Hallowe'en

Halloween is just round the corner. I thought I’d give you some of my thoughts on this event. They’re offered as a starting point in an ongoing discussion.

1. Halloween is commercially significant

In the US it’s the 2nd most popular holiday and it generates 4-6 Billion Dollars in revenue. In the UK it’s the 3rd behind Christmas and Easter. Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny are holding Freddy Krueger at bay for the moment. But it’s changing.

2. Halloween is historically significant

The origins of Halloween date back over 2000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain [sow-in], a word that means the end of summer. This festival celebrated the end of harvest and the beginning of the Celtic New Year on November 1st.

By 43AD the Roman Empire had conquered most of the Celtic regions and in the following 400 years the Roman festival of Feralia was incorporated into it. This was day in late October when the Romans commemorated the passing of the dead.

By the 800s Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the 8th century Pope Boniface IV designated November 1st All Saints' Day to honour those saints that didn't have a special day of their own. You wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out!
The Pope hoped to put a Christian spin on the pagan Celtic festival with a church-sponsored holiday [after all it had worked with Christmas]. Over the years the festival became known as All Hallows and the night before was known as All Hallows Eve or Halloween.

3. Halloween is spiritually significant
I have no wish to be reactionary but I’ve got issues with Halloween. I’m not about to mount a campaign. I’m aware that Christians have a reputation for the ‘spot it and stop it’ routine and I have no desire to strengthen that conviction. But to use an old Naval saying let me run these up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes them!
I’ve got issues with Halloween because

1. Halloween has become a time when wickedness is domesticated

Evil is portrayed as innocent. I think the Bible allows a place for imagination, pretence and fantasy but Halloween allows elements from the dark side of spirituality to be accepted in mainstream culture. It’s become a holiday of cultural fascination with evil and the demonic. Evil is portrayed as innocent and fun. And it’s neither. We need to remember the wickedness of evil. The devil and his demons are real. We have a real spiritual adversary who seeks our destruction. Of course through our identification with Christ we have nothing to fear from an enemy that he’s already defeated. But nevertheless wickedness and evil ought to be exposed, opposed and loathed. But our approach may actually be encouraging fascination with something that’s ultimately damaging.

2. Halloween has become a time when we celebrate what scares us

Out of love for the vulnerable, particularly children we ought to protect them from things that frighten them. Walking into Woolworths to be confronted by hairy spiders, a witch’s mask and a giant bat is not most young children’s idea of fun. At least our films have classification guidelines that allow parents the freedom to make a decision but no such restraint is exercised at this time of the year. We may be strong enough to cope with the associations with evil without being tainted and we may be brave enough to cope with the frightening images but not everyone is and as Christians we should therefore limit our freedom in love for others.

3. Halloween has become a time when we teach our children that extortion is acceptable

What else is trick or treat? We give people in our neighbourhood a choice between a rock and a hard place. It’s either ‘give me a treat’ or ‘I give you a trick’. Isn’t that what organised crime does?!

So, what could you do on thenight when the local children come to your door escorted by their elder siblings or their parents?
The following advice needs to be adapted to our personality and the age of the child on our doorstep!

1. Comment on their outfits and say something positive about how much time and trouble they went to.
2. Ask, ‘who do you think is the most powerful spiritual being in the world?’ and say no to all of their answers. Then ask them, ‘who do you think the devil is really scared of?’
3. Tell them that God once sent a baby from heaven to earth and when he grew up he scared the living daylights out of every evil spirit that he met. He even engaged in face to face combat with the devil and won. The devil thought he must have won when he was killed on a cross but it turned out that this was the killer blow that led to his complete and utter defeat and will lead to his future destruction.
4. Give them a sweet, hand out a tract like the one entitled ‘Halloween … What a Scream’ from the Good Book Company and tell them to come to church if they want to find out more!

Sources

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/halloween.shtml
‘Halloween … It’s A Scream’ The Good Book Company
‘Matters of Opinion: Hallowing Halloween: Why Christians should embrace the devilish holiday with gusto – and laughter’ A. M. Rearick III, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/october2/29.79.html
R. Mouw, ‘Making Real Decisions About Halloween’, http://www.beliefnet.com/story/47/story_4761_2.html

The Book of the Term: Autumn 2007

'Prayer and the Voice of God' Phillip D. Jensen & Tony Payne, Matthias Media

I am not someone who instinctively prays. I’m someone who acts not someone who prays! There have been times when I’ve attributed this to temperament and training. But really, it’s unbelief. That’s why I need to keep reading books like this one from Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen. For all of my Christian life I’ve been a fan of their work. I can’t think of a single resource of theirs that I’ve used that hasn’t benefited my Christian life. The same could be said for their book on prayer.

One of the great strengths of their books is that they’re clear and simple. This one is cast from the same die. In one sense it’s is nothing special. It simply collates and rehearses much of the useful biblical teaching that we’ve heard on prayer over the years. But that’s its value. What it offers is not new techniques but a convincing biblical presentation of what prayer is and why we should do it.

The book consists of ten Chapters spread over a little less than 200 pages. It costs £7. The chapters are short enough to be read on a tube trip up to town or accompanying a mocha latte!

In chapter 1 entitled, ‘Prayer and God’s Voice’ the authors argue that prayers is the most naturally unnatural thing for us to do. It’s natural because anyone can do it and often everyone does. It’s unnatural because it’s seeking an intervention from the supernatural. And so they define prayer as essentially 'asking God for something'.
The central premise of chapter two, ‘The God of Prayer’, is that prayer is determined by who God is. Given that God the able, willing, personal, holy and merciful God is also our Father we should have massive confidence to approach Him and ask Him for things.
The topic of why we should pray at all is tackled in chapter three, ‘Why Pray?’ We should pray because it’s very great privilege, it expresses the relationship of faith we enjoy with Him, it’s not an optional extra in the Christian life and because God has promised to hear and to act.
Why we don’t pray begins to scratch at the reasons why prayer is not the feature that it ought to be in our Christian lives. Jensen and Payne suggest that the reasons can be traced to a faulty view of God, a wrong understanding of our relationship with God and the presence of a real spiritual enemy.
The fifth chapter tells us ‘How to Pray’. The authors argue that prayer is not a time to hear God’s voice, it’s a time to respond to God’ voice. They speak to the essence of prayer and do not present a step-by-step technique, emphasizing the importance of both novelty and regularity in this task. They say rightly that prayer is not a matter of technique but of relationship.
Chapter six, ‘The Desires of God’ and chapter seven, ‘the Anxieties of Life’ deal with what ought to occupy the content of our prayers. Chapter six is a longer chapter but it includes a helpful summary of the Lord ’s Prayer. There’s some overlap with Don Carson’s brilliant book on prayer entitled, ‘A Call to Spiritual Reformation’. But this is the place to begin. Chapter seven touches on what to pray and what to expect when we pray in the midst of situations where we have no idea what to pray.
‘What Happens When We Pray?’ is the title of chapter eight. It explains the mechanics of prayer. The authors answer two questions. The first is ‘does God actually listen?’ The second is ‘does anything actually change?’
The brief chapter entitled, ‘Fellowship of Prayer’ is an encouragement to meet up with others in order to stimulate one another as we struggle in prayer. Any of us who've been in a prayer triplet ought to be nodding in agreement throughout this chapter!
The ‘Seven Common Questions’ of chapter ten are the standard queries raised by an audience. The answers are gentle, clear and explain the biblical text. Whether they’re our questions or not they’ll be right on the money for someone in our small group.
The book then concludes with a brief summary chapter and a chapter by chapter discussion guide with questions.

Why not buy a copy and read it this term? If you’re part of a triplet you could arrange to read a couple of chapters before you meet each week, answer the discussion questions and chat about what you’ve learnt. You could team up with someone, perhaps someone in your KG group and agree to work through the book and e-mail each other with some surprising observations, a few implications and a couple of resolutions. To get a copy of this book e-mail John Lumgair on john@quirkymotion.com.

The real value of this book is that it improved my praying. It was a real shot in the arm. I think it’ll help everyone else whether we’re frequent prayers or whether it’s been quite some time since what we had might be described as a routine. If that's a description that you recognise, can I suggest that it’s been long enough? Don’t waste any more time in prayerlessness. Get a copy, get reading and get your Christian life back on the rails.

Free Audio Bible

Listen to the Bible being read by David Field, Tutor in Systematic Theology at Oak Hill Theological College here
http://www.davidpfield.com/audio-bible/AudioBible.htm

School of Prayer IV

Why don’t we pray?
This is an article stimulated by and borrowing heavily from D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, ‘Excuses for Not Praying’, chapter 7, pp 111-122. It’s intended to expose our excuses for not praying. What follows are the six most common excuses Don Carson believes we give to justify our prayerlessness. In places there’s a bit of expansion from me!

1. I’m too busy to pray
London life is frenetic. Our lives are filled with activity. Some of that activity is unavoidable. But not all of it is, surely? In reflecting on the hectic nature of our lives Don Carson writes,
‘We are not living in a contemplative age. When we stop rushing and performing and doing, many of us park ourselves in front of a television, possibly a television attached to a video recorder, and simply absorb what is dished out. The result is that we seldom take time to think, to meditate, to wonder, to analyze; we seldom take time to pray’.
I wonder whether we’re already feeling the intense heat of the spotlight? God’s response to our busyness is found in the account of Jesus’ time with Martha and Mary. Martha chose activism over pietism. She ended up indignant that her kingdom activity wasn’t being noticed and supported by the king. Jesus told her in no uncertain terms that Mary’s decision to sit and learn at her Lord’s feet was the better choice. I’ve written on this elsewhere http://richardperkins.blogsome.com/2007/06/08/cultivating-our-relationship-with-christ/ and I’d encourage you to chase that up. Consequently Carson says what we might struggle to say to one another,
‘It matters little whether you are the mother of active children who drain away your energy, an important executive in a major multinational corporation, a graduate student cramming for impending comprehensives, a plumber working overtime to put your children through college, or a pastor of a large church putting in ninety hours a week: at the end of the day, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Cut something out’.
Cut something out. There’s an idea! Why not write down what you think you could cut from your week to make time for prayer.

2. I feel too spiritually dry to pray
It’s hard to do things when we don’t feel like doing them. That could be a tax return, an essay or the washing up. If we don’t feel like doing it we lack the impetus to do it. And in all likelihood we won’t. We’ll put it off. Sometimes, it’s like that with prayer. Some of us may already have experienced those times when discouragement, unbelief, emptiness and dryness strangle our prayer to within an inch of their lives. What triggers these feelings may be any number of things. If we’re tired we tend to see the dark clouds and not the silver lining! If we’ve been on the receiving end of some critical flak then our spirits may be a little low. If we’re anxious and stressed that takes its emotional toll. But whatever the cause, the challenge to pray just seems like one mountain climb too many. Carson suggests that there could be one of two presuppositions that lurk behind the excuse of feeling too spiritually dry to pray. The first presupposition is that we feel we can pray only when we feel good. But when we remember that Christ’s death is the sole basis of our acceptance before God we’ll recognise that we’re not thinking straight. True, we may not feel like praying. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t. The second presupposition is that we feel we should pray only when we feel good. The obligation to pray is not diminished because we don’t feel like it. This is a profoundly self centred way of thinking. How I feel is not the determinant of what I ought to do.

3. I feel no need to pray
Few of us would ever be so blatant. If we were, others might see the arrogance of our logic. Because at its root the logic runs ‘I am too important to pray. I am too self confident to pray. I am too independent to pray’. But we’d never be so obvious would we? But, as Carson observes, what happens is this,
‘Although abstractly I may affirm the importance of prayer, in reality I may treat prayer as important only in the lives of other people, especially those whom I judge to be weaker in character, more needy, less competent, less productive. Thus, while affirming the importance of prayer, I may not feel deep need for prayer in my own life’.
When we have a high opinion of our own capabilities, prayer seems a little beneath us. It’s for emergencies and is a terrific contingency when all else fails but it’s not the first port of call. In response Carson writes,
‘If Christians who shelter beneath such self assurance do not learn better ways by listening to the scriptures, God may address them in the terrible language of tragedy. We serve a God who delights to disclose to disclose himself to the contrite, to the lowly of heart, to the meek. When God finds us so puffed up that we do not feel our need of him, it is an act of kindness on his part to take us down a peg or two; it would be an act of judgement to leave us in our vaulting self-esteem’.
It’s very easy for us to come to critical points in life, career and family and precisely because our judgement has led to success in the past we repeat the error and plough on without inquiring of the Lord. We love our independence and as a result we may repeatedly stumble and fall because we’ve exercised our intellectual ability but have not sought God’s opinion and his wisdom on the matter.

4. I’m too bitter to pray
Perhaps some of us feel that life has left us with the short stick. When we compare our existence with those around us the decisions that God has made can feel chronically unfair. We feel like the victims of injustice. We may respond with disappointment, bitterness and resentment. This is hardly conducive to a healthy prayer life, especially when we’re meant to be praying for others. Carson observes,
‘Life itself is consumed by the petty assessment of how well you are perceived by those around you. In the morass of self-pity and resentment, real prayer is squeezed out. In other words, many of us do not want to pray because we know that disciplined, biblical prayer would force us to eliminate sin that we rather cherish. It is very hard to pray with compassion and zeal for someone we much prefer to resent’.
On the other hand, Jesus taught that forgiveness ought to characterise our attitude to others. In both Matthew 6 and Mark 11 he explained that those who want to experience his Father’s forgiveness will be those who extend forgiveness to others. It’s this approach that reveals that our repentance is authentic.

5. I’m too ashamed to pray
We’ve all been there. Our sin shames us. We feel so guilty. And proximity to the Lord makes our failure feel so much more acute. Carson puts it this way,
‘shame encourages us to hide from the presence of God; shame squirrels behind a masking foliage of pleasantries while refusing to be honest; shame fosters flight and escapism; shame engenders prayerlessness’.
We’re fools to run from a God who is determined to seek us out and bring us home. The perverseness of our decision to run away and seek exile is the very thing that Christ died to prevent. The place of exile is the place of misery. The place of absolution, freedom, acceptance and forgiveness is to be found in his presence.

6. I’m content with mediocrity
Would anyone in our constituency ever be so bold as to state this publicly? I suspect not. But, this is what we settle for when we spurn the offer of fellowship with the Lord. We may want to own the name Christian but we’re not interested in the increasing spiritual maturity that ought to come with the territory.

Conclusion
No doubt there are other excuses that we could muster for not praying. But most of these nail me!

School of Prayer III

Why should we pray?

The following is a summary of chapter three ‘Why Pray?’ in their excellent book on prayer by Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne. It’s a terrific chapter because it provides us with motivation for speaking to our Father and making our requests known.

1. we should pray because we can
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on our behalf we can talk to God as Father. As Philip Jensen and Tony Payne put it,
‘this almighty, all-powerful God, who by rights should destroy us as his enemies, has instead reached out to us in love, wiped away our sins and adopted us as his own children. He has become our Father, and He allows us to approach Him and pour out our requests to Him at any time, promising that He will hear us and give us every good gift’.
The first reason that we should pray is that we can. We have the immense privilege of being able to walk into the throne room of heaven and speak directly with the King. Familiarity with this truth must not be allowed to develop into contempt for this truth.

2. we should pray because we must
Prayer is not an optional extra in the Christian life. It expresses the essence of our Christian life. To be a Christian is to be a dependent child of God. To not speak with our Father in heaven makes suspect our profession to know Him and trust Him. Listen to Jensen and Payne on the reality of our faith,
‘We are no longer rebels who snatch the Father’s gifts but refuse to honour or thank Him. We are no longer pagans who run after food and drink and clothes; as if our lives were entirely in our hands, or as if these things were all that mattered in life. We are now the grateful recipients of His incredible grace and forgiveness who have come crawling back to Him in repentance, and we now look to him to provide us with all that we need. We want to give Him honour and glory in all that we do, and God is never more honoured and glorified than when we humbly ask Him for things, when He grants them in His mighty power and generosity, and when we pour out our thanks to Him for His kindness’.
We pray because we are children who speak to our generous father. This is the relationship that we have with the Lord. And so we should pray because we must!

3. we should pray because we’re commanded to
Prayerlessness may be bizarre, perverse and wrong but we’re very capable of such folly. As Jensen and Payne acknowledge,
‘We find ourselves lapsing back into the self-centred, self-sufficient mindset of our neighbours who think they don’t need God, and who neither ask him for anything, nor thank him for the many blessings he showers upon them anyway’.
What is God to do with us? In His kindness, He helps our prayerlessness, and He commands us to pray. This is a repeated exhortation in scripture. Like an encouraging Father He urges us and directs us to do what we sometimes don’t want to do but is in our best interests. There is a less sympathetic side to this. God commands us to pray and if we don’t pray then we’re guilty of sin. It’s not therefore something that we can shrug our shoulders and say ‘hey whatever’ about. We all fall into sin throughout our Christian lives. As with all sin, it is not to be entertained but to be confessed and repented of. God is a God who permits and encourages new beginnings. It may be that some of us here need to repent of our disobedient, rebellion demonstrated in our prayerlessness and provide some substance to our profession to trust God as our Father.

4. we should pray because of God’s promise
We pray because God has spoken and promised to hear our prayers and answer them. This is a powerful motivation. Not only does the death of Christ grant us access to God as Father but our Father promises that He will listen to us and grant us every good thing. We respond to those promises in trust and demonstrating that trust by praying to Him. Jensen and Payne put it this way,
‘Every time we open our mouths in prayer, we are saying, ‘I know you are able, I know you are willing, I know you are my creator and Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, and I know that you have promised to hear me when I call to you in prayer’.
We pray because of God’s promise.

Conclusion
Why do we pray? Because there’s the opportunity to do so, because there’s a necessity to do so, because there’s an obligation to do so, because there’s every good reason to do so. These four reasons to pray are worth remembering, pondering and above all else believing.

School of Prayer II

Prayer is speaking to God and asking Him for things. There are three main Greek words that are used and they all include refer to the act of asking, requesting or seeking for something from God.

In his 1662 book entitled simply, ‘Prayer’ John Bunyan, the author of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ defined prayer in the following way,

‘Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to His word, for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God’.[1]

As definitions go, I think that’s a pretty good one. Bunyan identifies seven key components in his definition. Let’s look at those in turn.

1. Prayer is a sincere pouring out of the soul to God

Prayer that is sincere is honest and genuine. When we pray sincerely we simply open our heart to God and to talk with Him plainly about the issues at hand. We need to be warned that the Lord will not be taken in by pretence. He won’t listen to the prayers of hypocrites. So we need to beware of praying to be seen, to be admired and to be applauded by others. Bunyan writes,

‘Sincerity is the same in a corner alone, as it is before the face of all the world. It knows not how to wear two masks, one for appearance before men, and another for private use. It must have God, and be with Him in the duty of prayer. It is not lip labour that it regards, for sincerity, like God, looks at the heart, and that is where prayer comes from, if it be true prayer’.[2]

Sincerity matters in prayer because it’s what we really are and it’s not something that can be manufactured. It comes from the heart.

2. Prayer is a sensible pouring out of the soul to God

Authentic prayer Bunyan writes, ‘is not, as many take it to be, a few babbling, prating, complimentary expressions, but a sensible feeling in the heart’.[3] His point is that prayer is a sane, level headed and rational response that comes from the heart. It’s caused by a deep conviction of sin, the wonderful experience of God’s mercy or excitement at the anticipation of what God has promised for us in the future. We don’t need to worry about working ourselves into a frenzied and heightened emotional state. We just sensibly respond to what we’ve heard in God’s word, what He’s laid on our heart or what we’ve found ourselves pondering.

3. Prayer is an affectionate pouring out of the soul to God

But lest we think that the affections are to be emotionally disengaged Bunyan continues. He writes, ‘when the affections are indeed engaged in prayer, then the whole man is engaged, and that in such a way that the soul will spend itself, as it were, rather than go without that good desired, even [namely] communion and solace with Christ’.[4] In other words, unless we’re emotionally involved in the activity of praying, we won’t pray. And so, in his view, ‘There is in prayer an unbosoming of a man’s self, an opening of the heart to God, an affectionate pouring out of the soul in requests, sighs, and groans’.[5]

4. Prayer is through Christ in the strength and assistance of the Spirit

We can only pray to God through the cross work of Christ and the work of His Spirit in applying spiritual life to us. Bunyan writes, ‘Christ is the way through whom the soul has admittance to God, and without whom it is impossible that so much as one desire should come into the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath’.[6]

5. Prayer is for those things that God has promised

Bunyan is clear that when we pray, the content of our prayers is to be guided by our knowledge of the scriptures. He writes, ‘Prayer is only true when it is within the compass of God’s word; it is blasphemy, or at best, vain babbling, when the petition is unrelated to the book’.[7] But before we panic we must be reassured that unrelated to the word allows a bit of leeway.

6. Prayer is for the good of the church

According to Bunyan we’re to pray for, ‘whatsoever tends to the honour of God, Christ’s advancement, or to His people’s benefit’.[8] Therefore we ‘must pray for the abundance of grace for the church, for help against all its temptations; that God would let nothing be too hard for it; that all things might work together for its good; that God would keep His children blameless and harmless, the sons of God, to His glory, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation’.[9]

7. Prayer is in submission to the will of God

‘The people of the Lord in all humility are to lay themselves and their prayers, and all that they have, at the foot of the their God, to be disposed of by Him as He in His heavenly wisdom sees best. Yet not doubting but God will answer the desire of His people that way that shall be most for their advantage and His glory’.[10]

Conclusion
Prayer is in essence speaking to God and making requests of Him.

[1] ‘What True Prayer Is’, Prayer, Banner of Truth Trust, pp 13-22
[2] Prayer, p14
[3] Prayer, p14
[4] Prayer, p16
[5] Prayer, p17
[6] Prayer, p18
[7] Prayer, p20
[8] Prayer, p21
[9] Prayer, p21
[10] Prayer, p22

School of Prayer I

Preliminary Bible work

5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

This is one of those two point parables from which we’re expected to learn something from the man in bed and something from the man in need.

The man in need represents us, and we’ll come to him in a moment. The man in bed represents God.

Jesus is not trying to teach us that God goes to bed, shuts the door, can’t easily rouse himself from sleep and doesn’t want to be bothered. The point if comparison is that like the sleeping man God will give to those who ask him whatever they genuinely need. The reluctant attitude of the man in bed contrasts with the eagerness of God to give good gifts to his children. No one would turn down a friend in these circumstances even despite substantial initial inconvenience. Therefore God will provide for the needs of his people even more generously and willingly. God is not a distant monarch who can’t be bothered with his subjects and their concerns. He’s interested in even the most trivial and insignificant needs of his people.

From the man in need we learn that we should practice unabashed, shameless forthrightness in prayer which does not hesitate to request the good gifts which God has promised to his people, if they ask him.