I love Arthur Bennett’s Puritan prayer book The Valley of Vision. These prayers are a regular part of my devotional life, and sometimes I bring them to corporate prayer in my church as well. One one of the prayers of confession has been particularly meaningful to me for about twenty years now. It is titled “Self-Deprecation,” and I led our congregation in prayer with it last Sunday morning. As I said, this one has meant a lot to me over the years. I pray it will to you as well. _______________ SELF-DEPRECATION My every sense, member, faculty, affection is a snare to me, I can scarce open my eyes but…
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Nashville Studio Singers Record “It Is Well” with Their Phones
Isn’t it astonishing that, the worse things get, the more Christians sing? The video above was released yesterday by a group of Nashville Studio musicians called the Ten Two Six Music Group. Incredibly, they recorded this on their phones! I was delighted to see an old college friend of mine in this one. His name is Jason Barton, and among other things he sings with Amy Grant as well as his own band 33 Miles. So to Jason: Salute, brother! Here’s the full story on the song as it was reported by the NBC affiliate in Nashville:
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Be Ye Glad
If life as God intended it is anything, it is a fight for joy. Especially in moments like the one we are in now. Praise God that Christianity is a singing religion. The Lord really does wish for us to have a deep and abiding joy in him, and he often sustains us in joy through our songs: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” –Colossians 3:16 In my sermon last Sunday, I told the story of a time in my own life when the…
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Banished from the public means of grace
Our church was scattered by the coronavirus this morning. We did not gather together as usual at the intersection of Southern Parkway and Third Street. No, today we were spread out all over the city of Louisville and beyond. Our college students were literally scattered across North America as many of them were compelled to go back to their hometowns after colleges and universities closed last week. Our church’s missionaries remain scattered all over the world. None of us could be together this morning. If you know what it means to be the ekklesia of God, your heart ached like mine did. For this is not how it is supposed…
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Battling the Coronavirus Panic
Our nation is facing a real challenge right now, and it is a real gut-check for Christians. Will we trust in Christ, suffer faithfully, show compassion, and bear witness? Or will we get swept away by the panic that seems to be unfolding in some places? I want to be clear about what I mean. I am not winding up to rebuke those who are taking seriously the novel coronavirus and who are being vigilant to do all they can to stop the spread and to encourage others to do the same. This is not a drill. It’s real. We all need to be vigilant. And we need to take…
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Remember Your Chains
I was reading Ezekiel yesterday and came across a stunning statement about a positive place for shame in our lives. Ezekiel is prophesying about the future restoration of God’s people after a long period of judgment: 62 “Thus I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, 63 in order that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your humiliation, when I have forgiven you for all that you have done,” the Lord God declares. –Ezekiel 16:62-63 We often don’t think about shame as having a positive role in our lives. In fact, we are often…
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Be careful how you jest…
“Like a madman who throws Firebrands, arrows and death, So is the man who deals treacherously with his neighbor, And says, ‘Was I not joking?’” –Proverbs 26:18-19 “Verses 18–19 could be taken to condemn any kind of antics (such as modern practical jokes played on a groom on his wedding day). While practical jokes can be destructive and hurtful, the larger context here implies that such may not be precisely the nature of the deceit implied here. Rather, this is a person who enjoys gossiping about or tampering with the affairs of other people. Such a person will purposefully confuse others and engage in a kind of social disinformation. When…
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There is no death of sin without the death of Christ
“Unless a man be a believer,–that is, one that is truly ingrafted into Christ,–he can never mortify any one sin… Seneca, Tully, Epictetus; what affectionate discourses they have of contempt of the world and self, of regulating and conquering all exorbitant affections and passions! The lives of most of them manifested that their maxims differed as much from true mortification as the sun painted on a sign-post from the sun in the firmament; they had neither light nor heat… There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.” –John Owen, “Mortification of Sin in Believers” in Temptation and Sin, The Works of John Owen, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, UK/Carlisle,…
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Spurgeon on the “Business” of Prayer
“Some brethren get up in our prayer meetings, and say some very good things; but what they really ask for, I am sure I do not know. I have heard prayers of which I have said, when they were over, ‘Well, if God answers that prayer, I have not the least idea of what he will give us.’ It was a very beautiful prayer, and there was a great deal of explanation of doctrine and experience in it; but I do not think that God needs to have doctrine or experience explained to him. The fault about the prayer was, that there was not anything asked for in it. I…
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The First Sin of the Day
O LORD OF GRACE, I have been hasty and short in private prayer, O quicken my conscience to feel this folly, to bewail this ingratitude; My first sin of the day leads into others, and it is just that thou shouldst withdraw thy presence from one who waited carelessly on thee. Keep me at all times from robbing thee, and from depriving my soul of thy due worship;