40 Days of Prayer Week 3

Transcription

1 40 Days of Week 3 Written by Pastor Eric Stiller Day 12 They Came to Scoff Sunday, March And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. Acts 2:40-41 An old poem says those who came to scoff, remained to pray. Where the gospel is faithfully preached, sleepy believers wake up and those who have wandered are brought home. But the word can also melt the heart of even the most hardened skeptic or jaded cynic. In the face of defiant unbelief and mockery, the gospel of Jesus Christ convicts of sin and brings times of refreshing. (Acts 3:20) New believers such as this often become the most passionate witnesses for the gospel they so recently embraced. And where their joy is sown, an even greater harvest is reaped as soul after formerly unbelieving soul falls to their knees begging to know, what must I do to be saved? They were devoted to the apostle s teaching. True revival is marked by devotion to the gospel, the only power on earth that can make dead people come alive. Holy Lord God, as we meditate on the power of your gospel to revive and renew, we earnestly ask that you will make our hearts malleable and teachable. Let us find our joy in the hope we have in Jesus Christ, the only hope for all the world! We pray now that you will make us bold to share this hope with our friends, family members, workers, associates, and all we meet who may be silently or openly hostile to you. Yes, give us boldness, but also give us wisdom, grace, tenderness, insight, discernment, and above all humility. Help us to remember the gospel we profess: that we are no better, no holier, no richer in inherent goodness. In fact, we may be very much worse than the skeptics we would seek to convince. Convict our hearts that we are sinners saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone, and let this conviction shape our interactions with the mocking world around us, as we preach to our hearts, there but for the grace of God go I! 2014 Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 1

2 Day 13 Worship Is A Response Monday, March 17 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. 7 Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts! 9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! Ephesians 2:4-9 The second mark of a revived church is vibrant worship. What is worship? One way of answering this question is by asking another. What do you find most beautiful, most powerful? What do you find most compelling? What moves you? For whatever we find most compelling, most powerful, most beautiful, is the thing that will evoke the strongest response from us. And at its heart, that is what worship is: our response to that which truly moves us. It might be something sublime (a waterfall, mountain, or sunset), something closer to our experience (career, romance, children), or even something mundane (our looks, our reputation, Facebook), but in all our lives, there is something that has captured our attention and imagination above all other things, and that is what we truly worship. Worship begins in our minds. Our English word worship comes from the old English worth-ship : that to which we ascribe value (verses 6-8). But it flows from our minds through our hearts and out into our experience and life. The Hebrew word for worship (verse 9) is more concerned with our response: it means to bow down, to get low before God. Whatever has ultimate value to you dominates your mind, your heart, your money, your time, your energy, etc.; it elicits the greatest response from you. What moves you? Heavenly Father, you created us with minds and hearts and imaginations and passions. As your image-bearers, we are endowed with the ability to comprehend, appreciate, and enjoy a vast spectrum of wonders, from blueberries to beaches to babies. Indeed, we rightly ascribe value to these things because you have created them and called them good. We love them because you love them. But Father, we confess that we often let created things become ultimate things. We long for beauty and power and mystery and pleasure, but we are consumed with finding our fulfillment for these longings in created things, rather than their fountain and source, which is you, O Mighty Creator. Teach our hearts to worship aright, to 2014 Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 2

3 see past the things themselves to the One to whom they point. Help us to delight in them with the measure that is appropriate, letting the joy they elicit draw us ever nearer to you, that we may know You, the fountain of Living Water, and that we may kneel down and drink deeply from your depths. Grant us hearts that are alive to you, hearts that can truly respond to you in awe-filled, reverent, joyful worship Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 3

4 Day 14 Who God Is Tuesday, March 18 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Psalm 96:6 Worship is God-centered: it is our response to who God is in and of himself. We esteem many things based on how they benefit us. For instance, I appreciate my car because it takes me where I want to go. I value my computer because it helps me do what I want to do. But there are some things we value simply for what they are. They are a good unto themselves. When we see a superb work of art or listen to a brilliant piece of music, we can t help but adoring it simply for what it is. There is nothing else to be done, nothing else to be received. They are not a means to something else, but a good unto themselves. So with God. Something eternal and transcendent comes to us through these things: power, beauty, glory. These all have their ultimate source in God ( strength and beauty are in his sanctuary ), and as we learn to see Him in all things, we begin to learn how to worship Him rather than the things themselves. Powerful, Beautiful, Glorious God, in you and from you and through you is every good thing. Teach us to value you for who you are in and of yourself. Help us to grow in wonder and trust and adoration, that we may simply adore the Giver rather than the gifts he gives, wonderful as they are. Mighty Lord, we ask that you will give us hearts of insight, that we may see beyond the beauty and goodness of this world to the one who lies behind it all. Let our worship be the response of hearts that are moved beyond comprehension as we see you for who you really are Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 4

5 Day 15 A Committed Response Wednesday, March 19 1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:1-3 Worship is not just any kind of response. It is not half-hearted. As we have seen, the greater the value, the stronger the response. True worship is the committed response of the worshiper. To worship is to hold nothing back, to take the irrevocable step. For Mary, there was nothing in the world that meant more to her than Jesus. Look at her! Every time she is mentioned in the New Testament, she is at the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:39, John 11:32, 12:3). He was the single greatest desire and joy of her life. Her response was to take something of immense value (worth almost a year s wages), and lavish it upon him. Yet once she had anointed Jesus with the ointment, there was no gathering it back up again. Mark s account of the incident tells us that she broke the flask. She poured it all out on Jesus: all her love, all her devotion, all her wealth, all her life. She held nothing back, but abandoned all to Jesus, for Jesus was all to her, and there was nothing she could give that she did not already have in him. What is your flask, and have you broken it at the feet of Jesus? Have you taken the step that cannot be reversed, and committed all to him? Lord Jesus, we could have the world, the heavens, even the entire cosmos, but if we have not you, we would be as the poorest beggar. Conversely, we could have nothing to our name, not even a crust of bread, yet if we have you, it were as though the treasure house of heaven had been poured down upon us. For that is what happened when you came to earth: heaven opened, and the glorious riches of God Himself flowed down in mercy and love upon a parched creation. Mighty Savior, help us to see how you took everything you had: your glory, your power, your honor, your majesty, and poured it out for us, being broken in the process. You held nothing back, but abandoned yourself to death on the cross, in the greatest act of commitment the world has ever seen. Help us to worship you with all we are and all we have, pouring our hearts out to you in love and devotion as our committed response Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 5

6 Day 16 The Whole Person Thursday, March 20 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:3 We now notice something else the Bible shows us about worship: it is the committed response of the whole person. Mary shows us that true worship is not simply a cognitive activity. Jesus moved her more powerfully than anything else that had ever entered her experience, and she did not respond with mere mental appreciation, as though Jesus were nothing more than a pleasant thought flashing across her intellectual horizon. We eat a bonbon and say, Isn t that nice? and off we go blithely about our life. Not so with Mary. The encounter she had with Jesus began in her mind, but overflowed to her heart and her actions. Worship expresses itself in our emotions: for a Jewish woman to let down her hair in public was an act of almost scandalous intimacy, yet there is no hint of impropriety. The tenderness in this scene is almost palpable. Worship affects our physical life: she kneels at his feet and wipes them with her hair. Worship changes the way we view our money: the ointment was worth almost a year s wages, yet it was nothing to her in comparison to Jesus. Our worship even transforms the world around us: what Mary did caused a social uproar (Mark 14:4-5). We are holistic beings, hence true worship can never be limited to one aspect of our being. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Dearest Lord Jesus, you did not love us only with your mind, but you loved us with your whole being, even taking a body to yourself and becoming human so that you could consummate your love for us on the cross. A holistic need required a holistic salvation. Our redemption began in your heart, but was carried to fruition with real nails, real wood, and real blood. We praise you for the fullness of your love for us, and ask that you would bring this, your gospel, ever more powerfully to bear upon our minds, our hearts, our hands, and through us the world around us. Let our worship, our response, our love for you, be in the whole person, and all the more as you give us eyes and hearts to perceive the wholeness of your love for us on the cross Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 6

7 Day 17 What He Has Done Friday, March 21 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. John 12:3 Worship is God-centered: the committed response of the whole person to who God is. But it is also gospel-centered. That is, it is a response not just to who God is, but to what he has done. The God-centered aspect of worship takes into account who he is, but the gospelcentered aspect of worship takes into account who we are: sinners in desperate need of grace. Our fallen nature prevents us from being capable of worshiping God simply for who he is, much less being able to obey his command to be holy as I am holy. But God has made a way for both, and our worship is all the fuller because of it. Mary s anointing of Jesus was no mere social courtesy. She was not simply extending him a lavish, but ultimately meaningless, act of hospitality. She was not being nice. She was worshiping God for what he was doing. The ointment with which Mary anointed Jesus was for his burial. She recognized what he was about to do, and her worship of him reflected that. She broke her flask for him, because she saw that he was breaking his body for her. This is gospel-centered worship: we come to the profound realization that God has mended our broken relationship with him by being broken himself, and this moves us to an irrepressible expression of worship. Gracious Father, how we wish that we were whole and sinless and perfect, capable of worshiping you with pure hearts and untainted lives. Would that we could love you with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength, simply for who you are in and of yourself. But our sin prevents us from seeing you. Even more, our sin prevents us from obeying you. We thank you for making a way back into your presence through the precious blood of your Son Jesus Christ, our Savior. Lord, as we have meditated on your gospel these past days, bring it ever more powerfully to bear upon our hearts. Transform and renew us by your grace, so that our worship of you is the reflection of hearts that are broken for wonder and gratitude at a God who would be broken for us. Shape our hearts and lives according to the glorious proclamation of what you did for us on the cross. We will spend eternity as your redeemed people, who celebrate your salvation. O Lord, let our worship of you be all the more joyful, committed, grateful, and humble because of it Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 7

8 Day 18 Filled With The Fragrance Saturday, March 22 3 The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:3 True love for Jesus doesn t just fill us. If it is real, it will overflow through us. If we really see him as the most glorious, powerful, beautiful, and compelling thing in our life, and if we really see what he has done, then our response will flow out of us into the world around us. True worship cannot be contained within ourselves, within our minds, or even within our houses of worship. That is far too small a view of what worship is. Our worship, if it is real, should make our lives fragrant with the love of Jesus. Our lives should be so redolent of Him that the people around us cannot help but catch the scent. This is Biblical worship. It is not solely concerned with what we do once a week when we gather together (although that is certainly a big part of it, for it shapes the rest of our life). Ultimately, it is the way we live all day, every day. At the end of his instructions to the Colossian church on corporate worship, Paul tells them: And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17) Remember, to some, we will be the fragrance of life. To others, the stench of death. (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) But to God, our worship ought always to be as sweet incense, rising to the throne of heaven. Is your life fragrant with the love of Jesus? Does it motivate and animate everything you do? Precious Lord Jesus, O Sweet Savior! Your love for us is sweeter than any rose, deeper than any ocean, higher than the highest heavens, longer than eternity, and wide as your arms stretched out on the cross, on which you died in order to make us your own forever. Have we ever beheld a passion so mighty as this? Have we ever known a power as unstoppable, a force as massive, as the love you have for your church? Holy Lord, smite us with your love. Let our hearts be wrenched with grief for our sin, that they may be wrought anew by your love. And may this holy work of yours bear a new work in our lives, the work of love and devotion that overflows through us, as though we were but broken, shallow vessels, incapable of containing the torrents poured into them. Make our lives a sweet scent to your nostrils, that the flasks we break at your feet may release the fragrance of your beauty, your power, your strength, and your glorious name into the world around us Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 3 p 8