I dare not say that anyone believes until they pray. I cannot understand a dumb faith. The first act of faith will be to speak to God. Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too.

JC Ryle’s little book – A Call To Prayer – is a great and easy little read. Here he is on private prayer as a mark of genuine conversion:
This is one of the common marks of all the elect of God, “They cry unto him day and night.” Luke 18:1. The Holy Spirit who makes them new creatures, works in them a feeling of adoption, and makes the cry, “Abba, Father.” Romans 8:15. The Lord Jesus, when he quickens them, gives them a voice and a tongue, and says to them, “Be dumb no more.” God has no dumb children. It is as much a part of their new nature to pray, as it is of a child to cry. They see their need of mercy and grace. They feel their emptiness and weakness. They cannot do other wise than they do. They must pray.
I have looked careful over the lives of God’s saints in the Bible. I cannot find one whose history much is told us, from Genesis to Revelation, who was not a person of prayer. I find it mentioned as a characteristic of the godly, that “they call on the Father,” that “they call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” I find it recorded as a characteristic of the wicked, that “they call not upon the Lord.” 1 Peter 1:17; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Psalm 14:4.
I have read the lives of many eminent Christians who have been on earth since the Bible days. Some of them, I see, were rich, and some poor. Some were learned, and some were unlearned. Some of them were Episcopalians, and some were Christians of other names. Some were Calvinists, and some were Arminians. Some have loved to use liturgy, and some to use none. But one thing, I see, they all had in common. They have all been people of prayer.
I have studied reports of missionary societies in our own times. I see with joy that lost men and women are receiving the gospel in various parts of the globe.
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My depression is a thing that exists. Therefore, God is using it to conform me more to the image of Christ, to conform believers around me more to the image of Christ, to potentially bring other elect members of the kingdom to the point of faith so that they become more like Jesus, and in some mad way to do something or other for people I have never met but who in God’s infinite and intricately weaved tapestry of history and circumstance, are somehow affected for their good too and they will become more like Jesus through it.

Somebody asked me yesterday whether I thought my getting depression was part of God’s plan. I thought that was a really interesting question and thought I would share my view on that here. If you can’t be bothered to read past this sentence, the short answer is, yes I do.
Here is the thing, I believe God is ultimately sovereign. He is sovereign over all things. There is not a single thing, in the whole of creation, that does not happen without God’s permission to do so. The Bible is unequivocal about God’s total and complete sovereignty.
If that is true, then simply the fact that I have depression means that it is, in some way, part of God’s plan. If God is sovereign over all things (and he is), then there isn’t anything that happens that is not part of his plan. Even his decision not to act, not to intervene, is a sovereign decision. If God chooses not to stop something that he could otherwise stop, he must be allowing it for his greater purposes. If God is sovereign over all things, there is nothing that happens that he could not stop and nothing that doesn’t happen that he could have chosen to make happen. Everything that does happen, happens because God either actively causes it or sovereignly permits it. It is as the Bible says, he is the one who ‘works all things according to the counsel of his will’.
The issue is, when it comes to stuff like depression, the inevitable question is: do you think God is happy that you’re ill? The short answer is, no. I don’t think God is any happier at the thought of me being ill than he is at the thought of people sinning. This inevitably leads to a follow up question, then why doesn’t he stop it?
The answer is that God orders his priorities. The Bible tells us, for example, that God does not wish for any to perish, but longs for all people to be saved. At the same time, we know that not everyone is saved. How do we account for this? Philosophers, at this point, like to posit the principle of sufficient reason. God wants all people to be saved, but he has a sufficient reason to allow them not to be. Depending on your particular theological bent, you will offer different answers as to what that sufficient reason is. But it is no different to us saying I would like to save £200 every month, but I would also like to buy a load of stuff too. One of those priorities tends to trump the other, meaning that though I would like both, I order my priorities, which is why my bank account is less full than I might otherwise like it to be. Similarly, God orders his priorities such that, though he may want all to be saved, he has higher priorities that mean all are not in actuality saved.
So, where does that leave us when it comes to my depression? It is certainly something that happened in actuality, so I consider it part of God’s plan. Does God want me to have depression? I don’t think he is pleased at the thought of me being sick. Nevertheless, that it has happened tells me he has some greater purpose in allowing it to happen. But, let’s be honest, we all want to know what that greater purpose is.
As a Reformed believer, I think God orders all things so that he will receive maximal glory. So, God’s highest priority is his own glory. What this means is that God has setup the world so that the world as it is – out of every possible world he might have created – brings him the greatest glory.
I cannot explain how each and every thing works ultimately to the praise and glory of God. I can have a guess at how some things – even some pretty heinous things – might ultimately work to his glory. But I am ultimately only guessing. I can highlight how some objectively terrible things definitely work to his glory because the Bible expressly tells us so. The cross of Jesus Christ – which was a gross injustice of the highest order and severe suffering of the very worst kind – was the very means by which God glorified himself most. It was his means of salvation for his people, the means of glorifying Christ, the means of becoming both just and justifier. Through something so heinous, God was ultimately glorified. But I must admit I can’t explain how every terrible thing that ever happens works to God’s glory that way. I trust what God’s word says, that such things will brings him more glory in the end than if it hadn’t happened at all, and I can have my guesses about what some of that might be, but that is all they are likely to be.

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Clearly there is much good in the world. Clearly there is much to be enjoyed. It is not worldliness to enjoy things in the world. If it causes us to give thanks to God and to love Jesus more, and it is not causing us to sin, have at it. Often the views and matters that concern and worry us most have not gotten everywhere and are not as widespread as some would insist or the internet would imply. But even if these things are true, in the end, isn’t the Holy Spirit more active, more powerful and more able to keep and preserve Christ’s sheep than anything might be able to drag us away? 

It’s not at all uncommon to hear about bit of Christian handwringing about the world. How will our kids manage to live as we send them to school? How will they cope with all the worldliness and pagan ideology on display? How will they (or we) function with the slew of filth that runs rampant on our televisions, in cinemas and – worst of all – across the internet on our computers, tablets and phones? We are bombarded with terrible things continually, whatever will we do?
One response to this, of course, is to just chill out a bit. Our children, at some point, have to learn to live in the world so perhaps it will do them good to figure out how to navigate it now when they are given the leeway of being children who – in the eyes of those who wish to view it as such – would at least consider them to know no better. Might it be that they will learn what others learn, but with the ability to figure it out with the help of parents who love them and want to help them navigate these things scripturally. Might it be that these things are more helpfully figured out now with these things now, where the worst of it on display is amongst their peers who display such things in the childish way children might ever do, rather than letting our kids face it for the first time at, say, university where such things are full grown, unrelentingly on display and without the safety and comfort of any family there to help? You may feel differently, and that’s absolutely fine if you do, but there is a good case to be made for this approach.
Similarly, we could talk about much that is good in the world. Usually, at this point, the bogey-term ‘worldliness’ will rear its head. As I understand it, worldliness is about devotion to the things of the world rather than the things of Christ. Essentially, side-lining Jesus for the sake of some temporal thing(s) that you ultimately value more than him. The Bible does have a lot to say about that sort of attitude, both understandably and rightly so.
But many Christians will use the term to mean something closer to enjoying anything that isn’t effectively Bible studies, sermons and singing hymns. Watching TV, going to the cinema or theatre is worldly. Drinking is worldly. Money is worldly. Holidays are worldly. Clothes are worldly. You name it, if you enjoy it and it ain’t called Jesus, you’re into a whole lot of worldliness. It is the cause of much handwringing and it is, for the most part, a load of crap.
Don’t get me wrong, anything can become an idol to us. And when something temporal has become an idol to us, we have bought into a spirit of worldliness. Loving the world more than Jesus. It is a real and genuine problem. What is not a problem is enjoying stuff in the world that God has made. God has ultimately made a world for us to enjoy. Much talk of edification seems to forget that just enjoying stuff is pretty edifying so long as we thank God for it.
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Our circumstances, even if hard, do not mean God is not at work. Our suffering does not mean God has failed. Our difficulties – even if we are praying for them to be resolved and taken away – do not show God to not be serving our good. Which is why we perhaps need to stop implying that we trust God because he works followed by examples of the Lord finding the money for our rent or healing us of some sickness. Those things are great and warrant our praises and thanksgiving. But they are not the evidence that “prayer works” or “God has it covered” we often think. We know God has it covered because, whatever may befall us now, we have a home in Heaven. 

I have blogged before about how we need to stop saying ‘prayer works’. As I said in that post, but I’ll head of again here, that’s not because I don’t think prayer works. I just think what we tend to communicate when we say that is not very helpful. Often what people mean by that phrase is also not very helpful. But you’ll have to read that other post to find out why.
But we have another close cousin of ‘prayer works’ that does the rounds. It is essentially ‘God works’. The view comes in a variety of forms. In its crasser form, it is the ‘delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart’ brigade. The most favourite verse of all who want God to be their personal genie. But there is a more reformed ‘seek first the kingdom of God’ approach that is just as problematic. It all ends up with either a quid pro quo with God – if I do this, he’ll do that – or, if we’re being less crass about it – a ‘God works’ idea so that I can just trust in the Lord because ‘he’s got it covered’ kind of thing.
Of course, we should trust in God because he does have things covered. Just as we should pray because prayer does work. The issue is that God having things covered and prayer working don’t always work in the way we have decided they must. I don’t think ‘prayer works’ in the sense that God will just give me whatever I ask for every time I ask. I don’t think ‘God has it covered’ by necessarily resolving everything to my satisfaction in the way I would like it resolving.
Often, these sentiments come out in little stories of our own. I was worried about such and such and event, I struggled to get something or other, I just had to trust God and, in the end, it all worked out. We can trust he’s got it covered. Or, I was worried about some operation or other, it was totally out of my hands, all I could do was pray and trust the Lord. But he made me well, the operation was a success, we can trust the Lord.
Now, I get the sentiment, I really do. And, for the record, it is obviously good to praise the Lord when he does what we have asked him to do. It is good when we are sick and God heals. It is good when we are worried and God resolves the cause of our fears. It is good when we are anxious about something unknown and the Lord works it all out for us. It is, of course, good and right to give thanks and praise him for such things.
My concern is, if we have gone hard on the ‘God has it covered’ or the ‘prayer works’ line, what do we say when our family member is sick and God doesn’t heal them and, worse yet, they die? What do we say when we are worried about something and God not only doesn’t appear to resolve the cause of our worries, but our worst fears are realised? What do we say when we are anxious about something unknown and the thing transpires to be even more hellish than we had even imagined? Do these things mean God doesn’t have it covered? Did prayer just not work that time? Has God basically let us down and failed to work for our good?
The problem with this line of thinking is that if God does not seem to have matters covered (as we judge it) or prayer does not appear to work (from our perspective), we quickly wonder whether it is worth the bother of following this God. You don’t have to know much about Israel’s history in Canaan to see this calculation roll round with troubling regularity. If God doesn’t appear to work, we’ll have a little go with Baal instead.
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When it comes to working out what your church will do, you first have to figure out what your people are able to do. There is no point coming up with an amazing plan for outreach if it centres around certain key skills your people don’t have or time commitments they aren’t in any position to commit to. You ultimate have to ask what can our people do, what are they interested in, what will they be able to do. Everything else, whilst lovely to think about, is ultimately not workable in practice.

When it comes to church life, there are lots of questions that rear their head again and again. Among them is this: what should we do? Obviously, lying behind that question is a series of others. What, exactly, is the mission of the church? What has God specifically called his people to do? Has he set any boundaries for how they ought to do it? There are many others besides.
But let’s just assume some things for a moment. Let’s assume we all agree that the mission of the church is to make disciples. That is, telling people about Jesus and seeking to grow them to maturity in Christ. Let’s assume for a moment that we all agree the gospel is the key to making disciples. That is, nobody will become a disciple of Jesus without understand the gospel, the good news of who he is and what he came to do. Let’s assume for the moment that we all agree that making disciples, then, involves telling those who don’t know about Jesus about him and telling those who do know Jesus the things about him that will lead to their growth in maturity.
With all those assumptions in place, let’s now ask our question: what should the church do? Or, more specifically, what should my church do? Are there particular things that my church should be doing? How do we even figure out what exactly we ought to do to make and grow disciples?
I think there are two groups of people you need to think about when answering this question. First, who has God given to this particular church? Who are its members? What are their particular skills and interests? What are they able to do? What are they specifically unable to do? We have to look at the gifts, resources and abilities of the people the Lord has given to us and ask what is possible for these particular people to do.
Second, we have to think about who the Lord has placed around us. What demographics are in our community? What are the needs? Are there places these particular people congregate? If not, what ways can we create spaces where that might happen? Are there places they go that I could go with them? Are there places I can go with them where it would be easier, more natural and most appropriate to share the gospel? Are there places it would be inappropriate for me to try and share them gospel with them?
These are not the only questions we might want to ask of these two groups of people. But these are the two groups we ought to be asking these sorts of questions of. 1. Who has the Lord given to us in the church (and what can they do)? 2. Who has the Lord placed around us (and what can we do with them)?
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We learn a great deal about ourselves when we rub up against people who think, live, work and act differently to us. We often learn, not just how annoying other people are, but why they might find us difficult and annoying. Sometimes they might well have a point and often we have to find a way to work through it. If we can’t, we are going to struggle in the church because Jesus tells us, ultimately, we must.

In any church, you will rub against people you don’t get on so well with. There are always people whose personalities we gel with better than others. I’m not talking about people who sin against you (though that will happen), I just mean people will naturally gravitate to certain other people and may find others rub them up the wrong way.
The world’s answer to such situations is to cut such people out. If you don’t click with someone, then forget about them. If you don’t like them so much, just avoid them. If you feel someone just isn’t your cup of tea, you don’t have to have anything to do with them. Just keep out their way and leave them to get on with being themselves, somewhere far far away from you.
But in the church we cannot do that. We shouldn’t do that. We have to love our brothers and sisters. How can we say we love God but hate our brother or sister? John’s answer is that we can’t. But even if we don’t hate them, we just don’t get on with them, we can’t easily do any of the one another things Jesus commands us to do from a distance.
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As believers, our final authority lies with scripture. The Bible itself is full of examples of people, saying to other people, that the Bible says their behaviour is troubling or needs correcting. That is the bread and butter of church discipline and, according to James, a matter of life and death (cf. James 5:20). 

The concept of abuse is floating around a lot at the moment. It is absolutely right that we recognise that there are pastors who abuse their sheep and, similarly, congregations who abuse their pastors. But it also bears saying that not everything that is called abuse is any such thing. Here are some things some people call abusive but are not.
When Someone in Authority Disagrees with You
This is just what it is. Disagreement is not abuse. Someone disagreeing with you who also happens to have some authority over you is also not abuse. You may go to your pastor and ask for something to happen that he does not think should happen. That is not abuse.
The fact is, people will disagree with each other. It may be over minor stuff, it may be over major stuff. But disagreement is not abuse. Disagreement is just disagreement. And disagreement will inevitably have consequences inasmuch as you presumably have to do something in line with whatever it is you are disagreeing about (either doing a thing or specifically not doing a thing). But to disagree and act in line with what is decided is not abusive.
Someone in Authority Not Doing What You Want
Similarly, just because somebody with authority or power does not do what you want does not make them abusive. I have written various book manuscripts. When it comes to the writer/publisher relationship, I am very much without power in that I cannot make a publisher take my book. All the power lies with the publisher. Hold onto your hats for this shocker, but not every manuscript I have written has been accepted by publishers when I sent them in. Some of them had the audacity to say they didn’t want my book (imagine that! The impertinence!) There is nothing abusive about them choosing to do what they are within their rights to do. Just because they didn’t do what I wanted does not mean they have abused me.
Similarly, you may want to do something in the church that your pastor, vicar or elders determine is not appropriate (for any number of reasons). That, similarly, is not abuse. There are any number of reasons why your suggestion might not be adopted. But just because they say ‘no’ to your idea does not mean they are abusively trying to control you. They are just not doing something that you would prefer they do. That is not abuse.

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Prayers that are not offered in and through Christ are like undelivered letters. They remain unread, unopened, and most significantly, unheeded. Anyone who has not put their faith in Jesus and approached God through him does not have access to him. Your prayers are undelivered, landing in God’s infinite dead-letter office. The Bible is very clear on this point. ‘There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5). 

We have been going through Hebrews recently in church. The key headline from Sunday’s sermon was that, in Christ, we can have real confidence before the judgement seat of God. We can access God confidently through the Lord Jesus.
One of the side points I made in that sermon – in passing and it was not in my notes – was that unbelievers have no right of access. Specifically, I noted that God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers. That is to say, if you do not trust in Jesus, God does not hear your prayers.
Of course, by that, I don’t mean God cannot hear the words coming out of people’s mouths or the thoughts in their heads. Of course he knows and hears those things. He knows and hears everything. So, in the sense that he knows when unbelievers are praying and knows exactly why they are praying and what they want, God hears their prayers in that sense.
But what I mean is that God does not grant them a hearing.
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As Evangelicals, we like to think we’re all about telling people about Jesus. But I wonder if many people would view Evangelicals as very “active” and not much more. The truth is, we are often very busy. But the real question is, do we actually tell people about the Lord Jesus?

Churches can be very busy places. My Sunday, these days, are pretty busy. Then we have a bunch of stuff on in the week. English Classes, Food Club, Dialogue Evening, Homeless drop-in, Lego club. There’s stuff happening most days at the church building. On top of all that, we are trying to encourage people to be involved in stuff in the community too as well as carving out the time to hang out together and do softer kinds of discipleship.
As you think about your own church, I am sure you can think of various things you are doing too. Some things that aim to build up believers, other things that aim to reach unbelievers. But as you think of all those things, it bears asking a question: do you actually tell people about Jesus? It might sound like a stupid question. Surely, if we’re anything, we’re all about telling people about Jesus, aren’t we? Certainly, that’s what we like to think about ourselves.
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What we need as a church is people who are free to hang out with other believers. We need people who are able to speak about Jesus in the ordinary everyday bits of life. We need people whose hands are not full of lots of formal ministry but whose timetables are free and flexible to simply read the Bible and chat with people about Jesus. Who are free to read some books with people and then meet up to chew them over. It sounds like a non-job, but it is really quite important.

In areas like mine, there are not a right lot of Christians about. We are in the middle of a majority Muslim area of town and in a town that is not replete with Christians at any rate. Which means what we are most interested in here is not attracting Christians who aren’t here, but reaching the lost with the gospel.
Knowing that we are seeking to reach the lost, we must also think how we will reach them. It may come as a surprise to some, but unbelievers don’t tend to just wander into churches on Sunday. If we’re going to reach the lost in our community, we’re going to have to either go to them or create the kind of spaces they will want to come into.
One of the ways we do that is by meeting needs. So, we provide things like English Classes and a Food Club as a place for people to come in. There is a need and we are happy to meet it in order to put ourselves in contact with unbelievers. We similarly create other spaces, like our Dialogue Evening, where we can meet with local Muslims and discuss the differences of our faith. Again, these are means of creating the kind of spaces – that do not typically exist in our town – where Christians and Muslims, believer and unbeliever, can spend time together.
It similarly means that we have to think carefully about how we will disciple people in the faith. Most of our members do not come from well taught, brilliant Christian backgrounds.
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