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Praying for Someone to be Saved
I’m looking forward to this weekend with everyone. Last year at the prayer weekend I gave out a booklet with some helps for praying. I’ll give out one again this year, and I wanted to post some of the contents here to help get prayer juices flowing.
Here’s a list I put together a few years ago of scriptures which help us pray for those in our lives who don’t yet know the Lord.
How to Pray for Someone to Be Saved (In no particular order…)
Ask God to have mercy on them
Romans 9:10
So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
Titus 3:5-7
…not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Ask God to turn them to Himself
Psalm 80:3
Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
Deuteronomy 30:10
…if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Pray for the person to believe the gospel
Acts 11:21
And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.
Ask God to open their heart
Acts 16:14
Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul.
Ask God to remove the veil that hides Christ from them
2 Corinthians 3:16
…when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Ask God to reveal Himself to the person
Galatians 1:15-16
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood,
Luke 10:22
All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
Ask God to open their eyes
Psalm 146:8
The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; The LORD raises those who are bowed down; The LORD loves the righteous.
Acts 26:18
…I now send you, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
John 9:39
And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”
Ask God to give them an inner vision of Christ’s Glory
2 Corinthians 4:1-6
Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Pray for them to receive Jesus
John 1:12-13
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Ask God to awaken them spiritually
Ephesians 5:14
…”Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”
Ask God to make them alive, that they would be born again.
Ephesians 2:4-5
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
James 1:18
Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
Pray for them to receive Jesus
John 1:12-13
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Ask God to turn them to Himself
Psalm 80:3
Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.
Deuteronomy 30:10
…if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Ask God to awaken them spiritually
Ephesians 5:14
…”Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”
Notes from Last Night
Last night we finished our trip through 1 Peter. The notes are sparse, but here they are:
4:12-19 Suffering with future hope, and present blessing
4:12
Becoming a Christian redefines what we see as normal. (see 4:4)
4:13
We see suffering in light of the future blessing it testifies to. (see also v. 17-19.) Undeserved suffering for Christ is a sign that we will be delivered from His wrath in the future, because of our true union with Christ. Suffering for Christ now is an evidence that we’ll escape suffering forever in the future with Him.
4:14
We experience suffering differently in the present, because we go through it with God. In a special way, the Holy Spirit is “upon” us when we suffer for Christ (v.15).
4:17
The final judgment will separate those who believe and those who do not. In a way, persecution of Christians operates as the beginning of that process–it separates those who truly believe from those who do not.
5:1-14 Some Last words to the community
5:1-5 Relationships in the church
5:2
Elders: Submitting to the Chief shepherd by willingly participating in His work
5:5
(Younger) Non-Elders: Submitting to the Elders
5:6
All: Submitting to one another and God.
5:6-7
We humble ourselves under circumstances, because it is under God.
5:8
Toward God– Humble Submission and relational heart sharing
5:9
Toward Satan –Watchful vigilance and resistance
Notice the contrast–God is caring for you; Satan is seeking to devour.
Some reasons to read Revelation
Richard Bauckham gives some great perspective on what reading the Book of Revelation did for its first readers–and what it can do for us:
“John is taken up into heaven in order to see the world from the heavenly perspective. He is given a glimpse behind the scenes of history so that he can see what is really going on in his readers’ world. He is also transported in vision into the final future, so that he can see the present from the perspective of God’s final purpose for the world. The effect is to open his readers’ world to transcendence. The symbolic world they enter imaginatively in the visions of the book is their own day-to-day world seen from God’s heavenly perspective. They are given an alternative to the world as constructed by the dominant ideological perspective of their culture, the Roman imperial view of the world. The visionary imagery has the effect of purging their imagination of ways of seeing their world derived from the dominant ideology, reshaping their perception of the world by means of alternative images, and so helping them bear witness to God’s truth in the context in which they actually live. By re-visioning the world from the heavenly perspective, they are enabled to resist the dominant vision of the world, and to live for God and his kingdom rather than for the beast and his kingdom. The clash of perspectives—heavenly and earthly, God’s and the beast’s—on reality is thematized in Revelation by constant reference to truth and deceit. The visions enable God’s people to see the truth of God, to see through the lies of the beast, and so to witness to God in the world.”
More thoughts on the clarity of scripture
Last week I highlighted a book dealing with the idea that the Christian scriptures are essentially understandable documents. Here’s another way to think about the issue, from John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Word of God.
God is fully in control of his communications to human beings. When he intends to communicate with a human being, he is always able to do it successfully. But another name for successful communication is clarity. An unclear word is one that does not succeed, that fails to accomplish its purpose. But we know that God’s word always accomplishes its purpose (Isa. 55:10-11). Therefore, his word is always clear…
Scripture is always clear enough for us to carry out our present responsibilities before God. It is clear enough for a six-year-old to understand what God expects of him. It is also clear enough for a mature theologian to understand what God expects of him. But the clarity of Scripture, (as we saw under the lordship attribute of control) is person-relative, person-specific. Scripture is not exhaustively clear to anyone. It is not clear enough to satisfy anyone who merely wants to gain a speculative knowledge of divine things. It is, rather, morally sufficient, practically sufficient, sufficient for each person to know what God desires of him.
Everyone, Everywhere.
Something to remember as you go to work or school today with non-believers:
We need to take seriously the claim of Romans 1:18–25 that everyone everywhere, in every culture, knows God but suppresses the knowledge.
A pagan culture cooperates in the suppression by supplying reasons and practices and comfortable social circumstances in which to worship false gods, or spirits in the trees. Or in pantheism people talk about a nameless “all” that they allege to be the ground of all existence. Counterfeit religion takes many forms.
But counterfeits are counterfeits of the true.
And they never succeed thoroughly because no one ever escapes God, who is omnipresent.
–Vern Poythress
Thinking through the “Jesus’ Wife” discovery
In case you haven’t heard the news yet, a Harvard professor announced this week that she has found an Ancient Coptic manuscript (pictured above) which records Jesus referring to, “my wife.” Here’s the New York Times account:
A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’ ” The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
We are all aware that the American media loves stories like this. Fortunately, Bible scholars who spend their lives studying this stuff are already responding. I recommend this breakdown by Peter Williams, in which he gives the whole translation, as well as all the relevant info that puts this discovery in its proper place. He ends the piece this way:
…Is it evidence that Jesus had a wife? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’. Not even Karen King is claiming that it is, though it’s inevitable that some of the news outlets will present it otherwise.
What we have here is a typical sort of text which arose after Christianity had become very popular and when derivatives of Christianity began to emerge. The language of the text is very similar to the Gospel of Thomas, sayings 101 and 114, and the Gospel of Thomas saying 101 shows influence of Luke 14:26, as the Gospel of Thomas does elsewhere. This way of speaking belongs to the mid-second century or later, in other words generations later than the books of the New Testament.
We asked Dr Simon Gathercole, an expert on apocryphal gospels and Senior Lecturer in New Testament in the University of Cambridge, for his comments. He concluded: “Harvard Professor Karen King, who is the person who has been entrusted with the text, has rightly warned us that this does not say anything about the historical Jesus. She is correct that “its possible date of composition in the second half of the second century, argues against its value as evidence for the life of the historical Jesus”.
Darrel Bock, of Dallas Theological Seminary, gives these thoughts:
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It is a small text with no context.
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It is a late text (4th century), if the dating given is right.
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It would be nice to know where the text came from on the collector’s market. It is a text without any real setting right now, just a date and a few broken lines.
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It needs a larger public vetting by experts (like being in the first quarter of a game and asking for comment on the whole).
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What is more, in Gnostic Christianity, there was a rite called the bridal chamber in which the church was seen as the bride of Christ. The whole thing could well be metaphorical with a disciple representing the place of the church. If that is the case, then it is not even a claim that Jesus was married in real life to a single person.
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It is one speck of a fringe text in a sea of texts that say Jesus was single. It, if authentic, is the exception, to the rule of texts we have on Jesus. Thus, in the end, even if it says what people are suggesting, it tells us only about a fourth century group’s views, not anything about Jesus.
Finally, here’s New Testament Canon expert Michael Kruger (whom I’ve been referencing here a lot):
…We do not have a single historical source in all of early Christianity that suggests Jesus was married. None. There is nothing about Jesus being married in the canonical gospels, in apocryphal gospels, in the church fathers, or anywhere else. Even if this new gospel claims that Jesus was married, it is out of step with all the other credible historical evidence we have about his life. As King herself noted, “This is the only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife. It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married” (p. 1 here).
Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory. It would certainly be far more entertaining for our culture if one could show that apocryphal books were really the Scripture of the early church and that they have been suppressed by the political machinations of the later church (e.g., Constantine). But the truth is far less sensational…
When it comes to these sorts of questions I like to remind my students of a simple—but often overlooked—fact: of all the gospels in early Christianity, only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are dated to the first century. Sure, there are minority attempts to put books like the Gospel of Thomas in the first century—but such attempts have not been well received by biblical scholars. Thus, if we really want to know what Jesus was like, our best bet is to rely on books that were at least written during the time period when eyewitnesses were still alive. And only four gospels meet that standard.
Notes from last night: 1 Peter 3:13-4:11
Last night we continued our study of 1 Peter. Here are the notes:
Intro:
1:1-2:13 – We have a new identity which has now made us strangers. But we have a new status
2:14-3:12 – Our purpose is 2:9, and we have direction about how to live it out in our ordinary relationships.
Tonight: When Our New Identity Leads to Suffering.
3:8-18 The will of God may/will include suffering.
Peter instructs us to be ready to talk about who you are and why you do what you do.
What you need to be able to “give an answer” for what you believe:
1. Awareness of God’s blessing, and the “opposite” nature of spiritual things. (v.14)
2. Lack of fear from keeping God in the center (v.14-15)
3. Readiness (Preparation + Eagerness). (v.15)
4. Meekness and respect. (v.15)
5. Good conscience – a life that doesn’t make you feel guilty. (v.16)
6. A life of good works. (v.16)
3:18-4:1 Christ suffered, arm yourselves with His kind of thinking.
Christ accepted suffering as part of God’s will. He saw Himself as God’s instrument for accomplishing His purposes—bringing us to God.
Through His suffering, He found ultimate victory, over spirits, & for our salvation
The new identity is identification with Christ.
“This same mind” = Submitting yourself to play whatever part God has for you in His plan.
He suffered because of His identity as Messiah. We suffer because of our identification with Him and our part in carrying on His work.
4:1-6 Be prepared to be thought strange.
This mind will produce: positively: good works and willingness to suffer for others; and negatively: avoiding activities others think are normal (sin). The new normal finds you strange. Lack of participation in what everyone assumes to be the only way to live will set you apart. But an eternal perspective here is essential: there is a Judge and a final accounting
4:7-11 Let the church be all about love. – Live out Christ’s victory! (1 John 4:4,7)
If things are bad, remember that it won’t last forever. Peter says, in effect, “be totally clearheaded for the purpose of praying.” He instructs us first to take care of each other (using physical resources)–Share your stuff! Then to take care of each other spiritually (with God’s grace)–Share your gifts!
To Sum it all Up:
- We must take everything about who we are from Jesus Christ. He is both our savior from sin and our model for how to be in the world.
- So…Let’s not run from the world, but instead let’s live out our lives in the midst of non-believers. Let’s be open and engaging.
- And…Let’s not be shocked when we’re misunderstood. (As “strangers,” we will find much of our culture we will abstain from. This will be misunderstood and lead to persecution.)
- We remember the coming future of hope and light, and live out our lives now to reflect what the eternal future will be.
“The Holy Ghost over the bent world broods…”
A hymn by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out,
like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed.
Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade;
bleared, smeared with toil;
and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:
the soil is bare now,
nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost
over the bent world broods
with warm breast and with, ah! — bright wings.
Are you a slothful drone?
Mike Focht read this to me the other day. It’s by a guy named William Law, who (as you can tell by his language) wrote in the 1700s, and he found it in From the Library of A.W. Tozer: Selected Writers who Influenced His Spiritual Journey.
It’s not really the kind of stuff we’re used to reading, but sometimes we need a saint from days past to point out things we take for granted and shake us up a little bit. Really, how many of us regularly waste the morning hours in bed because we stay up late the night before doing…what…TV? YouTube? Gaming?
Here’s what Mr. Law has to say about that…
I come now to consider that part of devotion which relates to times and
hours of prayer.
I take it for granted, that every Christian, that is in health, is up
early in the morning; for it is much more reasonable to suppose a
person up early, because he is a Christian, than because he is a
labourer, or a tradesman, or a servant, or has business that wants him.
We naturally conceive some abhorrence of a man that is in bed when he
should be at his labor or in his shop. We cannot tell how to think
anything good of him, who is such a slave to drowsiness as to neglect
his business for it.
Let this therefore teach us to conceive how odious we must appear in
the sight of Heaven, if we are in bed, shut up in sleep and darkness,
when we should be praising God; and are such slaves to drowsiness, as
to neglect our devotions for it.
For if he is to be blamed as a slothful drone, that rather chooses the
lazy indulgence of sleep, than to perform his proper share of worldly
business; how much more is he to be reproached, that would rather lie
folded up in a bed, than be raising up his heart to God in acts of
praise and adoration!
Prayer is the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoyment of
Him, that we are capable of in this life.
It is the noblest exercise of the soul, the most exalted use of our
best faculties, and the highest imitation of the blessed inhabitants of
Heaven.
When our hearts are full of God, sending up holy desires to the throne
of grace, we are then in our highest state, we are upon the utmost
heights of human greatness; we are not before kings and princes, but in
the presence and audience of the Lord of all the world, and can be no
higher, till death is swallowed up in glory.
On the other hand, sleep is the poorest, dullest refreshment of the
body, that is so far from being intended as an enjoyment, that we are
forced to receive it either in a state of insensibility, or in the
folly of dreams.
Sleep is such a dull, stupid state of existence, that even amongst mere
animals, we despise them most which are most drowsy.
He, therefore, that chooses to enlarge the slothful indulgence of
sleep, rather than be early at his devotions to God, chooses the
dullest refreshment of the body, before the highest, noblest employment
of the soul; he chooses that state which is a reproach to mere animals,
rather than that exercise which is the glory of Angels.
Your weekend schedule…
The title of this post is tongue-in-cheek, but really, this weekend’s Prophecy Conference here at the church building will be a great time for us to come and get a needed look at things like:
- How and why we (at Calvary) see scripture’s trachings on the end times (“Eschatology”) the way we do.
- How these things relate to world events.
- How our lives are part of God’s working in the world
- The soon coming of Christ!
Here’s the schedule of teachings. It’s free. See you there.
FRIDAY EVENING – September 14, 2012
Session # 1 ( 7:30 p – 8:30p ) Interpreting Bible Prophecy— Dr. Thomas Ice
Session #2 (8:45p – 9:45p) What 2 Look 4: Discerning the Signs of the Times – Dr. Mark Hitchcock
SATURDAY – September 15, 2012
Session #3 (9:00a – 10:00a) Prophetic Fulfillment: Literal or Spiritual? – Dr. Ed Hindson
Session #4 (10:15a – 11:15a) When Will the Believing Be Leaving? – Dr. Mark Hitchcock
LUNCH 11:15 – 12:30p
Session #5 (12:30 – 1:30p) A History of the Literal Interpretation of Bible Prophecy – Dr. Thomas Ice
Session #6 (1:45 – 2:45p) Israel’s Prophetic Future – Dr. Ed Hindson