http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15122034/the-purpose-of-election-is-a-church-beautified
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Leave the Throne of Guilt: Three Better Reasons to Pray
Calloused knees. Prayer closet. Answered prayers. Prayer warrior.
These four phrases don’t exactly trigger me with spiritual PTSD, but they do represent markers in my journey of moving from prayer-guilt into the grace of praying. For many years, I felt more like a D-student in the school of prayer than a beloved son in the presence of God. I was afraid to not pray, but I had very little delight in actually praying.
As a young believer in the late sixties, the joy of my new life in Christ was palpable and plenteous. But pretty soon, I started to feel the pressure of a new burden to “get it right.” I had consistent quiet times, underlined verses in my Bible (in three different colors), and engaged in Scripture memory. I fellowshipped, witnessed, and prayed. Unfortunately, these crucial spiritual disciplines functioned more as a means of guilt (or pride) than as a means of grace. Many of God’s good gifts are misused and disused until they become rightly used. This is certainly true of prayer.
A part of the problem — no, the biggest issue — was that I began the Christian life with a limited understanding of what happened when God gave me faith to trust Jesus and hid my life in his Son. I was certain of going to heaven when I died, but I knew little of what God thought about me while I lived.
United Forever with Christ
In Christ, all riches were already deposited into my account, but I was clueless about them. I knew Jesus died for my sins and that I was fully forgiven. But only years later did I come to understand my union with Christ, the imputation of his righteousness, and my adoption into God’s family — to name a few of the glorious benefits of our life in Christ.
I don’t blame anyone for not teaching me about union with Christ. I’m just eternally grateful I finally learned about it, came to rest in it, and now live out of its glorious implications. It wasn’t a game changer, but an everything changer — not a new day, but a new forever.
“The effort I now invest in praying has become a delight, not a burden.”
Our union with Christ is the foundation and fountain for knowing God, and the spiritual disciplines — including prayer (when shaped and fueled by the gospel) — are the means by which we deepen our knowledge of God and learn to “glorify and enjoy him forever.” Though the gospel has freed us from all earning, it certainly doesn’t free us from all effort. But the effort I now invest in praying has become a delight, not a burden.
Moving on from guilt and fear, I now focus on three callings that have radically transformed how I engage in prayer.
Fellowship with Your Father
“Fellowship with your Father” is exactly how my spiritual father, Jack Miller, reframed prayer for me, keying off of Jesus’s glorious invitation to say, “Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). How many times did I hear (and need to hear) Jack say, “Scotty, our Father wants to spend time with you more than you are even confident and comfortable in his presence. He loves you. You’ll never shock him, and he’ll never shame you. He knows your need is greater than you realize, and his provision for you in Jesus is exponentially more than you have yet grasped.”
Indeed, the gospel frees us from thinking of prayer as a way to get God’s attention — an effort to convince him of something we need or something we want him to do. Prayer is God’s nonstop welcome to us — a grace-subpoena into his presence (Hebrews 4:16).
“The gospel frees us from thinking of prayer as a way to get God’s attention.”
Our Father is always initiating and resourcing our communion with himself. As we spend both quality and quantity time with him, all the incomplete and wrong notions we’ve had about him get exposed and expelled. He also re-parents us through unrushed time in his presence. Abba is the Father we always wanted, and he alone can be to us what no human father could ever be.
The better we know God as our Father, we more we begin to embrace how big and good his prayer-answer vocabulary actually is. Answered prayer is no longer equated with a yes to our petitions. We begin to rest in our Father’s multiple wise answers, like no, not yet, and yes, but not exactly as you are asking. The burden is off our shoulders. We can ask with abandon and trust with even greater abandon. Our Father is always doing all things well, even when he doesn’t do all things easy. Our Father’s no is sweeter than any yes we can imagine — or demand. We start giving more yeses to him rather than “needing” yeses from him.
Jack also made it abundantly clear to me, “The more you fellowship with your Father, the more you will rejoice in his plan for the nations and live as his partner in world evangelism.” Jack could not think of prayer, the gospel, and our Father without seeing and rejoicing in the day when God’s every-nation family will stream into the New Jerusalem.
Behold Jesus’s Glory
The apostle Paul’s words are as riveting as they are compelling: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Many centuries earlier, King David expressed a similar heart orientation and single passion — even making it his number-one prayer request: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4).
Prayer as contemplation of Jesus’s glory reorients us away from prayer as consternation about getting results. Adoration of Jesus must not be relegated to the first letter of ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Adoration is the meaning and essence of each and every other aspect of life. Indeed, fixing our gaze on Jesus isn’t a warm-up exercise to prayer; it is prayer.
As we marinate in the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus, we are changed — we become more like Jesus, which is the goal of our salvation (Romans 8:28–30; 1 John 3:1–3). Our hope is fueled, because we discover more fully what the Scriptures mean when they declare Jesus to be the emphatic Yes! to every promise God has made (2 Corinthians 1:20). Our praying becomes less about claiming God’s promises and more about seeing how God’s promises claim us — and all of history. We think less about becoming prayer warriors, and we rest in Jesus as the prayer-warrior extraordinaire — ever living to make intercession for us and in us by the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:26).
Adoring Jesus also deepens our intimacy with him and intensifies our longing to be with him in eternity — the better-by-far-ness Paul writes about in Philippians 1:23. It also fuels our courage to go with Jesus into a life of missional living and loving. We cease thinking of doing anything merely for Jesus; rather, we begin to live as those who do everything with Jesus. Only Jesus can, and is, making all things new. Prayer frees us to find our place in his story, now that we’re already in his heart.
Listen to the Spirit’s Testimony
Lastly, thinking of prayer as listening to the Holy Spirit’s testimony helps us include in our prayer times not only talking but hearing. In Romans 8, Paul highlights just how vital this aspect of our fellowship with God actually is: “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs” (Romans 8:16–17). The Spirit is always preaching the gospel to us — nonstop, 24/7. As we linger over God’s word, do we take time to listen?
In fact, it is by the Spirit’s voice we most clearly hear God singing over us with great rejoicing (Zephaniah 3:17). How is this so? Because the Spirit is always making much of Jesus and is constantly applying his finished work to our hearts. As we experience the wonder of God’s great delight in us, we move more fully into the true blessedness of the convicting voice of the Spirit, the voice that is now and forever void of any condemnation (Romans 8:1). Confession and repentance become a way of life and a liberating joy.
Unfortunately, too much of the time we allow other noises and voices to drown out the Spirit’s voice. We tune the frequency of our hearts to our fears, disappointments, and anger. We indulge the whispers, shouts, and lies of the devil. We let the siren songs of our world and our lusts mute the peace-giving, joy-fueling, hope-enlarging testimony of the Spirit. We pay to hear an out-of-tune kazoo band, while the triune God has graciously made us members of his every-nation orchestra that gets to play and enjoy the grand symphony of the gospel.
Let’s get still and know that our God is God (Psalm 46:10). He does all that he pleases, all the time and everywhere (Psalm 115:3). Hallelujah, it has pleased him to make us his beloved daughters and sons through the work of Jesus.
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The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Guide to a Christian Classic
“I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass.” Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings first heard the wizard Gandalf utter these words in 1954, bravely standing against the balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm. Gandalf’s declaration now rings out in the memories of millions of those who have never read the original text, thanks to Sir Ian McKellen’s portrayal in Peter Jackson’s films.
But there is more to this line than an epic oration. In the creation myth of Middle-earth, not divulged to eager readers until four years after Tolkien’s death, we learn that the Secret Fire, or Flame Imperishable, is a gift bestowed only by God — the very gift of Being. And all the way back before 1920, Tolkien had penned a short entry in a lexicon focusing on Elvish linguistics and phonology that is the key to understanding this fire. Tucked away on page 81, the entry reads, “Sā: Fire, especially in temples. etc. A mystic name identified with Holy Ghost.”
That pattern of discovery perfectly encapsulates most people’s experience with The Lord of the Rings. A rousing story draws us in, but it takes deeper delving to unearth the rich veins of Christian theology that spread like mithril through Tolkien’s constructed world.
Perhaps you’ve been put off from reading The Lord of the Rings because Elves and Dwarves seem frivolous. Perhaps you feel content to watch the film adaptations instead. Perhaps it was simply something you read as a child, without ever considering that it might contain hidden depths. Whatever your reason, I’d like to invite you into Middle-earth to see how Tolkien approached his storytelling with an attitude of praise. We see in The Lord of the Rings a stellar example of the way a worldview can affect every facet of life.
The Open Secret of Middle-earth
Tolkien was not a professional theologian. He was not even a professional novelist. He was perhaps the greatest living authority on the history of the English language, a full professor at Oxford who mumbled his way through lectures on obscure Anglo-Saxon grammar. But when the stories he told his children gained attention and were published as The Hobbit, Tolkien became an immediate sensation. He spent the remainder of his life letting the public into the secret world he had been building in his imagination since he was a soldier in the trenches of World War I.
The basic plot of his magnum opus is now so well-known as to barely need a summary. Frodo Baggins, a diminutive Hobbit of the Shire, finds himself in possession of the One Ring, a thoroughly evil artifact that shares the essence of the Dark Lord Sauron (who was long thought destroyed). But Sauron (the eponymous Lord of the Rings) is rising again, and he wants his most powerful weapon back. Frodo, along with a small Fellowship, must undertake a mission to travel into the very heart of Sauron’s impenetrable kingdom without being discovered, and destroy the Ring in the very fires in which it was forged.
“That is the purpose for which you are called hither,” Elrond explains to the Fellowship.
Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world. (The Lord of the Rings, 242)
Not chance, but a hidden ordering, orchestrated the assembly of the Fellowship at Rivendell. This sort of subtle providence appears everywhere throughout the tale, and yet it remains hidden until and unless the reader asks the next (and necessary) question: “Ordered by whom?”
Divine Design
Once the question is posed, the answer seems inevitable. The very nature of the narrative drives it. Who keeps this seemingly impossible mission from devolving into chaos? Why does chance always seem to favor the side of the good? Gandalf, again, shows us more than is immediately obvious.
There was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought. (56)
This is the divine design of Middle-earth.
The Lord of the Rings keeps its Christian metaphysic under the surface. Tolkien deliberately set the story in the mythical past of our own world, before the special revelation to Abraham or the incarnation of the God-man. Yet, aside from its strong portrayal of providence, it also models the life of common grace.
“We see in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ a stellar example of the way a worldview can affect every facet of life.”
Frodo refuses to kill Gollum (who deserves it) because he insists that Gollum still possesses an inherent dignity and the possibility of redemption. Aragorn’s kingship manifests not in his seizure of military power, but in his works of healing and righteousness. Sam Gamgee, the blue-collar gardener, not Boromir, the realpolitiker captain, is the highest model of heroism. In all these ways, Tolkien is seeding the ground for spiritual harvest, creating art that has its own integrity while organically illustrating truth.
The World as Art
A staunch Roman Catholic who recited his prayers loudly in Latin even after Vatican II allowed for Mass in English, Tolkien didn’t set out to write “Christian fiction,” whatever that term may mean. He has no Aslan-allegory waiting to pounce upon us. “I was primarily writing an exciting story in an atmosphere and background such as I find personally attractive. But in such a process inevitably one’s own taste, ideas, and beliefs get taken up,” he explains (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 267).
Tolkien’s art is, first and foremost, just that: art, made by a professing Christian. Not a hidden sermon, not an evangelistic allegory, not a work of imaginative apologetics — at least, not directly. But Tolkien had an incredibly robust doctrine of creation, which makes the category of “art” something much more than mere entertainment. For him, the whole world is a work of Art that the Creator has made real, giving it what Tolkien calls “secondary reality” (Letters, 279).
And if the world is art, then it all must mean something. God, the true Being, gives other beings their existence, and because God is their source, they point back to him. All creation is sacramental: God reveals his own Being through the gift of being and his own invisible nature through visible nature. This is what creation means. It’s designed to lead us to glorify its Creator.
Stories Can Elevate the Heart
If the world really is art, then not just the sacramental, imaginative, aesthetic experience of creation, but also our instinct for poetic vision, reveal the divine Poet. If creation is art, then all art mirrors creation in some way.
Tolkien ties this vision of a universe teeming with unique, wonder-full creatures to his theory of sub-creation. We make because we are made in the image of a Maker, and we extend and enrich God’s creation through our own derivative creative efforts. Tolkien’s “exciting story,” in which a Christian mind imitates its Creator, doesn’t have to be a gospel allegory. It glorifies God by being itself, just as trees glorify God by being trees and the rocks cry out before Christ. All art imitates creation to a greater or lesser degree. God’s character is more translucent in some works than others (more evident, for instance, in The Brothers Karamazov than Iron Man 2).
The Lord of the Rings is not just popcorn fare. It is deeply theological, meditating on themes of death, fall, mercy, and idolatry. Its atmosphere strikes even non-Christians as redolent of a certain sanctity, of a high, clear nobility that elevates the heart. Here, Tolkien’s fantasy environment allows for such elements to be magnified beyond their ordinary scale and contemplated more directly. He invented this genre for a profound reason.
Joy as Poignant as Grief
In his magisterial essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien articulates the threefold theological movement of fantasy. First, it helps us to escape from the claustrophobic realm of materialism and all our quotidian burdens. Escaping into a new perspective then helps us to recover our view of the truth. Our eyes have been clouded by sin and possessiveness, and packaging the old familiar goods in unfamiliar forms helps us to see them afresh. But the key characteristic of all good fantasy is consolation, the joy of the happy ending.
Tolkien terms this specific sort of joy eucatastrophe, “a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.” While acknowledging that we live in the midst of much sorrow, failure, and pain, eucatastrophe instead “denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief” (Tolkien On Fairy-Stories, 75).
Fantasy echoes the story of redemption. Lost in our sin and with no hope of escape, we are alienated from God the Creator, but in an astonishing grace he himself becomes one of us in order to do what only he can. And when things seem darkest — when we reject, violate, and murder God himself — that is the exact moment at which God’s greatest triumph occurs. It leads our hearts to exult in immeasurable joy. The fairy tale has come true. “Legend and History have met and fused” (Fairy-Stories, 78).
As such, Tolkien believes that fantasy can train our hearts for truth. He writes of the gospel as a form of fairy tale:
This story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. (Fairy-Stories, 78)
A Classic for Christians?
If all good art reflects the divine artist, and all good fantasy foreshadows the gospel, what might we gain from reading a work like The Lord of the Rings, crafted by a Christian who self-consciously leaned into this state of affairs, seeking to make excellent art that goes with the grain of creation?
The Lord of the Rings offers a picture of a good and beautiful cosmos. It refuses to glamorize evil. It pictures heroes who are actually heroic in the biblical sense, not just glory-driven killing machines. Tolkien doesn’t need to make his fantasy Christian; instead, he can simply recognize and cultivate a narrative process that God has already designed to lead us to himself.
The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. (Fairy-Stories, 78–79)
Tolkien’s great text models for us what it might mean to redeem this aspect of God’s good creation, to participate in the work of making all things new. In this way, he too is a servant of the Secret Fire.
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Pastoring with Your Life: Exemplary Conduct in Little Moments
Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in . . . conduct. (1 Timothy 4:12)
My brother pastor, this tragic world has no idea how much you’re worth. But in the eyes of the risen Christ, you so matter. You carry weight with him, and you can carry weight with the people in your church. And this gravitas has nothing to do with your age.
If the ministry makes you feel inadequate, welcome to the ministry! Even the prophet Jeremiah felt that way. But the Lord told Jeremiah to stop his defeatist thoughts: “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak” (Jeremiah 1:7). And then God reached out and put his own words in Jeremiah’s mouth (Jeremiah 1:9). Why? Because what matters more than your mouth is whose words are in your mouth.
And, remember, your calling is to pastor, not only to preach. These two primary tasks are inseparable but distinguishable. Preaching declares gospel doctrine, and pastoring nurtures gospel culture. When the pastor’s message is good news, and his manner is gentle warmth, “church” can start feeling like an experience of Jesus himself. And it’s exemplary pastoral conduct, surrounding both preaching and pastoring, that leads people into those green pastures and beside those still waters.
You don’t have to be brilliant, but you must be exemplary. First Timothy 4:12 says so. And how could it be otherwise? We can think of gifted ministers whose shameful conduct has discredited them and grieved us all. The whole world, along with the entire Christian church, has every right to expect us to be surprisingly exemplary in this age of corruption. Brother, let’s stand tall with Christlike integrity, as true-hearted men of God. If we corrupt ourselves, we, like King David, will give “great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme” (2 Samuel 12:14 NKJV). So much is at stake right here: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in . . . conduct.”
Pastoring in ‘Little’ Moments
Conduct, in the original text, suggests your multifaceted lifestyle, your many moments on many fronts, your total way of life in all its variety. This word covers all your interactions with people, all aspects of your job performance, all occasions of family life and leisure. George Abbot-Smith’s Manual Greek Lexicon catches the sense with “a wheeling about” — that is, a turning from one moment to the next as each day unfolds.
The whole-life-ness of conduct reminds me of one way I’ve changed over the years. Back in college, all my friends were reading The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. So I took it up too. But I couldn’t stick with it. The story unfolded so slowly, with one subplot after another slowing the onward movement of the drama. I started thinking, “Get to the point!” In my impatience, I gave up. That was in the 1970s.
Then the summer before the first LOTR movie came out in 2001, I tried again. I wanted my own imagination to paint the pictures. And this time, I couldn’t put the books down. Why? Tolkien hadn’t changed. I had changed. I had come to realize, by my fifties, that my real life is just like Tolkien’s portrayal — one tiny subplot after another, but each one meaningful within the larger story. I now understand that all my tiny moments are building toward the final denouement promised by God. So, I get it. Many small moments are how our lives actually work. They are where our conduct is formed and displayed. They matter.
The Book of Common Prayer gets us praying that “among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” Exactly. That’s the realism, and the hope, empowering exemplary pastoral conduct.
Your Life Can Persuade
Let’s admit it. In lots of moments, ministry can feel insignificant. But your little moments are not little. Each one fits meaningfully into your story, as told by the Lord Jesus. Every meeting, every conversation, every quiet minute of study — all of it constitutes your conduct, declares your character, and can inspire your congregation. So, think long-term, and be patient. If God isn’t rushing around in a hurry, why should you? Over time, your exemplary conduct, growing into a magnificent totality, is convincing. You will win the respect of good people.
“Over time, your exemplary conduct, growing into a magnificent totality, is convincing.”
Yes, sadly, some church people will never respect you. But most others will be reasonable and will admire your example. They will feel proud that you are their pastor. You will prove the wisdom of saintly old J.C. Ryle: “Your life is an argument that none can escape.”
Now let’s get practical. As in my last article on exemplary speech, let’s see how Titus 2:2 can help us: “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled.” The “older men” are the grown-ups in the room. Your conduct can make you one of those heroes right now. Whatever your age, you can help set the tone for everyone else.
SOBER-MINDED
The exemplary pastor’s conduct is calm. He strides forward with gentle confidence. It isn’t bravado. It is sober realism. You are, in fact, serving the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth. You have no right to be inflated with pride or crippled with fear. The Lord of the universe called you into the ministry. He has been preparing you all your life for the duties and challenges of this very day. You’re more ready than you feel. Dare to believe it. And go do the next right thing.
“The exemplary pastor’s conduct is calm. He strides forward with gentle confidence.”
You can be a mature father-figure in your church. And good fathers know what to do, what to say, as the occasion requires. Then the other family members feel reassured, safe, grateful. What a wonderful calling your Lord has given you! You don’t have to deserve it, but you do have to receive it. Your exemplary conduct proves to your people that “Papa’s home.”
DIGNIFIED
The exemplary pastor’s conduct is noble. The longer I live, the more I desire this in my own life. That title “Reverend” before your name calls for this very quality of dignity, nobility, honor. I have no respect for pompous grandiosity in a minister. But gravitas — I revere it, and I expect it.
Is there laughter in the ministry? Oh, yes! How lovely a sound is the hearty laughter of the saints! But infantile silliness, common in our declining culture, deserves no place among the blood-bought people of God. We worship here below in harmony with “angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven,” as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us. Please, brother, show your church, by your exemplary conduct, what that dignity can look like — even this Sunday.
SELF-CONTROLLED
The exemplary pastor’s conduct is steady. Maybe at times you notice some unruly emotions inside you, as I do inside me. That bad neighborhood between our two ears can be a crazy place to dwell in. Our dark thoughts and feelings can dominate us, even defeat us. But godly men fight back. They dare to live in Spirit-given self-control.
Why not go to a trusted friend at church to talk and pray through together what most unsettles you? No one grows in isolation, not even pastors. But all of us can walk in newness of life by going to a wise friend with this humble request: “Help me see myself.” Who wouldn’t benefit from that? Your vulnerability itself will be exemplary conduct. And you will grow in the steady self-mastery that adorns the gospel you preach.
Exemplary or Cool?
The great thing about being 73 and half-dead is that I’m not cool anymore. It’s freeing. I don’t have to project an idealized false Ray. I can get over myself and love others. And here is my plea to you, my brother pastor: Why not enter that freedom right now, at your younger age? You can be exemplary in your conduct, by God’s grace, at a level that surprises even you.
Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Billy Joel back in 1990. Here’s a snippet of what he said:
I need substance in my life. And the world needs substance. The world doesn’t need any more hip. Hip is dead. The world doesn’t need more cool, more clever. The world needs substantial things.
The world needs substantial pastors too. That’s what I believe. It’s what you believe. Okay then: set the believers an example in your conduct.