From Horatius Bonar: When God's Children Suffer

Sickness prostrates us. It cuts into the very centre of our carnal nature; it exposes in all their deformity "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life". What vanity is seen in these upon a sickbed! These are our three idols; and these, sickness dashes down into the dust. 

Sickness takes us aside and sets us alone with God. We are taken into His private chamber, and there He converses with us face to face. The world is far off, our relish for it is gone, and we are alone with God. Many are the words of grace and truth which He then speaks to us. All our former props are taken away, and we must now lean on God alone. The things of earth are felt to be vanity; man's help useless. Man's praise and sympathy desert us; we are cast wholly upon God, that we may learn that HIs praise and His sympathy are enough. "If it were not for my pain," says one, "I should spend less time with God. If I had not been kept awake with pain, I should have lost one of the sweetest experiences I ever had in my life. The disorder of my body is the very help I want from God; and if it does its work before it lays me in the dust, it will raise me up to heaven." It was thus that Job was "chastened upon his bed with pain, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain", that after being tried he might "come forth as gold" (Job 33:19; 23:10).

Sickness teaches that activity of service is not the only way in which God is glorified. "They also serve who stand and wait." Active duty is that which man judges most acceptable; but God shows us that in bearing and suffering He is also glorified. Perhaps we were pursuing a course of our own and required to be arrested. Perhaps we were too much harassed by a bustling world and needed retirement, yet could find no way of obtaining it till God laid us down, and drew us aside into a desert place, because of the multitude pressing upon us.

None of the family rods is more in use than this, sometimes falling lightly on us, at other times more heavily. Let us kiss the rod. Let us open our mouth wide to the blessing, seeking so to profit by each bodily ailment, slight or severe, that it may bring forth in us the peacable fruits of righteousness. "I know," says one, "of no greater blessing than health, except pain and sickness."

The Difficulty of Preaching the Text

I have good friends in ministry who often describe preaching as "explaining the Bible". I've felt uncomfortable with this and have been averse to using such a description myself.

Part of the reason I think is that, at its worst, it sounds so terribly patronising! "I, the great and knowledgeable one, and going to explain this complex and mystifying matter that my mind has penetrated through hours in the study, with my knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and which clearly your minds are not able to do."

I wonder what such a view makes of the perspicuity of Scripture, and of the fact that John tells us that "we all know the truth" or "we know all the truth" (1John 2:20-21) as we have been given the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The clarity of God's word, and the ministry of the Spirit to lead us into all truth means that whenever we hear a preacher we have both an outer guide (Scripture) and an inner one (Spirit) that enables us to assess the speaker. It is not that we need the preacher to enable us to get the meaning of the Scripture.

The problem isn't an intellectual one. Sure, the study and learning of a godly preacher will surely bless and benefit a congregation, but something much more important is going on.

The real task of a preacher is to wrestle with the text as one who is simultaneously saint and sinner, and then proclaim that to a congregation in the same spot! The real problem in our hearing of the word of God is a moral one and not an intellectual one.

A preacher has the task of exposing the false readings we prefer to the actual meaning of the text which makes a moral claim on us. The one who really hears the word of God is he or she who does it. Being sinners still, we tend to be like the son in Jesus' parable who hears the word of the Father, cheers it as wonderful and then goes away and does whatever he intended in the first place (Matt. 21:28ff)!

There are a number of ways that sinners dull the claim of the text whilst still feeling some degree of piety for doing so!

• We reduce the text, refusing to see it in its full Trinitarian and salvific glory. The preacher has the task of making us see the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the glory and the love of God that every word brings to us.
• We manipulate the text, discarding either the moral claim of the text upon us on the one hand, or else reducing the text simply to a "to do list" on the other. The preacher must remember God's solid foundation which remains firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” (2Tim. 2:19) The preacher must expose the legalist and the libertine in us all.

Who is equal to such a task, himself being the sinner who comes to the word of God in the same way?

The preacher must himself let the searching word of God do in him what he is hoping the searching word of God will do in his congregation. Pain, agony, sweat, blood, tears must mark the hours of the preacher's preparation. Only then will he come with the love, joy, grace and goodness that will be necessary in the pulpit.

Mealy Mouthed No More

It's in prayer that our real relation to God shows itself, whatever it is that we may say in our theology or at church. In prayer we discover if we actually believe God to be the gracious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has reconciled us to Himself through the same Lord Jesus. Unless and until we believe that is the case, all prayer becomes mealy-mouthed, a timid refusal to say plainly and directly what is thought or felt, but rather wanders and weaves trying to find what may be pleasing or acceptable to God, not wishing that we get him offside.

Mealy-mouthed is an adjective that Martin Luther popularised. When a person has a mouth full of meal (ground grain) it is very difficult for him to speak. The meal is held on one side of the mouth and the person has to speak sideways, around the meal as it were. Mealy-mouthedness is indirect speaking. Try to speak directly with a mouth full of meal and it all sprays out. Mealy-mouthedness is the speaking of one who wants to conceal what is in his or her heart rather than letting it all out.

Such speech is the manner of speech of person who does not have confidence about his or her relationship with the person to whom he or she speaks. In prayer we find by experience whether we have finally come to know the truth that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. The person reconciled to God has been brought to Him in an encounter of wills. Where once we lived in an opposition of wills against God, in reconciliation we are brought into an encounter of will which strives to come to a unity of willing. Prayer is an encounter of wills – and it persists until unity of willing is accomplished. True prayer does not rush too quickly to the cry, "Not my will but Thine be done!" This cry may sometimes be a subterfuge of the refusal to pour our hearts and minds into knowing of the action of God in a situation. It may sometimes be a refusal to engage with God. Prayer is often an agonia - an agony, a wrestle, a struggle, even a fight. Remember Abraham, Jacob and Moses our fathers in faith! Each prayed (Genesis 17, 32, Exodus 33) in a tussle with God until there was unity in will and intention. None of them piously laid aside the struggle with an effete "... if it be according to your will."

Confidence in reconciliation is the secret of persistent prayer. This is the secret of boldness in prayer. The reconciled person is shameless and unafraid in asking and seeking and knocking on the door of the Father. Jesus tells the parable of a rude neighbour disturbing his friend in bed with a request for help (Luke 11:1-13). He says of the friend in bed: “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.” The story focuses our attention on the man’s boldness. The Greek word used there (anaideia) is used only here in the whole New Testament. It really has the idea around it of shamelessness, impudence, disrespect, disregard, recklessness and ruthlessness! And this is to be the character of our praying to the Father: “So I say to you…” says Jesus and he urges us to ask, seek and knock – literally the sense is “ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking.” Jesus is urging us to a certain shameless impudence in our seeking from the Father.

What is key in the parable is not what the friend in bed thinks of his rude neighbour, but rather the unstated assumption of the rude neighbour about his friend next door. He clearly has confidence that the friend will do what is needed for him even though it be inconvenient and difficult for him. Clearly he has a high estimation of the character of his neighbour. He knows enough of his neighbour to be sure that if he goes to him in difficulty and need that his neighbour will respond with help. Jesus urges the same confidence on the disciples – everyone who asks receives; everyone who seeks finds; whoever knocks will find the door opened. Jesus illustrates again. No father is going to hand out poisonous, dangerous gifts to their kids when asked for fish or eggs – and this is in the world where we are in slavery to sin. How much more then will the Father give good gifts to his children? Be confident in asking Him! He gives the overflow of the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.

We need to be taught to pray like this. How does a human being have such confidence in God? Something has to happen in our relation to the Father to turn our praying from mealy-mouthed and halting words into the strong words of confident children before the Father. The real teaching about prayer occurs at the cross of Christ. Nothing teaches prayer like reconciliation with the Father! Our mealy-mouthedness is an inability and an aversion to saying the direct thing. This refusal to speak directly with the Father, to say what is actually in our hearts and minds, comes from our sinning in Adam at the beginning, and has continued down through our tortured history of Religion and her close cousin, Unbelief.

Sin and guilt is the death of prayer. True prayer can only return when confidence in approaching God has been restored – and that only happens when sin and guilt have been dealt with fully and finally. Whilst we are unsure of this, our prayers will be wheedling and manipulative, rather than direct with the Father, full of confidence before Him. At the cross of Christ, at last full and frank ownership of the guilt of the world in the face of the holiness of the Father took place. Christ made a full confession of the Father’s holiness and of human guilt in his bearing of the sin of the world. His cross was the great declaration, “You are just Father, and holy, in judging all this sin that humanity has become.” In Christ, the Father was reconciling the world to Himself by not counting our sins against us, but rather making His Son to be sin for us and judging us and our sin in His Son, thereby enabling all who have faith in this Son and his sin-bearing obedience to approach the Father with confidence and freedom. And so we pray with confidence.

We need a radical rediscovery of all this today. Prayer is often the first thing to go in our public worship when there is "pressure for time." We gather to pray, and hardly anyone prays. We speak such cautious words in prayer, and we go away having barely opened the front gate, let alone banging without stop on the front door. The matters before us for prayer are great and our prayers must surely rise in greatness to them. We receive not because we ask not. Do we have wills so captivated by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we will His will that His name be hallowed and that His Kingdom come? Do we wrestle with Him for this in the face of the seeming reversal of that will in our world, where men and women do not hallow His name and where sin and evil prevail in the idolatries of our time? P.T. Forsyth made the point that the judgment for refusing to pray is that we then are unable to pray. For me, I know today that I must ask again - with all urgency and insistency - Lord, teach me to pray.