gospel

Anchored in Prayer

Our culture preaches a narrative that we are able, capable, and only limited by the imagination of our minds. We don’t have to listen too closely to the voices around us to notice the overt emphasis on self-help and human capability.

But we are more like the dependent child depicted in the prayer image than we are capable adults in control of all our circumstances and situations.

There are times in each of our lives where we realize how insignificant and weak we really are. A cancer diagnosis. Unexpected death of a loved one. Job loss. Pandemic. Work stress. Family illness. Natural disasters. Spiritual death.

If we are honest with ourselves, many things in our lives are outside our control and influence. This sense of personal helplessness is a prime opportunity to find ourselves anchored to God through prayer. This will be the fourth and final anchored post, and it culminates the underlying themes of the previous posts: Anchored in the Word, Anchored in the Gospel, and Anchored in the Church.

Why pray? Our sense of helplessness and inability is a key factor in our willingness to pray. When we are overwhelmed, uncertain, stressed, unable, or facing lack, through prayer we can find ourselves anchored to God who is in control, certain, able, and owns everything.

Prayer is a conversation. Throughout Scripture God invites his people to pray. Think about that. God wants you to bring your requests, burdens, and circumstances to him.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

If you are anything like me, you need God’s peace. So, if you are in need of God’s peace and interventions, then read on and learn some of the ways that prayer can anchor your faith.

When we pray, we are acknowledging God’s sovereignty and ability to intervene. There is nothing in this post more important than this truth. Praying reflects dependence on God. When we admit we are unable or that we lack, prayer and faith find their grounding in our spiritual lives. God is able to do far more than we can ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20). So when we pray, we can express our faith in God alone. It is from this place of dependence that God intervenes and answers,.

When we pray, we are trusting God’s wisdom. There are many things that I’ve prayed about and asked God for that I have not received. We must remember God is not a genie in a bottle. Our prayers are not wishes he is obliged to grant. Rather, God is all-knowing and all-wise. We should bring our burdens and requests to him. He is able to meet every one of them. But since he is Sovereign and in control, he knows best how to answer. We need to trust his wisdom. Remember, even Jesus requested that the Father remove the cup of the cross from him (Matt. 26:39), but submitted to the Father’s will.

When we pray, we are talking to our Father. God designed prayer to be more than a ritual or an event in a worship service. God granted us prayer as a glorious privilege. It is a conversation. Jesus teaches us to call God, Father (Matt. 6:9). Our Father in heaven knows what is best and cares to hear us and spend time with us. Prayer is a relational conversation between you and your Father who loved you enough to send Jesus to die for your privilege of prayer. This alone should motivate us to pray.

If prayer anchors our spiritual lives, then should we pray at set times or for extended periods of time like Jesus (Luke 6:12)? Should we pray for hours at a time like the spiritual giants of old (Martin Luther, Hudson Taylor, and others)? Should we whisper prayers through the day never ceasing our conversation with God (1 Thess. 5:17)? Should we fast when we pray (Matt. 6:9-18)?

Yes.

Yes. To all of the above and to many more questions we could ask about our manner and pattern of praying. Whether you pray in the morning during your quiet times, at night before bed, throughout the day in whispers, or in groups and services at church, prayer is a privilege that we should take advantage of more often than we do.

Here are a few guiding reminders that will strengthen our prayer lives:

  • Pray Scripture. One way you can be assured that you are praying what God wants is to pray phrases and sentences that God has already spoken. After all his thoughts and ways are not our own (Isaiah 55:8). My daily Bible readings often provide the content for how I talk to God. I find myself thanking God for his interventions as detailed in Scripture and bringing requests to God that connect to his work in the past. A helpful resource on this topic is Donald Whitney’s book, Praying the Bible.
  • Pray the gospel. What do I mean by this? Well the gospel teaches that we are spiritually bankrupt (Matt. 5:3) and in need of spiritual life (Eph. 2:1-10). Our need for Christ doesn’t change when we receive salvation. We do not need to be saved again, but the pattern of humility and dependence that characterized our entrance into salvation should continue to permeate our spiritual lives. When we remind ourselves in prayer of our need, our desperation, our dependence, we move to an attitude of humility, surrender, and faith that God hears. Praying gospel truths also reminds us that we can approach the Father because of the sacrifice of Christ.
  • Pray with others. Jesus taught us to pray “Our Father.” Prayer is a community privilege (Acts 4:23-31). While we cannot pray about everything on our prayer lists with everyone in the church, we can pray together with families, group members (Sunday school and discipleship groups), and close friends. Sharing prayer requests, praying together, and reflecting on answers to prayer will deepen prayer in our lives. Here’s one example. In our family devotions, we have often prayed for the sick and for protection. We also pray for the salvation of friends. Each time God strengthens, heals, and saves, we make time to thank God and praise him for answered prayer. This practice strengthens our faith.

Have you prayed today? I don’t ask to make you feel guilty if you haven’t. I ask to remind you that you can.

If you have a prayer request, I would be honored to join you in praying about it. Feel free to share in the comment section below, and I’ll pray with you about it today. If God has recently answered a prayer you’ve been praying, I would love for you to share that in the comment section as well. God’s answer to your prayer could encourage someone else!

Anchored in the Gospel

Last week’s article, Anchored in the Word, emphasized our need to be dependent upon the Bible for our spiritual life.

This week’s article is going to build from that previous post. Not only do we need to be anchored in God’s Word, but we need to be anchored in the gospel of Jesus Christ. At first glance, it might have made more sense to emphasize our dependence upon the gospel prior to our dependence on God’s Word. However, it is through God’s Word that we become acquainted with the gospel.

The Apostle Peter wrote:

Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

1 Peter 1:23-25 (Emphasis mine)

In the first chapter of his letter, Peter grounds Christian conduct on the salvation of the believer. Paul does something similar in his letters. Doctrine (who we are in Christ based on Scripture) grounds Christian conduct (what we do in Christ commanded by Scripture). In other words, it is from the Scriptures that we learn the gospel and our need for Jesus Christ.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news of salvation. For the earliest Christians, the gospel repeated the basic story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus’ passion and resurrection have always been the central focus of the Christian gospel.

The gospel intertwines with our lives as we reflect on the reason for Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. This good news of salvation flows out of the truths of God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness. God is supremely holy and demands absolute righteousness (the reason for the OT Law). But mankind has not been able to keep God’s standard of holiness. From our first parents in the garden until now, we are all sinful (Romans 3:23).

That God’s demand is holiness and we are sinful is not good news. Rightfully, God judges sinners, and if God gave us justice, we would be eternally punished for our sinfulness (Romans 6:23).

This is where the good news of the gospel comes in. Jesus came to take our place. The story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is the story of the God/Man (Jesus Christ) who met God’s standards and became the Substitute for mankind who did not meet God’s standards.

The good news, the gospel, is that through Christ we might be justified (that is made right with God, Romans 3:24-26), made new (2 Corinthians 5:17), made alive (Ephesians 2:1-10), and experience the fullness of God’s life for us (John 10:10).

  • To experience this gospel, we must admit that we don’t deserve it or earn it. Rather, we receive it by faith (Romans 10:9-10).
  • To experience this gospel, we must admit that we are spiritually broken and impoverished. Rather, we receive it through grace (Matthew 5:3).
  • To experience this gospel, we must recognize that it is both our entry point into relationship with God and the means of spiritual growth in our relationship with God (Ephesians 2:8-10; 1 Peter 1).

The reason we must be anchored in this gospel is because Satan, our enemy, has developed many false gospels that distract and distort from the true gospel. These false gospels deceive many into believing they have the real thing. These false gospels damage the spiritual lives of many believers. These false gospels bind many to untruths that hinder their spiritual development.

False gospels:

  • Legalism. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were legalistic. In legalism, one’s standing with God is based on behavior rather than the gospel of grace. Some, who claim to be Christians, believe their salvation is dependent on their works. And some Christians receive salvation by grace, but then proceed to depend on their deeds as a means for God’s approval. In short, legalism rests on our ability to fulfill the law. Legalism is not good news, because we can never be righteous enough.
  • Antinomianism. This word means anti-law and is the extreme opposite of legalism. If legalism says that our spiritual lives depend on obedience to the law, antinomianism says that how we behave has no bearing on our spiritual lives. Paul decried this false teaching in Romans 6:1-2. Antinomianism misses the point of the law altogether. God’s laws reflect the holiness of his character. As believers, we are to obey God, but not as a means to God’s approval. Rather, we are to obey God out of the approval we have from God through Jesus Christ. Antinomianism is not good news because it rejects the basis for the gospel–God’s holy demands.
  • Prosperity Gospel. The prosperity gospel teaches that enough faith, prayers, and generosity to the right ministries will result in health, wealth, and status. Prosperity teachers emphasize the experiences of here and now as opposed to God’s eternal plans for glorification and reward. This false teaching is unfortunately spreading very rapidly in our world. The prosperity gospel is not good news because it treats God more like a genie in a bottle than the Sovereign and Holy God that he is. It also puts much more emphasis on our response than God’s character and actions.
  • Liberalism. In theological liberalism, the primary emphasis for Christians is on love and justice in the world. The social gospel and social justice are common phrases in this false gospel. Liberalism emphasizes behavior (love and justice) far more than belief because it oftentimes rejects the supernaturalism found in the biblical worldview. I want to be careful here. Christians are to show love and pursue justice. But these are not the means of the gospel. Rather, these are the characteristics of Christians living out of the gospel. Liberalism is not good news because it does not recognize the depth of human sin nor the supernatural means of God’s redemptive work.
  • Moral Therapeutic Deism. This false gospel is a fancy way of articulating much of Western Christianity’s emphasis on doing good and treating biblical characters as mere moral models. God’s primary responsibility here is to encourage Christians to be good in behavior. Moral therapeutic deism is not good news because it diminishes God’s nature and minimizes Christian experience to being “good people.” This false gospel is seductive because many Christians fall into it unknowingly when they emphasize moral behavior over the good news of the gospel.

The root of these false gospels is pride and self. The root of the true gospel is Christ and what he brings to us.

We need to be anchored in the gospel because the gospel makes much of God. The glory of the good news for us is that the only part we truly play is that we come to God as sinners. God gets the glory for our salvation. We get the privileges of forgiveness and walking with God.

We must think on these things. In his helpful book Your Mind Matters, John Stott encourages us to think on the gospel regularly.

We are to consider not only what we should be but what by God’s grace we already are. We are constantly to recall what God has done for us and say to ourselves: “God has united me with Christ in his death and resurrection, and thus obliterated my old life and given me an entirely new life in Christ. He has adopted me into his family and made me his child. He has put his Holy Spirit within me and so made my body his temple. He has also made me his heir and promised me an eternal destiny with him in heaven. This is what he has done for me and in me. This is what I am in Christ.”

John Stott, Your Mind Matters, 59.

Reread that quote. If you need to, keep reading it. It will do you good to reflect on who God is and what he has done in the gospel to bring you to himself.

Take a moment (or more than a moment) and praise God for the good news. Being anchored in the gospel requires that we think on these things often, praise God for these things regularly, preach the good news to ourselves consistently, and seek to obey God on the basis that he has made us his children.

Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash