Borrowed Light

Brothers, There Is a Kind Which Only Comes Out By Prayer

November 6, 2015Mike Leake 1 Comment

The desperate father makes the long journey to Jesus. His son has had uncontrollable seizures since he was but a toddler. Nothing has worked. Maybe Jesus can help. Much to his dismay, Jesus is gone and only the disciples are present. They’ve been commissioned to extend the ministry of Jesus–but still this is like a rookie surgeon doing risky brain surgery while the expert is on vacation.

Dad brings his precious little boy to this band of Jesus followers in hopes that maybe they can do what Jesus has done. They’ve been trained to do this. They’ve been commissioned. They’ve even cast out demons and healed people before. And so they go through the motions of what they did before; perhaps shouting at the demon, commanding it in the name of Jesus to leave the little boy.

Nothing.

They keep trying.

Still nothing. (Mark 9:14-18)

—

The desperate family squirms their way into the back pew. Dad is hoping that maybe God will show up and heal his splintering family. Truthfully, his greatest hope is that junior will quiet his mouth for about 20 minutes so he and his disappointed bride can hear the sermon or maybe even some of the songs. They need rescue, hoping that the pastor—one who has been entrusted to extend the ministry of Jesus—will be able to heal the brokenness.

The pastor steps up to the pulpit and faithfully exposits God’s Word. He is doing what he was trained to do. He studied all week. He is able to stand before the people and say thus says the Lord. And he does it with passion. His sermon would have gotten an A in seminary class.

But it didn’t rescue this family.

Nothing happened. The Word didn’t take root. It was all true but for some reason the Word didn’t come to this family in power. The pastor couldn’t drive out the demon intending to destroy this family.

—

I think the disciples have something on many of us pastors, especially those of us who travel in more Reformed-minded circles. You see the disciples asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” I’m not sure we often ask that question. We assume that we’ve done our jobs and so we really don’t ask why we aren’t seeing fruit.

We faithfully studied. We got the text right. We prayed God would help us to preach the text clearly and passionately. We delivered the message to the best of our ability. We stood before the people and said “thus says the Lord”.

When nothing happened we rest in our theology of God’s sovereignty. Or perhaps our theology of the depravity of man. They either didn’t respond because God had other plans or because of their own stubborn hearts. And while that may very well be true, I’m convinced we are missing something else.

“This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

That was Jesus’ answer to the disciples failure. They weren’t utterly dependent on God. They had assumed that just because they were commissioned, and just because they had been given the right tools and training, that they had within themselves the power to drive out this demon. They were doing self-sufficient ministry in the name of Jesus.

I think Brian Croft is correct. The most common ministry priority neglected by pastors is prayer. If this is true then it puts us in the same place as the disciples trying to heal this little boy on the power of their calling. It won’t do. There are some things that will only happen in our churches and in the lives of our people as a result of faithful prayer.

Listen to Spurgeon:

“No man may expect to be the means of the conversion of a sinner without having the faith which leads him to believe that the sinner can be converted. Such things may occur, but it is not the rule. If I can preach in faith that hearers will be saved, they will be saved. If I have no faith, God may honour his word, but it will be in no degree; certainly he will not honour me. Abandoned sinners, if converted by means, are usually brought under the power of divine grace through ministers of great faith” (C.H.Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 10, 1864, p.34).

Brothers, lets stop neglecting this area of our ministry. Let us be dependent upon God to work and not assume that the power of our calling is enough to carry on the ministry of Jesus. We must be men of prayer. And men who are praying that God will work and move and do mighty things in our midst. Not just praying that God will keep us from being idiots on Sunday morning. Let’s pray and truly believe that God is able and willing to work and move in our church and community.

—

Photo source: here

Today in Blogworld 11.06.15

November 6, 2015Mike Leake

6 Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions

I don’t know why I found this so interesting.

We Should Expect Non-Christians to Share Our Morals

That didn’t say “shouldn’t”. I think the authors make some great points here.

Mission Agencies Send No One

I agree, even as a Southern Baptist. The IMB sends people on behalf of local churches.

7 Ways Women Can Grown in Studying and Teaching Scripture Without Seminary

Regarding number seven, there are some great online courses available

This little guy might even be able to get me in shape:

Theology Thursday: God Doesn’t Need You

November 5, 2015Nick Horton

We are dependent creatures. We are conceived and grow inside our mother’s before we enter the world. Even then we rely on them for years to feed, clothe, teach, and take care of us. We rely on our parents to listen to our whining, our angst-filled teenage searching, and our early adulthood decisions.

More broadly we rely on each other in community for food production, water, shelter, etc. Our entire lives are spent in interdependence with other humans and our environment for surviving and thriving. Even if you live alone in the middle of nowhere Alaska, you rely on the environment around you for the raw materials for shelter and food.

We live such dependent lives we are either minorly aware, or unaware unless it is pointed out. It’s so much a part of who we are we can begin to think that God is dependent on us.

Let’s be clear. God doesn’t need us.

We were not created because he was lonely and needed someone to talk to. After all, God is in perfect harmony and communion in the trinity. More on that in another post.

Before creation, God was. He existed before he brought anything into existence. Our Bibles begin with the statement, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1) This beginning was not his beginning, but creation’s beginning. Look at how Jesus prays in John 17:5 “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” God was in perfect harmony and unity in the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before the creation act.

Why is this important? Why do we care about divine aseity? Aseity is the attribute of God which is his self-existence and self-sufficiency. He does not need anyone or anything.

This matters because if God were not self-sufficient and self-existent, he would not be God. If God is dependent on his creation, then he is part of that creation and is not the ultimate cause for it. If God depended on creation, he could not have caused it to be as he would have depended on it to exist.

You and I depend on a great many things without which we would not exist. The air we breathe, water, and food being but a few. This is not true of God. He created air, water, food, the ground we stand on, stars, gravity, quarks, the higgs-boson particle, and everything else we know about and a whole lot we don’t know about.

He exists outside of his creation.

If creation, the universe, time, basically all that there is could be placed inside a box, God would be outside of that box. He is not contingent upon the box for his existence, but the box is contingent upon him. He does not need us, the universe, or anything. Read here what Paul says of the preeminence of Christ in all things in Colossians 1:15-20.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

He was before all things. All things were created through him and for him. In him all things hold together.

God is pre-existent and self-sufficient. He is eternal and does not rely on his creation for his existence.

Far from that, we rely on him. We exist for him. We are here because he wills us to be here. Our lives are to glorify God.

May your life glorify God through a life of repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. His relationship to us merciful if you are in Christ, and it is for his glory. He does not have to save anyone, and would be justified and glorified if he so chose. Yet he chose to save some and show his mercy which glorifies him yet more.

Friends it is a good thing that God does not need us. He would not be God if he did. We need him. Rejoice in his glorious grace and magnify his name!

“Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name forever!” (Psalm 34:3)