What the Enemy Knows About Prayer

"Well might Mary Queen of Scots say, "I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men."" - Ryle, A Call to Prayer.

And of course, this is but a small example of what the enemy knows about prayer.  Is it any wonder that he will do all he can to distract us from it and to tempt us to disbelieve in its effectiveness?

The Never-Failing Passport for our Prayers

"There is a way by which any  man, however sinful and unworthy, may draw near to God the Father.  Jesus Christ has opened that way by the sacrifice he made for us upon the cross.  The holiness and justice of God need not frighten sinners and keep them back.  Only let them cry to God in the name of Jesus, only let them plead the atoning blood of Jesus, and they shall find God upon a throne of grace, willing and ready to hear.  The name of Jesus is a never-failing passport for our prayers.  In that name a man may draw near to God with boldness, and ask with confidence.  God has engaged to hear him.  Think of this.  Is not this encouragement?" - Ryle, A Call to Prayer

Easy to Pray

"I ask whether you pray, because prayer is an act in relation to which there is great encouragement.  There is everything on God's part to make prayer easy, if men will only attempt it." - Ryle, A Call to Prayer

We just noted how difficult it is to become a man given to prayer.  So what does Ryle mean here?  It is not that prayer is actually easy when it comes to ourselves.  His point is that through Christ, we have been granted easy access to boldly approach the throne of grace.  We have no theological or super-spiritual hurdles to jump over in order to come into the presence of our Father.  We simply have to come in the name of Jesus (dressed in His righteousness).

"I'm Not the Praying Type"

"Have you forgotten that it is not natural to any one to pray?  "The carnal mind is enmity against God."" - Ryle, A Call to Prayer

Prayer is not something that comes naturally to anyone.  It is something that we will have to rouse ourselves to, against the flesh, from this point on until we are ushered into eternity.  I have never found it simple and easy to turn to prayer.  It seems I am always easily distracted, tempted to think in my materialistic way that prayer won't change anything.  This is not because I'm just not the praying type.  It's because none of us are.

What Breath is to Life

"Faith is to the soul what life is to the body.  Prayer is to faith what breath is to life." - Ryle, A Call to Prayer

"Behold, He Prayeth"

"And I say, furthermore, that of all the evidences of the real work of the Spirit, a habit of hearty private prayer is one of the most satisfactory that can be named...When (the Lord) sent Ananias to Saul in Damascus, he gave him no other evidence of his change of heart than this, "Behold, he prayeth" (Acts 9:11). - Ryle, A Call to Prayer

Faith and Prayer

"I can find that nobody will be saved by his prayers, but I cannot find that without prayer anybody will be saved." - J.C. Ryle, A Call to Prayer

And Calvin said, "Faith is ever the mother of prayer."

I Need a Real Thanksgiving

"...sorrowful, yet always rejoicing" - Paul

 

I need a Thanksgiving that does not deny my sorrows, my heavinesses, my grievings – which doesn’t call on me to pretend to be happy, happy all the day, and which doesn’t require me to get so drunk that I cannot remember my sorrows.  I need a reality check – a real reality check, where my soul can honestly know sorrow and at the same time know constant rejoicing – practiced rejoicing – a rejoicing that is rooted in Reality because it is rooted in Christ because I am rooted in Christ.  And being in Christ, faith comes forth – faith in the resurrection, faith in the vindication, faith in the perfect work of the One who puts me in the fire, removing dross, to make the glory more pure.

The Unintended Power of the Word of God

"The Luther Bible was to the modern German languge what the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible were to the modern English language.  Before Luther's bible, there was no unified German language.  It existed only in a hodgepodge of dialects.  And Germany as a nation was an idea far in the future, a gleam in Luther's eye.  But when Luther translated the Bible into German, he created a single language in a single book that everyone could read and did read.  Indeed, there was nothing else to read.  Soon everyone spoke German the way Luther's translation did.  As television has had a homogenizing effect on the accents and dialects of Americans, watering down accents and sanding down sharp twangs, Luther's Bible created a single German tongue.  Suddenly millers from Munchen could communicate with bakers from Bremen.  Out of this grew a sense of a common heritage and culture." - in Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, p20

And so the power of the Word in more ways than one might expect.  Cultures are brought together or formed and reformed around the Word translated into a common tongue.  This should be a great encouragement to the ongoing work of translating the Bible into languages, some of which do not even have a written alphabet at this time.

Corrupt Economics and Envy

"The original federal minimum wage laws were supported by northern textile manufacturers who wanted protection from the competition of southern manufacturers benefiting from low cost labor. From the avidity with which businessmen seek to avoid having competitors, we can infer that competition is at least as distasteful to capitalists as it is to socialists. They may praise it on the lecute tour, but when it comes to questions of public policy, they seem to believe that it works well only in other industries." - Schlossberg, p112, Idols for Destruction.

In his chapter, "Idols of Mammon", Schlossberg gives multiple examples of the power of envy that is at work in our economic and political system. However, he is quick also to note that the problem is not with "them" - the ones in the system or the system itself. The American culture, and the Americans that live in it, love the benefits of the system even at the expense of the costs of socialistic regimes placed over them.

"Resistance has always been possible...and with enough participants, may be effective. It is even more clear that the citizens in democracies cannot be absolved from the crimes and stupidities of their leaders. There is no refuge in the cry that the system is responsible." - p106.

And so we witness this summer the inability of the conservatives or the liberals in Congress to honestly handle our debt crisis. Capitalism and the free market systems are not losing to liberal politicians but to the envy of the people. The rare jewel of Christian contentment (Burroughs), and not more Republicans in the Senate or White House, is the only answer.