation. We must look to our obedience, to the secret springs of action, to the loyalty of our heart to God, if we would pray well, and desire the most out of our praying. Obedience is the groundwork  of effectual praying. . . The lack of obedience in our life breaks down our praying. Quite often, the life is in revolt and this places us where praying is almost impossible, except it be for pardoning mercy. . . The will must be surrendered to God as a primary condition of all successful praying. Everything about us gets its coloring from our inmost character.”

I John 5:3 says, “This is love for God: to obey his commands”. Love for God is shown in obedience. When we approach God with a love in our hearts for Him demonstrated in obedience, our faith through prayer increases. Although we must avoid any idea that our obedience is a demand for God to bless. God is worthy to obey whether he chooses to bless in a particular instance or not. The idea is that obedience does fuel confidence in prayer through stronger faith.

Therefore, if we desire to pray boldy, then we must obey recklessly.

Wrestling with God: The transformational nature of grace

I am teaching Genesis 32-33 Sunday, so I have been thinking through the meaning of Jacob’s wrestling with God and the Jacob and Esau reconciliation. At first I thought Genesis 32 & 33 fit together to form one big idea, but after looking at it more today, I think it is best to split it up into two parts. Jacob’s wrestling speaks to the work of God in the heart of Jacob, while the Jacob and Esau reunion (Genesis 32-33 in total) speaks to how God enabled Jacob to face his past.

Jacob’s wrestling with God is a difficult passage. In fact, Martin Luther said it was one of the most obscure passages in all the OT. But after having a few joints dislocated, I feel God has illumined the big idea of Genesis 32:22-32 for me.

I believe the passage speaks to the transformational power and nature of God’s grace. The question is, “How does God’s grace transform us?” The answer and BIG IDEA of the passage. . . . God’s grace cripples self-sufficiency forcing you to acknowledge who you are and transforming you into who you have become.

I look forward to preaching this one in the next few weeks!!!  I am still tweeking the big idea for the Jacob and Esau reconciliaiton which I see flowing out of Jacob’s wrestling . . . more to come.

Prayer and fervency

I have been reading The Complete Book of EM Bounds on Prayer in the mornings. If there is one book you can read on prayer it may be this book. I have been super encouraged by his insights on prayer. Bounds is a fantastic writer! Here are a few paragraphs from today’s chapter which I just shared with someone else.

“Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that availeth. Coldness of spirit hinders praying: prayer cannot live in a wintry atomosphere. Chilly surroundings freeze out petitioning; and dry up the springs of supplication. It takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of soul creates an atomosphere favorable to prayer, because it is favorable to fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat, noise. Heat is intensity – something that glows and burns. Heaven is a mighty poor market for ice.” (35)

“Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain, nor in the intellectual faculties of the mind. Fervency, therefore, is not an expression of the intellect. Fervency of spirit is something far transcending poetical fancy or sentimental imagery. It is something else besides mere preference, the contrasting of like and dislike. Fervency is the throb and gesture of the emotional nature.” (36)

Okay, this one is from the previous chapter, but just had to include it. . .

“A lack of ardor in prayer, is the sure sign of a lack of depth of intesity of desire; and the absence of intense desire is a sure sign of God’s absence from the heart! To abate fervor is to retire from God. He can, and does tolerate many things in the way of infirmity and error in his children. He can, and will pardon sin when the penitent prays, but two things are intolerable to him. . . INSINCERITY and LUKEWARMNESS. Lack of heart and lack of heat are two things he loathes. . . ” (31)

Several applications for me personally and the church in general not necessarily related to the above. . .

1) Pray with the head, yes, but most importantly PRAY WITH THE HEART. Prayer is the external expressing the internal. You cannot manufacture desire, but if the intense longing for the things prayed for is not there then ask God to supply it. Lets rid our lives and churches of heartless prayers!

2) Pray with a single focus. Short, simple prayers may sometimes be the best. David says, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4)

3) Lose yourself in prayer. Forget the external (i.e. word choice, what others think, length of prayer). Give God what is on the inside. He cares zero for formality and appearances.

Idolatrous prayers

How do we ensure that our praying does not become idolatrous?  James 4:3-5 says,

“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your pleasures. Adultress! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be friend of the world makes himself an enemy of god. Or do  you suppose it is in vain that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us?”

The question to ask yourself when you receive the requested thing is . . . Do I delight in the thing given or the God who gave it? If we delight simply in the thing received, then our satisfaction is found in the thing rather than in God. But if we delight in the God who gives it, seeing the thing received as a gift from Him demonstrating His goodness to us, then God is glorified and the thing received is placed within its proper perspective – simply a gift from all-sufficient God.

Sometimes the joy in the thing received and the God who gives it is so simulataneous that it is difficult to discern our attitude toward God. Am I more happy about the gift or the giver? Sometimes that question is difficult to answer by ourselves. But if we acknowledge all that we have is from God and he gives good gifts, then items received become mirrors of reflection into the goodness and kindness of God rather than moments of ultimate ends satisfying our humanly longing.

His glory. . . Our delight

Psalm 50:15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me

Reading Desiring God this morning (p. 140), Charles Spurgeon explains this passage and says, “Here is a compact, a covenant that God enters into with you who pray to him, and whom he helps. He says, ‘You shall have the deliverance, but I must have the glory. . . ‘ Here is a delightful partnership: we obtain that which we so greatly need and all that God getteth is the glory du e his name.”

When we pray. . . GOD GETS THE GLORY. . . WE GET THE DELIGHT.

Prayer as the Pursuit of God’s Glory

A few excerpts this morning from Desiring God by John Piper on prayer . . .

• The most precious truth in the Bible is that God’s greatest interest is to glorify the weath of his GRACE by making sinnners HAPPY in Him
• Prayer is the pursuit of God’s glory (John 14:13) and the pursuit of our joy (John 16:24) in that order.
• How do we glorify God? We pray – which is to ask God to do for us through Christ what we can’t do for ourselves – bear fruit (John 15:7)
• So how is God glorified in prayer?
• Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. . .
• And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that he will provide the help we need. . .
• Prayer HUMBLES us as needy, and EXALTS God as wealthy.

Desiring God, 137-138.

How to pray for Haiti

Here are several points of prayer for Haiti which I received yesterday. They have been adapted from Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA

1. Pray for the ongoing generosity of people around the world sending in support and supplies.

2. Pray for the complicated task of getting supplies to needy people when roads are not passable, and only a quarter of the country’s roads were paved before the earthquake.

3. Pray for the hearts, minds, and souls of the people, who are reportedly 80% Catholic and 16% Protestant, while roughly 50% also practice voodoo.

4. Pray for the rebuilding of the city of Port-au-Prince as prior to the earthquake it was the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with 80% of people under the poverty line and 54% in abject proverty with a GDP per capita of only $1,300 with two-thirds of the labor force not even having a formal job.

5. Pray for protection for disease, as the spread of hepatitis A and E, typhoid, malaria, leptospirosis, and dengue fever is a reality as conditions worsen.

6. Pray against civil unrest that would further promote chaos.

7. Pray for the government, which has lost many of its buildings and leaders.

8. Pray for the safety of the people, since some of the jails and prisons are now emptied and dangerous criminals are running the streets without police patrol to contain them.

9. Pray for the children as roughly half of Haiti’s populations is reportedly children.

10. Pray that Christians will help bolster the remaining churches in Haiti and support the planting of many more Jesus-centered churches so that the people of Haiti can see the Gospel rise out of devastation.

11. Pray about how you can give and/or go.

Everthing is amazing but no one is happy

If you haven’t seen this yet, it is great insight from a secular comic who recognizes the irony that as society advances people are still discontent . . . The funny thing is that the problem is not new. Read Genesis 3. . . want more irony? True contentment is only found in placing your trust in a man who claims to rescue you from death and give you life. . . his name is Jesus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

Why we don’t pray

Having read the autobiography of George Mueller recently, I was strengthened by the man’s unyielding devotion to pray. Surveys revel most in the church pray no more than 5 minutes a day, pastors and pastors’ wives up to 7 minutes. . . So why don’t we pray?

1. We do not believe anything will happen.

2. We are unaware of the greatness of God.

3. We have become blase to the Gospel.

4. There is little awareness of real need in our lives and the lives of others.

5. We feel far from God.

6. Lack of discipline.

7. We do not know how to pray.

8. We believe God will accomplish what He wants anyway.

9. Sin drives us into hiding from God.

10. The Word of God has not feed meditation. Nothing in, nothing out.

11. We are unaware or do not take seriously spiritual warfare.

12. We live independent not dependent upon God.

Man’s greatest deceit: Master of his mind and will

There is something deep within a man where he conceives himself to be master of his own mind and will. Every thought and inclination of the heart within a man desires to see himself free in the freest sense.

However, the Bible makes clear that we are wholly dependent upon God. Free only in the sense that we have been created by God for his own purpose. It is God who “fashions the hearts of all” (Psalm 22:15). To understand our dependence upon God, we must only consider the fact that never could we turn ourselves by the power of our mind and will from evil to good. We depend on God in everything.

Ephesians 2:1 says, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins.” We are all dead as a result of having usurped the authority of God. In doing so we attempt to establish ourselves as God. . .  Master of our own domain.

Thus, we need God to intervene in our lives to change our nature and desires. . . not only once but continually. We need constant value restructuring. Thus, we are not masters of our mind and will. We need intervention in our lives. This happens only as God through the power of the Gospel message restructures our hearts so that we come to see him as that which is most valuable. . . again and again.

While we tend to recognize the usurping of God’s authority in the orginal sin of Adam and Eve freely choosing to establish themselves as ultimate authority redefining what is good, often we are blinded by this continual sin in our daily lives. Each day we seek to reverse the role of God as creator and ourselves as the created. We dethrone God and throne ourselves as master of our mind and will. 

As the created, we become the creator fashioning a god of our own liking. As we inhabit the throne of God in our minds, we give attributes and qualities to God which are not his.  As God created man, so man attempts to create god. Thus, we deceive ourselves. While yearning to be master, we actually become slaves. . . held prisoner by the deceit of our own hearts. May God disenthrall us from such deception.

Lord, forgive us for reading ourselves into you. Forgive us for shaping our thoughts about you from the rationalization our own minds rather than the knowledge of your Word. You are not like us. You recieve worship. We give worship. Illuminate our hearts and minds to know you through the Bible today. And may we joyfully worship you in spirit and in truth this day and forever more.