Luther's Thoughts on Prayer

Praying the Ten Commandments.

I divide each commandment into four parts, thereby fashioning a garland of four strands.  That is, I think of each commandment as:

Instruction (what does the Lord demand of me - how does he teach me to trust Him in all things).

Thanksgiving (for His infinite compassion and has offered to be my God, to care for me, and to be my comfort, guardian, help, and strength in every time of need).

Confession (acknowledging my great sin and ingratitude for having so shamefully despised such sublime teachings and having provoked His wrath and I repent of these and ask for His grace).

Prayer (petitioning the King for help, strength, ability, preservation, obedience, etc.).

Thoughts on Prayer.

As you practice the spiritual discipline of prayer, you will find that different characteristics of God motivate distinctive types of prayer.

Adoration.

Confession.

Thanksgiving.

Lamentation.

Supplication.

Petition.

Intercession.

         

Requirements of Prayer.

A desire for the highest spiritual and material interests of those prayed for.

The utmost confidence in the divine promise and sufficiency to meet the need.

Readiness to cooperate in action as an outcome of intercession.

Excerpts from the book "A SIMPLE WAY TO PRAY:  Luther’s letter to a friend". Edited by Dr. Archie Parrish. Available from Ligonier Ministries.

Remembering Hope

Memory is frequently the bond slave of despondency. Dispairing minds call to remembrance every dark foreboding in the past, and dilate upon every gloomy feature in the present; thus memory, clothed in sackcloth, presents to the mind a cup of mingled gall and wormwood. There is, however, no necessity for this. Wisdom can readily transform memory into an angel of comfort. That same recollection which in its left hand brings so many gloomy omens, may be trained to bear in its right a wealth of hopeful signs. She need not wear a crown of iron, she may encircle her brow with a fillet of gold, all spangled with stars. Thus it was in Jeremiah’s experience: in the previous verse memory had brought him to deep humiliation of soul: “My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me;” and now this same memory restored him to life and comfort. “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” Like a two-edged sword, his memory first killed his pride with one edge, and then slew his despair with the other. As a general principle, if we would exercise our memories more wisely, we might, in our very darkest distress, strike a match which would instantaneously kindle the lamp of comfort. There is no need for God to create a new thing upon the earth in order to restore believers to joy; if they would prayerfully rake the ashes of the past, they would find light for the present; and if they would turn to the book of truth and the throne of grace, their candle would soon shine as aforetime. Be it ours to remember the lovingkindness of the Lord, and to rehearse his deeds of grace. Let us open the volume of recollection which is so richly illuminated with memorials of mercy, and we shall soon be happy. Thus memory may be, as Coleridge calls it, “the bosom-spring of joy,” and when the Divine Comforter bends it to his service, it may be chief among earthly comforters.

Spurgeon's Morning and Evening Devotional - Evening, May 28

 “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” Lamentations 3:21

Pure Religion...is this

A short video of the Dennehy family....You won't be disappointed.

Watch HERE

 



Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

James 1:27 

The Doctrine of Love: Our Identity as Christians

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another"

Having a strong, biblical foundation based on solid doctrine is essential in the life of all Christians. It keeps us humble to know, for example,  that we have been saved by God's grace and that we did not choose Him, but that He chose us. It help us not despair in our daily battle against sin the wonderful doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. He will not let us go. He who has called us will never leave us nor forsake us. He who began a good work in us is able to complete it. Our salvation, from A-Z depends only in the work of Christ Jesus, and that is strong, comforting doctrine. The doctrine of the Sovereignty of God is what gives us hope when all seems to be falling apart, when there are many questions and a few answers. That He is ruling this world and that he knows the number of the hairs on my head, makes a whole world of a difference. The way we approach God in prayer, the way we live our lives, the way we respond to sin, the way we deal with the desires of our hearts, all we do depends on the doctrines on which we stand.

There is one doctrine, however, that we sometimes leave on the side. We know it is there and we pretend to know it well until differences arise and conflict comes our way, I am talking about the doctrine of love.

To read the rest CLICK HERE

The Gospel Offer to All

The term ‘limited’ atonement has given much offense. It may not indeed be the most fortunate terminology. It is capable of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Some for this reason may prefer the terms ‘definite’ or ‘particular’ atonement.

Did Christ die and offer Himself a sacrifice to God to make the salvation of all men possible, or did He offer Himself a sacrifice to God to secure infallibly the salvation of His people?

The atonement is limited, because in its precise intention and meaning and effect it is for those and for those only who are destined in the determinate purpose of God to eternal salvation. We may well bless God that this is not a meagre company, but a multitude whom no man can number out of every nation and kindred and people and tongue.

It is sometimes objected that the doctrine of limited atonement makes the preaching of a full and free salvation impossible. This is wholly untrue. The salvation accomplished by the death of Christ is infinitely sufficient and universally suitable, and it may be said that its infinite sufficiency and perfect suitability grounds a bona fide offer of salvation to all without distinction. The doctrine of limited atonement any more than the doctrine of sovereign election does not raise a fence around the offer of the gospel. The overture of the gospel offering peace and salvation through Jesus Christ is to all without distinction, though it is truly from the heart of sovereign election and limited atonement that this stream of grace universally proffered flows.

The criticism that the doctrine of limited atonement prevents the free offer of the gospel rests upon a profound misapprehension as to what the warrant for preaching the gospel and even of the primary act of faith itself really is. This warrant is not that Christ died for all men but the universal invitation, demand and promise of the gospel united with the perfect sufficiency and suitability of Christ as Saviour and Redeemer. What the ambassador of the gospel demands in Christ’s name is that the lost and helpless sinner commit himself to that all-sufficient Saviour with the plea that in thus receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation he will certainly be saved. And what the lost sinner does on the basis of the warrant of faith is to commit himself to that Saviour with the assurance that as he thus trusts he will be saved. What he believes, then, in the first instance is not that he has been saved, but that believing in Christ salvation becomes his. The conviction that Christ died for him, or in other words that he is an object of God’s redeeming love in Christ, is not the primary act of faith. It is often in the consciousness of the believer so closely bound up with the primary act of faith that he may not be able to be conscious of the logical and psychological distinction. But nevertheless the primary act of faith is self-committal to the all-sufficient and suitable Saviour, and the only warrant for that trust is the indiscriminate, full and free offer of grace and salvation in Christ Jesus.

* Part of an article which formed a series from John Murray’s pen entitled ‘The Reformed Faith and Modern Substitutes’ in The Presbyterian Guardian, 1935-36.

Let the Bible elevate your mind

Bible Translations.

There’s a conversation running right now on the relative value of certain Bible translations.

Depending on who’s talking and for what purpose, it might strike some as tedious. I happen to enjoy the discussion, and I think there’s one strain that’s worthy of consideration for those interested in how language might affect their spirituality.

In discussing the recent republication of the Knox Bible, a mid-twentieth century translation, Michael Brendan Dougherty mentions one “fatal” flaw, the use of sacral language, such as thee’s and thou’s. Apparently, translator Ronald Knox felt stuck using it in his day, but why not change that for the contemporary edition, asks Dougherty?

My answer is less about the Knox Bible than it is about the general loss of sacral language in our culture. It’s stodgy, we’re told, and nobody talks that way, right?

Yep. But we should be wary about losing it nonetheless.

Why? For starters, while the Bible may speak to our moment, it speaks across millennia. There are perhaps good reasons to favor contemporary English in some settings, but the overall loss of sacral language has, as Leroy Huizenga puts it, “accommodat[ed] the language of the Scripture to the barbarism of contemporary culture.” Instead of allowing the Bible its natural transcendence, sacrificing the sacral sensibility limits the scripture’s ability to correct our current perspectives because it’s too heavily reshaped by them.

Next, translating a text involves more than rendering one language into another. It involves rendering a mindset, rendering certain patterns of thought. This is sometimes lost in oversimplified conversations about thought-for-thought translations vs. word-for-word translations. To properly render the thought, attention to vocabulary, phrasing, and flow is essential. A flatfooted rendering of the Psalms, for instance, robs them of their power.

George Weigel addresses this issue relative to the new Roman Missal. While some object to its foreign-sounding phrases, Weigel explains, “The language of the liturgy is . . . meant to elevate us, to lift us out of the quotidian (i.e. everyday; commonplace) and the ordinary.” It’s not the patois (i.e. speech) of the parking lot. Rather, it’s “our privileged participation in the liturgy of saints and angels around the Throne of Grace, and the way we address the Lord, and each other, in those circumstances ought to reflect the awesome character of our baptismal dignity.” Importantly, even when the masses spoke Latin, the mass wasn’t everyday Latin.

Weigel’s observation applies to the scripture as well. Even in its day, King James English was dated. David Teems, author of Majestie and Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice, says that the translators chose the archaic style to intentionally elevate the experience of its hearers. It was supposed to smack of sacredness, hint at the holy in its very phrases and turns.

This is true of the original text of the Bible itself. While Paul’s letters may sometimes sound common and direct, much of the Bible is cast in more sacral tones. As Robert Alter notes in the introduction to his translation of the Pentateuch, “[T]he language of the biblical narrative in its own time was stylized, decorous, dignified, and readily identified by it audience as . . . distinct from the language of quotidian reality.”

And as he says introducing his translation of 1 and 2 Samuel, “If one keeps in mind the strong element of stylization of the ancient language even in its own time, there is no good reason to render the biblical Hebrew as contemporary English, either lexically or syntactically.”

I don’t accept that there is no good reason, but neither do I disagree with Alter’s main point. To encounter the scripture is to encounter the holy, and therefore its translators should honor the intent of its writers. The text of scripture communicates the grace of God to us. The language doesn’t have to be off-putting and alien, but it must be up (to) that essential task.

I have no trouble believing that modern translations have done a lot of good. I work at a Bible publisher that publishes several different translations and see the value every day. But I do worry that we are increasingly unable to meet God on the scripture’s own terms. The text should enable the relationship, not handicap it.

Too often we want a plug-and-play Bible, but to recapture that sense of the holy, to experience the elevation possible in word and phrase, perhaps we need to spend time with a translation that lifts us out of ordinary life, instead of doubling as an echo chamber for it.

Posted on Patheos.com by Joel Miller.

Total and Free Access

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)

Some years ago I was living in one of the Alpine valleys of Southern France, preaching to one of the little Huguenot congregations while I was pursuing my studies at the University of Grenoble.  Every Thursday morning I walked four miles up the valley to a little centre where I taught a score of children about God.  In that village there lived a Roman priest who, on Thursday, used to come down the valley to a village near the one where I lived.  Frequently our paths crossed, and at times we found ourselves going the same direction.

One day as we went along together he said to me, “Why do you Protestants object so strongly to our praying to the saints?”  I asked him to explain what advantage there was to be gained from praying to the saints.  He replied, “Well, suppose, for example, that I wanted an interview with the President of the Republic.  I could go to Paris and arrange for an interview with any one of the members of the cabinet.  In the same way I may obtain the intercession of the Virgin and the saints on behalf of my desires as I pray.”  I said to him, “Sir, let me ask you a question.  Suppose that my father is the President of the French Republic.  Suppose that I live in the Palace of the Elysee with him, sit at his table three times a day, and am frequently the object of his tender solicitations, and know the touch of his loving hand.  Do you think for a moment that if I have a problem to present to him that I am going to go across Paris to one of the ministries, pass all the guards and secretaries that surround a cabinet member, and finally reaching his office say, ‘Monsieur le Ministre, would you be so kind as to arrange an interview for me to talk with my daddy?’  Do you not rather think that I will look him in the eye at one of the moments when he puts his arm across my shoulder in a gesture of affection, and then tell him that I have a request to make?”  The priest was taken aback.

Access!  Think of it.  At any moment, in any place, I may go to the Father, knowing that with Jesus Christ as my one Mediator I will be instantly received.  I am a child of the King.  I have become at the very moment of my new birth an heir of God, and a joint–heir with Jesus Christ.  I have “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven” for me (cf. 1 Peter 1:3).

Originally posted on 11/26/12 at “Making God’sWord Plain” by Donald Grey Barnhouse

Adopting Technology

How might this be useful in providing Bibles to the unreached people?

 

Excerpts from an article in MIT Technology Review by David Talbot

October 29, 2012

With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages—simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing what happens.

 The goal: to see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs.

Early observations are encouraging, said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC’s founder, at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week.

The devices involved are Motorola Xoom tablets—used together with a solar charging system, which Ethiopian technicians had taught adults in the village to use.  Once a week, a technician visits the villages and swaps out memory cards so that researchers can study how the machines were actually used. 

After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the “alphabet song,” and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word “Lion.”

The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Great Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.

Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.

Does Evil Exist?

A short dialog between a young student and his professor.

 

The dialog takes place in an 19th century school room and begins with the professor addressing the young students followed by a young boy questioning the professor.

Professor:        I’ll prove to you if God exists, then he is evil.   Did God create everything that exists?  If God created everything then he created the evil which means God is evil.

Student:          Excuse me, professor.  Does cold exist?

Professor:        What kind of question is this? Of course it exists.  Have you never been cold?

Student:          In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the law of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat.  Professor, does darkness exist?

Professor:        Of course it does.

Student:          You are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either.  Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness.  Evil does not exist.  It is just like darkness and cold. God did not create evil.  Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart.

 

The young student was Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential iconic scientists and intellectuals of all time. A German-Swiss Nobel laureate, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.

Credits:  Original author unknown.  Dialog transcribed from a posting on YouTube.  View HERE

 

The Differences and the Similarities in the Way the Father Draws Sinners to Christ by the Holy Spirit.

The following was taken from Pastor David Muray's blogsite HeadHeartHand

 Differences in the Father’s Drawing
 1. Different ages: The Holy Spirit works on young hearts and old hearts. However, the majority are younger as their hearts and wills have not grown so hard and so skillful in resisting the Spirit.

2. Different time periods: Sometimes the drawing can take place in a few minutes; sometimes it can be over many years.

3. Different forces: The Holy Spirit is sometimes “violent” (e.g. Saul of Tarsus), but often gentle (e.g. Lydia).

4. Different expectations: Sometimes we are not surprised by who the Spirit draws to Christ. They have looked promising for many years and we have been almost waiting for them. At other times, the Holy Spirit picks out the least predictable and most unexpected.

5. Different means: The Holy Spirit may use a sermon, a Scripture reading, a tract, a book, a witness, even an argument to draw sinners to Christ.

Similarities in the Father’s Drawing

 1. The Holy Spirit uses the Word: This is not some kind of mystical mid-air experience. There’s a mystery to it all right, but it’s always rooted in the Scriptures. It’s not just some fizz of feelings or emotional manipulation.

2. The Holy Spirit works through the mind: This is a rational experience. The Holy Spirit persuades and reasons with the sinner using the Scriptures. He explains his situation, exposes his need, exhibits him the solution, outlines what he has to do, encourages him with promises, beats excuses, and overcomes obstacles. “And they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” (John 6:45)

3. The Holy Spirit changes the will’s direction by changing its passions: As the reasons and arguments pile up, the will begins to change from South to North; it is turned 180 degrees and re-directed. It was going against God by going away from God. But now it is going towards God with love and happy expectation.
You cannot experience the Holy Spirit without emotion. Although He works through the mind upon the will, it is not an emotionless experience. There can often be deep and powerful emotions as the sinner’s mind, will, and heart are changed. There is usually a painful sorrow as the sinner looks back at his past resistance. There is joy over the grace extended and the forgiveness enjoyed.

4. The Holy Spirit draws to Jesus: The Holy Spirit directs the sinner’s attention to Jesus Christ in particular. It is not a general theism that is spoken of here. The Father draws to Jesus. We come to Christ. We see a beauty in Him we never saw before. We develop a fascination, even an obsession, with Him. We are more than attracted to Christ: we are impelled. And when we come, he receives. He has never cast our or driven away any sinner drawn to Him by the Holy Spirit (John 6:37).

5.  The Holy Spirit always wins: Although there is a general, or common, work of the Holy Spirit that is successfully resisted, when the Holy Spirit sets out to save, He saves. He has never been defeated. A big fat zero is in His losses column. “All that the Father gives me will come to me” (John 6:37). We’re not talking possibility or probability but certainty. And we are not talking just of coming but of staying…forever.
As the Shorter Catechism (31) put it: “Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.”

Franklin Graham trying to legitimize Mormonism as Christianity.

Franklin Graham: Mormonism Will Never Be Labeled a ‘Cult’ Again...

By: Heather Clark

During a recent interview with CNN, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), advised that a page that was removed from the ministry website last month following Graham’s endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, which classified Mormonism as a cult, is “not going to come back.”

The page, entitled, “What is a Cult?” read, “A cult is any group which teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the Biblical message of the Christian faith. It is very important that we recognize cults and avoid any involvement with them. Cults often teach some Christian truth mixed with error, which may be difficult to detect.”

It then listed among three bullet points on how to identify a cult, “They do not adhere solely to the sixty-six books of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. They add their ‘special revelations’ to the Bible and view them as equally authoritative.”

“Some of these groups are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spiritists, Scientologists and others,” the web page stated.................

 “What is going on here?” asked John McArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, California, in response to Graham’s comments. “It’s an almost inconceivable contradiction that a man who believes that has raised millions and millions and millions of dollars to gather people from all over the world into large stadiums and tell them they need to believe in Jesus Christ.”

“[Mormonism] is a damning religious system,” McArthur said. “It is so far from Christianity that it is more like paganism than Christianity.”

“Evangelicalism is in a desperate situation, and that is made manifest by its inability to distinguish who is a true Christian. We have abandoned any clear understanding of what it means to really be saved,” he asserted. “We have no right to redefine [salvation] in our own terms in order to be be popular or in order to be accepted. True and historic Christianity has never been confused about what it means to be a Christian.”

read the entire article here

A "must see" video describing the trip back to the Sawi tribe by the first pioneer missionary..

http://vimeo.com/pioneersusa/neverthesame




this is the country Trevor Johnson currently serves as a missionary...check out our website for more info on Trevor sovereigngracebaptistchurch.net

How I Absorbed Three Punches and Stood Up Anyway

There is a very good article by Pastor Tom Chantry at his blog site...I'll give you a teaser but check out the entire article

 

 

Although I’ve been worried about this election for months, only in the aftermath did I realize that I never really thought our country would re-elect a President who has been such an abject failure by any and every measure.  It just didn’t seem possible that we would do so, and so at some level I didn’t expect it at all.  As the results rolled in, I found myself reeling, unable to take in the enormity of what has happened to our nation.  I scarcely slept, unable to stop running through the implications of the disaster.  I was, to put it mildly, knocked down and stunned.

But God is gracious, and eventually I slept, and this morning I find myself back up off the mat.  Looking back, I can see what it was that took me so by surprise.  I allowed myself to think too highly of my country – to imagine that the American optimists were right and that there is something exceptional and wonderful in the American spirit which pulls us through the worst crises.  That smugness was knocked out of me by a series of blows as I realized anew that we are a culture of sin, a culture of stupidity, and a culture under judgment – none of which really surprises me in the light of day.  Those blows absolutely leveled me last night, but today I’m standing.  Here’s why:

Read the entire article here:   chantrynotes