Christ's (True) Church Is a House of Prayer

^{Isaiah 56:7} Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,

And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar;
For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

Ps 28:3 — The Hardest Speech of All: the Silence of God

    1      To You I will cry, O LORD my Rock: Do not be silent to me,

            Lest, if You are silent to me,

            I become like those who go down to the pit.

    2      Hear the voice of my supplications

            When I cry to You,

            When I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary.

    3      Do not take me away with the wicked

            And with the workers of iniquity,

            Who speak peace to their neighbors,

            But evil is in their hearts.

Ps 28:1–3

The speech of those who are false in their hearts is a great trial. But the silence of God would be a greater trial still. Let believers supplicate Him that He be not silent.

The Ordinary, Every-day Glory of Being a Covenantal Presbyterian

Believers, do you follow God's covenantal way of speaking in the Scriptures and dealing with His people through the ages, by praying and laboring in behalf of all those generations that will come from you?

My wife has an aunt who is into genealogy and just learned of another Hugenot family from which our children are descended. It would be interesting to trace our lineage to learn of the many godly ancestors whose prayers for their covenant progeny are being answered by His marvelous, redemptive grace in our lives. And it is marvelous to think of how those answers might continue to resound for many, increasingly-large generations to come.

Live a few faithful years in dependence upon Christ. Instill in them the faith by God's means and His Spirit's powerful application of it to them. Pray for your offspring. Be forgotten. God will not forget the prayers, the labors, or His promises to which you are responding.

And if you have no children, are you not yet participating in God's keeping of these promises to others? If they are kept only unto you is that faithfulness small? Even so, it is not only to you that they are kept. God's covenantal way of dealing includes within a congregation, whose families and children He responds to as you pray day by day, and whom also you strengthen as a body-part doing its share, by which share the rest of the body is being built up into Him (cf. Eph 4:11–16).

I'm Believing God That... This Phrase Is a Rather Anti-biblical Way to Describe Prayer

I've noticed a trend, lately, of professing believers saying that they're "believing God that" He will do something that they want Him to do. I assume that what they mean is that they are praying--pleading with Him, crying out to Him, making known their requests to Him. These are Scriptural ways of describing what it means to pray for something. And then there's the entire issue of having such requests formed by the mind of the Lord Himself in the Scriptures.

I'm not sure where the other way of speaking is coming from. While I try to stay abreast of the latest inventions of men that are passing themselves off as "Christianity," there must be some new book(let), or preaching personality, or radio ditty of which I'm not aware.

But I am aware that it is harmful. One of the chief delights of the believer is to know that God is God, and we are not. It is to view Christ in the Bible by Spirit-wrought faith, and behold His glory as the only-begotten of the Father. It is to realize continually that He is wise, and I am not. He is powerful, and I am not. He is righteous, and I am not. He is holy, and I am not. He is good, and I am not. He is perfectly faithful and true, and I am not.

We see an ocean of glory in God the Son, incarnate--full of steadfast love and faithfulness. We see in Jesus Christ all that God is, all that we ought to have been, all that is credited to us through faith in Him, all that will be done in us as He makes us like Himself. Why would we want to feel like we ourselves are something? Such a feeling can only hide from our view the glory of Christ. Why would we want to speak of our desire, and our confidence in that desire, as if it has in itself some kind of spiritual power?

When I hear someone say, "I'm believing God that..." what I hear is the opposite of prayer and of faith. Prayer involves a submission to the wisdom of God, but this statement seems to impose upon Him my wisdom. Faith binds itself to believe God's words, but this statement seems to bind God to believe and obey our words.

So, I think we might find it more helpful (and certainly more honest) to use one of those Bible phrases to describe the fact that we are asking God for something. It is a wonder that the Lord God listens to the voices of men. And a mercy that He responds by His grace which is sufficient for us, as His power is perfect in our weakness. Often, this mercy comes in the form of a resolute, divine, "No!"

And let us reserve "believing God" for reference to believing not what we are telling Him, but rather for what God has perfectly told us in the Scriptures--best of all, all about Himself in Jesus Christ.

180627FW Genesis 25:19-28 - Praying and Listening to Our Always-Good God

Family Worship teaching time from Genesis 25:19-28, following up upon the Old Testament reading from Lord's Day morning worship. We see how the Lord, in His goodness, was bringing the Savior into the world--even through the prolonged trial of Rebekah's barrenness and the intense trial of her pregnancy. And, we see how faith, because it is sure of God's goodness, responds to such trials by prayer and seeking God's Word.

2018.01.11 Devotional Gleanings

And the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said to him, “Surely your brother Esau comforts himself concerning you by intending to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice: arise, flee to my brother Laban in Haran. And stay with him a few days, until your brother’s fury turns away, until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him; then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereaved also of you both in one day?”
Genesis 27:42-45

How very sad! "a few days." She never saw her dear son again. Let this sober us against attempting to manipulate situations, as she had been doing throughout the chapter. Instead, let us do what is Scripturally right in each situation and trust the Lord to bring from it whatever He will.

Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?
Matthew 26:53

What encouragement this is! He who now intercedes for us has, at His mere request, the instantaneous arrival of more than twelve legions of angels. Jesus prays for me. Let me never again doubt that I am receiving from heaven exactly whatever is of maximum eternal benefit for me and all the Lord's people.

Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”
Acts 26:28

One could hardly think of such a fearful use of the word "almost." Dear ones who are grappling with the claims of Christ and the danger of your sin, do not be "almost" persuaded and suffer torment forever, justly for your sin. Take a page from Jacob, and wrestle with the Lord, clinging to Him and refusing to let go until He blesses you. Do not say from Hell one day, "I was almost persuaded to become a Christian."

Government Needs God's Word, Not Just Our Prayers (from Ezra 7-8)

"Blessed be the LORD God of our fathers, who has put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem, and has extended mercy to me before the king and his counselors, and before all the king’s mighty princes. So I was encouraged, as the hand of the LORD my God was upon me; and I gathered leading men of Israel to go up with me." Ezra 7:27-28

We live in a day when, more and more, believers are seeing the need to cry out to God that He would give us favor in the eyes of the civil government. What a blessing it would be to see real-life, government action that can only be explained by the fact that the Lord our God had put this into their hearts!

But there is a component in this section of Ezra that could otherwise have easily escaped out notice: his ministry of the Word to the civil authorities.

Ezra "prepared his heart to seek the Law of Yahweh, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel" (Ezra 7:10). 

From cover to cover, the Bible teaches a religion of the heart, even when it comes to the Law of God. Those who set "relationship" and "religion" opposite one another make a grave error, just as those who set "heart" and "Law" opposite one another.

Later, we read Artaxerxes saying, "Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it diligently be done for the house of the God of heaven. For why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons?" (7:23). 

Where did Artaxerxes get this idea? Well, he called Ezra,

"a scribe of the Law of the God of heaven" (7:12)

and Ezra himself says in the next chapter,

"we had spoken to the king, saying, 'The hand of our God is upon all those for good who seek Him, but His power and His wrath are against all those who forsake Him.'" (8:22)

Almost certainly, Ezra had prayed for the king's response, just as he prayed for safety on the road (8:23). And as we saw above, we know with certainty that he attributed the king's response to the miraculous work of God. But Ezra's waiting upon God for a miracle was not a passive inactivity. He had also been telling Artaxerxes the truth about the God of heaven.

Even if Artaxerxes was not genuinely converted, he did respond well enough out of fear for the protection and prospering of the church. Might not the Lord do the same or better for us today? Surely, we too should be praying that the civil authoirities would be a blessing to the church in our day.

But, in addition, let us keep aware of legislation that impacts the church, and request such wise laws as would protect and prosper true churches. And let us give to our authorities the plain Word of God without shame, for the good of the land over which they rule depends upon the very God to whom we pray!