What Happens When We Pray?

Do we really know what's going on when we pray? When we bow our heads at the dinner table? When we whisper quietly during our morning commute? Or when, like dragging our feet along a well-worn path, we ask again for God to do what he hasn't yet? Do we know what's happening?

The Bible tells us in Revelation 8:1–5.

Here's the picture: The seventh seal — the last page in the scroll of history — has been opened. And there is silence. Seven angels stand before God and each are given seven trumpets. Then another angel approaches the altar carrying a bowl (or censor). This angel is given incense to offer before the throne, with the prayers of the saints. Imagine, then, on this altar are piles of prayers. Centuries of prayers. Your prayers and mine. They are as fire, burning, their smoke rising up from the altar before God. Then the angel takes his bowl to this blazing altar and he rakes in all these flames. Then, holding this bowl of fire — of our prayers — he steps over and hurls it onto the earth.

John Piper concludes,

What God wants us to believe about our God-exalting prayers is that none of them are lost. None are wasted or pointless. They are stored up on the altar of God until the proper time when God pours them out on the earth to accomplish his great purposes of judgment and redemption. (The Prayers of the Saints and the End of the World, January 9, 1994)

Until this point in the Book of Revelation, Piper explains, the apostle John has shown us the awesome sovereignty of God that controls history. But now he shows us something different: our role in it all. That is, we have prayed and the Lord has heard us.

The utterly astonishing thing about this text is that it portrays the prayers of the saints as the instrument God uses to usher in the end of the world with great divine judgments. It pictures the prayers of the saints accumulating on the altar before the throne of God until the appointed time when they are taken up like fire from the altar and thrown upon the earth to bring about the consummation of God's kingdom.

In other words, what we have in this text is an explanation of what has happened to the millions upon millions of prayers over the last 2,000 years as the saints have cried out again and again, "Thy kingdom come . . . Thy kingdom come!" Not one of these prayers, prayed in faith, has been ignored. Not one is lost or forgotten. Not one has been ineffectual or pointless. They have all been gathering on the altar before the throne of God. . . . Not one God-exalting prayer has ever been in vain.

Pray it again, then, that which you've asked. Seek it more, then, that for which you've longed. Expect that God hears, then, because no believing prayer is in vain. Ever.

What to Do with a Told Gospel

It was a beautiful Saturday morning, the kind nobody in Minnesota takes for granted. The sun was running strong, the air was happy, the sky had never been more blue. My family and I were finishing up breakfast outside when I opened the Bible for some kid-friendly devotional thoughts.

On this particular morning our four-year-old was digging it. Maybe it was the change of scenery, or maybe the Fruit Loops, but something had her leaning forward, all ears. I was sharing about what it means to be messengers for Jesus in 2 Corinthians 5:20–21. The reason we had moved here, I explained, is because God wants our neighbors to know him. Plain and simple. We have good news, really good news — the kind of news that compels us to tell it. Amen then, and breakfast was over.

Within ten minutes we closed down the cereal and laced up our shoes for a stroll around the block.

Elizabeth (our four-year-old) took one step out the front door and gladly bellowed, "Neighbors! Hey, neighbors! Come out! We're here to tell you about God!"

People heard her.

I've sat on this scene for months because, to be honest, I've not been sure what to do with it. What was she thinking? Was she street-preaching? Doesn't she get the value of relationships? Was she trying to give attractional ministry one last hooray? I've mulled that picture over several times and tried to stamp it as cute but misguided. Admirable, but not serious. Deconstructing the zeal of a four-year-old — I know, it's embarrassing.

But here we are now. I think I get it. The fact of the matter, blaring the loudest that morning, is that a little girl bridged the most necessary application from what I said to how she takes walks. That is, she connected what the Bible teaches to how she really lives (and her dad has a lot to learn).

Every Christian knows there is something about the gospel that drives us to tell it. There is some indivisible connection between believing it and making it known. It is good news, after all, and news is just that — news. Perhaps it would help, then, to re-highlight this simplest, most fundamental reason why we speak the gospel to others: because the gospel is essentially a told gospel.

There is good theological rationale here. One could start with what it means that God is a communicative agent. That he speaks and has always spoken in the intra-Trinitarian majesty of the Father and the Son by the Spirit. The knowledge of God's identity has always diffused itself. And undoubtedly, if this principle is found in his eternal essence, it will be detected in the preeminent word of who he is. More could be said here, but let's get to the Bible. Consider two texts.

1 Timothy 3:16,

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. (emphasis added)

This is a succinct dose of doctrine, perhaps a creedal formulation from the early church, maybe even a hymn. But whether that's the case or not, it's at least a memorable Pauline expression that distills the identity of Jesus into doxological prose. And essential to this confession of Jesus is that he is proclaimed among the nations. He is a spoken Jesus. A heralded King. One, in fact, who is heard and believed.

Colossians 1:21–23,

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. (emphasis added)

Look closely at that phrase "the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven." Here’s one of those rare exceptions where it helps to take a peak at the original language. John Piper explains,

The Greek for the phrase “which has been proclaimed” is tou keruchthentos). This is a substantival participle which we could render “the proclaimed one” in English. It is in apposition with “the gospel” (tou euangeliou . . . tou keruchthentos) — “the gospel . . . the proclaimed one.” (Has the Gospel Been Preached to the Whole Creation Already?)

Basically, Paul calls the gospel the "proclaimed-in-all-creation gospel." He refers to the gospel as what it is. The gospel is proclaimed. It is told. We don't get to opt out for a more myopic brand. There’s no less expensive version without that feature. There's not a gospel for social butterflies and then another for introverts. Everyone of us has only ever believed the told gospel, if we’ve believed the real gospel at all.

And the simplest, most natural implication of believing this gospel is that we ourselves tell it. We tell the good news in which we hope because hoping in told good news inevitably compels our telling it, too.

So then why don't we? According to a recent survey from Lifeway Research, we Christians don't seem to be telling people about Jesus very much. If we believe a "proclaimed-in-all-creation gospel," but we don’t proclaim it ourselves, what gives?

Training, resources, equipping, examples — all of these are good and important. And we've seen a fair share of them the last twenty years. But what if it's simpler that that? (I’m speaking as a poor evangelist here.) Might it be that we don't tell the gospel because we're missing something in how we understand it? Maybe the lack of our telling it points to a deficiency in our grasp of its inherent toldness? Maybe we've skimmed over the gospel's built-in compulsion to not just believe, but believe and speak. Maybe the real need is not additional components of training, but deeper wonders to mine, depths by which to be overcome — so that the step from gospel to mission is not a moving beyond but a moving further in.

Do you know what God has done?

Remember the story of the sinful woman who washed Jesus's feet with her tears. She fell before him in awe, bewildered by his presence and mercy. And no one else got it. "This man isn't a prophet," the Pharisee criticized, "he doesn't know who this woman is!" The disciples may have been baffled, too, until Jesus tells a story.

Two men owed debts, one debt was a day's wage, the other a year's income. The debt of both men were cancelled, and Jesus asks which of these men would love the lender more. Peter responds, "The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt" (Luke 7:43). Then we begin to see. . . The cluelessness of those bystanders corresponds to their ignorance of mercy. The crowd didn't understand the woman's devotion because they didn't understand what it means to be forgiven. That's why they responded so dumbly, so critical, so jaw-dropped and confused. Here was a reality — a beautiful, holy reality — that they could not wrap their heads around because they haven't tasted the depths of Jesus's grace.

And maybe that's our problem with evangelism. We don't tell the told gospel because we've loss sight of what it means to be forgiven. All this talk of mission might as well be a broken prostitute washing Jesus's feet. It is nonsense to us unless we remember our debt. Unless we're flooded again with the news that it's cancelled — the news that it's cancelled, which we heard, which we were told.

The news that makes us step out the front doors of comfort and civility, and say, "Neighbor! Hey, neighbor! I’m here to tell you about God!"

What’s My Church For?

The central experience of the universe and the Christian life — namely, treasuring Christ — is sustained in churches.

God has ordained that when people find the “treasure hidden in the field [Christ!]” (Matthew 13:44) and are converted from world-treasuring to Christ-treasuring, they are sustained and strengthened and matured and transformed and refined and guided and mobilized in organisms of Christians called churches.

When Paul says, concerning the church, “Let all things be done for building up” (1 Corinthians 14:26), he means for deepening and intensifying and strengthening the experience of treasuring Christ. That is what the church is for.

The church is the bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:25–32). Therefore the local expressions of the universal church (called churches) are to sustain the affections proper to a bride for her infinitely precious husband. By the ministry of the Word (John 15:11) in the power of the Spirit (John 16:14), the church sustains the experience of treasuring Christ — for her members and for the world.

Therefore, let us pray and work for this great cause of savoring and sustaining and spreading and showing the deepest experience of treasuring Christ. And, to that end, let us love the multiplying and growing of churches where this is sustained.

Writing Like Cicero for the Sake of the Soul

Marilynne Robinson, whose novels Gilead and Home have moved many of us deeply, has just published a new collection of Essays titled When I Was a Child I Read Books.

Here’s a caution. Her fiction is more easily understood than her nonfiction. She admits, “My style is considerably more indebted to Cicero than to Hemingway” (87). That means her sentences sound like translations of good Latin. In other words, she writes non-fiction like John Owen.

The preface puts the book under the banner of America losing Democracy. The lead essay puts it under the banner of losing our soul. She would say, it's the same danger.

If you are willing to dig, there are gems in this hard ground. For example:

William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake for his translation of the Bible, who provided much of the most beautiful language in what is called by us the King James Bible, wrote, he said, in the language a plowboy could understand. He wrote to the comprehension of the profoundly poor, those who would be, and would have lived among, the utterly unlettered. And he created one of the undoubted masterpieces of the English language. Now we seem to feel beauty is an affectation of some sort. And this notion is as influential in the churches as it is anywhere. The Bible, Christianity, should have inoculated us against this kind of disrespect for ourselves and one another. Clearly it has not. (6)Modern discourse is not really comfortable with the word "soul," and in my opinion the loss of the word has been disabling, not only to religion but to literature and political thought and to every humane pursuit. (8)We all know that if we were the size of atoms, chairs and tables would appear to us as loose clouds of energy. (10)Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again. (18)I looked to Galilee for meaning and to Spokane for orthodonture. (87)

But if you don’t know her, start with the fiction. First, Gilead. Then, Home. Then the Essays.

The quotes are from Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (New York: Ferrar, Strauss Giroux, 2012).

The Grunt Work of the Gospel

"I am concerned," writes David Platt, "about a general vagueness that has existed in contemporary Christianity regarding the next step..."

We have seen that God blesses us so that his glory might be made known in all nations. But an all-important question remains. How do we make God's glory known in all nations? If God has given us his grace so that we might take his gospel to the ends of the earth, then how do we do that? (Radical, 87)

Platt goes on to cast a vision for disciplemaking in the local church — a vision that is further developed by David Mathis in the appendix of Finish the Mission (Crossway, 2012). Mathis calls disciplemaking "blue-collar Christianity."

[It's the] rolling up your sleeves, putting on your mud boots, and doing the grunt work that moves the gospel forward. . . . There are very few frills. Rare accolades. Low hype. It's jolly hard work that doesn't grab headlines or come off as fascinating to the masses. (171)

Expounding 2 Timothy 2:1–7, he summons readers to jump into "the grunt work of gospel advance through personal, intentional, relational, patient, gospel-centered disciplemaking." Here's the outline:

I. Christians are called to make disciples (verse 2) Disciplemaking demands intentionalityThere is a context of deep relationshipThe content centers on the gospel

II. Disciplemaking is hard work and brings suffering (verses 3–7) Single-mindedness (verse 4)Discipline (verse 5)Hard work (verse 6)

III. The key to discplemaking is gospel grace (verse 1) "Jesus is the ultimate empowerer of disciplemaking. And Jesus is the one whose cross covers all our many failures in, and through that cross energizes us for, making disciples who make other disciples of his lavish grace." (181)

The Not-So-Special Season of Seminary

My seminary education was unbelievably special. It was a unique and weighty privilege to give myself for a season to the intense, disciplined, and uninterrupted study of God in his word.

I graduated this May from Bethlehem Seminary, and I can honestly say I would do it all over again, if given the chance. I simply wouldn’t trade the lessons learned, friendships forged, or skills acquired for anything. Seminary was a sweet and special season. But was it really special?

In a fresh article for Tabletalk, summarizing the blog series “How to Stay Christian in Seminary,” David Mathis says no. I wish I could have read this in August of 2008 before diving into my seminary season. While it can be a profoundly powerful and valuable time for those called into ministry, too often seminary can become a bad excuse for laxity in our fight for faith or taking a few plays off in battling sin, loving our families, or winning converts. After all, we left the rhythms of real life to prepare for real life, right?

Mathis writes, “Chase the trail of ‘staying Christian’ in seminary long enough, and you’ll realize it’s less about what a special season seminary is and more about what Christianity is in every season of life, in every age of church history, in every place on the planet. Staying Christian in seminary is about staying Christian in general.”

He highlights a simple key for combating this complacency: There’s nothing really that special about seminary. That’s right, you need the gospel, your Bible, and grace for the everyday as much as ever — maybe more.

We’ve pulled together some resources to help you stay Christian in seminary — and for that matter, in all of life. Don’t let Satan convince you that you don’t need help. As you’re being equipped to battle darkness in this world, he’s as eager as ever to encourage pride, undermine faith, and destroy future ministry in the midst of your season of prep. With a little practical advice, and a lot of God, we can be hopeful about staying Christian, even in seminary.

A Big-Leaguer Who Learned to Lean on God

As the Giants and Tigers battle it out in the World Series, the Minnesota Twins sit comfortably at home after a disappointing 96-loss summer.

While it was a bleak season for the Twins, one bright spot was left-fielder Josh Willingham — who recently joined us for an interview at the Desiring God offices.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of Harmon Killebrew.

It was 42 years ago, in 1970, that the Hall-of-Fame slugger — who played 22 years in the major leagues, from 1954 to 1975, and died in 2011 — was the last Twin to hit 35 homeruns in a season. Until Willingham in 2012.

Willingham not only clubbed more homeruns this year than any Twin in four decades, he also batted in 110 runs, the third highest total in the American League. Without doubt, the 33-year-old veteran, and evangelical Christian, from Florence, Alabama, proved himself to be a steal of an off-season deal in the first of his three-year contract with the team.

But even Willingham’s outstanding 2012 campaign ended with a frustrating shoulder injury that kept him out of the lineup for the final week. Par for the course, it seemed, for the 2012 Twins.

Willingham is no stranger to frustration and bleak seasons. After playing his first full big-league season in 2006, he missed the last month of 2007 with a back injury, and then missed 50 games in 2008 when the injury returned. Added to the strain, 2008 was for him a contract year.

“I was one injury away from back surgery,” says Willingham. Which could have meant the end of his career. “It puts things in perspective. You have to lean on God.”

For Willingham, the 2007 and 2008 frustrations led to strengthened faith, but God wasn’t done redirecting him yet. All his previous pains paled in comparison to the tragedy that struck in 2009.

“It’s all minor compared to what I dealt with in 2009 with the loss of my brother. I’ll never forget the day I got the call at 3am in Tampa.”

It was June 13, 2009. While still mourning the recent death of his grandfather, Willingham opened the door to the feverish knocking of the team’s traveling coordinator and heard the most shattering news of his life: his best friend and brother Jon had been killed in a car accident.

He was devastated. He left the team for 10 days, in the middle of the season, to return home and mourn with family. These were the darkest days of his 33 years so far. But even in the bleakest season of his life, Willingham discovered a silver lining of divine purpose and grace. It would be his Christian faith that would get him through life’s deepest water.

“Dealing with that was very tough. But it’s part of life. Things like that happen for a reason. That’s why one of my favorite verses in the Bible is James 1:2–3” — which says,

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Indeed his faith was severely tested and, says Willingham, God used the death of his brother to get his attention and put his priorities back in order. When the Enemy meant evil against him, “God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

“It put everything in perspective. To be honest, baseball was number one in my life before that happened. It wasn’t number one after. It was right where it was supposed to be. That’s what happens when a tragedy like that happens. It gets you back to putting your priorities where they are supposed to be.”

Strangely, the best two months of his life followed. Not because he was any better physically, he says, but because his spiritual priorities had been adjusted. Freshly freed from the enslaving idol of baseball, he was now ready to enjoy the game in its proper place.

After that, baseball “didn’t mean as much to me,” says Willingham. “Baseball was where it was supposed to be on the priority list, number three or four.” And for Willingham, with the house of his faith newly in order, his two best seasons in the majors followed in 2011 and 2012.

If there’s any Twin who’s lived through bleak seasons, and ended up all the better for it, it’s Willingham. Perhaps he’ll have something to teach the 2013 team.