Great Thoughts on Daily Prayer

Considering our recent study of the Lord's Prayer, here is a really useful post by Tim Keller offering ideas of how to incorporate prayer, meditation, and Bible Reading into our everyday life.

Lots of good wisdom from a seasoned pastor here. Read the whole article.

Family Worship

Many of us desire to have meaningful family worship times together in our homes, but struggle in this area. I know I do. I found this post from the Resurgence blog by Tim Smith helpful in this regard:

1. Keep it short

I would recommend 15-30 minutes, as a general rule. If things are going well, you can always keep the conversation going, but the goal should be brevity. If you make a discussion too long, it will become tedious and can actually turn your kids away from God. This time should be an overflow of all the Scripture, prayer, and discussion going on in the rest of your lives—not the only place where it happens.

2. Read

Most importantly, family worship is a time for Scripture. Make sure to read small chunks, maybe only a verse or two, at a time and then unpack it together. You can go through a book of the Bible, pick a verse that applies to the day’s events, or choose something topical. The important thing here is connecting Scripture to life in a way that your kids can understand. For younger kids, the The Jesus Storybook Bible is pretty hard to beat.

3. Pray

Everyone should pray together. Thank God for what he has done and how he has provided. Take requests. Pray for each other. Pray for your city and specific lost people in your lives. Remember that you are building a rhythm, which is just as important as any specific prayer.

4. Sing

It doesn’t matter if you can play an instrument or your voice curdles milk—we should all sing songs to God. Scripture is full of song, and our families should be as well. Truth be told, you are probably more of the problem with this than your kids. Young kids naturally sing all the time without any self-consciousness. Get over your hang-ups and desire for perfection and just sing together. My girls and I are making family songbooks as a creative project, and they’re stoked.

5. Keep it regular

The sum is greater than the parts. You will have off days. You will miss days. You may even question your call to ministry. Whatever happens, just keep at it and God will make you equal to the task.

6. Older kids set the example

If your oldest kid is not engaged, your younger ones will follow. Challenge your oldest children to set the example for their siblings. Give them a bit of ownership and a role in how you structure these times, and it will be a huge help.

7. Limit TV

I’m not saying kill television completely, but there is no doubt in my mind that excessive TV rots the attention span. If your kids, or you for that matter, can’t pay attention to anything for more than two minutes, then think about what other entertainment might be captivating your senses.

HT: Take Your Vitamin Z

Daily Checklist

I thought this was a useful little blog post. Surely we can all work more than a few of these into our day. From the 9Marks blog (italics mine):

See how many of these things you have already completed (or can still do later today)...

1. Have you read your Bible and prayed?

2. Have you given God thanks for something?

3. Have you encouraged someone?

4. Have you considered your sin? (and have you repented of it?)

5. Have you told the gospel to anyone?

6. Have you given God praise for his character?

7. Can you think of a way to serve someone you love?

8. Can you write someone a (brief) note/email that might help them through a struggle?

9. Can you protect your eyes and heart from lusting on your way home?

10. Can you remind yourself of the gospel? (it is never a bad time to recount this glorious truth!)

Please don't make this a list for the super-spiritual (if you did a lot of these things) or the spiritually poor (if you didn't do any of these things). Why not simply pick one or two new ones and incorporate them into your day tomorrow?

Matthew Henry on the Lord's Prayer

There is a great online resource available on prayer, the complete text of Matthew Henry's classic book Method for Prayer. Here is the link to Chapter 7 which covers the Lord's Prayer. You may wish to add this to your devotional reading as we continue our study of the Lord's Prayer in class. The unique aspect of Henry's book is that it teaches us to use the Scriptures as the foundation of our prayers. Check it out.

Church: Like a Business......or a Family?

Here's a very clear articulation by Mark Driscoll on what has to happen for a church to really function as a healthy body.....

The Lord's Prayer: 3 Strands

As we continue to study and apply the Lord's Prayer, this article by David Powlison, Praying Beyond the Sick List, is very useful. Here is a summary of the article included on the Between Two Worlds blog (one I encourage you to visit frequently) that highlights three strands of Biblical prayer, woven together in the Lord's Prayer:

"In this article David Powlison identifies three emphases of biblical prayer:

1. circumstantial prayers
2. wisdom prayers
3. kingdom prayers

He explains:

1. Sometimes we ask God to change our circumstances—heal the sick, give us daily bread, protect us from suffering and evildoers, make our political leaders just, convert our friends and family, make our work and ministries prosper, provide us with a spouse, quiet this dangerous storm, send us rain, give us a child.
2. Sometimes we ask God to change us—deepen our faith, teach us to love each other, forgive our sins, make us wise where we tend to be foolish, help us know You better, give us understanding of Scripture, teach us how to encourage others.
3. Sometimes we ask God to change everything by revealing Himself more fully on the stage of real life, magnifying the degree to which His glory and rule are obvious—Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, be exalted above the heavens, let Your glory be over all of the earth, let Your glory fill the earth as the waters cover the sea, come Lord Jesus.

The Lord’s Prayer, he points out, contains all three, tightly interwoven.

The Lord’s kingdom (#3) involves the destruction of our sins (#2) and our sufferings (#1). His reign causes a flourishing of love’s perfect wisdom and a wealth of situational blessing. Prayers for God to change my circumstances and to change me are, in their inner logic, requests that He reveal His glory and mercy on the stage of this world.

I especially appreciate his emphasis that these strands are mutually reinforcing, so that if one gets neglected it hurts the other two as well.

When any of these three strands of prayer gets detached from the other two, prayer tends to go sour.

If you just pray for better circumstances, then God becomes the errand boy (usually somewhat disappointing) who exists to give you your shopping list of desires and pleasures—no sanctifying purposes, no higher glory. Prayer becomes gimme, gimme, gimme.

If you only pray for personal change, then it tends to reveal an obsession with moral self improvement, a self-absorbed spirituality detached from engaging with other people and the tasks of life. Where is the longing for Christ’s kingdom to right all wrongs, not just to alleviate my sins so I don’t feel bad about myself? Prayer pursues self-centered, morally-strenuous asceticism, with little evidence of real love, trust, or joy.

If we only pray for the sweeping invasion of the kingdom, then prayers tend towards irrelevance and overgeneralization, failing to work out how the actual kingdom rights real wrongs, wipes away real tears, and removes real sins. Such prayers pursue a God who never touches ground until the last day.

May God help us to have prayers that weave together all three."

SBC Convention: The GCR Debate

Blogger Trevin Wax has an excellent summary of the differing viewpoints around the primary issue that will be addressed at the upcoming SBC convention in Orlando, the recommendation of the GCR Task Force. Here is the summary of areas addressed in the final proposal:

1. Getting the Mission Right
2. Making Our Values Transparent
3. Celebrating and Empowering Great Commission Giving
4. Reaching North America
5. Reaching Unreached and Underserved People Groups within North America
6. Promoting the Cooperative Program and Elevating Stewardship
7. The Call of the Nations and the SBC Allocation Budget

From Wax's blog post:

It’s easy to be confused about the recommendations of the Great Commission Task Force. Through state papers, blogs and websites, the conversation about the future of the Southern Baptist Convention has been going on at a furious pace.

Whenever two points of view become overly politicized, the rhetoric heats up. Hype can eventually obscure reality, leading to misunderstandings and miscommunication on the part of both camps. GCR supporters have sometimes spoken as if this resolution will be the spark of a worldwide revival which will send renewal through the SBC. GCR detractors have sometimes spoken as if these resolutions would end the SBC as we know it and destroy all our cooperative efforts.

In this article, I wish to cut through the hype by briefly summarizing the final GCR proposal and the contending viewpoints, providing clarity regarding these recommendations.

Read the whole article here.