The sexual relationship within marriage is powerful and beautiful, but it can only be described to a certain extent; eventually it must be experienced to be understood. The young soon-to-be-married man imagining the sexual relationship with his wife-to-be can really only guess at what it will be like; the bit he understands about it brings about a good and pure longing in his heart to actually experience it. The same is true of so many of the beautiful things in life; beauty calls to be experienced.

Worship is much the same. I love reading about worship, but it is always ultimately dissatisfying because it stirs up the desire to experience worship. This longing to experience beauty is part of the great hope of every Christian—the desire to experience the beauty of worshipping God face-to-face. While we love worship in this world, it is always stained by sin and it is always mediated, and for these reasons we long for the real thing, the fullest thing.

I thought about beauty and the beauty of worship as I read this week’s chapter in The Hidden Life of Prayer. When I was a child I was taught the ACTS acronym to help me distinguish between the different kinds of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Christians use different terms for these things; some combine them into fewer categories and some add a couple. What is consistent, though, is that there are different ways to pray. At times prayer is full of praise and thanksgiving, at times prayer focuses on confession of sin, while at other times it is full of pleas for the Lord’s help and guidance.

In The Hidden Life of Prayer, David McIntyre speaks of worship, confession and request as the three components of prayer. This week’s Reading Classics Together brought us to his chapter titled “The Engagement: Worship.” Here he gives three ways in which “the tribute of praise which the saints are instructed to render to the Lord may arise,” which is to say, three reasons for which we ought to express worship in prayer: in acknowledgement of daily mercies; in thanksgiving for the great redemption; and in contemplation of the Divine perfection.

Returning to my earlier analogy, I wonder if we are approaching the point in these discussions of prayer where there is really only so much that can be said without simply turning to prayer. As much as I enjoyed this chapter, it felt like something that would be far better experienced than described. I am glad to hear of how a man offers prayers of thanksgiving for his redemption, but I would far rather offer prayer for my own redemption. I suppose that is the ultimate purpose of any book on prayer—to make us pray. Later on in the book McIntyre will quote John Laidlaw who says this: “The main lesson about prayer is just this: Do it! Do it! Do it!” In good Baptist style I’ll add an “amen!” to that.

It has been a couple of months since I’ve had the privilege of preaching, and I am looking forward to stepping into the pulpit again a couple of weeks from now. It is always a joy and always a weighty responsibility. In reading Kent Hughes’ commentary on Isaiah I was challenged by his “Word to Those Who Preach the Word”—his preface to the Preach the Word commentary series for which he serves as general editor. It’s a powerful meditation on the pleasure of God in preaching.

There are times when I am preaching that I have especially sensed the pleasure of God. I usually become aware of it through the unnatural silence. The ever-present coughing ceases and the pews stop creaking, bringing an almost physical quiet to the sanctuary—through which my words sail like arrows. I experience a heightened eloquence, so that the cadence and volume of my voice intensify the truth I am preaching.

There is nothing quite like it—the Holy Spirit filling one's sails, the sense of his pleasure, and the awareness that something is happening among one's hearers. This experience is, of course, not unique, for thousands of preachers have similar experiences, even greater ones.

What has happened when this takes place? How do we account for this sense of his smile? The answer for me has come from the ancient rhetorical categories of logos, ethos and pathos.

The first reason for his smile is the logos—in terms of preaching, God's Word. This means that as we stand before God's people to proclaim his Word, we have done our homework. We have exegeted the passage, mined the significance of its words in their context, and applied sound hermeneutical principles in interpreting the text so that we understand what its words meant to its hearers. And it means that we have labored long until we can express in a sentence what the theme of the text is—so that our outline springs from the text. Then our preparation will be such that as we preach, we will not be preaching our own thoughts about God's Word, but God's actual Word, his logos. This is fundamental to pleasing him in preaching.

The second element in knowing God's smile in preaching is ethos—what you are as a person. There is a danger endemic to preaching, which is having your hands and heart cauterized by holy things. Phillips Brooks illustrated it by the analogy of a train conductor who comes to believe that he has been to the places he announces because of his long and loud heralding of them. And that is why Brooks insisted that preaching must be “the bringing of truth through personality.” Though we can never perfectly embody the truth we preach, we must be subject to it, long for it, and make it as much a part of our ethos as possible. As the Puritan William Ames said, “Next to the Scriptures, nothing makes a sermon more to pierce, than when it comes out of the inward affection of the heart without any affectation [pretence].” When the preacher's ethos back's up his logos, there will be the pleasure of God.

Last, there is pathos—personal passion and conviction. David Hume, the scottish philosopher and skeptic, was once challenged as he was seen going to hear George Whitefield preach: "I thought you do not believe in the gospel." Hume replied, "I don't, but he does." Just so! When a preacher believes what he preaches, there will be passion. And this belief and requisite passion will know the smile of God.

The pleasure of God is a matter of logos (the Word), ethos (what you are), and pathos (your passion). As you preach the Word may you experience his smile—the Holy Spirit in your sails!

R. Kent Hughes

Steve Saint: The Next Chapter - Steve Saint was recently in a bad accident and may now be permanently paralyzed. Randy Alcorn shares a video from Steve’s hospital bed. You can read details of the accident here.

TGC Women’s Conference - You can watch the Gospel Coalition women’s event live online starting Friday at noon.

The All-Sufficiency of Christ - For the rap fan, here’s a new, free track from Timothy Brindle. He speaks of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. On a similar note, you may enjoy this article from Christianity Today (PDF).

Our Eugenic Past and Future - Here’s an article from the New York Times that traces our eugenic past and future. “Having left behind pseudoscientific racial theories, it's easy for us to look back and pass judgment on yesterday's eugenicists. It's harder to acknowledge what we have in common with them. First, a relentless desire for mastery and control, not only over our own lives but over the very marrow and sinew of generations yet unborn. And second, a belief in our own fundamental goodness, no matter to what ends our mastery is turned.”

And What Remains - I enjoyed this short film, though I kept hoping for a good, gospel punch!

Libraries, Studies, Writing Rooms - The Art of Manliness has a gallery of the libraries, studies and writing rooms of famous authors.

A Little World Made Cunningly - We truly are fearfully and wonderfully made. And that includes being indwelt (or ondwelt) by a myriad of other fearfully and wonderfully made little creatures. “The ancients talked about the human body as a microcosm, as a little world.  Now scientists have shown just how true that is, how each of us is a world with millions of inhabitants.”

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts. —A.W. Tozer

After writing about this new genre of I went to heaven books, I received many comments and emails asking me about biblical examples of those who glimpsed heaven—John in the book of Revelation, Paul in 2 Corinthians, Isaiah in his prophecy. I will address this briefly today.

There are several themes in today’s “I went to heaven” books:

• Each of the people experienced heaven after dying a natural death. In every case, the soul had left the body so the person was clinically and spiritually dead.
• After the experience of heaven, each of the people was restored to life so that the soul returned to the body and the body was no longer clinically or spiritually dead.
• Each of the people describes as much as they can remember and does so in order to offer encouragement and in order to validate what the Bible says.

There is no biblical precedent for experiences of this kind. Let me look to each of the biblical passages.

Revelation

The Revelation is unique in being New Testament apocalyptic literature. This genre is prophetic, meaning that it is inspired by God in order to show what will take place in the end times, tying together past, present and future. Here is how John introduces his experience:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. (Revelation 1:1-2)

God gave Jesus Christ a revelation which he in turn made known to John through an intermediary. John says that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day when he experienced some kind of a vision (Revelation 1:10). He was fully alive and consious when this vision was given to him. The purpose was not to speak of heaven or to validate heaven, but to speak of events that will soon take place.

It is important to note how he closes the book: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book” (Revelation 22:18-19). John makes it clear that the final words of Revelation mark the closing of the canon—the closing of God’s revelation through Scripture. A certain kind of revelation came to a close after John’s vision of the things that would soon take place. Equating John’s experience—an Apostle receiving an inerrant, canonical vision from God himself—with Colton Burpo’s, is to compare apples to battleships.