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 — this bowl 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.

For another sermon from John Piper on the cosmic magnitude of our prayers, see "Prayer and the Victory of God" (January 1, 2006).

by Jonathan Parnell | October 13, 2012

Jesus Understands Loneliness

“He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3)

Sometimes we feel alone in the world. 

Jesus understands this feeling. 

In a very human sense, he was alone.  

Imagine what living in this world was like for Jesus. He was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). That might sound like a pleasant problem to deal with. 

I don’t think so. I think it was tormenting. Peter described sinful Lot’s experience in Sodom as being tormented day after day by the “lawless deeds that he saw and heard” (2 Peter 2:8). How much worse was it for sinless Jesus living in a world of sin?

Imagine what his childhood was like. He would have been odd, sticking out morally like a sore thumb, never quite fitting in with any group, even his own family.

Even his loving parents wouldn’t have fully understood him. Nor would they have been able to protect him from others’ stinging remarks and maybe cruel mocking over his unsullied strangeness.

I wonder how much came from his siblings? His brothers and sisters (Matthew 13:55–56) would have grown increasingly self-conscious around him, aware of their own sinful, self-obsessed motives and behavior, while noting that Jesus didn’t seem to exhibit any himself. What resentments accrued? All was not harmonious because Jesus’s own brothers didn’t believe in him (John 7:5), possibly until after his resurrection (Acts 1:14).

Jesus was a sinless person living with sinful parents, sinful siblings, sinful extended relatives and sinful neighbors. No one on earth could identify with him. No human being could put an arm around him as he sat in tears and say, “I know exactly what you’re going through.” His sorrow and grief (Isaiah 53:3) began way before Gethsemane.

But Jesus’s loneliness reached its apex the moment he became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) on the cross and was “forsaken” by his Father (Matthew 27:46). First he was estranged by sinlessness and then from being sin. Jesus knew supreme rejection and loneliness.

Which makes him perfectly suited to understand yours. He is a high priest who can sympathize with this weakness (Hebrews 4:15).

But Jesus doesn’t just understand your loneliness; he’s destroying it. Because he died on your behalf, you are no longer truly a stranger or alien, but you are a fellow citizen with the saints and a member of God’s family (Ephesians 2:19). Because Jesus was alienated from God and man, you will enjoy the full family fellowship of God and all of his redeemed saints forever.

Child of God, your loneliness is passing away. The day is nearing when you will know as you have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). And the fading loneliness you still feel Jesus understands.

So “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that [you] may receive mercy and find grace to help” with every lonely need (Hebrews 4:16).  



by Jon Bloom | October 12, 2012

True Holiness Befriends Sinners

by David Mathis | September 10, 2012

The pursuit of holiness may keep you from bad company. But have you ever considered that it might also lead you to keep some pretty bad company?

Jesus is our litmus test of lived-out holiness. He is the Holy One of Israel in human flesh. His life serves as the best answer key for what divine holiness looks like when reflected in humanity. And they rightly called him “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).

So what are we to do with a God-man who associated with the most blatant nonbelievers of his day?

Not Merely to Defy Convention or Enjoy a Party

It’s worth noting what Jesus is not doing when associating with unbelievers throughout the Gospels. He’s not just going with the flow. He’s not trying to get in with the hip crowd. He’s not just looking for a good time, or to drown his sorrows, or tag along with the social scene, or grow his reputation, or hang out because there’s nothing better to do.

Take note that there’s no passivity in Jesus’s approach. And no sin. He’s there on mission — in the unbelieving household, at the party — not aiming simply to defy conventions, but actively seeking the salvation of sinners. He sees associating with unbelievers as a strategic place to call for repentance — and is it all that surprising when he keeps running into the hardest hearts among the “believing” religious elites of his day?

Angling for Repentance

In Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with Sinners, New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg sums up the relevant texts from the Gospels like this:

Scandalously, [Jesus] associates with the notoriously wicked, but he is willing to feast with the scrupulous religious leaders as well. Jesus’ table fellowship with sinners reflects his willingness to associate with them at an intimate level, but not merely for the sake of defying convention or enjoying a party. In each case various textual clues, if not explicit statements, demonstrate that Christ is indeed calling them to repentance and summoning them to become his followers. (167)

His close proximity to sinners doesn’t mean he’s coddling sin, but that he’s getting close enough to confront unbelief with precision and grace. When he engages sinners (Mark 2:15; Luke 7:37–38), he’s honest that he sees them as such (Mark 2:17; Luke 7:47–48), and that it’s precisely for their sake that he has come. The man known as “friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19) is said, in the next verse, to “denounce the cities [that] did not repent” (Matthew 11:20).

A Contagious Holiness, Not Fearing Contamination

Jesus exhibits a “contagious holiness,” Blomberg calls it. “Jesus discloses not one instance of fearing contamination, whether moral or ritual, by associating with the wicked or impure. Rather, he believes that his purity can rub off on them, and he hopes that his magnanimity toward them will lead them to heed his calls to discipleship” (167).

Having your purity “rub off” on nonbelievers isn’t automatic, and won’t come from passivity and nonchalance. It happens through sustained intentionality to connect with nonbelievers where they are and, with God’s help, point them toward saving belief in Jesus. The power to clearly and explicitly share the gospel, and to gently but firmly call for change, won’t come from the worldly desire to nestle up to sin. It must come from holiness, true holiness.

Befriending Unbelievers Together

And here’s an important clarification in the land of lone-rangers. Jesus is the perfect, sinless God-man — and during his earthly ministry was able to go at it alone if needed — but even he always seemed to have his disciples with him. How much more do we need a team, to go at our evangelistic efforts with a solid brother or sister or two who will not let us be dragged down by the sin around us, and in us, but keep us on mission, intentional to engage and rescue sinners with the gospel of Jesus.

Don’t storm the gates of hell alone. Jesus sent out his disciples two by two (Luke 10:1). You’re wise to go with a team.

Good News Changes Bad People

So proceed with accountability, and use great caution. As the apostle Paul acknowledges in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” Be warned.

But don’t miss the evangelistic impulses flowing elsewhere in the very same letter in 1 Corinthians 5:9–11.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.

Don’t confuse the call to separate from an openly sinful “brother” with a summons to stay away from the lost. We call them “lost” because we hope they’ll be found. And in an increasingly post-Christian culture, they likely will not be “found” without someone risking it to take them the gospel in uncomfortable ways and places.

It’s one thing to confess Christ and embrace sin. It’s quite another thing when someone living in sin doesn’t yet confess Christ — and the Christian bent is to put ourselves in potentially dangerous situations in hope of rescuing them.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:14–15)

Yes, bad company corrupts good morals. Do beware. And don’t ever forget that God’s good news stands ready to change really bad people.

Crucified to Sin, Raised to Go Back In

Maybe the call to holiness has kept you from eating with the tax collectors and sinners of your town, and in certain circumstances, that may be all well and good. But if we’re taking our cues from the Holy One of Israel made human, eating with tax collectors and sinners could be the very thing we’re called to do more of.

Christian holiness is not the avoidance of darkness at all costs. It includes going into the darkness, letting our Light shine without compromise, and bringing people back from the darkness by the power of God.

Jesus’s true followers are not only crucified to the world, but also raised to new life and sent back in to free others. Let’s die to every sinful desire in us for bad company, and yield to the holy impulse to befriend some of the world’s worst for Jesus’s sake.

You Obey the One You Fear

Well, here is a good, deeply challenging thought for today:

by Jon Bloom | August 17, 2012

At the root of insecurity — the anxiety over how others think of us — is pride. The pride is an excessive desire for others to see us as impressive and admirable. Insecurity is the fear that they won’t, but instead they will see us as deficient. As King Saul1 shows us, it’s a dangerous fear because insecurity can lead to great disobedience.

Samuel’s heart was broken and heavy as he neared the Saul’s camp at Gilgal. Israel’s first king had failed so soon and so seriously.

And Samuel was tired. He’d been up all night prayerfully mourning the Lord’s words, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.”

And he was angry. The Lord had already severely disciplined Saul for officiating the burnt offering when he knew it transgressed the Law. But God had been gracious in giving him another chance by sending him to carry out judgment on the Amalekites. The instructions could not have been clearer. They had not been obeyed.

The old prophet trembled at the word he must deliver to an armed king who feared public humiliation more than the Holy One.

Saul was all smiles when he saw Samuel. “Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.”

Samuel had to bite his tongue. “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?”

Saul felt immediately exposed. Alone he had figured that fudging some on the instructions really wouldn’t matter. But now he knew he had gravely presumed. He fumbled for words. “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.”

This was a smoke screen. “Stop!” Samuel cried. He could not bear Saul trying to cover disobedience with cosmetic righteousness. Nor his cowardly hiding behind the people. “I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night.”

Saul’s was defensive in his guilt. “Speak,” he said with a bravado disguise.

“Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord?”

Then looking over at the plump livestock, the price of Saul’s kingdom, Samuel said, “Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?”

Saul was defiant in his denial. “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.”

Samuel just hung his head in disappointment. And he shook it with a subtleness that stung Saul as much as anything the prophet had said…yet.

With teary eyes on the ground, Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.

Samuel then paused and caught his breath. Slowly he looked up into Saul’s guilt-shy eyes. “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.”

Saul nervously glanced at the wordless watching men around him. He was sweating. “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.”

Saul is a sober reminder to us that we obey the one we fear. He feared the people — he loved his reputation — and despised God. Being little in our own eyes can be either righteous or ruinous. It’s righteous if we see God as big and us as small. This actually frees us from fear. But it’s ruinous if the approval of man is what’s big to us because it always leads to disobeying God.

When we fail in this area, and all of us do at some point, God calls us not to remorse but to repentance. Saul was remorseful, but not repentant. He pursued the god of his own glory over the God who gave him that glory right to his death on Mount Gilboa. And he became lethally paranoid with insecurity.

So let us repent of our insecurities and say with Peter and the disciples, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). 

An Olympic Lesson in God's Omnipotence

Sad to see the Olympics end?

Every other year, whether Winter Games or Summer, it's thrilling when the Olympics arrive and captivate the world's collective attention for two full weeks. But most of us are at least a little glum to see them go, even if it does mean we finally get to catch up on some sleep.

There's a bigness to the Olympiad that fascinates us. It comes with a kind of transcendence that taps into a profound longing in the human soul. On display are the world's best athletes. From most of the world's geopolitical nations. The world's eye fixed on a single object as is rarely the case outside of war. From our limited vantage, few things seem to bring out humanity's oneness, and feel as globally significant in a good way, as the Olympic Games.

But as great as the Olympics are, there is something infinitely greater — Someoneinfinitely greater. The grandeur of the Games points us to the grandeur of God. The taste of transcendence they bring helps us see there's a Bigness and Magnitude that doesn't come and go for a couple weeks every couple years, but is here for our enjoyment forever — together with people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

John Piper helps us learn this Olympic lesson in the omnipotence of God:

During the Summer Olympics one of the camera maneuvers taught me something about the greatness of God. The opening and closing ceremonies were thrilling to most of the people who saw them. The sheer magnitude of the crowds and fireworks and music were a once-in-a-lifetime experience of bigness and grandeur.

Those of us who watched it on television could feel some of the thrill when the camera was high enough to take in the whole great sweep of the coliseum. But then something strange happened. The camera continued to recede into the sky where it was perched in the helicopter, and the coliseum became smaller and smaller until it was just a blurry dot on the ground.

As I watched that happen I was filled with joy in the greatness of God. I said to myself, "Look how thrilled we are with a coliseum full of color and sound. Look how we stand in wonder. Look how we shout and clap and feel excitement at the splendor of it all. But look again from God's perspective. Compared to his power and splendor, it's a blurry dot on the ground."

God puts on a minor display of his strength and splendor every morning as he brings the sun up over the horizon — 865,000 miles thick, 1.3 million times heavier than the earth, blazing on its cool edges at one million degrees Centigrade! Every morning has its opening ceremonies to thrill us with the power and the glory of God and fill us with hope that one day we will enter a land where all the wonders that have inspired us on this little earth will be like blurry dots in comparison with the magnificence of God's eternal closing ceremonies.

And every night God puts out a little puppet show of his majesty in the sky, with Perseus and Andromeda and Hercules and Orion and Leo the Lion and Draco the Dragon sporting about in the local galaxy 100,000 light years across.

"Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge." And what they teach so forcefully is that God is infinite in power. Nothing that has ever awed you can compare to him. He is God Almighty! Nothing can stay his hand. He does whatever he pleases. He is the Potter and the universe is his clay.

by David Mathis | August 13, 2012