Pastor's BlogCovenant's 50th Anniversary Celebration is coming up September 10th-12th, 2010! Be sure to read more about it by rolling over our visitors button above and then clicking on "Current News".Kingdom FocusOver the past year you have heard me on numerous occasions referring to Jesus’ instructions to us to pray that God’s “kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.” This ‘kingdom focus’ is a call for us to begin to recapture our original reason for being… we were created to be a colonizing people, creating and establishing, wherever we are, communities that demonstrate what life can and should look like lived under the Lordship of Christ! But how will that come about? Is this simply a matter of building more churches? Do we simply need to be ‘holier’? I am going to begin a series in the monthly Spire that will attempt to provide some answers to such questions AND provide some direction in the pursuit of this Kingdom vision. This series will be based on a series of papers produced by Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. The answer will begin with our learning to PRAY. For many, if not most, of us, prayer is a means of getting personal needs met. Sometimes we even use prayer to praise God. But is that all there is to prayer? What part does prayer play in our pursuit of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven? As you look throughout the Old Testament you see God’s people involved in cycles of spiritual excitement, spiritual stagnation, rebellion, repentance, excitement, stagnation, rebellion, repentance and so on. One of the ever present characteristics of the people’s cycling out of rebellion into renewal was “Then the people cried out to the Lord.” A similar pattern was evident in the New Testament. At Pentecost we read that the people “were together in prayer”, they were “filled with the Holy Spirit” and they “began to speak, declaring the wonders of God.” This was the ‘pattern’ of renewal. And the one ever present characteristic of both situations was what Keller calls a “corporate, intense, prevailing spirit of prayer”—not for personal needs, but for the presence and reality of God among His people. Let’s begin with a consideration of the nature of Spiritual Renewal. Essentially, there are three marks of genuine spiritual renewal. First, there is an outpouring of the Spirit on and within the congregation, so that the presence of God among his people becomes evident and palpable. There is a new and deeper conviction of sin and repentance — not just for major ‘behavioral sins’ but for attitudes of the heart. There is then the experience of a far more powerful assurance of the nearness and love of God, with the end result that Christians become both humbler and bolder at once. The more deeply one feels his or her sin debt, the more intensely he or she feels the wonder of its payment. “Nominal Christian” (i.e., Christian in name only) church members come to realize that they don’t actually have a living relationship with Christ by grace and get converted. Long-time members talk about being converted or about Christ in radiant terms or express repentance in new ways. It electrifies people when this first begins to happen. Corporately, there is more passion, freedom and sense of the presence of God in the worship services. Secondly, as a result of this outpouring of the Spirit, the people of the world are brought into the church and it begins to grow. Why? On the one hand, the renewed believers create a far more attractive community of sharing and caring, and often with great worship. There is the beautified community of the King. This can attract people from the outside. On the other hand, when Christians who begin to experience God’s beauty, power, and love and put their relationship to Christ and the church first in their lives, they become more willing and confident to talk to others about their faith and less judgmental when they do so. They are also more willing to invite people to visit their church. As a result, there are numerous conversions — sound, lasting and sometimes dramatic. Significant, even astounding, church growth occurs. Many churches in America grow rapidly, but almost completely through transfer growth. When that is the case, renewal dynamics are not strong in the church. But in revival, conversions are not a trickle. In the U.S. from 1857-1859, a revival brought over a half a million new people into the church. In New York City, it is a well-documented fact that nearly all the churches grew fifty percent in membership in that two- to three-year period. At the same time, nearly a third of the population of Northern Ireland joined the church, and approximately ten percent of the entire population of Wales and Scotland were converted. Thirdly, there is a full impact on the community surrounding the church and even the broader culture. Revivals produce waves of people who become involved in works of social concern and social justice. Major social justice movements such as abolitionism had strong roots in the revivals. The reason for this is that real holiness changes the private and public lives of Christians. True religion is not merely a “private matter,” providing internal peace and fulfillment. Rather, it transforms our behavior and our relationships. The 1904-05 revival in Wales had created many social changes. Life in the coal pits was transformed; workers and management engaged in prayer meetings on company time. Many working people came to take aged parents home from the workhouses where they had been sent. Long-standing debts were paid, stolen goods returned, and crime rates plummeted. These three marks of revival may be small or large, long or short, dramatic or quiet, widespread or localized. But when the renewal dynamics are in place, these effects are in evidence. Without these dynamics in place, a church can grow in numbers, but not in vitality, and thus the growth will not have lasting results. Actually, many churches in America do grow rapidly, but there are tell-tale symptoms of lifelessness. Most or all of the growth may be by transfer, not conversion. There is no deep conviction of sin or repentance and thus few people can attest to dramatically changed lives. Also, the growth of the many churches makes no impact on the local social order, because people do not carry their Christianity out into their use of wealth, their work, or their public lives. Without deep renewal of the gospel in the heart, our external lives will be ‘sealed off’ from what we believe, and our beliefs will never result in concretely changed living. So what does this look like in the context of Prayer? As I said earlier, the one ever-present characteristic of movements of renewal is corporate, prevailing, kingdom-centered prayer. What is that? 1. It is focused on God’s presence and kingdom. In Outgrowing the Ingrown Church 1, Jack Miller talks about the difference between “maintenance prayer” and “frontline” prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short mechanical, and totally focused on physical needs inside the church. But frontline prayer has three basic traits: 1) A request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves; 2) a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church; and 3) a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory. It is quite clear whether these traits are present when listening to a prayer meeting. Most interesting is to study biblical prayers for revival, such as in Acts 4, or Exodus 33, or Nehemiah 1, where these three elements are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that the disciples, whose lives had been threatened, did not ask for protection for themselves and their families, but only boldness to keep preaching!2. It is bold and specific. The history of revivals shows one or a few or many who take the lead in praying fervently for renewal. Their pattern is Moses (Exodus 33), who pitched a tabernacle outside Israel’s camp where he and others prayed for God’s presence and to see his glory. Such prayer need not (indeed, usually does not) begin as an organized church program. Rather it is a private field of strong exertion and even agony for the leaders. The characteristics of this kind of prayer include: a) Pacesetters in prayer who spend time in self-examination. Without a strong understanding of grace, this can be morbid and depressing. But in the context of the gospel, it is purifying and strengthening. They “take off their ornaments” (Ex. 33:1-6). They examine their hearts for idols and set them aside. b) They then begin to make the big request — a sight of the glory of God. That includes asking: 1) for a personal experience of the glory and presence of God (“that I may know you” [Ex. 33:13]), 2) for the people’s experience of the glory of God (v.15), and 3) that the world might see the glory of God through his people. (v.16). Moses asks that God’s presence would be obvious to all: “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is a prayer that the world would be awed and amazed by a show of God’s power and radiance in the church; that it would truly become the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom. 3. It is prevailing and corporate. By this we mean simply that prayer should be constant, not sporadic and brief. Why? Are we to think that God wants to see us grovel? Why do we not simply put in our request in and wait? But sporadic, brief prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency; and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard. We will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for — to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God break through. So, let’s ask ourselves some questions as we conclude: What can we do to welcome the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst to a greater degree? Are we, individually and corporately, looking to the grace of Jesus and the love of God for assurance and self-worth? Are we a deeply self-sacrificing, serving community What would need to change for our prayer lives to become more “frontline”?
Kingdom-Focused Prayer: Part 2-Seeking the Spirit of the Lord
But, Edwards says, there is a great difference in how frequently and intensely people pray for the first category of
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