Prayer for the Day

This morning the Valley of Vision prayer I prayed ended with this good thought:
          "If my life should end this day, let this be my best day."
How very appropriate, when we face every day a myriad of temptations, and need daily such grace to love God.  Let this be the day in which Christ in me conquers sin.

Praying for Fruit in the Lives of Others

Over the last few weeks as I have preached in John's Gospel Jesus' promise for prayer has struck me several times.  Several times Jesus says: whatever you ask for in my name, I (or the Father) will do it.
The pattern in John goes from Jesus to his disciples; because Jesus receives whatever he asks from the Father, the disciples (who abide in him) have the same privilege.  So in John 11:22, when Jesus comes to Bethany after Lazarus' death, Martha affirms that for Jesus, "whatever you ask from God,. God will give you."  And Jesus, in John 14:16, will ask the Father for the Spirit, and the Father will give him to the disciples.
Along with that, and flowing from that (again, because of the disciples being "in Christ"), comes the promise of John 14:13-14, and 15:7, 16, repeated again in 16:23-24.
One thing we may certainly ask for, and know that God will grant it, is for good fruit in our own lives, and in the lives of other believers.  So here is one place where we can apply this: praying for our brothers and sisters in our own church.
So try this: Take your church directory, and pray for one column of families in church every day.  That is about five or six families a day.  Pray for their children, and adult children.  Pray for the fruit of the gospel in their lives.
For me, I also have a list of college students and young adults.  I pray for them a few a day.  Then I have a list of all the children in our church, broken down by ages.  I pray for them grouped by age.  In addition to praying for them, it helps be to stay on top of how old the children of the church are.
Now I confess, I mostly am a YOLF ("Ye Of Little Faith"); that is, I am not always convinced that much comes of these prayers.  I confess I pray with little expectation.  But that is something of which I must repent; for Jesus assures me that these prayers, said in his name, God hears, and God will grant fruit in the lives of others in response to my prayers.  Stand in awe!  How much else do we do in a day that has that much of a promise behind it?

The Sound of Silence...

You may remember that as the title of a Simon and Garfunkel song.  It is a sound that is rarely heard anymore by many of us.  One of the reasons is that we are surrounded by electronic noise.  It used to be that I would encounter "dead space" in life--down time, where there was nothing pressing on me, and I had a moment or two to look around, enjoy the flowers and grass, or look out the window and think, or just "chill."
One of the reasons there is less of that is technology that is always there.  So instead of looking out the window and chilling, I take my phone in my hand, check my email, see how the Phillies did last night, see what the stock market is doing, look at the weather....
Now someone has written a book called The End of Absence. It has a nice review in the Wall Street Journal that you can see here.  Pity no one has time to read books anymore.  But you can read the review on your phone--and if you do have some down time, you can probably find the book on an e-reader near you...

God in the Whirlwind, by David Wells

I have just about finished this book (you see it on the bar on the right).  Today I saw that Carl Trueman has a review of it.  It's theme is God's holy-love (hyphenated to emphasize that holiness and love go together in God).  This presents a challenge to us--we tend to emphasize God's love (for the most part) or his holiness (less common, but still we do it), often in isolation from each other.  To emphasize God's love makes him out to be a Santa Claus-like figure, always pleasing us but never making demands of us. To emphasize God's holiness leads to legalism or Pharisaism, usually combined with condemnation for those who do not measure up as we do.
God's love is holy, and his holiness is loving.  That is why both his holiness and his love compel and change us.  In Christ his love satisfies his holiness for our justification; by the same love, he transforms us in Christ toward greater holiness, what we call sanctification.  Both pieces go together.  There is that--and much more--in Wells' book.

"Dispatches from the Front"

Recently the Westminster Bookstore has promoted a set of DVD's and a book titled Dispatches from the Front.  It is a collection of stories, a kind of travelogue, from different places in the world where the gospel is radically changing lives--that is to say, some very hard and dark places where the gospel is at work.  Here is the blurb on one of the DVDs:
In our world of comfort and convenience it is often startling to realize that poverty, slavery, and persecution grip much of the globe.  Yet it is also thrilling to realize that the work of the gospel transforms, empowers, and equips us to make a lasting difference there on the frontier of human need.
So far I have watched most of the first video, mainly about southeast Asia (the nations around the super-modern city state of Singapore).  It is well worth watching, though it is disturbing--very much so.  And it puts our lives--and our discomforts, such as they are--into perspective.  At the same time, it does highlight how Christ changes lives, and brings hope to truly hopeless pats of the world.  Stay tuned for more about this, or check out their web site.

Sudanese Woman goes to Italy

Here is a report from the BBC web site that gives an update on the previous post.  The Sudanese woman (a Christian whose father--though an absentee father--is Muslin) was freed last month, and released into the custody of the US Embassy in Khartoum.  It appears that Italian diplomats have assisted her in leaving Sudan, and that she is now in Italy.  There she met with the Pope.  Nothing states whether she is Roman Catholic or not; perhaps she is.  Whatever it may be, it is an answer to prayer.

Sudanese Woman Re-arrested

A few weeks ago we prayed for a Sudanese woman who is married to a Christian, and who was under a death sentence in a Sudanese jail for converting to Christianity.  The BBC reports that she was released last week, but has been re-arrested, along with her husband and family (she had given birth in jail) as they were leaving Sudan.  Please continue to pray for her (Hebrews 13:3). You can read the BBC report here.

Medal of Honor Recipient

Here is a link to the interview I will mention in Sunday's sermon:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/medal-honor-recipient-shielded-fellow-marine-grenade/