Promises: God Hears Your Prayers
The promise of God to hear prayers is for all those who come confessing their sins and seeking divine pardon in and through Christ alone, who made atonement for our sins on Calvary’s tree where He hung despised and rejected for our sakes.
A few years back, there was a clever trend afoot that brought light amusement to some and great annoyance to others. Friends and family members would record a voicemail greeting that began with a cheery “hello,” only to pause for a few seconds before launching into the rest of the greeting, “I can’t come to the phone right now.” That brief interlude was just long enough to prompt many of us – myself included – to launch into conversation. Having been greeted by a familiar voice, you could reasonably assume to be speaking with (and heard by) your loved one on the other end of the call. But instead you had fallen prey to cheap trickery. What few words passed your lips dissipated in futility, left unheard like the crash of a tree in an uninhabited rainforest. The promise of a friendly hearing was broken as the rest of the voicemail greeting bombarded your unsuspecting ears. With thanks to God and confidence in His promises, we can be grateful that such is never the case when we call upon His Name in prayer.
God in His Word speaks of an unbreakable promise of what we might call “a friendly hearing” at His throne of grace. Christians in the midst of spiritual warfare are counseled, “draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (Jas. 4:8). This assurance of God’s readiness to commune with us in our acts of devotion flows out of the very nature and character of God, whom David addresses with the salutation, “O You who hear prayer” (Ps. 65:2). We might render David’s words as “O Hearer of Prayer” or “O Prayer-Hearer.” This is rightly to be regarded as a divine title, for it is our Triune God who guides us in prayer by the Spirit, perfects our prayers in and through Christ, and receives – or hears – our prayers before the Father’s throne. He promises to hear the prayers of His people, for He cannot deny Himself.
However, God’s Word does confront us with solemn warnings and threats against impenitent prayer. Christ cautioned His disciples not to pray like the hypocrites do, for social advancement and the esteem of men (Matt. 6:5). Neither should we pray like heathens, with vain multiplication of words and phrases (Matt. 6:7), divorced from any kind of intelligible meaning or spiritual efficacy. To call upon the Name of the Lord as a godless hypocrite or as a superstitious unbeliever is powerless. This sobering reality finds expression in Job’s rhetorical questions, “What is the hope of the godless (KJV: hypocrite) when he is cut off, when God requires his life? Will God hear his cry when distress comes upon him? Will he take delight in the Almighty? Will he call on God at all times?” (Job 27:8-10).
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How to Teach Your Kids to Spot A False Gospel
As parents, we know that most ideas are caught, not taught. It’s useless to teach our kids all the right things if we don’t embody those ideas ourselves. This means repenting when we miss the mark. It means reading the Bible and praying with them. And just like my daughter will never again fall for imposter waffles, our kids won’t settle for false gospels because they will be so well acquainted with the real thing.
When my daughter was young, I would make quinoa, oatmeal, and flax seed “waffles,” and she loved them. It wasn’t until we were visiting family in California that she experienced the hotel breakfast bar and loudly exclaimed, “Mom, these waffles are so much BETTER THAN YOURS.” The jig was up. The dry and grainy imposter waffles would no longer be tolerated. Now she had tasted the real thing and would never again be fooled by a counterfeit.
Likewise, one of the most effective ways to teach our kids to detect a false gospel is to be sure they are well acquainted with the real thing. That way, when they come across a false version of Christianity, they will recognize it immediately. Here are some ways we can teach our kids to spot a false gospel:
Teach Them to Love Truth
One of the most common ways Christian young people are tricked into bad ideas is through the vehicle of relativism. Relativism is the belief that absolute truth doesn’t exist or can’t be known. “What’s true for you is true for you” or “There is no truth” are common expressions lobbed at Christians to shut down their ideas and make them feel judgmental for simply claiming to know the truth.
However, Christianity is a belief system that stands or falls based on truth being absolute. God either exists, or he doesn’t. Jesus was resurrected, or he wasn’t. Jesus actually claimed to be Truth itself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The stakes are that high!
Teaching our kids to base their beliefs on what is true rather than what feels right will help keep them from walking away when their faith no longer “gives them the feels.”
Teach Them to be Biblically Literate
From the beginning, false ideas about God were being passed off as “Christian.” False teachers often twisted Scripture to trick Jesus’ followers into believing their teachings. Even today, some of the most deceptive ideas are the ones marketed as “biblical.”
The only way to know if an idea is biblical or not is to know what the Bible says.
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Rev. Cotton Mather and the 18th-Century Battle Over Smallpox Inoculation
It is unknown how many people died of smallpox in the 3,000 years it has likely infected humans, but it has been estimated in the 20th century alone to have killed more than 300 million people. How do you fight something that terrible and seemingly unstoppable? In hindsight, the answer seems pretty straightforward: Start with a basic knowledge of the principles of immunity.
Smallpox constituted one of the worst of viral plagues experienced by humanity, and it was indeed a terrible disease for many who contracted it. After an incubation period of 7-19 days, those infected experienced an initial fever accompanied by body aches for another 2-4 days. Sores began to form in the mouth, then spread to the face, extremities, and the whole body within 4 days, and filled with liquid and pus. In people that survived this viral onslaught, their sores began to crust over, forming scabs that could result in scarring for life. It is unknown how many people died of smallpox in the 3,000 years it has likely infected humans, but it has been estimated in the 20th century alone to have killed more than 300 million people.
How do you fight something that terrible and seemingly unstoppable? In hindsight, the answer seems pretty straightforward: Start with a basic knowledge of the principles of immunity. For centuries, people understood that individuals who acquired many diseases become immune to getting them again, but what they didn’t understand is that immunity could be induced in order to protect individuals who never had the disease.
This began to change, possibly in the 16th century, when the technique of variolation, derived from the Latin name for the virus, Variola (meaning “spotted”), began to be adopted in the west (its origin is unknown). With variolation, scabs of smallpox sufferers were ground up and dried, then exposed to naive (i.e. never infected) individuals by rubbing on the skin or by small circular needle perforations on the back of the hand, or in some cases, sniffed into the nose or on cotton placed into one nostril.
Those that received the inoculation mostly experienced a mild form of disease, with a transient fever and a small number of pustules at the site of inoculation, and upon recovery were ‘forever free from fear of contagion’, as Boston minister Cotton Mather wrote around 1714, after being convinced by his African slave, who had been variolated. The procedure was not without risks; variolated individuals were still contagious, and it was estimated that 1-3 out of one hundred died from a more severe form of the disease due to the inoculation. However, this was a substantial improvement over the maximum 30% mortality of natural infection, and the procedure gained acceptance and was employed in England by the early 18th century.
Yet variolation was still treated with suspicion and hostility in much of the rest of Europe, as mentioned by Voltaire in his Philosophical Letters, published in 1734:
It is inadvertently affirmed in the Christian countries of Europe that the English are fools and madmen. Fools, because they give their children the small-pox to prevent their catching it; and madmen, because they wantonly communicate a certain and dreadful distemper to their children, merely to prevent an uncertain evil. The English, on the other side, call the rest of the Europeans cowardly and unnatural. Cowardly, because they are afraid of putting their children to a little pain; unnatural, because they expose them to die one time or other of the small-pox.
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The Glorious Equalities & Inequalities of Heaven – Part 1
All of us will experience fullness of joy, and pleasures forever more (Psalm 16:11), these pleasures are not going to be absolutely identical for all. There is an equality under grace (we are all sinners justified and saved by grace and nothing we receive will be because anyone can boast in themselves), but that equality does not mean uniformity.
Earlier this year, we spent some time as a church thinking about what happens to us when we die. We thought about the final hope of Jesus’ resurrected, glorified people in the new heaven and earth. Theologians call this the ‘eternal state’.
But is this eternal state identical for every individual or is their variation in the degrees of glory and happiness we will each know? I think it’s a bit of both.
What we all receive
Generally speaking, all believers will receive the joy of seeing God face to face, of being with Jesus, and being like him (1 John 3). There will be fullness of joy for all of God’s people. James speaks of a crown that believers receive, as the reward of eternal life (James 1:12). This is the inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you… i.e. all believers (1 Peter 1:4). Not one single person in heaven will have any flicker of unhappiness, in God’s presence.
This equality of joy fits in with the doctrines we know and love well: of justification and blessing from God on the basis of faith alone, in the work of Christ alone, by grace alone. This is the reward we have by faith in the work of Christ, earned by him. Paul teaches us that any gifts we receive from God can never be earned: ‘By works of the Law, no human being is justified in his sight’ (Romans 3:20). So, receiving these things in heaven, being in God’s presence isn’t grounded on our obedience. Believers will stand in heaven and be in the new creation, accepted, loved, forgiven, justified on the basis of Christ’s work. Romans 5:19 says, ‘by the one man’s obedience the many will be counted righteous.’ Jesus will say to all of his people “come and enter into the joy of your master” (Matt 25:23).
We love the equality of grace, that we all receive these things… by faith.
What we receive in different degrees
The danger though, is that we overextend the doctrines of faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone…
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