On eloquence (or lack thereof) in prayer

Posted on February 20, 2017 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

I must confess that I am sometimes intimidated about praying in a church gathering such as a prayer meeting or small group. My brain is not wired to call up Old Testament images about restoring what the locusts have eaten or calling down mighty angels. These references make those adept at praying sound so . . . so . . . spiritual and powerful.

I am not poking fun at them, I really am impressed with some people’s ability to think of these things to spice up their prayer. Such eloquence is a gift, it just happens to be a gift that I do not possess.

But some encouragement came to me during a recent reading of Exodus 5.

That chapter records that Pharaoh increased the workload on the Israelites as a result of Moses’ request to let the people of Israel celebrate a feast to God. The Israelites, in turn, confronted Moses blaming him for the increased hardship.

Moses then brings this to God. Notice the language of his prayer:

“O Lord, why have you brought harm to this people? Whey did you ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done harm to this people and you have not delivered your people at all.” – Exodus 5:22-23

That prayer contains no flowery language. It is short and honest. Moses asks the questions that are on his heart and tells God why he is asking. There is no hiding behind excess words here. Moses comes to God and directly tells him what is on his mind.

This encourages me that prayer does not need to be eloquent to be effective. It is OK to come directly to the point. It is OK to be honest and straight-forward.

I suppose the lesson is that there is no best way to pray. The important thing is to do it.

Never avenge yourselves – A warning to Christian trolls

Posted on January 4, 2017 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

Reading Romans 12 this morning, these verses jumped out at me:

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:19–21, ESV)

If we take these verses seriously and put them into practice, I wonder if the reputation of the church would be greatly improved in the eyes of those who see us as judgmental hypocrites.

Jesus tells us in John 16:8 that it is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict men of their sin. But too often, we take that role on ourselves and feel that we must take a strong stand against what we think are counter Biblical activities. Do we trust God enough to work in a person’s life to bring conviction where it is necessary?

In the internet age, civility seems to be the primary casualty. It is so easy to vent our judgment and hostility to those with whom we don’t agree. Unfortunately, those in the church sometimes share in this trollish behavior. There have been times when I have read social media posts and cringed at the lack of sensitivity to those who don’t share our beliefs.

When confronted, the Christian trolls counter with an accusation of being “soft on sin” which, interestingly enough, is an accusation leveled at Jesus a time or two.

By his life and ministry, Jesus showed us that it is possible to be completely loving to all the people around you without condoning their sin.

We must engage in conversation with others who don’t share our beliefs. In those conversations we are called to stand firm on standards that are clearly taught in the Bible. But we must do this in a way that is consistent with the example of Jesus and the clear teaching of Scripture.

For example, the opening verses of Romans 2 teach me that I need to be extra careful when I confront others on their sin because I am prone to the same errors. How can I look down on someone for stealing when there is greed in my own heart? How can I condemn someone else for their priorities when mine are equally out of order (but perhaps better hidden). If I am to confront, it must not be as a judge, but as a fellow law breaker.

This prompts some questions for us:

Can we trust God enough to let him bring conviction where it is needed?
Can we be patient, knowing that God will bring that conviction at the right time?
Can we err on the side of being loving, having experienced the love that overcomes our own sins?

Nobody likes trolls, Christian or otherwise.

What is the gospel?

Posted on December 31, 2016 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

Like many organizations, the church has its own jargon. The danger with jargon is that we can use words for which we have a fuzzy understanding. One of the words in common usage in the church is the word gospel.

At its core, the word gospel means “good news.” The English word gospel comes from the Old English and is a compound of god (good) and spel (story or message). It is a direct translation of the Greek word euanggelion which is also a compound of eu (good) and anggelion (message or announcement). This is the word from which we get our English words “evangelism” and evangelical.

But what is the gospel? How should we define it in a Christian context?

As I thought about this, I thought that I should use my Bible software to do a search of the word gospel in the New Testament to see how the gospel is described. Here is a list of things that I learned about the gospel from looking over the list along with a reference to where I found it. The list is not exhaustive; some of these appear in multiple places and I only list the reference to the first mention.

It is the gospel of the kingdom [of God] – Matthew 4:23
It is preached to the poor – Matthew 11:5
It should be preached in the whole world – Matthew 24:14
It is the gospel of Jesus Christ – Mark 1:1
It is the gospel of God – Mark 1:14
It is the gospel of the grace of God – Acts 20:24
It was promised beforehand – Romans 1:2
It is concerning [God’s] son – Romans 1:3
It is the power of God for salvation – Romans 1:16
Paul calls it “my gospel” – Romans 16:25
Paul felt compelled to preach the gospel – 1 Corinthians 9:16
It is free – 1 Corinthians 9:18
It is the gospel of the glory of Christ – 2 Corinthians 4:4
It can be counterfeited – 2 Corinthians 11:4
It can be distorted – Galatians 1:7
It is not according to man – Galatians 1:11
It contains truth – Galatians 2:14
It was preached to Abraham – Galatians 3:8
It is the gospel of your salvation – Ephesians 1:13
We become partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel – Ephesians 3:6
It is the gospel of peace – Ephesians 6:15
It was a mystery (something previously hidden) – Ephesian 6:19
It should be defended – Philippians 1:16
It will change our behavior – Philippians 1:27
It is a message of hope – Colossians 1:5
It comes in power and in the Holy Spirit – 1 Thessalonians 1:5
The gospel is opposed – 1 Thessalonians 2:2
It is entrusted to men – 1 Thessalonians 2:4
It is the gospel of our Lord Jesus – 2 Thessalonians 1:8
God calls us through the gospel – 2 Thessalonians 2:14
It is the gospel of the blessed God – 1 Timothy 1:11
It is something worth suffering for – 2 Timothy 1:8
The gospel brings life and immortality to light – 2 Timothy 1:10
It is about Jesus Christ, risen from the dead and a descendant of David – 2 Timothy 2:8
It caused Paul to be imprisoned – Philemon 13
It is preached by the Holy Spirit – 1 Peter 1:12
It is something that the angels want to understand – 1 Peter 1:12
It demands obedience – 1 Peter 4:17
It is eternal – Revelation 14:6

Perhaps there is no better way to end one year and begin another than by reflecting on the may facets of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What a gift we have been given!

By what sin?

Posted on December 28, 2016 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

Question 15 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “By what sin did our first parents fall from their original condition?”

The answer given is, “Our first parents’ sin was eating the forbidden fruit.”

In our fallenness, we are likely to respond, “what’s the big deal about eating fruit?” Why would God kick our first parents out of the Garden for this?

We have to find the answer in the nature of God and why he created us in the first place.

Love always demands a choice. God did not create us as automatons who can only perform the tasks we are programmed to do. We are not simply a collection of Pavlovian responses. We are not merely “dancing to our DNA.”

We (as represented by our first parents) were given a choice and we chose badly.

If you look at the story in Genesis 3, you see that Satan asked a question that lead to a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of God’s character. We believed the lie that God does not have our well being in mind. Satan implied, and we believed, that God was withholding a good thing from us for no good reason.

Honesty forces us to admit that we still choose badly much of the time. We want our own way and struggle to see how obedience to God is for our benefit.

But isn’t that so like us? We know that the large dessert will move us farther away from our goal to maintain our optimum weight but we eat it anyway. We know that 20 minutes of exercise before work will go a long way toward keeping us healthy, but it is so much easier to check our social media feeds or grab 20 minutes of extra sleep.

We accept a short term pleasure at the cost of long term health.

Morally, we fare little better. We are serial idolaters, giving our best to things that draw us away from God. We want what we want when we want it and can find any number of excuses as to why it is the right course of action, even when the small voice inside us tells us we are off track.

Thankfully, there is good news. There is the Gospel (which means good news). We rebelled, but God had a plan to fix what was broken, even before we broke it.

On eloquence (or lack thereof) in prayer

Never avenge yourselves – A warning to Christian trolls

By what sin?

Categories

Archives