Praying with The Puritans

Greetings All,

     This past weekend I attended a conference in Pittsburgh, PA, for the CCO (Coalition For Christian Outreach) where there just happened to be a bookseller.  My curiosity got the best of me, and I walked over to see what books were on the shelves.  I practiced great restraint (for me) and ended up walking out with only four new books to add to my library!  One, which was entitled: "Kneeling With Giants - Learning To Pray With History's Best Teachers," by Gary Neal Hansen, caught my attention.

     I've only gotten through two of it's chapters so far, but I found one section both interesting and helpful.  It's called, "Praying with The Puritans" and encourages us to use their common form of praying by meditation and writing.  Enjoy.

Praying With The Puritans

     "Back in student days, after a bad breakup, my journal saved my sanity. I bought a little black book to hold my dark, grieving thoughts, and in it I poured out lamentation, confusion and anger. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, until I didn't need to anymore.  A couple years later, I looked back and found that pretty much every page was the same. You could say writing was a kind of therapy, but for me it was prayer. God was listening. Healing came.

     I often pray best with a pen.... Writing in my journal draws me quickly and surely into God's company. God is there, listening, and I find myself understood and accepted. That changes me. It may seem an odd and indirect form of prayer -- I do not start each journal entry with "Dear God" -- but if prayer is conversation, the act of writing allows me to take my part of the dialogue seriously.  It slows me down, and hidden things come to light.  Burdens are lifted. Insights and possibilities emerge....

     To all who resist writing as a way of prayer, I plead for an imaginative openness. A great many people find that writing sparks spiritual growth.... The first time I tried to write in a journal, I found myself so anxious I destroyed every page. I was not afraid that someone would see it. The struggle was with myself. Here were my feelings, the insides of me, spread out on a page. I felt almost naked. Later, and to my own surprise, I tried again. Soon writing in my journal was the way to come honestly to God and find grace. All I can say is that it is worth it to keep coming back to the experiment of prayerful writing...  If this is a new way to pray, it can be a challenge. The good news is that many Christians have prayed this way throughout history.  And there is no better example than the Puritans.

     Now, before you start rolling your eyes, let me say that these sixteenth and seventeenth-century Calvinists from England and then America have gotten a bad rap. We assume the joke is true that a Puritan is defined as someone terribly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun.  In literature class we read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) or The Crucible by Arthur Miller (1915-2005) [neither one of which ever met or had any interaction with a Puritan] and forever after when we hear "Puritan" we picture poor Hester Prynne being judged and shamed, or the horror of the Salem witch trials.  However, if you read what the Puritans wrote about the Christian life, the picture changes. They brought single-minded passion to their pursuit of God. They lived with a focused, prayerful longing to be made new in Christ. They may have been more conscious of sin than most Christians are today, but they were also more aware of God's blessings and grace. These were inner experiences, but I can describe them confidently because when they prayed about them they often did so with pen in hand. Written approaches to prayer were so important to the Puritans that they wrote manuals to teach each other how to do it. 

     The Puritans, as Calvinists, had a very heavy doctrine of providence, believing that God was actively involved in virtually everything in their lives and the world. Today the idea has fallen on hard times. Many assume God is not actively involved, or they look at things that happen in the world and wonder what God could possibly have been thinking. Providence filled John Beadle (an English Puritan who lived from 1595-1667 and wrote "Diary of a Thankful Christian") with a sense of wonder. He claimed that if we only looked, we would see God's name, wisdom, power and faithfulness in every blade of grass and every drop of rain. Nurturing awareness of providence can bring us to awe as well. Believing, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it, "earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush alive with God" makes it more likely that we will notice God at work, take off our shoes, and kneel.

     Beadle lists a number of topics to write about in our journals. Some are more clearly powerful than others, but they all help us move forward in seeing God at work, and giving thanks, knowing God better and loving God more. 

            1.) "Let every man keep a strict account of his effectual calling." "Effectual calling" is the Puritan term for the way God got through and made you a Christian... 

       2.) "Take special notice of all divine assistance.. either in the performance of the duties that are required of us, or in bearing those evils that are inflicted upon us." 
       3.) "Remember, and for that end put into your journal all deliverance's from dangers, either to you or yours."
       4.) "All the instruments, all the people and means that God has in providence at any time used for your good, must not be forgotten." 
       5.) "And finally, mark what returns, what answers God gives to your prayers, and write them down... as most remarkable pledges of His love." 

     When I first became a believer (38 yeas ago) I did this very thing more often (having no idea the Puritans had done it before me). I even have those journals in my possession still, and the answers to many prayers recorded there. But in our fast paced society that habit fell by the wayside. Thankfully, this chapter convinced me I need to pick up my pen and journal again.  You may want to give it a try as well. After all, how could one not benefit from prayerfully writing about God's grace and involvement in their lives, or recording for future days a written record to remind them of His power, providence, intervention, rescue, provision, and daily expressions of kindness?  I dare say it could do everyone nothing but good! 

In His Service, Pastor Jeff

20 Quotes on Prayer

Greetings All, 

     This weeks "thought" consists of 20 different quotes regarding prayer.  I set them before you because next to reading your Bible, there is surely nothing that could do you more spiritual good than prayer. They are not set before you to see which you consider better, but to encourage you to pray!  Those who first discipled me encouraged me to set aside a focused time to pray at the start of the day and again at the close of the day, with continual spontaneous prayer being offered throughout the day.  And in many ways I found that easy, being converted in the days before smart phones and computers were the rage, and social media filled all of our "empty time" with constant updates, likes, pictures, posts and sometimes needless time-wasting distractions.

     Some of that is good and helpful, but much is very trivial and infringes on time that could be spent in much more meaningful, transforming and beneficial activities. In fact, for many, the vital experience with God in prayer (be it morning, evening or in between) has taken a back seat to social media sites. Many of us now wake in the morning, or end the day, by running to our devices -- be it the smart phone or the computer. Thus, if I could do anything (even in the life of one person) to change that, and encourage you to spend that time in invaluable fellowship with God in prayer, it would be worth all the time of gathering these quotes from well-known pray-ers.

     If there is any habit of the heart that believers need to rekindle, it's prayer. Try it for a day.  Choose fellowship in prayer with your greatest Friend, over scrolling through endless the posts of other friends.  For as F. B. Meyers once rightly stated: “The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.”   May some of these insights help sway you to offer more time with God in prayer. Enjoy.

20 Thoughts on Prayer

"Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays."   Soren Kierkegaard

"Prayer makes a man godly, and puts within him the mind of Christ, the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of compassion, and of prayer.  If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying."    E.M. Bounds

"Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?"  Corrie ten Boom

"To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing."   Martin Luther

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work, prayer is the greater work.”  Oswald Chambers

"Rather than set aside daily time for prayer, I pray constantly and spontaneously about everything I encounter on a daily basis. When someone shares something with me, I'll often simply say, 'Let's pray about this right now.'"  Thomas Kinkade

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."  Abraham Lincoln

"To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees."  Billy Graham

“Time spent in prayer is never wasted.”   Francis Fenelon

“Fervent prayers produce phenomenal results.”   Woodrow Kroll

“Prayer delights God’s ear; it melts His heart; and opens His hand. God cannot deny a praying soul.”  Thomas Watson

 “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”   Jesus the Christ 

“Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of Him that we are capable of in this life.”   William Law

“The right way to pray is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.”   Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The best and sweetest flowers of paradise God gives to His people when they are upon their knees. Prayer is the gate of heaven.”   Thomas Brooks

“O, let the place of secret prayer become to me the most beloved spot on earth.”   Andrew Murray

“When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end.”   R. A. Torrey

“When I pray, “coincidences” happen, and when I don’t, they don’t.”   William Temple

“There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.”  William Law

“The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.”   F. B. Meyer

     The blessing of prayer in one's life is hard to calculate.  Yet I believe that some day God will reveal the blessings we forfeited, and the life-transforming benefits we turned away, by the times we ignored it; and  in the opposite sense, show us the wonderful things we would never have experienced had it not been for the prayers that we, or others, prayed on our behalf.

In the Bonds of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff

Principles of Spiritual Growth

Greetings All,

Today's selection comes from a book given to me by a fellow missionary friend in Honduras many years ago.  We were walking along the shoreline of a coastal island discussing the struggles of ministry, the knowledge of our own sinfulness, and thus our mutual sense of feeling unworthy for the task, when suddenly he voiced the phrase I myself have used so often: "Hey, I have a short little book you should read...."   Not much later it was in my hands, and like many other books I've read, I found it very helpful.
So these many years later I will share with you some of the parts I found helpful and highlighted about 20+ years ago.  (Yes, to the horror of many fellow book lovers, I do mark up all my books, and love picking up used ones where others have done the same!)  The book is called "Principles of Spiritual Growth," and was written by Miles J. Stanford.  Each builds upon the others.  Enjoy.

     "Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger all would be well. The idea that our failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, leads naturally to a false conception of the way of deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of sin, and with our inability to overcome it, then we naturally conclude that to gain victory over sin we must have more power. 'If only I was stronger,' we say, 'I could overcome my violent outbursts of temper." And so we plead with the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise self-control. But this is altogether wrong. This is not Christianity. God's means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. 'This is surely a peculiar way of victory,' you say, but it is the divine way. God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man, but by crucifying him. Not by helping him to do anything, but by removing him from the scene..."

     "Immaturity considers the Lord Jesus to be a Helper. Maturity knows Him to be Life itself.  Dr. J. E. Conant wrote, "Christian living is not our living with Christ's help, it is Christ living His life in us.  Therefore, that portion of our lives that is not His living is not Christian living; and that portion of our service that is not His doing is not Christian service; for all such life and service have but a human and natural source, and Christian life and service have a supernatural and spiritual source." Paul insisted, "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Gal. 2:20)." 

     "In preparation, there is a tearing down before there can be a building up. "Come, let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, and He will heal us, He has smitten and He will bind us up" (Hosea 6:1).  This applies to both growth and service.  J. C. Metcalfe writes: "It is more than comforting to realize that it is those who have plumbed the depths of failure to whom God invariably gives the call to shepherd others. This is not a call given to the gifted and highly trained, or the polished as such. Without a bitter experience of their own inadequacy and poverty they are quite unfitted to bear the burden of spiritual ministry. It takes a man who has discovered something of the measures of his own weakness to be patient with the failings of others. Such a man also has first-hand knowledge of the loving care of the Chief Shepherd, and His ability to heal one who has come humbly to trust in Him and Him alone. Therefore he does not easily despair of others, but looks beyond sinfulness, willfulness, and stupidity, to the might of unchanging love. The Lord Jesus does not give Peter the charge "Shepherd my lambs" on hearing Peter's self-confident affirmation of undying loyalty (Matthew 26:33). He gives it after Peter has utterly failed to keep his vows and has wept bitterly in the streets of Jerusalem."

     "The first step in getting out of the struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans, and into the victory of the eighth chapter, is to pass through the struggle spoken of in the seventh. Of all the needy classes of people, the neediest of this earth are not those who are having a heartbreaking, agonizing struggle for victory, but those who are having no struggle at all, and thus no victory, yet do not know it. Those who are satisfied and jogging along in a pitiable absence of almost all the possessions that belong to them in Christ.  J. C. Metcalfe gives this same fact an added witness: "Many a young Christian, who has not been warned of this necessary voyage of discovery upon which the Holy Spirit will certainly embark him (Rom. 7), has been plunged into almost incurable despair at the sight of the sinfulness which is his by nature.

     He has in the first place rejoiced greatly in the forgiveness of his sins, and his acceptance by God; but sooner or later he begins to realize that not all is well, and he has failed and fallen from the high standard he set for himself to reach in the first flush of conversion. He begins to know something of the experience Paul so graphically describes: "The good I want to do, that I do not do, but what I hate, that I do" (Rom. 7:15). And, in consequence, he feels that the bottom has fallen out of his Christian life. Then, perhaps, the Devil whispers to him that it is just no good in going on, because he will never be able to make the grade. Little does he know how healthy his condition is, and that this shattering discovery is but the prelude to a magnificent series of further discoveries of things which God has expressly designed for his eternal enrichment.

     All through life God has to show us our own utter sinfulness and need, before He is able to lead us on into the realms of grace, in which we shall glimpse His glory. Self-revelation (regarding our sin) precedes divine revelation -- that is a principle for spiritual birth and spiritual growth. The believer who is going through struggle and failure is the Christian who is being carefully and lovingly handled by his Lord in a very personal way. He is being taken through the experience (years in length) of self-revelation, and into death -- the only basis upon which to "know Him" and the power of His resurrection... (Phil 3:10).

     God works by paradox. Success comes via failure; life springs out of death, etc. The only element in the believers life that crumbles is that which has to go anyway. New life can never be harmed or affected. This disintegration is something the believer cannot enter into or engineer on his own.  Self can never cast out self.  He has to be led into it by the mercy of the Holy Spirit -- into failure; abject and total...

     So often the means utilized by the Spirit is an unsaved mate, or even a saved one!  Or poor health, yes, and good health too!  A thousand and one things are used by Him -- in fact, everything (Rom. 8:28-29), to bring out the worst in us, ultimately enabling us to see that the Christian life has to be, "not I, but Christ."  People, circumstances, etc., are never the cause of failure. Self's reaction to them is the cause, and the one problem to be dealt with. "It's me, it's me, O Lord."

Just some helpful contrary-to-the-ways-of-the-world Gospel truth to chew on and be encouraged by!

With you in the Bonds of this life's struggles, Pastor Jeff