In prayer, the motives and desires of my fellow brothers and sisters are on display. I gain insight into the deep wells of their faith. I see their heart of compassion. I hear their love for the lost. I discern their affection for Christ. I perceive their steadfast faith. We gain understanding of one another, and that understanding is critical for genuine, durable love.

Every believer desires spiritual intimacy with other believers. We may call it fellowship, community, or doing life together. God didn’t make us to be lone rangers. He saved us into the church. He called us out of the kingdom of darkness and into local expressions of the body of Christ.
And yet, spiritual community is still hard to come by. It doesn’t happen by accident. It comes as a gift from God, and he usually gives it as we intentionally cultivate Christian affection and mutual understanding. So, how might we begin cultivating this kind of life together?
One proven way to this kind of life together is that we pray together. What better way to be more united with fellow believers than to gather and bare our hearts before the throne of God together? What an opportunity and privilege! We get to go to him in prayer.
Shared Prayer Transforms Churches
Shared experiences — a concert, a vacation, an adventure — create a bond. Those memories often create deeper, more enduring affection. They can be a relational glue that holds people together. Dates and vacations with my wife have reinforced our marriage for times when life gets hard. These shared memories create tenderness, understanding, and love. In the church, similar kinds of shared life can lead to mutual appreciation, unity, and trust. I love my fellow elders more when we have endured trials together, fighting side by side in spiritual battle.
Gathered prayer can be that shared experience in a church. I’m not advocating for any particular program or event, but for prayer (formal and informal) to fill your church and bind you together. You might think of these prayer times as the furnace room of the church. Heat and warmth radiate out when God’s people gather together to pray. I’ve seen firsthand how this shared dependence on God transforms the ethos and culture of churches.
Each Sunday morning in our church, a small group gathers in the prayer room. Service will not start for another 45 minutes, but communion with the Lord has begun. We gather to call upon God to work for his glory and purposes. We sing together of his grace revealed in Christ. We lay hands on the preacher and ask for God’s word to run. We lift up our suffering saints, pleading that they would find comfort. We pray for our visitors and for our people, for our neighborhoods and for the nations. We cry out for mercy, and we confess our sins. It’s a holy moment. No fanfare, no fireworks, but again and again, we see God come, meet us, and answer our prayers.
These times of prayer together create Christlike affection for one another.
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The question for those engaged in ministry is whether we ourselves have learned Christ as Paul describes, and can then teach others the grace of God in such a way that leads to sanctification in those who have faith in Christ Jesus. Paul tells Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:16).

The matter of sanctification can be simply stated. It has been defined as “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness” (WSC 35). The manner in which this work progresses in a person’s life, however, is more difficult to fathom. This is evident in Paul’s description of his own experience: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). With consternation he continues, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (v. 19). He questions with deep conviction, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (v. 24), yet concludes with confidence, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25).
While the doctrine of sanctification may be simply stated, understanding our personal experience as we continue to struggle with sin is another matter. And personal confusion in our experience may cloud our comprehension of the doctrine itself.
Perplexity concerning sanctification is not surprising in part because it is not new. Historically, the word mystery has been commonly used. The seventeenth-century pastor Walter Marshall wrote a treatise, stemming in part from his own personal struggle, entitled The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, taken from Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 3:16, “Great is the mystery of godliness.” Another well-known pastor-theologian from the seventeenth century, John Owen, repeatedly uses the word mystery in speaking of sanctification in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, claiming, “The work itself, as hath been before declared at large, is secret and mysterious.” Later, he confesses: “The sense of what the Scripture proposeth, what I believe, and what I desire an experience of, that I shall endeavor to declare. But as we are not in this life perfect in the duties of holiness, no more are we in the knowledge of its nature.”
Despite these difficulties, Marshall and Owen, along with many other Reformed pastors and theologians, have labored to explain the pattern of sanctification and its application as taught in Scripture. In my experience, however, those entering ministry speak with greater clarity about the doctrine of justification than they do sanctification. While confident concerning the necessity of Christ’s death and resurrection for pardon of sin, there may be unease in describing the efficacy of the same for our being conformed to the image of Christ through the work of the Spirit. The question is whether Scripture teaches a clearer pattern of sanctification than we seem able to articulate.
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True humility directs our desires forward to Christ. All our ambitions are directed towards him. All our plans are in service of his kingdom, and his glory. We expect great things from, and attempt great things for, Jesus Christ, whose name is higher than any other name (Heb. 1:4). If humility is guardrail, gasoline, and governor, then Christ is the goal. We aspire to be only unworthy servants, thrilled with the privilege to simply enter into the joy of our master (Lk. 17:10; Matt. 25:23).

I love humility, which is why I advocate so loudly for ambition.
Not the narcissistic variety you see in sports, politics, and Hollywood, though. If  you observe a man whose ego balloons into the stratosphere, pray for them. They are naked and not ashamed.
Then look down, and double check your own distance from the ground. After all, it takes one to know one.
No, that’s not the kind of ambition I’m talking about. I’m talking about godly ambition. The kind that gains velocity because it’s hedged in by humility. For a leader to “expect great things from God and attempt great things for God,”[1] in William Carey-like fashion, God must be the enthralling object of our aspiration. True humility does not smother ambition in the name of modesty. Rather, true humility snuffs out love of self with the superior affection for a greater glory — specifically, God’s glory.
True Humility Guides Desire
Laziness often masquerades as meekness, but true humility guides — and even fuels — desire.
We are meant to see ourselves as “[God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). But we often get this backward in our churches. “Humility” provides cover for all kinds of sloth, ambivalence, and self-protection. If ambition is a vice, then indolence is a virtue, and the less-aspiring-one ends up more highly praised. “My, look at what a fine Christian specimen he is. He’s so modest that he reaches for nothing, aspires to nothing, and risks nothing!”
Blessed are the meek. . . . for they shall, what, sit on their hands?
Those who assume an anti-aspirational “modesty” that does not desire great things for God often use humility as a pretext. This is not the kind of humility God wants. The one who buries their talent to protect themselves from risk may find the Master condemning rather than celebrating their decision (see Matt 25:26).
Seeing Through Audacity
Another angle. Sometimes we encourage low aspirations not because we love humility but because we fear ambition. We prioritize eradicating inflated self-expectations above pastoring people toward a more glorious goal. I say, give me the young man who comes up after I preach, telling me he longs to do it better than me! I can smile and say, “You set the bar too low,” knowing God is fully competent to crush his pride. My job is to see beyond the blip of his immaturity and put a superior affection on his radar. I want to engage his longing for significance until he hears the gospel “ping!”, sets his significance aside and fixes a course for God’s greater glory.
If we will look beyond the audacity of young people, we may discover the future of the church.
Paradoxically, the same is true of their ambivalence.
Seeing Through Ambivalence
The first time I met the man who would succeed me in the church where I pastored for almost 3 decades, he was an unbeliever. Moreover, he was asleep in the front row. . . . while I was preaching. But God whacked him good with a conversion that eventually transformed his entire personality. He went from being bored by God’s Bride to wanting to “spend and be spent” in the service of her care. That church is still planting churches under his leadership.
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