Pray For Your Daughter: 31 Day Challenge—Day Twenty-Seven

Mike Leake

Day Twenty-Seven: That she would delight in righteousness

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” –Micah 6:8

Our daughters will be tempted to act like the culture that surrounds them, which is proud, selfish, and anything but humble towards God. Culture says, “serve yourself.” It likes kindness so long as it costs you and not them. The God of the Bible is increasingly mocked and and ridiculed and the temptation is to either walk away from God or compromise his Word and bring shame on his name. Yet, what is countercultural is the Christian’s loving humility when no reward of man will ever come.

Father, help my daughter to shine like a city on a hill. Let her soul flow with humility towards you, understanding her sin and brokenness, and that the only way to walk with you is through your Son Jesus Christ. Lord keep her from pride so that she may respond to a hostile world in the love and kindness of Christ. Make her soul delight in righteousness that justice may flow from her. Keep her humble towards you, God, so that in life she may glorify you and not bring shame upon your name. Lead my daughter not into temptation, but deliver her from evil. For in humility toward God, from which flow justice, love, and kindness, you are glorified! Glorify your name, O God!

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Nick lives and serves the Lord with his wife Amy and Son Gabriel in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He loves his Lord, his family, his church, and lives to proclaim the Gospel in whatever way he can.

Pray For Your Daughter: 31 Day Challenge—Day Twenty-Six

Mike Leake

Day Twenty-Six: That she would remember that she is not perfect

“This God – His way is perfect.” –Psalm 18:30

It is easy to neglect praying for how we relate to our children. We need to understand them in light of their fallen nature. It is equally easy to fall into a pattern of demanding obedience apart from the hope of the gospel. Thus, our children find morality more therapeutic than the gospel. They find their satisfaction in doing right rather than knowing the Righteous One. They develop self-righteousness.

We need to remind ourselves that they are imperfect and are only made perfect by Christ. We want to teach them to love the Law of God. We want them to see how Christ’s fulfillment of the Law of God as the Word incarnate covers the gap of their imperfections. His grace woos our daughter’s as it woos her parents.

Lord, today my daughter will betray you. Today, she will reveal her imperfection. She may act selfish. She may say something mean to her mommy, friend or sibling. She may be defiant. Not a day goes by where she will not betray your perfection. Yet, you lavish your grace upon her. Your grace is so bountiful; your grace is so lovely. May she not exploit your grace; may your grace compel her to loving obedience.

Continue to remind me that she is not perfect. As I see her imperfections, help me extend grace out of patience. Remind me of my position as a sinner. In those moments when I want to grit my teeth and bellow an angry response to her defiance, change my disposition. Remind me of how you love. Remind me of how you’re patient. Help me to speak tender words to her. Help me to firmly love her. And help me to preach the gospel to her constantly. So she will remember and celebrate your bountiful grace.

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Joey Cochran is the father of Chloe and Adalie. He is the Church Planting Intern at Redeemer Fellowship St. Charles and blogs at jtcochran.com. Follow @joeycochran on twitter.

Pray For Your Daughter: 31 Day Challenge—Day Twenty-Five

Mike Leake

Day Twenty-Five: That she would find her identity in Christ

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! –1 John 3:1

Who am I? This is the cry of every young girl. Where do I fit in? Am I acceptable to others? Am I good enough, pretty enough, or smart enough? Our culture pushes so many values at our daughters, insisting that they can be everything and have everything. It tells girls that the approval of others is what really matters. As a result, they spend so much time worrying about accomplishments and appearance instead of seeking first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. If they could grasp what it means to be loved by God and adopted as His daughters, perhaps the rest would become less important.

Father in heaven, I thank you for the love that you have lavished on my daughter. You have loved her from eternity and desire her love in return. Please speak louder than the world to her heart and mind, so that she may know your love for her. Help her to cherish your love above all else and to understand what it means to be a daughter of the King. Help me, as her parent, to assist her in prioritizing the message of scripture above the lies of the world. I want to lead her with my life and my lips. I pray that whenever she feels alone, insignificant, or unlovely that you will remind her of who she is to you.

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Corey Whittaker has two teens and has been a Youth Pastor for over 20 years. He has an MA From Trinity School for Ministry in Youth Ministry and an MA from Liberty University in Counseling. He currently serves at Christ the King in Durham, NC as the Youth Pastor and various and sundry other roles.

A Year With Sibbes: The Bruised Reed, Week 3

Nick Horton 2 Comments

Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. In February, we’ll learn more about the man behind the Bruised Reed as we tackle Mark Dever’s biography of Sibbes. (Purchase it here). I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged!

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Summary/Engagement

It is evident that Richard Sibbes was a Pastor by his constant counsel to the weak and discouraged. After all, what are bruised reeds and smoking flax but weak sinners, and so we all are to some degree. Sibbes gives instructions in chapter nine for the tender care of those weak souls. He fills the page with wisdom. Consider;

“The church of Christ is a common hospital, wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other; that we should all have ground of exercising mutually the spirit of wisdom and meekness.” (57)

What good would come of our fellow brothers and sisters remembering that they are sick along with us, and that we all seek Christ for his healing touch. There is no one who is well, and those that think they are often do the work of Satan in “depraving the good actions of others.” (56) Friends let us not take up the office of accuser with Satan, but rather seek to encourage and be encouraged in God and his word. We would do well to consider the furnace that saints are in, the refining that God is performing, and that there is an end result he has in mind. Let us not seek to tamper with the work of the Master Craftsman while he labors over his work.

We would do well to remember that with ourselves as well. As I heard Junior Hill say, “We can see what God has done, and what he will do, but we can’t see what he is doing.” We don’t know what God is doing as we go through heartache and trials. Sibbes says, and O may we hear, “We must not judge ourselves always according to present feeling.” (58) Our hearts are deceitfully wicked! Our feelings can lie to us but God cannot! He keeps his word. He is faithful and true and will complete the work that he began in us though in our afflictions and suffering we may feel cast off. Do not listen to your feelings, but trust the word of the Lord. Sibbes said so beautifully concerning our life in Christ in hard times;

“Life in the winter is hid in the root.”

Application/Discussion

There are winters that we walk through. I have faced the valley of the shadow of death. I have wrestled with temptation and sin and despaired of life in the battle. I have compared my life to others and concluded I must not be saved. Yet this joy stealing comparison discredits God’s grace in me.

“Know, for a ground of this, that in the covenant of grace, God requires the truth of grace, not any certain measure; and a spark of fire is fire as well as the whole element.”

In other words, it is not the strength of our faith but the object of our faith. God does not measure how much faith we have in our salvation, but that it exists. And so it is in you. Are you discouraged and doubting your salvation? Do you doubt God’s grace in your life? Read chapters ten through twelve again and let Sibbes’ biblical wisdom pour over your soul.

Know that in affliction God is working. The Refiner’s fire seeks to burn away those things which are not of him, and leave behind the purity of heavenly things. God removes and takes away things which are not for our good or his glory though we may not see it that way. He burns off sin, and oh do we ever feel it and suffer in the furnace of affliction. Yet may we say with Job; “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Not only does the fire burn away impurities, but as Sibbes said, “Fire maketh metals pliable and malleable, so doth grace, where it is begun; it worketh the heart to be pliable and ready for all good impressions.” (61) God uses the furnace of affliction to mold us and shape us in to what he wants us to be. We protest the process because we cannot see what he is presently doing. Yet while our souls are as clay in the hands of the potter, immerse yourself in his word. The Bible is a means of grace whereby God transforms us by the power of the Spirit. So in this light and momentary affliction, don’t quit. Press in to the word and seek him.

Is God working in your life in ways that you may not ascribe to him? Are you discounting some affliction or refining as the work of Satan, yet it may be that it is the work of God? What are you going through, though presently painful, yet it is yielding refinement for an eternal glory in God? Have you become timid in asking your Father to glorify himself through you?

I’ll close with a thought from Ligon Duncan I heard tonight, paraphrased; “It is not that we seek too much from God, but too little.” Seek from him more that we could ever ask or think.

Share in the comments your reflections on this, and share what insights you gained from this week’s reading.

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Last week, we covered chapters five through eight.

Next week, we’ll be covering chapters thirteen through sixteen.