Prayer and Gossip?
Written by J. V. Fesko |
Thursday, August 24, 2023
All too often public prayers are not a genuine venue for offering up our desires and needs before our covenant Lord but a platform for gossip. A good rule of thumb is, if you’re praying for someone, how might your prayer change if they were sitting next to you?
As a pastor I always did my best to encourage my congregation to pray. Prayer is, I believe, one of the lesser-attended subjective means of grace. I suspect that when times get tough people pray, but I often wonder that when times are good do they pray as much? Therefore, I took every opportunity to have people pray. I was really excited when the women of the church wanted to gather on a regular basis for prayer on Saturday mornings, so I certainly encouraged this activity. But I quickly found out that sometimes prayer is really a thin disguise for gossip.
It’s one thing to pour our soul out privately in prayer before our heavenly Father. I can be freest when it’s just me in my “prayer closet.” I can complain, celebrate, wrestle, and lay my soul bare. But the moment that I pray in public, there are certain responsibilities I have. I may think and suspect a lot of things about many people and circumstances, but that is not license for me to voice them publicly, and especially in prayer.
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Already But Not Yet
From 10/21-7/22, our now 43-year-old son Jordan went through great adversities. He responded to ongoing wicked trauma on many fronts by trying to take his life three times. We felt the power of that vortex too. Once, in Mexico, he jumped from a tower, broke his back and smashed his feet. His back required 8-hour surgery. It is remarkable he can walk on his shattered feet. After we exhausted mental health resources in Montana, friends recommended Menninger Clinic in Houston. Menninger charged $50,000 to walk in the door. God provided.
Stephen King’s character, Ted Brautigan, tells youthful Bobby Garfield, “When you’re young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you’re living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been. Then we grow up, and our hearts break in two.” (“Hearts in Atlantis”)
That breaking comes in many ways. Because of sin’s onset, God “subjected” (creation) “to futility”…and placed it in “slavery to corruption.” (Romans 8:20, 21) Friend, who knows when futility and corruption will manifest themselves?
For example, consider “Sam”, a sprightly older man in his late 70’s. We met after a lecture regarding the care of words. Our conversation ran deep.
As an infant, Sam simultaneously contracted two serious diseases. The doctor, called to Sam’s parent’s farmhouse, held out no hope. Already having lost other children to disease, Sam’s Mother with deep groaning poured out her soul in prayer like Hannah (1 Samuel 1: 10-17).
Mercy, mercy! God spared Sam’s life. Like Hannah in the Bible, Sam’s Mother encouraged Sam to go into the ministry. And he did.
Sam and his wife, “Sarah”, raised six children. And there were challenges with churches – he even had the sad duty of closing one.
Sam’s greatest challenge came after the children had left. Something broke in Sarah. She became dangerous. On numerous occasions, she tried to take Sam’s life. Finally, a daughter helped him commit Sarah to a mental hospital.
Once, after Sam visited Sarah, a doctor pulled him aside saying: “Sam, following your visits, it takes days for your wife to settle down. For her well-being and ours, we ask you not to visit your wife.”
What a story!
I asked Sam: “What good has God been in all of this?”
Sam, who had thought much about life, with unwavering voice replied: “God’s love is incorruptible.”
Friend, “incorruptible” leads us to the majestic New Testament book, Ephesians. Paul and the Holy Spirit conspire to make “incorruptible” the last word – the word that continues to ring in our ears and dominate our thoughts.
“Incorruptible” had that effect on me.
Traveling from Helena to preach Sunday, August 27, 2023, for a 4:00 service in Laurel, MT (3+ hours away), I felt an urge – by the Holy Spirit? – to stop and worship at dynamic Trailhead Christian Fellowship – north of Townsend.
Although I walked in late, that unexpected stop paid rich dividends.
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The Blessedness of Beholding the Lord in Glory
They will see His face (Rev. 22:4).
As the Scripture sets before believers our enduring hope, the saints hear of the day when we shall see “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Specifically, when Christ appears, “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). John Owen once asked, “To whom is it not a matter of rejoicing, that with the same eyes with which they see the tokens and signs of him in the sacrament of the supper, they shall behold himself immediately in his own person?” He then adds “in the immediate beholding of the person of Christ, we shall see a glory in it a thousand times above what we can here conceive.”
Believers have been longing for such a sight (Job 19:26), yearning to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27:4). And while we have some faint acquaintance with Christ’s glory now by faith, a total transformation in us, changed from perishable to imperishable (1 Cor. 15:51–52), is necessary to see His unveiled glory. It is when we are like Him that we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Thus, the day will come when the obstacle to our glorified seeing, the darkness of our sin, the weakness of our frame, shall be removed. Then there will be no hindrance to beholding His glory. This sight is, as Jonathan Edwards said, “the chief bliss of heaven.” And what will such a sight produce in believers? What shall be some of the blessings of beholding the Lord?
It will produce at least five things. First, the sight will produce joy. In Psalm 16, David writes, “In your presence there is fullness of joy [literally “joys”—it is so abundant this joy cannot be spoken of in the singular]; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). The believer shall never have a languishing, sorrowful soul or a miserable body again. There will be no more drooping heads in present hardships. All trouble will be gone, and that will thrill our souls. However, the greatest joy will be found in uninterrupted communion with the Lord. We shall truly rejoice in Him. Sin will no longer darken our appreciation of His person and works. Thus, we will delight in our God like never before.
Second, this sight will produce satisfaction. During our days on earth, we found Solomon’s testimony to be true. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Eccl. 1:8). We grow weary with everything. We crave novelty and variety. That craving gets us in trouble because, at times, we tire even of God’s good gifts due to our inward corruption. Nothing fills the restlessness in us. And while Augustine was right to say, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,” even as believers we cannot sustain focus upon our Lord. We grow dissatisfied and distracted because of sin. But that is not how it will be in glory.
In Psalm 17, David is praying for deliverance from the wicked and their violence. He then contrasts his hope with that of worldlings “whose portion is in this life” (Ps. 17:14). Their belly is filled with treasure. They are satisfied with children and leaving their abundance to their infants. But not David. He wants more than what this cursed world, even in its blessings, can offer.
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Seven “Subspecies” of Toxic Wildlife in the Human Kingdom
They come in varieties. Further, while some toxic people seem to have mastered holistically the dark art of toxicity, most toxic people are not quite so skilled; they have mastered selected aspects of toxicity and combined them with their natural personalities. Thus, here we profile seven notable subspecies who can be spotted on the terrain of our lives.
Author Robert Tew once wrote, “Don’t let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.” And he’s right; his modern proverb expresses well the way Jesus and other biblical exemplars such as Nehemiah treated toxic people. Thus, the first installment of this series focused briefly on the life of Jesus and revealed that Jesus walked away from toxic people. He refused to entrust himself to people who could not be trusted.
So if, like Jesus, we determine to walk away when necessary, we must be able to identify who is toxic to us and who is not. After all, we are not omniscient as Jesus was. Yet, there are some clear and identifiable signs of toxicity. Indeed, in the last installment, we enumerated ten signs that a given person behaving in a toxic manner toward us. Building on that post, this installment will make an analogy between toxic people and exotic species of wildlife. We will draw upon the ten signs from the last post, and for amusement’s sake, will compare each type of toxic profile to a “subspecies” of wildlife.
Not every subspecies of toxic wildlife is created equally. They come in varieties. Further, while some toxic people seem to have mastered holistically the dark art of toxicity, most toxic people are not quite so skilled; they have mastered selected aspects of toxicity and combined them with their natural personalities. Thus, here we profile seven notable subspecies who can be spotted on the terrain of our lives:
1. The Palavering Peacock: Have you ever met somebody who manages to turn any conversation toward himself or herself, sucking any available “air” out of the room? And if he is unable to get people to talk him or his chosen topic, he gets bored with the conversation and walks away? If so, you’ve encountered a distinctive sub-species of TP—the Palavering Peacock. These conversational hijackers prefer to feed on Large Group Lillies and Small Group Spruce, although when starved they have been known to graze on Single Person Sunflowers.
2. The Micromanaging Malapert: Do you know somebody who wants to control everybody and everything around them, even down to the small stuff? Somebody who suffocates you? If so, you have probably gotten a whiff or two of these control freaks—the Micromanaging Malapert—a TP sub-species whose preferred habitat is the Passive Person Plains but who is known to migrate quickly toward prey in any environment.
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