I recently happened across an interesting quote from John MacArthur’s book Hard to Believe. The premise of the book, which flies in the face of the church growth movement, is that it is not at all easy to be saved—it is actually very difficult. A few weeks ago I mentioned how important Ashamed of the Gospel was in my spiritual development at the time that I transitioned from mainstream theology [back] into Reformed theology. Hard to Believe came a little after that, but was very reassuring to me as I continued to grapple with the issues.

And here is what MacArthur says:

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This week I received Heart Cries to Heaven, a new book from DayOne that is a compilation of prayers composed by David Campell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, PA. One of those prayers stood out to me as I considered the week to come in which Americans will head to the polls and elect their new representatives. Here is a “Prayer for Godly Leaders.”

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Our great and gracious God,

We pray that you will give us leaders who fear your name. We ask for those who are in authority over us

We ask, Lord, that you will not give us up to the sway of those who care nothing for you and for your laws.

Give us godly leaders, we pray.

We pray, too, for godly leaders within the church.

We pray for the reformation of the visible church and for great revival within its midst. May those who are in the positions of leadership manifest the same qualities that we see manifest supremely in our Lord Jesus Christ, and that, under the leadership of such men, your church would flourish.

Give us all grace, we pray,

We pray that you will stand with your servant as he opens up the Word,
That you will put words in his mouth,
That you will give to us illumined minds and hearts,

Hear us, O God, we pray, and these prayers and the many others that in the silence of our hearts we would lift to you, the omniscient God.

Hear us, for Jesus’ sake.
 Amen.

Earlier this week I was skimming back through William Farley’s book Gospel-Powered Parenting by (which I reviewed here) and happened across his discussion of “Gospel Fathers.” In this section he discusses the importance of godly, masculine men within a church body. He starts out by quoting a selection of lines from Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow:

You cannot have a thriving church without a core of men who are true followers of Christ. If men are dead, the church is dead…

If we want to change the world, we must focus on men…

When men are absent and anemic the body withers…

The church and the Titanic have something in common: It’s women and children first. The great majority of ministry in Protestant churches is focused on children, next on women…

Men don’t follow programs; they follow men. A woman may choose a church because of the programs it offers, but a man is looking for another man he can follow.

I think the core of what he says there is found in the final paragraph. Men don’t follow programs; they follow men. Farley wants to make sure that we understand what this does not mean. “We are not talking about ‘macho’ behavior. Machismo is a perversion of biblical masculinity. In fact, it usually occurs because men feel insecure about their masculinity.” The simple fact is that men want to follow men—real men, admirable men, men who are worth following.

The point of it all? If you want to have a solid church—a church that has strong, masculine men within it (which is the exception rather than the rule within the Evangelical church) you need to have strong, masculine, godly leadership. Without this kind of leadership a church will inevitably wither and fade.

Daniel Doriani's commentary on James is one of the relatively few commentaries I’ve read cover-to-cover. It’s one I enjoyed a lot. In his discussion of the final portion of James 5, I found an interesting story that I thought I’d share with you. As I read it, I though of my continuationist (charismatic) friends. It is my experience that these people often typify cessationists like myself as those who do not believe in supernatural or miraculous healings. But this just isn’t the case. The disagreement really arises over whether or not the spiritual gift of healing is operative in the church today. I believe in heailngs, not in healers, so to speak.

This quote describes something that happened in a conservative, Reformed, Presbyterian context and something that I think is consistent with cessationist theology (even though cessationists may have some disagreement about what James refers to by anointing a person with oil). Doriani is not the only Reformed Presbyterian who has experienced this kind of blessing.

During the autumn when I first studied James in earnest, a friend suffered a viral infection of the heart. While it was not a heart attack, it mimicked many of the symptoms of one. My friend felt listless; he looked gray and lifeless. One day at church, I told him that James 5 instructs elders to lay hands on the sick and to pray for their healing; I suggested that he call the elders for that very purpose. Two weeks later, he told me he wanted to proceed. No one in our church had done this before, so we did something very Presbyterian: we studied the matter another six weeks and hoped he didn't die in the meantime.

At last, we appointed a night for prayer and the elders gathered. Our church's pastor (I was a college professor at the time) summoned the elders. Before we prayed, he told us not to expect a dramatic physical healing, since God heals in many ways. I appreciated his motive, but there was no need to restrain my enthusiasm; my doubting heart was already skeptical enough...

...My friend knelt down in the middle of a circle of elders. We anointed him with oil, laid lands on him, and began to pray. Since I had started the process, I was appointed to offer the closing prayer.

As soon as we began to pray, I had an overwhelming sense that God was, at the moment, healing my friend. My arms felt what I can only describe as bolts of fire pushing through them. As I grasped my friend's shoulder, heat and energy burned my hand. I felt that my one hand could lift all of his 230 pounds to the ceiling or push him through the floor if I wished.

I knew God was healing him. I wanted to shout, "We must stop praying that God will heal John and start praising God that he has healed him." But I was too astonished, too ensure of my sensations, to say a word to anyone that night. For four days, I kept my experience to myself.

Four days later, after church, my friend beckoned me with a wild grin, "Dan, watch this." At once, he dashed up a flight of steps. I dashed after him and met him at the top. He smiled, "And I'm not even breathing hard."

"I knew it," I exclaimed, and told him what I had felt a few nights earlier. And he told me, "I knew it too."

Since that day, I have joined elders to lay hands on the sick and pray for them. I have never again felt the fire. And while I occasionally feel a flood of warmth and emotion, I have learned that my feelings and God's healings have no connections. A small number have experienced immediately healing from serious illness. More have recovered gradually and under the care of physicians. Many have found spiritual healing--great peace and spiritual renewal in times of crisis and suffering, whether they recovered physically or not. And some have apparently gained no physical or spiritual benefit at all.

A page later he provides an interesting and important clarification about what James says about healing and something that is consistent with cessationist beliefs.

Sick men and women call the elders as a group. They do not call those with a gift for healing; rather they call all to pray for healing. James says the prayers of a righteous man are effective. Since the first qualification for an elder is holiness--not social standing or theological acumen--the prayers of elders are effective. The elders pray for healing, not for miracles. It doesn't matter if a healing is quiet or splashy, True healings garner all the attention they need.

As I was looking through J.D. Payne’s book Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting I came across a sidebar which lists “some benefits of being a mother church.” Though this is by no means an exhaustive list, it does draw out some important benefits of being a church dedicated to planting. This topic is close to my heart these days as my church prepares to send out some of our members to plant a new church on the east side of Toronto.

Here is the list:

At least thirteen things (the “lucky thirteen”) happen within sponsoring churches when those churches become actively involved in planting new churches.

1. Sponsoring keeps the church fresh and alive to its mission and vision and challenges the church’s faith.
2. Sponsoring reminds the church of the challenge to pray for the lost.
3. Sponsoring enables the church to welcome other people into the kingdom that it would not otherwise have assimilated.
4. Sponsoring creates a climate open to birthing a variety of need-meeting groups within the sending church.
5. Sponsoring provides evangelistic vitality and activity.
6. Sponsoring encourages the discovery and development of new and latent leaders.
7. Sponsoring encourages coaching, mentoring, and apprenticeship in ministry while providing a renewed understanding of how we are all part of a team effort.
8. Sponsoring provides an occasion for church members to get to know missionaries personally.
9. Sponsoring builds on the past and insures the future.
10. Sponsoring minimizes the tendency toward a self-centered ministry.
11. Sponsoring provides an education in missions and serves as a stimulus for young people’s dedication to Christian service.
12. Sponsoring provides a visible proof that God is still working through people and that some are responding to his commission to go out and evangelize.
13. Sponsoring provides a new opportunity for personal involvement in missions.

The list is taken from Spin-off Churches: How One Church Successfully Plants Another by Harrison, Cheyney and Overstreet. I haven’t read the book, so can’t comment on whether it’s worth the purchase.

I came across this bit of writing on Facebook today and quite enjoyed it. It stands as a good challenge at any age, but perhaps particularly in an age of Christian celebrity. It was written by George D. Watson, a Wesleyan minister who did the bulk of his ministry in the early 20th century.

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If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 16:24-25

If God has called you to be truly like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility. He will put on you such demands of obedience that you will not be allowed to follow other Christians. In many ways, He seems to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Others who seem to be very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and scheme to carry out their plans, but you cannot. If you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others can brag about themselves, their work, their successes, their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. If you begin to do so, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may supply you only on a day-to-day basis, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, a helpless dependence on Him and His unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward while keeping you hidden in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.

God may let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done; this to teach you the message of the Cross, humility, and something of the value of being cloaked with His nature.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, and with a jealous love rebuke you for careless words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.

So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has a right to do as He pleases with His own, and that He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.

God will take you at your word. If you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things that you cannot. Settle it forever; you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways which others are not dealt with. However, know this great secret of the Kingdom: When you are so completely possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven, the high calling of God.

I am not a sabbitarian, but sometimes wish I was. At the moment I can’t overcome a few theological issues that prevent me from embracing the view. Thankfully this does not prevent me from honoring Sunday and seeking to set it aside as a special day, one dedicated to the Lord in a unique way. I recently found this quote in Walter Chantry’s Call the Sabbath a Delight. Again, though I am not a sabbitarian, I can agree with him on the blessings that can be ours if we keep this day set apart to the worship of the Lord, to instruction and to fellowship (which is to say if we seek to make it a day set apart from our usual tasks of studying, working, earning a living).

There is blessing to be had in connection with keeping the Sabbath Day. Surely the reference is to blessing which falls on his creatures who enter into God’s rest with him. There is great benefit and happiness heaped upon those who keep the day holy. Our heavenly Father has pledged blessing within Sabbath observance.

Where a weekly day is not spent in the worship and service of God, ignorance of God and his Word increases rapidly both in and outside the church. Families disintegrate, finding inadequate time to instruct children in morality, no time to pray together as families. Individuals are “stressed out” because their souls are neglected and they can find no fountains of spiritual refreshment. Churches are weak and neglected. Few worshippers are present and even fewer are found who will devote time to the Lord’s service within her body.

What blessings are to be found in devoting an entire day to the worship and service of the Lord? His own nearness to his people. A knowledge of the day of salvation. Fellowship with the saints. Homes in which parents worship with children, read the Bible to children, talk with children about moral issues of our day—52 days per year, one entire year out of every seven. Churches full of people seeking to praise God and to find avenues of service to the Lord. Nations whose thought and moral fibre are lifted toward heavenly standards. The Word of God abundantly studied. Prayer multiplied. Spiritual refreshment, joy, progress in the kingdom. Psychological strength.

How trite to proclaim that a Sabbath Day is impractical and impossible. How unspiritual to call it a burden which is hard to bear. It is impossible to conceive of any measure more perfectly designed than is the Sabbath to bring everlasting blessings to individuals, families, churches and communities. Spiritual men bemoan the lack of time to pray, read, worship, witness, teach children. God in his wisdom and grace has provided just such time for these very wishes of the godly by commanding that a day in each seven be set aside, devoted to the Lord.

Today I have two unrelated quotes for you. Each of these caught my eye this week. The first is a prayer from Augustine of Hippo (a.k.a. St. Augustine).

O my God,
let me, with thanksgiving,
remember, and confess unto you
your mercies on me.

Let my bones be soaked with your love,
and let them say unto you,
Who is like you, O Lord?

You have broken my chains in pieces.
I will offer unto you the sacrifice of thanksgiving
And how you have broken them, I will declare;
and all who worship you, when they hear this, will say:
Blessed is the Lord in heaven and in earth!
Great and wonderful is his name!

A brief prayer, but an important one. (HT:TW)

And here is a prayer (or a kind of prayer) from George Whitefield:

"Yea...that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more … raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be 'fools for Christ's sake', who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth's accolades, but to win the Master's approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness 'signs and wonders following' in the transformation of multitudes of human lives."

Yeah, I know that I posted a prayer yesterday. But this is another great one I came across (one drawn from The Valley of Vision but which I stumbled across while reading some other web sites). It is titled “Continual Repentance.” I think these lines are particularly good: “I need to repent of my repentance; I need my tears to be washed; I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness.”

O God of Grace,

You have imputed my sin to my substitute, and have imputed his righteousness to my soul, clothing me with a bridegroom’s robe, decking me with jewels of holiness. But in my Christian walk I am still in rags; my best prayers are stained with sin; my penitential tears are so much impurity; my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin; my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness.

I need to repent of my repentance; I need my tears to be washed; I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness; I am always standing clothed in filthy garments, and by grace am always receiving change of raiment, for you always justify the ungodly; I am always going into the far country, and always returning home as a prodigal, always saying, “Father, forgive me,” and you are always bringing forth the best robe.

Every morning let me wear it, every evening return in it, go out to the day’s work in it, be married in it, be wound in death in it, stand before the great white throne in it, enter heaven in it shining as the sun.

Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, the exceeding beauty of holiness, the exceeding wonder of grace.

A prayer to pray after you finish praying—it’s a bit odd, I admit, and yet it makes some sense. At least it makes sense when you read it and pray it on your own. Who hasn’t felt like this when they pray?: “O God of grace, I bewail my cold, listless, heartless prayers; their poverty adds sin to my sin.” Have you ever wanted to pray better? Have you ever realized just how poor you are at praying? Then read and pray this prayer from The Valley of Vision:

O God of grace,
I bewail my cold, listless, heartless prayers;
their poverty adds sin to my sin.
If my hope were in them I should be undone,
But the worth of Jesus perfumes my feeble breathings, and wins their acceptance.
Deepen my contrition of heart,
Confirm my faith in the blood that washes from all sin.
May I walk lovingly with my great Redeemer.
Flood my soul with true repentance that my heart may be broken for sin and unto sin.
Let me be as slow to forgive myself as thou art ready to forgive me.
Gazing on the glories of thy grace may I be cast into the lowest depths of shame.
and walk with downcast head now thou art pacified towards me.
O my great High Priest,
pour down upon me streams of needful grace,
bless me in all my undertakings,
in every thought of my mind,
every word of my lips,
every step of my feet,
every deed of my hands.
Thou didst live to bless,
die to bless,
rise to bless,
ascend to bless,
take thy throne to bless,
and now thou dost reign to bless.
O give sincerity to my desires,
earnestness to my supplications,
fervour to my love.