The Gospel and the Prayerless Soul

Again we exhort the believer—guard against the least declension in prayer; let the first unfavorable symptom that appears alarm you, go to the Lord in your worst frames; stay not from Him until you get a good one. Satan’s grand argument to keep a soul from prayer is—”Go not with that cold and insensible frame; go not with that hard and sinful heart; stay until you are more fit to approach God!” and listening to this specious reasoning, many poor, distressed, burdened, longing souls have been kept from the throne of grace, and consequently from all comfort and consolation. But the gospel says—”Go in your very worst frames;” Christ says—”Come just as you are;” and every promise and every example but encourages the soul to repair to the cross, whatever be its frame or condition.

–Octavius Winslow, Evening Thoughts:Daily Walking With God, October 5

Spurgeon Sabbatical 09

From June 22-July1 I have the uber privilege of being part of the Spurgeon Sabbatical. Here’s what I shared with my uber-supportive church as I get ready to live in Exile (aka Massachusetts) for wee bit.

Hello Church,

One of the things of love most about WBC is the passion and commitment to be generous towards the Kingdom of God, all around the world, locally and globally. Not just when it’s convenient but whenever God calls and enables us to.

Well, I want to thank you ahead of time for being generous to God’s people, specifically a group of pastors  that I will be serving at the Spurgeon Sabbatical, June 22-July 1. Your generosity in sending me to serve these pastors who come from all over the States and even around the world has been recieved with thankfulness by them in the past and I know will once again this year. They realize that it is a loving sacrifice for your pastor to serve you  “from a distance,” catching up with emails and phone calls in the afternoon and coming back just for the weekend.

This will be my 3rd time leading the gathered worship aspects of the Sabbatical–each day will begin and end with a time worshipping God together in song, Scripture reading and prayer. These times are meant to bookend our rigorous study and lively fellowship. This year’s topic is “Romans 1-5 Judgment and Justification: Keeping the Main Thing in Ministry, the Main Thing.” Our two texts will be Simon Gathercole’s Where is Boasting: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1-5 and Mark Noll’s edited Where Shall My Wond’ring Soul Begin?  The Landscape of Evangelical Piety and Thought.

My time at the Spurgeon Sabbatical is more like a short-term mission trip than a vacation or simply attending or even leading a conference.  It will be exhausting. I will be away from my family. The days will be long. There will be intense soul-surgery. So…I humbly ask you to pray:

• Pray that God would encourage Heidi in my absence.
• Pray that I would serve with the strength that God supplies.
• Pray that God would free me from the tempation of self-importance.
• Pray that the 15 pastors would be personally renewed in their faith by our study of the gospel in Romans.
• Pray that these men would return with their eyes fixed firmly on the Lord Jesus Christ as their only hope and goal for their families and ministries.

Honest About Sin, Hopeful About Forgiveness

I haven’t been blogging much. I’m gearing up for vacation next week and am hoping that a restful week by the lake might reinvigorate my writing.

For now, here are some gospel-musings that I recently shared with my church family.

The gospel frees us to be both brutally honest about our sin and abundantly hopeful about our forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  When we come face to face with the gospel there is no room for denial and there is no room for despair. This prayer from The Valley of Vision fed my soul richly yesterday, and I hope that God might use it to preach the gospel to your soul today.

All things in heaven, earth, around, within and without condemn me—

the sun which sees my misdeeds,

the darkness which is light to You,

the cruel accuser who justly charges me,

the good angels who have been provoked to leave me,

Your countenance which scans my secrete sins,

Your righteous law, Your holy Word,

my sin-soiled conscience, my private and public life,

my neighbors, myself—

all write dark things against me.

I do not deny them, do not excuse them, but confess,

“Father, I have sinned.”

Yet still I live, and fly repenting to Your outstretched arms;

You will not cast me off, for Jesus brings me near,

You will not condemn me, for He died in my place,

You will not mark my mountains of sin, for He leveled all,

And his beauty covers my deformities.

O my God, I bid farewell to sin by clinging to His cross,

Hiding in his wounds, and sheltering in His side.

–adapted from “Divine Mercies” from the Valley of Vision, p. 17

How Will You Preach the Gospel in THIS Kind of world?

Bob Dylan didn’t have a clue how right he was when he croaked…“The times they are a-changin’.” The world we live in is morphing at a staggering rate. But. There is one thing that will never change–the gospel. And we are to be ready in season and out of season (1 Timothy4:2) to announce life’s only essential message. Take a second to get connected with the reality of our hyper-changing world and ask God for wisdom to faithfully proclaim his un-changing goodnews.

Jesus Prayed for You Today

One of the most loving things we can do for each other is to pray for each other–to ask our Heavenly Father to act powerfully in the midst of our sorrows and tears, our pain and our fears. Oftentimes we mean well and end up saying something like, “I’ll be sure to pray for you.” And all too often..we simply forget to pray. Better yet is when we pray right then and there for our brother or sister!

Don’t you feel loved and cared for when you know that  your friends are praying for you?!

But there’s something even greater. SomeOne greater! Someone who never stops praying for  God’s children, for you, for me. Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus prayed for you today, yesterday, and will pray for you tomorrow. Even when you and I forget to pray for each other, Jesus doesn’t forget. Even when you and I pray for each other once or twice or even for a few weeks, Jesus never stops praying for us! Let these words sink into your soul, let them be an anchor for your drifting heart:

Consequently, [Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.–Hebrews 7:25

For the past year I’ve been regularly preaching this implication of the gospel to my heart–because Jesus died the death that I deserved I can draw near to God. Because on the cross Jesus was forsaken by God, I’ve been adopted by God and can talk to him like as my Father. As the final sacrifice, Jesus took God’s wrath and I got God’s mercy. As the Great, Resurrected and Exalted High Priest, Jesus stands between me and God and intercedes for me…when I sin, when I doubt God’s promises. Today! Yesterday! Tomorrow! Forever!

So when you tell someone you’ll be praying for them and even after you do pray for them, remind them “And don’t forget, Jesus has been praying for you, he is praying for you, and he will be praying for you!”

“Jesus is our master in prayer; he is also our companion in prayer. He says to us, ‘I’ll pray for you …’ — and does it. His promise to pray for us is not lost or overlooked in a vast heavenly clutter of petitions and intercessions, confessions and thanksgivings, ascending in a cloud of incense to his altar. It defeats our imagination to understand how this takes place, but we have it on good authority that it does.

Jesus prays. He is praying for us right now. He was praying for us yesterday. He will be praying for us tonight as we sleep and tomorrow morning as we wake up. Jesus praying for us is a current event.

You don’t think you know how to pray? Yes, there is much to learn; meanwhile Jesus is praying for you. You don’t feel like praying? Relax, feelings come and go; meanwhile Jesus is praying for you. You don’t have time to pray? Jesus doesn’t mind waiting; meanwhile he has plenty of time to pray for you.”

—Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 163-64