40 Days of Prayer Week 5

Transcription

1 40 Days of Week 5 Written by Pastor Eric Stiller Day 26 Joy In The Other Sunday, March So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. Acts 16:11-12 The apostles missionary adventures took them many places, and to many different kinds of people. Acts 16 is a remarkable account for many reasons, not least of all for the picture it gives of the diversity of the early church. We are introduced to a group of people who would make up the church in Philippi: a wealthy businesswoman, a demon-possessed slave girl, and a Roman jailor. It s almost impossible to unite of a more unlikely mix of people. But that s exactly what the gospel does. It brings together people who would never associate with each other under any other circumstances, and doesn t just bring them together, but gives them a basis for rejoicing in each other and finding deep, loving fellowship with each other. When Christ calls us to himself, identity markers such as race, gender, economic status, mental health, moral integrity, religious tradition, etc., all of these become subsumed under the new identity that is given each of us in Christ: child of God. We are no longer Americans or Kurds, community leaders or misfits, rich or poor, diseased or well. These things no longer define us primarily. What defines us, and therefore brings us together in joy and unity, is our status as God s people. The gospel doesn t erase our differences. It gives us the only power in the universe that can enable us to celebrate them for what they are: expressions of the variegated wonder of God s creation. Holy Father, what a privilege and joy it is to call you Father, for you have called us children of the living God. Thank you for calling us, adopting us, and remaking us in your image. Lord, your kingdom is one that brings people together, people who would never otherwise have anything to do with each other. Not only do we tolerate each other, but your gospel unites us in a common bond of joy and fellowship that transcends all the secondary incidentals that used to define us. Father, help us to live out our identities as your children by loving each 2014 Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 1

2 other and caring for each other, and by accepting and welcoming each other into our lives, our homes, our prayers, and our hearts. Give us a joy in each other that confounds the world around us, that they too may come into your house, fall at your feet, and name you as their only Lord and King Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 2

3 Day 27 A Heart For Others Monday, March From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 The fourth mark of a revived church is passionate, aggressive evangelism. Notice here its motivation. To regard anyone according to the flesh is to forget that, for all their sin and flaws, they are created in the image of God. They are immortal beings, crowned, as it were, with dignity and honor by God himself. No one ever said it better than C.S. Lewis: It is a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. There is no one about whom God does not care. And Paul tells us that we are his ambassadors, that God himself pursues broken image-bearers through us! See, therefore, the heart of God in these verses. We implore you, we beg you, we entreat you! God in us, making his appeal. God s heart for the lost becomes our heart. Is that your heart? When you meet people in the course of your day, do you see an immortal being headed either for glory or eternal destruction? Eternal God, O Ancient of Days, from the foundation of the world you created every human being in your image, investing them with glory, honor, and dignity. We forget this so easily. Even at our best, we often view the people around us as annoyances and pests. Forgive us, we pray, and bring the gravity of their eternal souls ever more powerfully to bear upon our hearts and minds. Give us a greater sense of your love for them. For their sake, O Lord Jesus, you forsook your throne in heaven and died for them. If we consider them to be an inconvenience, let us remember that inconvenience does not even begin to describe what 2014 Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 3

4 you went through on the cross for us. Fill us with your love, Lord Jesus! Make us a church that yearns with holy love for the lambs you bought with your blood Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 4

5 Day 28 Inviting Others To Know Him Tuesday, April 1 27 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, "Follow me." 28 And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. 29 And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. Luke 5:27-29 Levi (whom we know better as the apostle Matthew) found incredible grace with Jesus. Few people were viewed with more hatred and disgust than tax collectors, who were pawns of the Romans and traitors to the Jews. When Jesus called Levi, it showed that you can never be so bad that God is inclined to reject you, but it was also a startling revelation to the moral insiders that you can never be so good that God is obliged to accept you. Levi didn t have theological training. He didn t have years of walking with Jesus. All he had was a story of grace, and a love for the one who had called him. And so he threw a party for Jesus, and invited others to know him. Sometimes the best we can do is simply invite others to the party. We may not be articulate in defending the faith, or experts in explaining the difficult passages of the Bible. But everyone wants to be noticed and included. And that is something we can all give to others, no matter where we are in our life with Jesus. All it takes is a love for Christ that is rooted in grace, and a heart for others that yearns for them to know that grace also. O Mighty Master of the Feast, Lord of the Party, you called us to yourself and invited us to the marriage supper of the Lamb. We look forward to that day when we will eat it with you in the kingdom of heaven. But Lord, we realize that there are many others who have yet to hear your call and accept your invitation. May we be bearers of that invitation to them. Help us to reach out to them. Some of us may be inarticulate or timid, but Lord, we ask that you would embolden all of us to love the people in our lives well by inviting them to know you. Even as we approach this Easter day, when we celebrate your resurrection from the dead, we remember that many are thinking about you, perhaps second-guessing their assumptions, wondering if the reports might be true. It is so much easier to take a chance when you know you don t have to do it alone. Give us boldness, as your church, that we would invite and enfold the broken and wounded wanderers we come across every day to come meet you for themselves Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 5

6 Day 29 Seeing God s Image In Others Wednesday, April 2 6 Jacob s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) John 4:6-9 Francis Schaeffer was famous for saying that human beings are glorious ruins. That is, we are all marred and disfigured by sin. But the image of God is not destroyed. It is not effaced completely. Everyone is created in his image, and even the disintegrating effects of sin cannot completely unravel what God has woven into the very fabric of who and what we are. Jesus looked at this Samaritan woman and saw her as an image-bearer, someone precious in God s eyes. As far as the world was concerned, they could not have been more different, and yet Jesus saw her as someone who had something to offer, and he dignified her by asking her to give him a drink. Him, the incarnate Son of God! The people we meet throughout our days may be marred, disfigured, and unraveled by sin. But there is something, in even the worst psychopath, or the most hardened criminal, that still reflects God s image. What is it? Find it, for it is there that our witness to them begins. If we can see where they reflect God s image (What do they love? What are they good at?), we gain a window into the eternal glories that lie beneath the ruins of their lives. Lord Jesus, there is no one in your creation in whom your image is effaced completely. In each one of us, there exists something that reflects your character, your beauty, your glory. Help us to see that in the people around us. Give us eyes that we might perceive where you are already at work in their hearts. Help us to see, acknowledge, and affirm the gifts you have given them, that we might help them to see those gifts and that image for themselves. You have placed eternity in the heart of man. Lord, grant us favor that we might point the people in our lives to the eternal glories that course through their souls, and so lead them to see the One who placed them there. All to the praise of your glory! 2014 Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 6

7 Day 30 A Gracious Challenge Thursday, April 3 13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." 16 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." 17 The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." John 4:13-18 When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus for the living water and he told her to call her husband, it may have seemed like he was changing the subject. But he wasn t! He was actually helping her to see where she had been looking all along for the water her soul yearned for: in the arms of one man after another. Jesus is so gentle and respectful when dealing with our sins. He doesn t come out swinging and clubbing this woman with epithets and accusations. He doesn t say, Sinner! Repent! He helps her look at her own heart by sensitively yet pointedly revealing her deepest struggles. If the sinless and holy Lord of the universe could be so gentle and respectful when dealing with the sin of another, how much more should we, sinful and broken as we are? Yes, sharing the gospel with someone means helping them to see their sin, but we should always do so with tears of repentance in our own eyes. When someone knows that you are not judging them, but identifying with and loving them, they are much more likely to hear a challenging word from you. Dearest Lord, how gentle you are! O Most Wise One, you know exactly how to bring a hard word into the life of another. You reveal our struggles to ourselves, rather than exposing them to the world around us. You don t need the information, and it is no business of the world s. Their sin is their own. But you gently and respectfully help us to look at our own sin for ourselves. In our dealings with and witness to others, will you please give us the grace, gentleness, and wisdom to see where they struggle, and rather than shaming them, help them to see for themselves. This requires more wisdom and insight than we possess, but even more it requires humility and repentance. Pour these into our hearts and minds, that we may speak the words of challenge that need to be spoken, but that we may do so in a way that attracts people to you, rather than repelling them because your representatives are so haughty and insensitive Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 7

8 Day 31 Free To Be Broken Friday, April 4 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman s testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world." John 4:39-42 Prior to her encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman avoided her community. They didn t want to see her, and she didn t want to see them. After all, she was a promiscuous woman five husbands, and she wasn t even married to the one she was with now! Hence, she would rather draw water at the hottest time of day than subject herself to the scorn of the other woman who would go to the well when it was cooler. But after meeting Jesus, everything was different. Come see a man who told me everything I ever did! Not only was she no longer hiding from her community, she was unabashedly open about her sin. She was free to be broken before them, because she had finally found what she had been looking for all those years: Jesus. Shame no longer defined her, and her freedom opened the door for many others to believe in Jesus, and find the same freedom for themselves. When the gospel gets hold of us, we can attract other broken sinners to Jesus because they see that something, or rather someone, has been at work in our lives. Lord Jesus, it is stunning enough to see one person find the boldness and freedom to tell others about your work in their sinful heart. What would happen if a whole community were to do the same! Precious Savior, we ask that you would help us to draw ever nearer to your cross, and find ever more release and gladness in your empty tomb. As you transform us, give us the openness and the freedom to be broken in front of others. And we ask also that you would save us from the perverse kind of pride that can come as we try to top one another with war stories about our past. Let us simply and humbly acknowledge a gracious God who saved us from an astoundingly unspectacular and unglamorous life of sin. And let us also be frank about the ways we still struggle, lest we give others the impression that we are somehow above them. May we be instruments of your grace and healing in the lives of many others Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 8

9 Day 32 Free To Be Broken Saturday, April 5 22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. Acts 17:22-23 When he was in Antioch (Acts 13), Paul stood up among the Jews in the synagogue and proclaimed the gospel. But he did so in a very different way than we see here. If he had simply duplicated that message among the Greeks in Athens, it would have been incomprehensible to them. In Antioch, Paul spoke to the Jews by appealing to their history and their knowledge of the Bible. It was a very in crowd. They knew all the religious lingo that he used, and that was one of the reasons that his message to them was ultimately so powerful, because he used their own traditions and history to show them the truth of the gospel. The Greeks had none of that context. And yet Paul was able to give them a succinct and compelling gospel presentation. How? He spent time with them. He read their books, their plays, their poets. He lived among them, worked among them, and walked among them. In short, he spoke their language. If we are ever to make the gospel comprehensible to the people in our lives, we must do the same. They may have grown up in church and know what sanctification means. But chances are, many of them have not. How will you explain it to them? Paul used a shared context in a unique way to communicate the unchanging gospel to people in a way that was understandable to them. It takes time to learn how to do this, and it also takes a love for the people with whom you would share it. Heavenly Father, how were you to reach us? How were you to make your truth known and your redemption tangible? How could finite beings comprehend an infinite creator? All praise to you for the gospel! Rather than make us reach up to you, you reached down to us. Rather than make us understand you, you came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ and spoke in a way that we could perceive. In the very best and most gracious sense, you are the ultimate accommodationist! O Lord, help us to learn the language of the ones we would reach for your sake. Give us a love for people that are unlike us, that we might spend time with them, eat with them, walk with them, learn of them. And give us insight by your Holy Spirit, that we might know how best to communicate your gospel to them in a loving, humble, and comprehensible way Central Presbyterian Church 40 Days of Week 5 p 9