Last week we started looking at the Christian basis for prayer. This week we think about broadening our prayer concerns. Remember, this really isn't theory. How will this affect the groups you are a part of in 2009?

Expanding our concerns

Our prayers are often of a totally different character to the prayers of the Bible. For example, look at the prayers in the following passages:

• 2 Samuel 7:18-29
• Matthew 6:5-15
• Colossians 1:3-14

Note the concerns of these prayers: the grand purposes of God; the salvation of Israel through David's dynasty; the growth of the gospel and of believers; the coming of the Kingdom of God; the renown of God. In short, they are God-centred, not self-centred, prayers. They are full of thanks to God, rehearsing his holiness and saving power, and asking him to fulfil his plans to save the world.

Paul sets an agenda for prayer meetings in 1 Timothy 2:1-7. Read this now.

We are to pray for everyone, with the focus upon godly living and the salvation of all. Of course, we can bring our personal needs to God in prayer (see 1 Pet 5:7; Matt 6:25-34). By bringing all matters to God, even the minor details of our lives, we express faith in God's rule over all things. God has committed himself to provide and care for us.

Collecting prayer points

The old routine of collecting prayer points is a mixed blessing. It is good to hear others' concerns so that we can pray very specifically. It is one of the key ways we express our love for each other. But this routine does present some problems. It takes a lot of time, and the actual praying gets tacked on the end of the discussion. It can become repetitive, with the same issues being raised every week. It can be difficult at certain stages of the group's existence for people to be honest and open with their prayer requests. The main problem, however, with sharing prayer points is that it promotes self-centred praying.

Beyond our personal concerns, what should the group be praying about? Our prayers should reflect God's purposes in his world, so we should pray for:

• Gospel preaching. The group might adopt a missionary or evangelist for whom they can pray, as they keep track of his or her activities and needs.
• Unbelievers. Pray for the salvation of your unbelieving friends and families. Pray more widely for the conversion of those in positions of power, of people who have a public profile, or even of neighbours whom you don't know.
• The growth of the church in godliness. Pray for your church's programmes and plans. Perhaps adopt a particular ministry, such as Sunday School, and pray for it for a period.
• Our own growth in godliness. This is an important focus for the group. Pray about your responses to the sermons you hear. Pray about the Bible studies you do in the group—that God will help you to apply what you learn to your mind and behaviour. Most groups need help in doing this, lest they drift into their own concerns rather than God's concerns, as expressed in the Bible passage. We need to learn to pray with ‘open Bibles’, rather than forgetting what we have just studied as we start our time of prayer.

The group dynamics of prayer

It can be hard to get everyone in a group to pray out loud, especially when the group is quite new and people are not yet comfortable with each other. How can we make this easier for each other?

• Leading in prayer. When we pray with others, we are not only praying to God, we are also leading others in prayer. This is true in any Christian context, such as conferences, committees and church. We must be conscious of others, not in order to impress them; on the contrary, we must seek to serve them. Here are some practical tips on serving people in prayer:
  • Use the plural pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’. This signals that we are all praying, not just the person speaking.
  • Say short prayers so that everyone can maintain attention.
  • Avoid jargon or complicated expressions; use language that everyone in the group will understand.
  • Don't switch into an unnatural ‘prayer mode’. Use your normal voice and keep a normal posture.
• Form smaller groups. Reducing your group size into twos or threes for prayer can lower people's anxieties and allow them to pray more openly. Single sex prayer groups can have the same effect.
• Formulating prayers. When time is spent discussing what we want to pray, people are often more confident and willing to pray. A sense of unity in prayer is developed, making it easier for people honestly to say ‘Amen’ to each prayer. Discussing and formulating prayers before praying need not make praying a formality; it simply brings the group together in their support of the prayer.

Prayer partners

You might wish to form ‘Prayer Partnerships’ within your group where small groups of people regularly pray together. This tends to build more prayer into group life, as well as deepening some of the friendships in the group. There are endless possibilities for how such a group might operate. Here are but a few suggestions:

• Pray together only during group meeting time.
• Pray together during the week, outside the group time.
• Pray for each other during the week, without meeting together.
• Change prayer partners every few weeks or months.

Exercise

Is your group too narrow in its prayer concerns?

What ministries could you adopt for prayer? List a couple here.

Does your group suffer from the ‘prayer point routine’? How could you improve upon this?

Read the full article online.

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I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me. But it did. It was almost funny in an appalling way.

I was recently part of an interview panel for a fairly senior position at a Christian institution. We were hoping to appoint a Christian person to the position, but the realities of the situation dictated that we were going to have to settle for someone who was at least comfortable to support the Christian stance of the institution.

And so as each applicant filed in, and as the interview proceeded, it was my job to ask the Christian question: “As you know, The X Institution is founded on Christian principles. What is your own understanding of the Christian faith?”

Now, judging by their applications, none of the candidates made any claim to be Christian. I wasn't expecting a theological debate. But I suppose I harboured an optimistic hope that there might exist at least some understanding or sympathy with Christianity, or that some of them might have prepared themselves to say something intelligent on the subject.

Then one answered, “Ahm, well, I'm a practising Anglican. I go to the Cathedral in Y, where I've been living. And to me, Christianity is about being loyal and honest and open, and willing to include others. It's about transparency and tolerance and ... sharing one's beliefs in [voice lowering, quavering] the Lord ... Christ ...”

Perhaps she couldn't believe that she had actually uttered the word in a job interview, or perhaps it was the first time she had ever said the word outside a church building. But the final almost whispered ‘Christ’ escaped from her mouth like a hiss of air from a long-unopened sarcophagus.

The candidates who followed were no better. There was the self-described ‘notional Christian’ who acknowledged that while he was not a practising Christian, he nevertheless was, in all probability, within the bounds of what the norms of Australian society would class a Christian to be. And he sent his son to a church school.

There was someone who declared that being a Christian meant that we were all created in the image of God (a slightly promising start), and therefore we ought to treat each other with care and kindness, which, along with an appropriate focus on academic achievement, would enable everyone to reach his or her own potential and make a meaningful contribution to society.

And there was a Catholic person, who warmed to the theme that Christianity was fundamentally about ‘giving back’—not to God, but to society, out of gratitude for the privileges and opportunities we've been given.

I suppose I didn't expect theological astuteness, nor any real clarity about the gospel. But I guess I had hoped for at least a mention of Jesus or God or the cross or the resurrection or faith or anything! I would have settled for a passing reference to the Sermon on the Mount. Or the Ten Commandments.

It was painfully and embarrassingly obvious that none of the candidates had ever given Christianity (as a subject) a moment's thought. It's not that they had wrong ideas so much as they had no ideas. They were saying the first thing that came into their heads, dredged up from who knows where.

And all of them were highly intelligent, tertiary-educated, experienced people, applying for a well-paid senior position at a Christian institution.

It was sobering reminder of just how mired in ignorance and apathy most of our friends and neighbours are—like an old friend of mine who had spent six years at a church school (going to chapel three times a week), and who looked up from his crossword one day and said to me, “Biblical baby found in bulrushes. Five letters. Third and fifth are ‘s’. That's Jesus, isn't it?”

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The Church of England in the UK has released a prayer for those who have been made redundant (along with other prayers for people affected in other ways by the financial crisis). It has been fascinating to hear various clergy on the radio here in the UK answer the question ‘why?’ as people have queried how this prayer can be of any benefit to anyone. It's a question that has at its heart the deeper question of ‘Why bother praying at all?’, and so provides a great opportunity to call people to repentance and faith in Jesus. It hasn't been used as such, as far as I can tell, but it is always difficult to know how people have been edited. Certainly the impression given by most of the sound bites I've heard or read have gone along the lines of, “We need to give people the words to share with God how they are feeling”.

The great thing about this sound bite is that it helps people realize that God is interested in them and their feelings. In an unfriendly economic environment where people so easily feel disposable and unappreciated—even if they're gainfully employed—it is good to say clearly that God is interested in us as people, not as numbers or economic entities. None of us are ‘useful’ to God apart from his work in us to enable us to serve him. He doesn't need people the way the economic system does, and so doesn't demand from us the anonymity and productivity that burdens so many, particularly during times of financial crisis. It can be a great relief to be conscious of this as we speak to God. He isn't part of the economic system that has let us down; he is completely separate from it and not tied to it, and his interest in us is not based on our performance.

However, one of the difficulties with this sound bite is its implication that prayer is primarily about ourselves and our feelings. Here, God is an unskilled therapist at best, and akin to a small domestic animal at worst. He only ever listens; he never speaks or critiques us in any sense. He is always on our side. This is profoundly misleading because prayer is not first and foremost about our feelings, but about our expressing to God that we depend on him utterly and that we want him to rule our lives. Certainly, when we know God as our Father because we trust Jesus for salvation, we instinctively tell him our feelings, fears and joys. But we do this as part of learning to trust him with our whole lives. Telling God we have been made redundant and how this makes us feel is normal for a Christian.

But, as the redundancy prayer shows, prayer is more than a means of self-expression. The redundancy prayer includes the plea, for example, to ‘help me to think clearly, and calm my soul’. When we ask God to keep our minds and order our ways, we ask him to rule our lives. It is far more radical than simply ‘sharing’, which does not imply change and which certainly contains no suggestion that God has authority or rules over us in any way. Talking to God about our redundancy means we're depending on him. We might look for other opportunities to work, and so forth, but if God does not provide them, then we have nothing. By calling out to God for his help, we are expressing that to God, and we are saying that this is how we want it. We don't want to depend on our own abilities, strengths or capacities; we want to depend on God. We want him to rule and order our lives, even in the tough times. In prayer, we say most eloquently that we are weak, but God is strong. Even in our praise of God for who he is, we still express our dependence. Indeed, we are dependent on Jesus to bring us to God and to forgive the sins we may inadvertently commit even in the most fervent of prayers. Even praise can only be done because of what Christ did for us apart from our actions. Prayer is our plea to God expressing our desire to continue in his strength with his presence always with us, relying on him for comfort in the distress of redundancy and other difficulties of life.

The Christian view of prayer is countercultural to western society, which values individualism, autonomy, strength, beauty and wealth. Our culture instinctively sees prayer as a meaningless act apart from its impact on the person praying. Whatever value prayer has is entirely due to whatever comfort or strength a person derives from the act of praying. But prayer is a bold act of faith—faith in a living and active God whom Christians know as Father because of the death of his Son for us. Prayer cries out for God in a harsh and difficult world, and is a radical statement of belief in the goodness of God, despite such a world. It cuts against the grain because it says of ourselves “We are weak and need God” and of God “He is strong and can save, and he orders the affairs of our world”.

An explanation of Christian prayer is an explanation of the message of Christ Jesus—that being weak, we need God and will come to him on his terms, through his appointed Saviour, confessing our sins and joyfully embracing his rule over our lives. What would your sound bite on ‘why pray’ include? Why do you pray?

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We recently tackled the important but somewhat unfashionable doctrine of total depravity in The Briefing, and, in response, received a letter asking about the place of preaching the law with regards to revealing sin. Let me post the letter in full and then open up the discussion:

I found the articles by Martin Foord and Simon Manchester in December's Briefing very helpful. It's always good to be reminded of the seriousness of sin both in our own relationship with God and in speaking to others. However, shortly afterwards I read two other articles by Jim Packer (‘Puritan Evangelism’) and Ray Comfort (‘Hell's best kept secret’) that made me wonder if there was something missing from what Martin and Simon said.

Martin ends his article with the helpful reminder that, “Becoming a Christian doesn't mean that you bypass the horror a sinner experiences before a holy God. We find this horror in the pre-modern saints ... [but it] is now so foreign to late modern conversions.”

Jim Packer and Ray Comfort forcefully argue that the biblical way to produce this experience is to use the law in evangelism to show the seriousness of sin and the futility of salvation by works. They highlight that it was the law that produced this horror in the pre-modern saints like Luther and Bunyan and that these saints always used the law in their own gospel preaching.

If this is so I wondered why the law wasn't mentioned in either of the Briefing articles. I am also aware that I have never been taught to use the law in any training that I have been to on evangelism. Is the use of the law in evangelism an issue that has been considered and then rejected on biblical grounds or is this something that we forgotten and desperately need to recover?

In light of the questions raised here, let me make a few observations.

Firstly, I have not done the work to understand what the Puritans might have meant by “using the law” in their gospel preaching. But at one level, that is not the most important thing. The question is, what might it mean to use the law in gospel preaching, and what does the Bible actually do with this question?

Secondly, the apostolic preaching of the gospel in Acts (e.g. chapters 2, 3, 10, 13, 17) is interesting in this regard. Peter, Paul and the others refer the Jews to the Old Testament as a reminder of God's patience and their disobedience, and a reminder that God has fulfilled his promises in Jesus. The pointy end of their preaching is that God will judge the world, and they need to repent for their rejection of him. It doesn't seem to me that the apostles listed off a string of commandments, but rather they reminded the people that God had made them his, and that they had failed to listen to God.

When it comes to the Gentiles, the situation is even more interesting. Acts 17 is again about the fundamental truths about God: he is sovereign, he has set a day for the judgement of the world, you need to turn to him. But Paul doesn't seek to establish this so much from the law, but from their experience (cf. Rom 1:32: Paul apparently thinks that there's some general understanding of sinfulness present, even in those who act most shamelessly). So the question becomes how do you remind people of their position before God and of God's nature and character as holy and righteous creator and judge?

Thirdly, somewhat randomly, the whole discussion makes me think of the reciting of the Ten Commandments in the Anglican Prayer Book service. (Not that I am advocating a return to using the prayer book; I think that it is culturally inappropriate in most places.) However, what it did do was to draw a connection between God and his demands of us on a week by week basis (or originally, in fact, on a day by day basis). This is important because I don't think we speak in cultures where we are easily understood anymore. When we say, “God is love”, what do people hear us say? That he will let us do anything? That he is always on about seeing the good in people? That he cares for the little person? That he sent his Son to die because our sins leave us deserving of his judgement? We have the same problem when we talk about justice. Who's justice? What sort of justice are we talking about? When God is on about justice, does that mean saying that being gay is totally acceptable and that gay marriage would be acceptable in his sight?

Part of our problem is that, as we have lost any sense of a universal authority, the nature of individual rights and wrongs has been seriously called into question. I've realized that this leads me into a problem: I want people to feel the seriousness of sin. But in order to do that in a way that communicates effectively, I keep pointing people to the social consequences of sin. While these are bad, they are always open to question. For example, does divorce always lead to emotionally damaged children, or is it the parent's attitude to each other and what they communicate in the process? There are always ways to alleviate the socially damaging consequences of any sin, but in a world of consequentialist ethics, if there aren't bad consequences, then the original thing wasn't bad either. And pointing to the social consequences doesn't get to the heart of the problem. Our biggest issue with sin is that we sin against the God who made us and who has every right to judge us. We reject the Lord of life.

Fourthly, let's finish by thinking about what it might mean to ‘use the law’ in our evangelism. In one sense of the term, it could mean reminding people that God is the creator (Genesis is a part of the law). At another level, it could mean reminding people of God's specific commandments. At another level, it could mean looking at how God related to Israel and made promises that he fulfilled by sending Jesus for us. Whether these things were exactly what the Puritans were on about is not particularly important (although we may well learn a good deal from their example because they may not have been as tied to our culture as we are!). But the most important thing is to understand what God meant us to do when he encouraged us to preach the gospel: he wanted us to tell people that they are sinful, deserving of his judgement, and in need of life and hope, and that God deals with all of these issues and many more by sending Jesus to die on a Roman cross and raising him as the Lord and Judge of all. Jesus' death and resurrection is about dealing with sin and judgement, not about our existential angst. Those are the truths we need to keep communicating in any way we can.

I look forward to hearing some of your reflections on this question.

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In the old days when Al Stewart used to be fit and I used to run ahead of him, he used to say how competitive I was. Or it may be that I used to complain how competitive he was; I can't remember now. All we were doing was going for our daily 12 km run, and he hated losing. Me, I didn't mind losing. But I didn't enjoy coming second, and there were only two of us.

So I had this trick on certain days when he wasn't feeling so good, and it involved running just fast enough that, about the three-quarter mark, his stomach would give out and we would mutually enjoy a visual reprise of what Al had already enjoyed for dinner the night before. That left both of us in great shape for the breakfast Mrs Stewart would have waiting for us upon our sweaty return.

Years later, it occurs to me what a wonderful rebuke Romans 12:10 is to people like Al. Notice the nature of the competition: “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honour.” (emphasis mine).

What's that you say? That I could have listened to this verse a bit more carefully also? That Mrs Stewart actually defeated both of us in the ‘showing honour’ stakes just by feeding us breakfast?

Well, okay. But at least, 25 years later, we still work on the first half of that verse. (Me a bit better than you, I think, Al, though I wouldn't want to make too big a thing of it.)

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Today we speak to some of our Panellists about their highlights of 2008.

What are the top three reference or ‘standard work’ books you would recommend for the basic Christian library? That is, what would you want a new and thoughtful Christian who is committed to growing to have on their shelf?

• New Bible Dictionary (recommended by Lionel, Paul and Tony)
• New Bible Commentary (recommended by Tony)
• Bruce Milne, Know the Truth: A handbook of Christian belief (recommended by Lionel and Nicole)
• Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom in The Goldsworthy Trilogy (recommended by Lionel, Paul and Jean. I agree with this one, but some people find it hard to get into. For those who struggle with such reading, I recommend Vaughan Robert's God's Big Picture)
• JI Packer, Knowing God (recommended by Nicole and Jean)
• John Stott, The Cross of Christ (recommended by Nicole, Jean and myself)
• Walter Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (recommended by Paul and Tony).

I think I would add Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. Even though he's pre-millennial, believer's baptistic, congregational and charismatic, and I'm amillennial, paedo-baptistic, presbyterian (even though I'm Anglican) and non-charismatic, we're both reformed and complementarian, and I like that he idenitifies his convictions openly upfront, and that he normally does a pretty good job representing alternative views in and outside of Evangelicalism. I find myself photocopying sections of this book to give to keen Christians asking about particular doctrines (e.g. virgin birth, Trinity, deity of Christ, atonement, sovereignty, etc.) much more than any other.

What are the top three books you'd recommend on Christian living and ministry?

• Lionel:
  • The Old Testament. Read large slabs of it often because Paul says that “All Scripture [by which he meant the Old Testament] is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).
  • Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, Guidance and the Voice of God
  • Colin Marshall, Passing the Baton: A handbook for ministry apprenticeship.
• Nicole:
  • John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to fight for joy
  • Barbara Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Woman
  • Christopher Ash, Married for God.
• Paul:
  • Don Carson, How Long, O Lord?
  • Don Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation (yes, there is a theme here!)
  • Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, Guidance and the Voice of God
• Jean
  • Don Carson, How Long, O Lord?
  • John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to fight for joy
  • JI Packer, Rediscovering Holiness or Laid-Back Religion
• Tony
  • JC Ryle, Holiness
  • Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, Prayer and the Voice of God (being immodest but trying to be honest!)
  • Bill Hybels, Just Walk Across the Room (ignore most of what he teaches in this book, but simply drink in the basic point and his love for lost people).

What are the top three recent ‘stretching’ reads that you'd recommend for the educated lay person and the busy pastor to keep us all thinking hard about the things of God?

• Lionel
  • Donald Robinson Selected Works Volume 1: Assembling God's People and Donald Robinson Selected Works Volume 2: Preaching God's Word
  • D Broughton Knox: Selected Works Volumes 1-3
  • John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright
• Nicole
  • Brian Rosner, Greed as Idolatry
  • David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant
  • Justin Taylor and John Piper (eds), Suffering and the Sovereignty of God
• Paul
  • David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow'rs (not much else here sorry!)
• Jean
  • John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress
  • Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its causes and cure
  • Ed Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave
• Tony
  • Peter Jensen, The Revelation of God
  • David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow'rs
  • James Denney, The Death of Christ

What are your top three fiction books you've enjoyed this year?

• Lionel
  • Various Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters.
• Nicole
  • Atonement (Ian McEwen)
  • The 44 Scotland St series (Alexander McCall Smith)
  • The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards)
• Paul
  • The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
  • Going Postal (Terry Pratchett)
  • Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
• Jean
  • The Miracle at Speedy Motors (Alexander McCall Smith)
  • Atonement (Ian McEwan)
  • The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
• Tony
  • Saturday (Ian McEwan)
  • A thousand splendid suns (Khaled Hosseini)
  • Independence Day (Richard Ford)

What are your top three non-fiction books you've enjoyed recently?

• Nicole
  • My Seventh Monsoon (Naomi Reed)
  • Hidden Art (Edith Schaeffer)
  • Marriage to a Difficult Man: The Uncommon Union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards (Elisabeth Dodds)
• Paul
  • Thomas Moore of Liverpool (Peter Bolt): It's some of the history of the man who made the bequest that allowed the creation of Moore Theological College)
  • Extraordinary Relationships (Roberta Gilbert)
  • Adrenalin and Stress (Arch Hart)
• Jean
  • Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks)
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
  • Ancient World: Egypt, Rome, Greece in Spectacular Cross-section (Steve Biesty): There had to be a kid's book in there somewhere!
  If you're counting Christian non-fiction, my top two would be Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (John Bunyan) and Faithful women and their extraordinary God (Noel Piper). Christian biography rocks!
• Tony: I'm assuming non-Christian.
  • The Closing of the American Mind (Allan Bloom)
  • Joe Cinque's Consolation (Helen Garner)
  • The Short Game Bible (Dave Pelz)

What is your favourite release from Matthias Media this year?

• Lionel: Living with the Underworld (Peter Bolt), although I've yet to finish it all!
• Nicole: You (Michael Jensen)
• Paul: Six Steps to Reading Your Bible (Tony Payne and Simon Roberts)
• Jean: Different by Design (Claire Smith)—the best MP3 talk series I heard this year, which is saying a lot. Thank you, Claire, for your faithful, thoughtful, courageous and wise teaching on the roles of men and women!
• Tony: That's a toughie! Dead heat between the new edition of The Future of Jesus (Peter Jensen) and Living with the Underworld (Peter Bolt) (well, it was November last year, but it's close to this year!).

What are the best couple of websites you've discovered this year? (I.e. not one you've been visiting for ages like Challies).

• Lionel
  • Voice of the Martyrs news and prayer
  • The ‘Upper Register’ Blog by Lee Irons
• Nicole
  • EQUIP book club (well, maybe not ‘discovered’, but it's new this year!)
  • The Best Book Co-op
  • SubText
• Paul
  • Pyromaniacs
• Jean
  • I only started reading blogs just over a year ago, and my favourites quickly became Desiring God and 168 Hours. But if you want something definitely this year, then two new blogs I love are EQUIP Book Club and The Best Book Co-op.
• Tony
  • I've been trying to cut down my surfing this year. I think everything on my Google Reader I discovered before this year.

What are the best three audio downloads you've listened to this year (individual talks or series with the url if possible)?

• Lionel
  • John Piper's biographical messages on great Christian leaders
  • New College Lecture Series 2007, Prof Oliver O'Donovan, ‘Morally Awake? Admiration and resolution in the light of Christian faith’.
• Nicole
  • John Piper, ‘The Ultimate Goal of True Womanhood’
  • Tim Chester, ‘Making Disciples for the Missional Church’ Part 1 and Part 2
  • Tim Keller, ‘It takes a city to raise a child’.
• Paul
  • I don't listen to many, sorry.
• Jean
  • Series:
    • Carolyn Mahaney, ‘To Teach What is Good (Titus 2)’
    • John Piper, ‘Psalms: Thinking and Feeling with God’
  • Individual talks:
    • Don Carson, ‘The Christian in Complete Armour’
    • Neil Chambers, ‘Lamentation: God's Gift to the Church’
    • CJ Mahaney, ‘A Biblical Understanding of Sleep’
    • John Piper, ‘The Ultimate Meaning of True Womanhood’.
    It's a four-way draw!
• Tony
  • Sorry, I don't listen to audio downloads!

Can you give us some favourite new Christian music—especially songs for singing at church?

• Nicole: Jane Saunders: we bought her CD In His Hands this year, and the whole family loves it).
• Paul: Bring on the Day (Garage Hymnal): not quite congregational, but I really like this album).
• Jean: Valley of Vision (Sovereign Grace Ministries): Is that new? I'm also dying to hear their new Psalms album.
• Tony: Lift Up Your Heads (Michael Morrow)

Lastly, what is your book of the year and why?

• Lionel: The Selected Works of Donald Robinson Volume 1 and Volume 2. Donald Robinson has had a massive influence on evangelical biblical studies through his lecturing at Moore College in the 60s and 70s, but he has not been widely published until now. He could be regarded as the patriarch of the evangelical biblical theology movement. His commitment to the gospel-based unity of the Scriptures forms the basis of much of Graeme Goldsworthy's work on biblical theology. But he is never simplistic or clichéd in his approach. He was an extraordinarily agile thinker whose startling insights were often way ahead of his time (e.g. he was espousing the view that the relationship between Jew and Gentile forms an exegetical key to the New Testament decades before the phrase ‘New Perspective’ had ever been coined). This collection is a highly stimulating read that really makes you think hard about your assumptions about the Bible.
• Nicole: When I Don't Desire God: How to fight for joy.
• Paul: I don't think I've got one!
• Jean: Sorry, but it's another draw. When I Don't Desire God: How to fight for joy (John Piper) because it has such helpful, practical advice on spiritual disciplines, especially the excellent chapter on how to use the world to glorify and enjoy God, and because of the last chapter on depression. John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress: I'm exhausted after writing 17 posts on it for the EQUIP book club, but I'm also encouraged and challenged by the wisdom of this godly man. These two were the reading highlights of my year. (Lucky for you, I read Martyn Lloyd-Jones's Spiritual Depression last year or it would have been three! That book shaped my thinking about discouragement and anxiety profoundly.)
• Tony: Living with the Underworld (Peter Bolt) for offering a model of popular theology that is learned, biblical, insightful, gospel-focused, and a delight to read all at the same time.

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Our Saturday blasts from the past are going to continue to feature the series of articles from the 90s called ‘Factotum’. Their practical call to real service among the people of God and the lost are just as timely now as they were when they were first written. The next two Saturdays are all about encouraging prayer.

If there is one sure-fire prayer point in small groups, it's praying that God will make us more prayerful! Everyone believes in prayer; everyone recognizes that we need to pray more, but everyone has trouble making it a priority. Put it down to the bustle of 90s life, or simply to sinful, independent hearts—either way, we can always find something which is more pressing a task than speaking to God in prayer.

This edition of ‘Factotum’ aims at getting Christian groups praying. It's practical, as ‘Factotum’ always intends to be. But it's not about suggesting techniques which, like diets, tend to last for a few days before we break them, feel like failures and give up altogether. Instead, we focus upon enduring ideas which should pervade our prayer life.

Prayer ruts

Most Christian groups pray. Most Christian groups easily drift into prayer ruts. Our times of prayer become hurried intercessions, a quick vote of thanks at the end of the Bible study, prayers for the sick or ‘those who aren't with us’, or general prayers for more love and peace. Of course, these are all great things to pray for, but we usually end up praying for them by default, because we don't put in the time and effort to think about what to pray.

Most groups find it easier to do Bible study (or have supper) than to pray. Prayer gets reduced to a minimum, sometimes included only to relieve our guilt about it.

Prayer warriors

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. (Col 4:2)

We want our groups to love praying—to long to pray to God. Our group meetings can be training grounds for great prayer warriors. What is it that will help our group to be devoted to prayer? Here are a few ideas:

• The example of leaders. If you are a group leader, you must first address prayer in your own life. The group will see whether you are a prayer warrior or a prayer wimp. Enough said.
• Give prayer priority in group time. You may need to be creative in order to achieve this. Occasionally, devote the entire meeting to prayer. Start your meeting with prayer instead of leaving it until the end. Pray at several different points during the meeting. Pray spontaneously as issues arise from discussion.
• Keep track of the groups prayer concerns. Some groups use a ‘Prayer Diary’, so they can look back to what they have prayed about, as well as writing in specific events, people and occasions to pray for in the future. It is a very helpful aid to memory.
• Be confident in God through Christ. Ultimately, this is what drives us to pray. It is the truth of the gospel—that we are lost on our own, but have entered into relationship with God through Christ—that will sustain us in prayer. We need to keep teaching the gospel. It reveals the love of the Father in his Son for his people. If we doubt that God cares for us and hears and responds to our prayers, we will never pray. We need to recall that “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things” (Rom 8:32).

Christian prayer

There are numerous prayer techniques being promoted in churches which are not true Christian prayer. The Christian form of prayer comes from the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. We pray:

• to the Father
• through the Son (on the basis of his death)
• in and by the Spirit
• using ordinary language.

It is worth modelling this carefully in our groups, and not allowing any special techniques. There is no human technique for prayer. Prayer is available to those who trust Jesus. Believers have marvellous access to the Father through him. The current trends towards meditating in prayer, listening to God in prayer, having dialogue with God, journalling, imagining and having prayer dreams have moved away from the gospel basis of prayer.

Exercise

Think of five or six creative ideas for making sure that your group devotes more time to prayer.

Read the full article online.

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‘Any student, anywhere, anytime’ is the unofficial slogan of the theological education by distance ‘movement’. Flexibility, quality and the potential for local adaptation by locals have seen exciting growth in the provision of theological education throughout the world, made possible largely in the 21st century by widespread internet access. (The previous technology of photocopier and mail service has been, and is still, effective in many parts of the world.)

But with all the advantages and flexibility of a part-time and self-directed distance education movement, a significant challenge has arisen. That is, as the potential for the ‘individualization’ of theological education increases, so does the danger of theological education becoming ‘qualification’-focused, rather than an exercise in increasing personal maturity and ministry service.

As Paul writes to the Colossian church, he thanks God for them and prays for them in these words:

[F]rom the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. (Col 1:9-10)

Paul is clearly in favour of people coming to know God better, and I'm guessing that includes theological education! However, knowledge is not the end purpose: he wants us to know God so that our walk will be changed into a pleasing, fruitful walk.

Because of our theology of fellowship and relationships, and because we follow a God who commands us to continue to meet together, we (correctly) place a very high value on corporate gatherings where we can gather for the purpose of teaching, encouraging, rebuking, and so on. For many of us, not surprisingly, our experience of growth in knowledge and maturity through the ministry of small groups matches this theology—and formal theological education is no exception.

Many theological training institutions require students to attend full-time and, if possible, residential courses as this provides the best community and fellowship setting where knowledge and fruitful walking can be encouraged to flourish.

However, in many places around the world, full-time residential courses are not possible, and distance education is an excellent alternative. Excellent as it is, providing theological education by distance provides a great number of challenges for those who want to encourage both growth in knowledge and fruitful walking as the ‘community of learners’ can be spread all over a region, or even all over the world. Because of this, fellowship, and learning and encouraging in fellowship, may not happen, and studies can quickly become a pathway to a qualification or certificate, rather than to growth in maturity and ministry service.

Providers of distance theological education are trying several techniques to address this issue—for example, by providing regular ‘intensives’ for students, requiring attendance at a regular regional group, providing online chat and ‘community’ facilities for students, and allocating students into permanent groups with full-time tutors. Some of these provisions have had several decades of testing through various TEE (Theological Education by Extension) programmes, while others are emerging as new technologies develop.

For those of us involved in distance theological education, these issues of fellowship and growth will continue to grow because—and praise be to God for this!—all over the world students are taking up the opportunities presented through distance theological education.

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Today we interview Nicole Starling.

How did you come to Christ?

I first heard about Jesus through my Scripture teacher at school when I was five years old. My parents weren't Christians, but were happy for me to attend Scripture, and even started sending me along to Sunday school (at the local Baptist church) at about the same time. I decided when I was about six that I wanted to follow the example of my Scripture teacher and become a Christian. I don't think I understood everything at the time, but I know my decision to love and follow Jesus was genuine. By God's incredible grace, it was only a couple of months after that that my parents were invited along to a Sunday school service at church. (They used to just drop me off and leave, so they hadn't attended the church up to that point.) My father was an atheist, but miraculously God used a verse quoted from the Bible during the sermon to convict him of his sin and need for Jesus. There was a complete turnaround for him from that day on. My mother wasn't sure what was going on at first, but a friend (who had originally invited us along to playgroup, Sunday school, church, etc) followed her up by dropping a Bible off at our house one day and telling her to read John's Gospel. She became a Christian as she read through it. From that point, my faith grew as I was raised in a Christian family, with my parents discipling me and teaching me how to follow Jesus.

How do you occupy your time?

Many different ways! My focus is on helping my husband and raising our three children aged six, four and (almost) two. I spend my weekdays at home with the two littlest ones, and I try to get involved in our local school where I can. I help lead a Bible study for Morling College wives, and try to build relationships with them outside the group as well and help them prepare for the life of a pastor's wife. We attend Macquarie Baptist Church (on the grounds of Morling) where I'm involved in playgroup and leading a women's Bible study. One of the highlights of my week is teaching Sunday school to the preschool class there.

I spend a lot of my spare time writing and reading and ‘thinking out loud’ on my blog 168 hours.

Tell us a bit about your background or other interests.

I grew up in country New South Wales, then moved to the Blue Mountains as a teenager. After high school, I did an Arts/Law degree, then worked for a couple of years as a legal editor before having our first child.

What are some books that really helped you grow as a Christian?

• Knowing God by JI Packer—the first serious Christian book I ever read. It encouraged me profoundly at the time, and helped expand and deepen my understanding of who God is.
• Desiring God and When I Don't Desire God—both by John Piper. His books have helped me enormously in setting my heart on the things that are most important, and learning to live life in the light of the incomparable preciousness of Christ.
• Women and the Word of God: A response to biblical feminism by Susan Foh. This was the first book that put some cracks in the fortress of my youthful ‘evangelical feminism’, and it started me on the process of rethinking what the Bible says about men and women.

What are you reading now?

• Beyond Greed by Brian Rosner: this is a must-read, especially at Christmas time!
• No Ordinary View by Naomi Reed.
• The World According to Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith

Which websites do you check ‘religiously’?

• Desiring God
• EQUIP Book Club
• In all honesty
• The Best Book Co-op
• Storian smol
• Sola Panel (of course!)
• I also check The Sydney Morning Herald Online pretty regularly.

What would your friends say are your hobbyhorses?

• The preciousness of small children (including unborn children) in the eyes of God; the need to take children seriously in teaching them about God, Christ, sin and salvation; and the value of children's ministry as ‘real’ ministry.
• The importance of application in preaching. (I say this as a listener and armchair critic, not as a preacher!)
• The need for Christian families to be outward-looking and hospitable.
• The importance of encouraging ministers' wives.

What's something that makes you angry?

When people despise unpaid and unglamorous work and ministry

Who is someone who inspires you?

My mum inspires me because of her willingness to serve so many people, quietly and faithfully behind the scenes.

I'm also inspired by who have left home, their extended family and the comforts of Australia to serve God (and in some cases, raise a family) in Russia, Vanuatu, the Middle East, Slovenia, India, Madagascar, south-east Asia, and so on.

What is your ideal day off?

Spending time with Dave and the kids, being flexible on the activities! (Sometimes we visit a zoo or a museum with the kids, pull out a few weeds in the garden, read a good book with Dave or maybe watch a couple of The West Wing episodes together in the evening.)

Give us your top five mockumentaries.

1. People Like Us
2. Best in Show (or anything by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy!)
3. Summer Heights High
4. The Office
5. Zelig

Many thanks to you, Nicole.

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You're sitting in church feeling a little more nervous than normal. If you had known that the sermon was going to be about that, you might have decided to stay in bed this morning. But there it is, front and centre on the service outline. What should you do? Thinking at a speed that would normally startle you, you hit upon the perfect strategy: talk to others about ‘it’ before they talk to you. If you start the conversation and talk about how you struggle with ‘it’ before they raise the topic, you're home free! People will think you're godly and open, and you'll be able to walk away feeling good about yourself without having to change a thing. The best defence is a good offence.

If you don't recognize this story, you're either much more godly or much less devious than me (and probably both). It's a little scenario that plays itself out in churches all over the world every Sunday.

I was reminded of this piece of relational deception when I read Emily Maguire's article ‘Too much information‘ in my local paper the other day. The article is about the tendency for people to reveal too much information about themselves to complete strangers. She says,

At a recent dinner function, I was seated next to a stranger who told me about her divorce, abortion, gynaecological troubles, abusive childhood and teenage sexual experimentation all before the main course was served. I responded with polite interest and sympathy but cheerfully declined to reciprocate with confessions of my own. Later, I learnt that this woman had found me “uptight” and “secretive”.

Apparently in our up-to-date world, you have to be willing to share your deepest secrets with a perfect stranger, just like the celebrities do. There's no ‘privacy’ any more.

Why does this happen? I can't prove it, but I suspect people at dinner parties do this for the same reason we do it in church on Sunday: if you seize the initiative, it removes the guilt. It's all about the difference between hypocrisy and shamelessness (an idea that I owe entirely, and borrow shamelessly, from my old pastor Phillip Jensen). Hypocrisy involves saying one thing and then doing the opposite thing entirely. Hypocrisy is an awful thing, and most of us dislike it intensely; it's just plain ugly. But hypocrisy is actually better than shamelessness. Hypocrisy at least agrees that there is something that we are supposed to be doing that we are not. Shamelessness, on the other hand, is about declaring that the thing we should be ashamed of is actually our glory. Shamelessness means taking what is perceived as bad and turning it into a virtue. It's a way of removing guilt and shame.

Now, of course, shamelessness can be both positive and negative. In Australia in the 80s and 90s, certain ethnic communities took the sting out of racial slurs by using the slurs positively. In Australia, the word ‘wog’ had long been a derogatory term for people of southern European and eastern European background (particularly those living along the Mediterranean, such as the Italians, Greeks and Spanish). In the late 80s, a group of comedians took the term and began to use it positively; they created a hit TV show Wogs Out of Work. Suddenly, because of their public shamelessness, the source of shame became a source of pride. People began calling themselves wogs, and the stigma was largely removed. The same path has been pursued with great success by the gay and lesbian community.

What has all of this got to do with us? Well, there is little doubt that we live in a world that wants to remove any concept of guilt completely. Guilt is the great opponent of self-esteem. And the best way to be rid of guilt is to act shamelessly. The unfortunate effect has been to make guilt and shame private and personal categories. Well, almost! Of course, there are still categories of public guilt and shame, like believing in God's sexual ethics and believing in absolute right and wrong. It is tempting to think that Christianity has been sidelined, and that Christians should keep their heads down and accept the new status quo. This leads, in many cases, to quiet acquiescence to the ideas of the day or to a general sense of nostalgia about other and better days. But the simple fact is we all live in societies with their own conceptions of guilt and shame—conceptions that have been changing ever since Jesus walked the earth. Christians in the west have lived for centuries in a world where God's conception of appropriate guilt and shame have been (largely) shared by our world. Increasingly this is not so, and so we are often challenged to feel ashamed of the things are most important to God.

But as I read the Bible, I don't think our world is all that different from Jesus' world. Paul speaks to the Philippians about people opposed to the cross using these words: “their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil 3:19). Peter tells his readers not to worry that they live in a world where people “are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery” (1 Pet 4:4). Shamelessness was part of life for the early Christians. The apostles encouraged them to stick with God's truth and to live for righteousness. They were to work at being shamelessly committed to God's gospel.

The problem is, of course, that shamelessness is a two-edged sword. It's possible to use shamelessness to defend ourselves against the truth—to protect ourselves from being changed by the word of God—just like in our opening illustration. And it's also possible to be rightly shameless in standing up for the truth and holding onto the gospel of Jesus. When it comes to proclaiming Christ, the best defence is a good offence. When it comes to responding to God's word, our offence can become a terrible defence that keeps us from being transformed.

So how's your shamelessness going? Are you shameless about the right things or the wrong things? Are you being shameless about your sin, or about the gospel of God?

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