"Pray also for me ..."

The Apostle Paul was never shy when it came to requesting that others might pray for him and for his ministry labours (see for example Ephesians 6:20 and Colossians 4: 2-4).  It was neither struggling weakness nor self-effacing humility.  It was an expression of both a conscious dependence upon the Lord without whom nothing of eternal, God-glorifying worth would be possible (John 15: 5-8), and a desire to actively involve others in front-line ministry as co-workers together  (see 2 Cor 1:11).  But whatever the motivation, Paul believed in the efficacy of the prayers of others on his behalf, and asked that they would maintain this prayerful support.
Like apostles, pastors are similarly, deeply dependent upon the prayers of others.  But for what should they pray?
RW Glenn recently guest-blogged for Trevin Wax and addressed this very issue.  I think this is an important matter that I trust many will take to heart.  One might quibble about the order here and there, but it's a great place to start.  He writes:   

About nine years ago, I developed the following list of prayer requests that I gave to every willing hand. I haven’t passed them out in at least four years, but I decided to resurrect them. Why? I need prayer…badly! And so does your pastor. As leaders in the church, we have unique and often more intense temptations (“Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter”). So will you consider praying for your pastor the way I ask my people to pray for me?

1. That the gospel would be the focal point of my life and identity – not manhood, not being a husband, not being a father, not being a pastor, but who I am in Christ.
2. That I would not fear man by desiring the admiration of people; that the Lord’s “Well done” would be ever before my eyes.
3. That the Lord would not allow me to go long between repentances; that I would keep short accounts with Him and be sensitive to and ruthless with my sin.
4. That I would continue to grow in the character qualities of a man of God (1 Tim. 3:1-7; 2 Tim. 2:22-26; Titus 1:5-9).
5. That I would have a consistent, powerful, diligent life of private prayer; that I would grow in my dependence on the Holy Spirit.
6. That the Lord would give me great diligence in study and sermon preparation, making the most of my time.
7. That my preaching and teaching ministry would be empowered by the Holy Spirit; that the Lord would effect real change in our lives through it; and that by it we would be more endeared to Christ.
8. That I would boldly and faithfully and humbly and joyfully and intentionally share the gospel with the non-Christians in my social orbit.
9. That I would see Jesus as supremely valuable, my greatest treasure, and as my dear friend.

Amen and amen! 

The problem of evil - revisted

With thanks to CS and BW

Evil cannot, does not, must not 'make sense'

Because of the plethora of weddings I was involved with last week, I didn't manage to get across to the Portstewart - Keswick Convention where Dr Chris Wright was giving the morning Bible readings.  I have however, been richly exercised and stimulated over these past few days through reading the opening sections of his book, The God I Don't Understand, in which he addresses some of the Biblical issues that at times cause believers to question or query the character and purposes of God - either through his activity or more, his apparent inactivity - and which are often grist to the antagonist's mill. I don't agree with everything, but he is very helpful in a number of areas.  Take for instance, the 'mystery of evil'...
That God has chosen to reveal so much in His Word about Himself, creation, humanity, sin, Christ, redemption, heaven and hell, etc., indicates that where God has not given clear information about such as ultimate questions regarding the origin of evil, Satan, the suffering of the "innocents" etc, such silence is because he has deliberately determined to withhold answers to such questions.  The Bible gives the occasional hint, but there are no definitive answers.  And this, says Wright, is a wholly positive and necessary thing.
Like Alister McGrath, Chris Wright draws attention to our investigative rationality as part of what it means to be made in the image of God.  We have a fundamental drive to explore, to question, to understand and explain life, the universe, everything.  Even evil.  But our explanations for the presence and impact of evil do not and will not work because evil, simply, cannot be rationalised. He writes in summary conclusion: 

Aftermath of the Aurora cinema shootings

"God with his infinite perspective, and for reasons known only to himself, knows that we finite human beings cannot, indeed must not, "make sense" of evil.  For the final truth is that evil does not make sense. "Sense" is part of our rationality that is in itself part of God's good creation and God's image in us.  So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.

"Evil has no proper place in creation.  It has no validity, no truth, no integrity.  It does not intrinsically belong to the creation as God originally made it nor will it belong to creation as God will ultimately redeem it.  It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality.  Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled.  Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence that has made itself almost (but not finally) 'at home'.  Evil is beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends for us to understand.  So God has withheld its secrets from his own revelation and our research" (p.42).

In subsequent chapters Wright develops his approach, and to be fair to his intentions, I need to point out that while he argues that the Bible compels us to 'accept' the mystery of evil and suffering as something that is beyond our understanding, this does not imply that we should just resignedly acquiesce to its presence;  rather, the Biblical call is to protest and lament at the offence of evil which contradicts the goodness and purposes of God; and by faith, look ahead with joy-filled hope at evil's present defeat and final and unequivocal destruction in the new creation (p.56ff) - all in consequence of Jesus' triumphant victory at the Cross and through his resurrection (Col. 1: 20).  

Discipleship: mapping the faithfulness of God in our lives

1 They have greatly oppressed me from my youth—
    let Israel say—
2 they have greatly oppressed me from my youth,
    but they have not gained the victory over me.
3 Plowmen have plowed my back
    and made their furrows long.
4 But the Lord is righteous;
    he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.
Psalm 129: 1-4 (NIV 1984)

Commenting upon this psalm, pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson writes:

"The cornerstone sentence of Psalm 129 is, 'The Lord is righteous', meaning not merely that He is always right (which he is and this, of course, is what the Bible assumes), but that he is always in right relation to us...

"That 'The Lord is righteous' is the reason that Christians can look back over a long life, crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions - look back across all that and see it as a road of blessing and make a song of what we see. 'Sorely have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me (v 2: RSV).  God sticks to His relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it.  

"The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment that God makes to us.  Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God's faithfulness.  We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous.  Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms.  It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance."

A Long Obedience in the Right Direction (Marshall-Pickering: London, 1989), p 128-9.  Slightly edited for brevity and clarity.
HT: Tullian

Growing in Grace

J.C. Ryle

"When I speak of 'growth in grace', I do not for a moment mean that a believer's interest in Christ can grow.  I do not mean that he can grow in safety, acceptance with God, or security.  I do not mean that he can be ever more justified, more pardoned, more forgiven, more at peace with God, than he is the first moment that he believes...
"When I speak of 'growth in grace', I only mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigour and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in a believer's heart.  I hold that every one of those graces [is capable] of growth, progress and increase.  I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like may be little or great, strong or weak, vigorous or feeble, and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life.  When I speak of someone 'growing in grace' I mean simply this:  that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual-mindedness more marked.  He feels more of the power of godliness in his heart.  He manifests more of it in his life.  He is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace."

JC Ryle, Holiness Evangelical Press, 1976, p84f.  Orig. published 1877.

While one might misinterpret Ryle's latter sentences to mean that one's spiritual maturity is ultimately, a steady, linear, upward and onward progression (which - from our perspective - it is clearly not, cf Romans 7), nevertheless the burden of the importance of Christian growth and giving ourselves wholeheartedly towards the pursuit of increasing Christlikeness, is the message we desperately need to hear and heed. 
See also here.

The essence of sin and salvation

The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone. 

John StottThe Cross of Christ(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 16
HT:  OFI

The search for God-particle and the search for God

Happy Higgs-Boson Day!

On this momentous day when scientists at CERN have announced the discovery of a subatomic particle consistent with the Higgs boson particle that gives matter mass, do read this article by Professor Alister McGrath, Christian theologian and apologist, and trained molecular biophysicist, written for the Daily Telegraph at the end of 2011 about the parallels between the search for so-called 'God-particle' and the search for God Himself.  The fact that Alister is from 'Norn Iron' is a bit of a bonus ...

In 1994, Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman came up with a nickname for the Higgs boson – the mysterious particle proposed by physicist Peter Higgs back in the 1960s to explain the origin of mass. Journalists loved the name – "the God particle" – which probably explains the huge media interest recently in the work of the Large Hadron Collider. Most scientists hated it, considering it misleading and simplistic. Maybe so. But it certainly got people talking about physics.

And maybe it’s not such a bad nickname after all. Lederman invented the name the "God particle” because it was “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive.” Nobody had seen it back in 1994. And they’re still not sure whether they’ve really seen it today. Yet this isn’t seen as a massive problem. The idea seemed to make so much sense of things that the existence of the “God particle” has come to be taken for granted. It has become, I would say, a “particle of faith”. The observations themselves didn’t prove the existence of the Higgs boson. Rather, the idea of the Higgs boson explained observations so well that those in the know came to believe it really existed. One day, technology might be good enough to allow it to be actually observed. But we don’t need to wait until then before we start believing in it.

Some tell us that science is about what can be proved. The wise tell us it is really about offering the best explanations of what we see, realising that these explanations often cannot be proved, and may sometimes lie beyond proof. Science often proposes the existence of invisible (and often undetectable) entities – such as dark matter – to explain what can be seen. The reason why the Higgs boson is taken so seriously in science is not because its existence has been proved, but because it makes so much sense of observations that its existence seems assured. In other words, its power to explain is seen as an indicator of its truth.

There’s an obvious and important parallel with the way religious believers think about God. While some demand proof that God exists, most see this as unrealistic. Believers argue that the existence of God gives the best framework for making sense of the world. God is like a lens, which brings things into clearer focus. As the Harvard psychologist William James pointed out years ago, religious faith is about inferring “the existence of an unseen order” in which the “riddles of the natural order” can be explained.

There’s more to God than making sense of things. But for religious believers, it’s a great start.