Prayer is a serious business for in prayer we come before the King—we speak to God, commune with God, rely upon God. We submit our wills to God and entreat him for what he can grant, what he can provide, what he can accomplish. And though we come freely and confidently, we dare not approach disrespectfully. To guard against disrespect we should be willing and eager to be the means God uses to answer the prayers we have made, whenever that is possible. We should always be willing to labor not just in prayer, but to see our prayers answered.

God invites us to pray, directs us to pray, commands us to pray. He even assumes we will pray, for when his followers ask him for instruction, he prefaces his teaching with “when you pray,” not “if you pray.” The Bible assures us we have been given bold, confident access to God through our faith in Jesus Christ. Petitioning the King is one of the great privileges of his children, so that we can at any time draw near to God’s throne to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
We can pray in all circumstances, for no condition is too dire. We can pray about all matters, for no petition is too small. We can pray alone or in a crowd, at great length or in a single sentence. We can pray while broken by sorrow or lifted by worship, while experiencing the depths or grief or the heights of joy. But whenever and however we pray, we must take care that we do not make light of so great a privilege.
With this in mind, we must ensure we never approach God disrespectfully or entreat him frivolously. God is not a genie who must grant our wishes once summoned, not a servant who must do our bidding once commanded. Prayer is not a kind of talisman we can invoke at a whim or a kind of totem to grant us supernatural powers. Rather, it is, most simply, appealing to God that his will would be done on earth even as it is already done in heaven.
One way to guard ourselves against flippancy is to ensure we do not pray any petition for which we are unwilling to act. True faith and true submission is not praying and wishing, not praying and hoping, not praying and sitting, but rather, praying and acting.
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There are to be certain characteristics of those within Christ’s Kingdom, and those characteristics stand in stark contrast to the way the world operates in its rebellion against God. Unlike the kingdoms of this world, Christ’s Kingdom does not advance through top-down enforcement, but bottom-up servitude. Christians, the subjects of Christ’s Kingdom, don’t lord over others, but serve from beneath.

Most of us are familiar with the Lord’s Prayer. If we didn’t learn it at school or recite it at church, we’ve undoubtedly heard it in popular films. But there is a danger with being familiar with a thing. Oftentimes, familiarity can be mistaken for understanding. We might be able to say, “Thy Kingdom come,” but that’s not the same thing as being able to explain what that really means or how it’s actually achieved.
The coming of Christ’s Kingdom ought to be the hope and prayer of every Christian. We want God’s will to be done on earth, just as it is in heaven. But how does that happen? How does the Kingdom of Heaven advance on earth? Is it through the power of military conquest? Are we to subdue Christ’s enemies with threats, force, and violence? Or is it achieved another way?
While we are commanded to pray for the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom here on earth, we are never instructed to further that Kingdom with the means through which the kings and rulers of this world advance their own. In fact, the exact opposite is the case.

When the mother of James and John attempted to secure for her sons the second and third most powerful positions in Christ’s Kingdom, Matthew tells us that the other disciples became indignant (Matt. 20:24). So, Jesus gathered them together and informed them that they had the entire system backwards. They weren’t reflecting the nature of Christ’s Kingdom, but rather, that of the non-Christian world.

Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:25-28
There are to be certain characteristics of those within Christ’s Kingdom, and those characteristics stand in stark contrast to the way the world operates in its rebellion against God. Unlike the kingdoms of this world, Christ’s Kingdom does not advance through top-down enforcement, but bottom-up servitude. Christians, the subjects of Christ’s Kingdom, don’t lord over others, but serve from beneath.
In other words, the Kingdom of God does not advance through threats of physical violence. We’re not here talking about self-defence (Ex. 22:2-3), a just war (Ex. 15:3), or the civil authority’s responsibility to wield the sword in restraining evil (Rom. 13:3-4), but whether the church — or specifically, the Christian — grows the kingdom at the edge of a sword.
Now, it’s important at this point that we don’t understand this to mean passivism, or defeatism, or retreatism. This is the repugnant and unbiblical approach of cowards. Christians are “more than conquerors” and as such, we have no business waving the white flag (Rom. 8:37). We don’t forfeit the battle. We don’t flee the fight. Instead, we take up arms, just as the Holy Spirit commands us to.
In Ephesians 6, the Apostle Paul urges Christians to dress for battle, by putting on the “whole armour of God.” We are to do this, not to fight against other people, but in order to withstand the “schemes of the devil.”
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Ephesians 6:12
For the Apostle, our chief enemy is spiritual, and as such, our armour ought to be the kind that can withstand his assaults. Paul tells us in the verses that follow, what this “armour of God” looks like.
“Stand, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation…”
Ephesians 6:14-17a
The subjects of Christ’s Kingdom have an obligation to dress for warfare, the most deadly and effective kind.

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Written by Zoe S. Erler |
Friday, May 5, 2023
Cameron’s ties to Ridge Haven were always a given, having been enlisted as a high schooler to help with everything from food service to housekeeping, starting the summer of 2009 when his dad Wallace was hired as executive director. What wasn’t a given was his love for the camp, which has grown from serving about 400 kids a summer in 2009 to a two-location operation serving more than 13,000 campers year-round today.

For a self-proclaimed introvert, Cameron Anderson might have the most extroverted job on the planet. As the newly-installed executive director of Ridge Haven Camp, Conference and Retreat Center, he spends nearly 100% of his waking hours with people, whether it’s checking with camp staff, visiting a construction project, sitting down to lunch with campers in the dining hall, or playing with his two daughters.
Cameron’s ties to Ridge Haven were always a given, having been enlisted as a high schooler to help with everything from food service to housekeeping, starting the summer of 2009 when his dad Wallace was hired as executive director. What wasn’t a given was his love for the camp, which has grown from serving about 400 kids a summer in 2009 to a two-location operation serving more than 13,000 campers year-round today.
“I knew he was the best person for the job [when I saw how] he mentored the staff, summer staff, high school students … he just wants these kids to have a life of ministry, whether lay or not,” says Wallace.
A No Brainer
In 2019, Wallace, a hemophiliac, had a health scare and told the board of Ridge Haven that it was time to begin the search process to identify his replacement. The board began interviewing candidates.
Meanwhile, Cameron, who had graduated from Erskine Theological Seminary and was freshly ordained as a teaching elder in the PCA, moved from Georgia back to North Carolina with his wife Jeanna to come on staff as the camp’s ministry director. Wallace and others noticed that in addition to tending to operations, bookkeeping, and general finance, Cameron was intentional about cultivating the spiritual lives of other staff members and the summer college counselors.
“Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a mentor,” Wallace half jokes about himself. “I was once told when I was in seminary, the best thing you can do is be a church planter, go in and plant a church for three years, and then leave.”
Cameron, on the other hand, seemed to thrive in the areas in which his father had struggled.
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