Prayer makes things worse...

Revelation 8 opens with a vision of the seven angels of God being given trumpets.

But before more is said about this, there is a change of scene. Another angel arrives and this one is given a golden censer in which he is to burn a great quantity of incense, offered with the prayers of the saints. This he does, and the smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of the saints, rises up before God. When this has happened, the angel then filled the censer with fire from the altar where he has stood offering up the prayers of the saints, and he throws the censer down onto the earth. And as it crashes there, all kinds of disaster takes place: thunder, lightning, rumbling, earthquake.

It is after this that the seven angels then start to blow their trumpets, and as they do all kinds of disaster takes place. Ecological disaster in earth and sea, the collapse of trade systems, the loss of water security, the bringing of darkness all flow from the blowing of the first four trumpets. A loud, persistent, wailing comes from an eagle messenger: Woe, woe, woe! And things are going to get worse...

At the blowing of the fifth trumpet, demonic and hellish forces of destruction and war are released in the earth, causing terrible agony for those refuse the truth of God. At the blowing of the sixth trumpet, even larger armies of destruction and war are released. At the blowing of the seventh trumpet, all comes to a conclusion and the rule of God is seen throughout the creation.

The blowing of the trumpets is described only after the vision of the angel who brings the prayers of the saints to God. Certainly the language of the first trumpet, where things are hurled and cast, matches that of the censer, which, after the prayers have ascended to God, is then hurled to the earth causing havoc. I think that what the Seer is telling us is that the hellish chaos of destruction that is evoked by the blowing of the trumpets comes as the result of the prayer of the saints, the people of God.

All of us who pray undoubtedly pray for things to get better. We seek God's intervention and help. This would be true of the saints throughout the ages. It may be shocking to us to read hear how prayer results in things becoming worse, in all the powers of hell breaking out in terrible action.

What we must see is that the censer and the trumpets are given to the angels from the hand of God. These events that issue from the blowing of the trumpets and the casting of the censer are actually not the attacks of hell, but the judgments of God. The praying of God's people is closely linked to the outworking of the judgments of God in His world. The saints do not necessarily pray for judgment, but rather for salvation and vindication. But God's saving work in this age is always linked to the action of his judgments.

In a world in which it may seem that the hellish forces of destruction portrayed in this scene of the revelation have burst out of those pages into the reality of our lives today, we will undoubtedly be moved to pray for those so devastatingly

The Strengthening of Prayer

This morning, as I try to do every Monday morning, I prayed in my morning prayers for people I know and love, and who have a variety of needs. Included in them today were four men I know who, having grown up in evangelical, gospel-centred Christian homes or churches, have made the decision to pursue homosexual relationships or lifestyles.

I pray for these four men quite frequently, moved in part I guess by the knowledge of the brokenness of my own sexuality. My prayers are not from a position of superiority. In fact, this morning as I came to prayer I was quite burdened by that sense of my own brokenness. When I came to the names of these four in my prayer diary, I thought "O Lord, how am I going to pray for them when I am so poor myself?" But I did pray for them, and in the prayer a wonderful strengthening happened to me.

The Spirit of God is for the weak and the broken. There is probably nothing weaker in the world than honest praying. I found in praying today that the Spirit of God came to me in a fresh way, lifting the despondancy and bleakness of the sense of my brokenness, and energising me with knowledge of the grace of the Lord Jesus that will guard me and keep me until the great final day of renovation, renewal, restoration. And with that came a renewed resolve to wait faithfully in weakness, not to let the brokenness be the last word, but to live in Jesus Christ, the Lord of grace.

Each day and every day...

Just outside my office window is a grevillea bush, which currently is bursting all over with pale pink flowers. Every day a wattlebird comes to sup from these nectar-laden flowers. Each flower has many little stalks with only a tiny spot of nectar on each, but the wattlebird goes from flower to flower gathering these little morsels of sweetness. Every morning, through the cool of the night, the flowers have replenished; every day the wattlebird returns to feed. Along with the wattlebird, there are dainty little spinebills, cheeky, chatty New Holland honey eaters, and the occasional rosella who call in for a sugar hit.

But it is the wattlebird who most amazes me. He is a large bird, and the amount of nectar he needs to collect in a day must be enormous. How does he go when the heat of summer burns off the flowers and the nectar dries up? The birds can't store up supplies. Each day and every day they must be fed by the Father.

Jesus said, "Not a sparrow falls to the ground but the Father knows it." And he told us of how kind the Father was in providing for His creatures. He really does care for both humanity and beast. And he told us this so that we would not be anxious or foolish in how we view the future. Anxiety and foolishness would push us to do what the birds cannot do—to try to store up for the future. Wisdom and freedom comes from trust in the Father's good hand. He loves birds, and we are very precious in His sight.

Current Reading Nov 2011

Well, this may not be of much interest to you, but here's what I'm reading or have been reading recently. It's certainly been interesting for me!

I've really enjoyed getting through Grace Upon Grace: Spirituality For Today (Concordia, St. Louis: 2008) by Rev'd Dr. John Kleinig — it's a treatment of Luther's understanding of the means by which we are grown by God, i.e. prayer, meditation and temptation. God Himself is the prime actor in these three areas. Christian spirituality is essentially a receptive spirituality.

Along similar lines is Gene Veith's outline of Lutheran spirituality, The Spirituality Of The Cross: The Way Of The First Evangelicals (Concordia, St. Louis; 1999). Particularly helpful to me in this study was his treatment of the doctrine of vocation, and the Lutheran understanding of the two kingdoms. Vocation is the means God uses in order to mask Himself in His provisions for creation. Veith argues that Luther's thought could be summarised under two great doctrinal heads: the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of vocation. I was convinced.

I've also read Roland Allen's missiological classic, Missionary Principles—And Practice (Lutterworth, Cambridge; 1913, 2006). A great stimulus for a preaching project. Allen is exploring the role of the Holy Spirit in the mission of the church in four brief, pungent and thought-provoking chapters. The Spirit himself provides the impulse for mission (not the command to be on mission). The goal of the mission is the revelation of Jesus Christ, and this goal is realised more and more as the various nations express the truth of Christ in their settings. The means of the mission are in Christ: we are the means he uses. We don't need to find means to accomplish something for him; He is using us to accomplish what he will do. (Jens Christensen makes the same point in his classic book, Mission To Islam And Beyond, New Creation, Blackwood; 1977, 2001). In the last chapter he explores the reaction to all this in the church.

Currently I am reading The Ethics Of Evangelism by Elmer Theissen (Paternoster, Milton Keynes; 2011). This is a philosophical defence of ethical proselytising. I'm only through the introductory material, and have just started reading his analysis of various objections to proselytising as essentially unethical. It seems an important book to me.

And for my enjoyment and to wind down at night, I am taking little bits of Alexander McCall-Smith's Bertie Plays The Blues as my bed-time reading. I love his gentleness, his fondness for his characters, his amiable humanity. And I really want to know of Bertie ever gets to being seven! I know I could read the book in one day, but it is nice having little lolly-sized packages to read each evening, and to stretch out the pleasure that his writing gives.

Virtuous Ambition

On the whole, ambition has much about it that is dangerous, corrupting, selfish and sinful. But wanting something is a very important Christian virtue. It is the corruption of desire and ambition that is the problem, not desire and ambition in themselves.

If sacrifice is to make any sense, if laying a thing down in honour and praise of God actually means anything, there must be desire and ambition at the start. If what we give away or give up is actually gift, and expresses self-denial in love for another, then there must be desire or ambition to begin. A gift that means nothing to us to give is no act of love.

Positively, ambition and desire lie at the heart of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Passivity, nonchalance, indifference are hardly the ideas that come to mind with that command! Instead there is the anticipation that the whole of life is seen as the arena in which we seek to glorify and praise Him as largely as we can. Great ambition!—to make God's glory as clearly seen as possible. This isn't necessarily best done by a false humility that glories in our being "nothing". Rather, the glory of God is a man or a woman fully alive!

Paul urged Timothy with a motto for life, one that he wanted Timothy to pass on to the congregation in his care. "This is a trustworthy saying: whoever desires to be an overseer desires a noble work." The saying is encouraging and cautionary. The desiring that Paul speaks of is eager, keen, longing. The desiring to be an overseer (Gk: episkopos) is not for a position but a work. Sinful ambition seeks position; godly ambition seeks to be as useful to God and His people as possible.


[Here is some teaching I recently gave on this topic.]

Wise words on preaching from Sinclair Ferguson

Sinclair Ferguson offers his Decalogue for preachers. Wise words.

Sheep Without A Shepherd

"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." (Matt. 9:36)

Harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. I think the translation, and the way we've heard these words preached on, doesn't help us. We may be tempted to think that there is silliness, confusion, lostness as the main problem that faces these shepherdless sheep.

Harassed - the Greek word contains the idea of being flayed, skinned, mangled. And even possibly of these being self-inflicted.

Helpless - the Greek word contains the idea of being violently cast down or cast away.

The problem for sheep without shepherds is not so much that they are lost and leaderless; it is that they face terrible danger and even death.

So, when Jesus looked compassionately at the crowd, he was moved with deep pity because they were in mortal danger and there was no one to help.

But there was him! He had a gospel to proclaim, and kingly authority to exert. And this gospel and this kingdom would take him to a cross where he would be violently cast away and mangled by the angry mob of humanity. And entering our lostness, he found us to bring us home to Him who clothes and heals us, and who will in no way cast us down. To the Father of all grace and mercy.