Vocabulary
Often we come before the Lord and our hearts are stirred to pray but we lack the words to contain our appeal to God. Sometimes in our habitual practice of regular prayer we can grow somewhat stale feeling like we are just repeating the things that we have said before. We know that Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their pride filled repetitious prayers. However the problem with the Pharisees was not the repetition of words but the hearts filled with arrogance and empty of affection and love for God. But what should we do to help strengthen our prayer lives? First, we must rest in the reality that the Holy Spirit is interceding for us and Jesus is interceding for us before the Father. We are not accepted before God because we have become a human thesaurus. But when we have found ourselves at a loss for words a wonderful and practical help is to use God’s word to fill our prayers. Below is an example of something that I pray on a fairly regular basis. I hope it is helpful. A Prayer Oh, Lord you are Holy, Sovereign and Good! Please hear my prayer And consider my petitions And continual pleas Fill me Oh Lord with your Holy Spirit And help me to experience your steadfast love Prepare me to a be useful tool And a cleansed vessel And a ready implement In your providential plan for your Kingdom May my feet be shod with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, (Ephesians 6:15) May I have fastened on the belt of Your objective, genuine Truth. (Ephesians 6:14) May I have Your breastplate of righteousness, (Isaiah 59:17) the imputed righteousness of Jesus. (2 Corinthians 5:21) May I be crowned with Your helmet of salvation (Ephesians 6:17) to protect and renew my mind. (Romans 12:2) May I hold firm to the shield of faith which is my protection against all the onslaught of Satan’s arsenal. (Ephesians 6:16) And may I wield rightly the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17) in the great battle against the cosmic powers over this present darkness and that dark and wicked dragon seeking to devour the souls of men. (2 Timothy 2:15) For You alone, Oh Lord, deserve Honor, so cause me to walk in humility that Youmay receive honor! You alone, Oh Lord, deserve Praise, so cause me to be ever rejoicing so that You are continually praised! You alone, Oh Lord, deserve Glory, so cause me to use every opportunity whether in word or deed to do everything to the glory of God! (1 Corinthians 10:31) Cause me, Oh Lord, to be a promoter of peace among the brethren, love for all the Saints and a bold proclaimer of the hope and faith that are in Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen!
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Together The kingdom of God is a community under the reign of Christ our Lord and King. Oftentimes, when we talk about the nature of salvation we emphasize the personal relationship between the individual and God. This is important because every believer does have an individual relationship of faith and trust in God through Jesus Christ. Each believer has the Holy Spirit residing in them! However, this does not mean that the personal Christian life is to be private or experienced alone. This last Sunday we had the privilege of participating as the local church in a baptism. Here in our church we weekly participatie in taking the Lord’s supper as Christ’s body and bride. The reason I use the word participate is that I believe that in these ordinances we are participating in the grace that has been collectively given to Christ’s body. The church has been given gifts. These are unmerited blessings provided by Christ for His people. But they are not automatic; they are experienced through means of grace in which we fellowship and participate in these blessings. Grace So when we gather to sing God’s praises and hear His word proclaimed we are experiencing together, God’s grace in these practices. The grace is already there for us but this is how we practice and experience it. In the age in which we live we are able to watch and listen to preaching and teaching from anywhere and anyone we want all on our own. I love to listen to sermons and podcasts where I learn more of Christ and His kingdom. However, when we gather for the worship and word of God more is happening than mere instruction or data transmission. We should be gathering to love and serve one another as family members in the body of Christ. If I miss a family dinner, someone could bring me a plate of leftovers, but honestly I missed the best part by not being there. This is also true in the church. Covenant Love God loves. That is a complete sentence because the Bible is clear that God is love (1 John 4:16). God loves us! Of course as believers we should stand amazed that God loves us individually. But God also loves us corporately as His people. His promises have always been corporate promises. “They will be my people and I will be their God”Jeremiah 32:38. There is a real sense in which we experience God’s love corporately in ways that we cannot experience it alone. God has set His love on His people and we are supposed to experience things together so much so that Jesus said this would be the proof of our discipleship (John 13:35). Faithful Discipleship Finally, faithful discipleship requires the community of the local church. Jesus never intended His disciples to be lone rangers. He sent them out two by two (Luke 10:1) and even after Pentecost we find them together (Acts 3:1). When we are born again we receive all the grace of Christ and all the unmerited favor we will ever need. But it is through the means of grace that we participate in all that we have received. Paul says that we are to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12-13). This means participating in real time and experiencing in real life the sufficient and sustaining grace of God that we have in Jesus Christ! Real Idols Last week in our Sunday sermon, we considered Paul’s proclamation to the citizens of Athens in the Areopagus. The Apostle was confronting the rampant idolatry of the city. When we think about idolatry, we probably start by thinking about the fact that the idol is not god at all (Isaiah 44:9-11). This is true. It is also true that the idol is a tool for demonic worship (1 Corinthians 10:19-21). Since we were all made to worship and serve God it is a big sin to give that praise and glory to other things. But there is another problem with idolatry. Every idol or concept of deity conceived of by the imagination of man is too small and too weak to be the one true God. As one historic theologian has said, “Our hearts are idol factories.” However, they are idol factories producing cheap knockoffs of the real thing. The Trap These idols are crafty prisons of the inmates own making. We often express our hatred for the life destroying power that these idols have over men and women. The ability of drugs, pornography, and gambling to draw away the heart of man is amazing. But remember, these things don’t have power on their own. The sinner is enslaved by their own passions (Romans 6:15-23). The amazing point here is that in our sin the grip that holds us to the impotent idol is our own. I believe that so much emotional and spiritual trauma is, to an extent, self inflicted by people holding on to sin, shame, and pain. The trap is that we imagine a god too small to deliver us from the problems and challenges that we face. Even many who claim to be Christians are actually living as unbelievers because the god they believe in is too small to vanquish their sin, free their hearts, and lead them in victory! The Truth So if the true God is a Big God, so big in fact that He is by His very nature beyond the limits of our imagination, then how can we know Him? The answer is that He must condescend to us and reveal Himself to us. By condescend, I mean that He must come down to us. We might say that He must “get on our level,” so that we can understand Him. Throughout history God has used interactions with key people such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses to give understanding of who He is. He has also used interactions with key positions Pharaoh, kings of various rival nations, or even the kings of Israel and Judah to demonstrate His power and purposes. God even uses the general knowledge of the created world to display His eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20). God has also chosen to communicate with us through divine revelation in the inspired writings of prophets and Apostles (2 Peter 1:16-21). God used these individuals to deliver His message to us. Dr. Jeff Johnson writes “There is no true theology without divine revelation. Light comes from above--from God. Knowledge of God is not obtained from man’s own ability to climb out of His darkness into the light.” God has chosen to come to us and tell us what we need to know so that we can love and worship Him. God tells us what He wants us to know about Him so that we can rest and rely upon Him. Most of all God has chosen to reveal Himself to us through the incarnation. I love Christmas time, and the celebration of Jesus birth is far more than the celebration of the successful delivery of a baby (although that is an amazing thing), but rather it is the celebration of God coming into the world in the form of a servant (Philippians 2:4-11) so that everyone who trusts in Him can be made a son (1 John 3:1-3). The Transcendent The Bible uses many words to convey the transcendent nature of God. He is Spirit, awesome, great, mighty, almighty, majestic, glorious, worthy, immutable (unchangeable), wise, just, good, true, faithful, love, blessed (happy), honorable, perfect, complete, glorious and Holy! Also this is only a partial list. The reality is that God is far greater than we can imagine and beyond any box that we might attempt to put Him into. However, this reality has led many to try to speculate beyond what the Scripture says because God is more than what is in the Bible. But we must not fall into this error, because when we go beyond the sure revelation of God in the Bible we will certainly end up with a worthless idol instead of the true God (1 Corinthians 4:6). It is because of the infinite, transcendent nature of God that we must rest ourselves in God as He has revealed Himself in the 66 books of Scripture alone. Stories Stories are powerful! One of the best ways to teach concepts and truths is to use stories. Jesus often used stories called parables to make particular points to those listening to His teaching. The Bible itself is a book that contains a high percentage of narrative portions that are not fairy tales or fables but true accounts of what happened in people’s lives and God interacted with them. God is in Himself a God of community and communication even beyond the reality of His creation. Within God there is perfect community and communication among the trinitarian Godhead of Father, son and Holy Spirit. Since we are created in God’s image this desire for true community and communication is at the core of humanity. Therefore it should not be surprising to us that we are drawn into stories of what has happened in the lives of other people. Also we should expect these stories to be used by God to have effects on our lives and on our hearts. This seems to be evident as we read the accounts of people in the scriptures both individuals and the greater communities, especially God’s covenant people. Personal Testimonies Personal testimonies are impactful because there is connection between the truth being conveyed and real life experience. The Bible is clear that independent eyewitness testimony is crucial to convicting the guilty. But God also chose to use independent eyewitness testimony to attest to the reality of Jesus' resurrection. In the gospels, we see the angels, the women, and the disciples testify to the miracle that has taken place. Even the reality that we have four gospels written by four different authors is a picture of the importance of a plurality of personal eyewitness accounts of what has happened. Our personal testimonies of what God has done in our loves can also have a real impact on others as we relay what God has done for us and through us. Oftentimes these stories are hard to tell because they involve us confessing our sins and/or bearing testimony to hard circumstances in our lives, but God is able to bring beauty out of the brokenness of our stories and meet people where they are in the midst of their own stories. Testimonies can be used to encourage brothers and sisters in trying times, warn the wayward of dangerous and hurtful paths, and to call lost people to the same salvation that we have found in Jesus through repentance and faith. Biographies Another way that stories can have a profound effect on us is through reading good biographies. There have now been twenty centuries of faithful believers who have lived for Christ, loved God and suffered by the power of the Spirit and their testimonies can be used by God to strengthen and encourage us in our part of the race of life. Of course, these biographies are not inspired by God and we should not base our doctrine on them. However, we can learn how other believers have applied the same doctrines that we believe to their lives which is valuable instruction for how to live for Christ in this present darkness. Biographies of church fathers, faithful pastors, brave reformers and valiant missionaries are a great source of hope and courage for those willing to read their stories. HIStory Of course we have heard the cliche that history is HIS-story, but in reality it is true. In all of our personal stories and in reading biographies even in the Bible we must focus on the most important part which is what we learn about God! The purpose behind all of our stories is to convey what we have learned about God and how He related to people in tangible and practical ways. We serve the real and true God and so there are real and true accounts of His proactive interactions in time and space with His creation that help us understand who He is immaterial and eternal. Of course the greatest example of God revealing Himself is in the person of the Lord Jesus. (Hebrews 1:1-4;Colossians 1:15;John 14:8-11) |
AuthorEddie Ragsdale Archives
May 2024
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