Saturday, November 26, 2011

Effectual "Mountain Moving" Prayer


Rocciamalone by Roby Ferrari
Musings on Mark 11:20-25

Jesus teaches that as his followers you through prayer in a similar way will be able to realize the effectual power of God in your lives and in your service for his kingdom.  We can be as effective in our prayers as Jesus was in cursing the fig tree.  He promises us that as we meet these two conditions of faith and forgiveness we too can know the power of God in, over, around and through our lives. 

This is what He means when in response to Peter He says – “Truly I say to you that whoever should say to this mountain ‘be lifted up and be thrown into the sea’, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will come to pass it will be done for him.  Therefore I say to you whatever you ask in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”

Jesus is teaching in metaphor and we must not take his words literally.  Praying that a mountain would be lifted up and cast into the sea is a figure of speech for difficulties that exceed our strength and ability to meet. 

I would argue that we are to understand the mountain analogy as not just representing the troubles and challenges that inconvenience or even threaten our lives and welfare.  Rather these mountains are anything that would impede us from following Jesus as his obedient disciples.  They are not physical objects per se but the difficulties, trails, and temptations we face that would overwhelm us and negatively impact our walk as Christians. 

I. The first condition for “effectual mountain moving prayer” is faith in God.    

Jesus commands us to have faith in God.  Faith in God is not just bare confidence in God or the certainty that God will do for you whatever you want or fancy.  Faith in God entails knowledge of God.  Faith in God entails a growing communion and intimacy with God. 

How well do you really know God – the Triune God?  How familiar are you with God.  Knowing God entails knowing his character and will as both are revealed to us in the Scriptures. 

I would say that this is the mountain that most of us need to wrestle in prayer with God to cast from us – unfamiliarity with God in a deep and intimate sense.  It was for just such “knowledge” that Paul prays for his readers.

I have not stopped making mention of you in my prayers – I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, might give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart illumined so that you might know what is the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and his overflowing great power for us who believe according to the working of the might of his strength.  Ephesians 1:16-19

This is where we need to begin to pray – for this kind of intimacy so that we will be so much in touch with God that we will know better what to pray for and will have increasing confidence that since our prayer comports with God’s will then we already have what we have asked him for. 

This is reflected in Paul’s prayer for the Colossians where he asks “that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in your knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.” Colossians 1:9-11

What kind of impact would such intimate experiential knowledge of God have on your confidence in God?  Such knowledge would mean that you would know God in such a way that your perspective would be shaped by his character.  You would have deeper insight into his ways; so that you would have a better sense of how to pray when you face those mountains. 

Prayer is more than a shopping list because true prayer enters into the very heart of God.  Prayer entails humble cooperation with the purposes of God in the world. Prayer enables us to see God’s purposes more clearly and so enables us to pray “mountain moving prayers” because we really are connecting with the mind of God – the eyes of our hearts are becoming opened.  

II. The second condition we must realize if we are to experience ‘mountain moving prayer” is forgiving those who have sinned against us. 

Alan Cole wrote: “We have no inherent right to be heard by God, all is His grace and undeserved favor. But unless we forgive our fellows freely, it shows that we have no consciousness of the grace that we ourselves have received and need, and so it shows that we are expecting to be heard on our own merits, which we cannot.”

To embrace the gospel of free forgiveness and acceptance with God means that we recognize our huge need for forgiveness and that we have no basis in ourselves to stand before God.  This opens grace to us and becomes and operative perspective in our dealings with others.

We cannot expect God to answer our prayers if we do not forgive those who have sinned against us.  Such unwillingness shows that we fail to see our need for forgiveness.  We fail to see our transgressions against God to be more severe that anyone's transgressions against us. 

Donald English writes: The culture of prayer is the forgiving spirit.  Since God’s forgiveness of us is the essential ground over which we approach him in prayer, a lack of a forgiving spirit on our part destroys the atmosphere in which prayer is offered and answered.”

So it behooves us to truly forgive those who have offended us and sinned against us.  Lack of forgiveness gravely impacts our communion with our Father.  We cannot expect answers to prayer if we are unwilling to forgive others since the whole basis of our approach to and relationship with God is His gracious forgiveness of us through the offering up of his Son as the sacrifice of atonement for our sins.

We can only meet these conditions by God’s grace.  If we find ourselves failing in these two areas the solution is not despair but a turning to God in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.  God alone can give us faith and the humble capacity to forgive others.  Yet we must have faith in God and forgiveness toward others if we are to pray effectually and find his power to face the mountains that stand in the way of our following Christ’ faithfully and serving him obediently for his honor and glory. 

To Live Is Christ and To Die Is Gain


Calm Waters II by Rob Surreal
Musings on Philippians 1:21-26

This is an amazing and convicting claim.  Is it true of you?  Does life for you mean Christ and is the prospect of death seen as gain?   Again we need to be reminded that these words are Apostolic.  We are not only to follow the particular instructions or commands that we read in the New Testament, we are also to pay careful attention to the personal examples that the Holy Spirit saw fit to include in its pages.  This is indeed Paul’s testimony, yet we are at least to make it our aim that it becomes our testimony too. 

This affirmation rises out of the previous statement that Paul made in verse 20.  “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”   He says that he is being pressed between two prospects or choices (not that these were really his to make or to bring about).  He was being pressed between what was good and what was better by far.  It was good that he be released from prison to return to his ministry.  This would mean fruitful labor for him in the Lord.  He could once again return to the Philippians to aid in the progress and joy in the faith.   This would give them more opportunity to glory in Christ Jesus through the ministry that he would have among them.   This was indeed good.  Yet, there was something that was far better.  He is pressed (“hard pressed”) between the good and the better.  What could be better than continuing in this life to live from and for Christ?  “It is better by far,” he says, “to depart and be with Christ.” 

The major focus in the passage is on how death for the believer is gain.  Yet we do not want to overlook the other claim.  “For me to live is Christ.”   In fact death is only gain for those who in this age find Christ to be their life.  Death is in no way gain for those who have no relationship with Christ by faith.  In fact death for the unbeliever is permanent and irredeemable loss.  The writer of Hebrews says, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).  The Scriptures teach that death is the result of sin.  “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).  Jesus Christ has conquered death through his resurrection and only as we are united to him by faith will he not only be with us in death but will bring us through death.  This is so because Jesus also paid the penalty for sin and only by faith in him are our sins forgiven and are we reconciled to God and have hope of eternal life.

So in what way is death for the believer gain? 

1.      It may be gain for the cause of Christ.  Paul desires that Christ be magnified in his body whether by life or by death.  When believers live for Christ and suffer Christ is magnified.  When their suffering leads to martyrdom Christ is magnified.  So Paul saw the prospect of dying for Christ to be gain for the cause of Jesus Christ.  In this way Christ would be magnified in his body by death.
2.      Yet Paul was also thinking in personal terms.  He is hard pressed between two prospects.  For him death, which is to depart and be with Christ, would be gain.  He is speaking as a seasoned soldier of the Cross.  He is battle worn and weary.  Death is gain for the believer in that he is evacuated from the fight for faith.  Paul spoke of this when he wrote his final letter.  He is back in Rome and in prison but he knows that his outcome will be different.  He will die there.  He writes to Timothy, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure (same word used in Philippians 1:23) has come.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”   The struggle is now over and season of rest and waiting begins.  Martin Luther pointed out numerous times that for the believer death is gain “in that the pilgrimage is ended, the process of sanctification is completed, the struggle to do right is over.”  (quoted from Freeman Barton’s book “Heaven, Hell and Hades,” page 78).
3.      It is gain because the believer is with Christ.  Believers are those who die in the Lord and who rest form their labors (Revelation 14:13).  Death is not able to separate you from Christ.  You are at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6-9).  Those who die in Christ have fallen asleep in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:20, 51; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). 

Now for these reasons death for the believer is indeed gain.  Death is gain but it is not yet full and complete glory.  The Bible’s picture of the nature of physical death is really opaque and not as clear as many think it is.  Another problem that occurs is that many confuse the Bible’s description of the state of eternal glory, when we will be raised with glorious resurrection bodies, with what occurs at physical death.  Now while Paul saw death as gain, he makes it clear in other places that it is not glory (2 Corinthians 5:1-10) and that it is not our ultimate hope or source of comfort.  In fact when the Scriptures speak of what our true hope is in the face of death they speak of the resurrection at the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).  What we need to understand from this text is that Christ is central for you and it is because of his centrality that you can live differently in this life and face death knowing that he will take you through death to eventual glory and resurrection.  We can think of it this way.  To live in this age with faith in Jesus Christ and to seek to promote his kingdom is good.  It is good even when it is hard and pressing.  It is good even when in faith we hold fast to Jesus and he holds fast to us, yet we endure affliction and trial.  It is good to know and live for Christ and endure the consequences of what a vital faith means in this fallen world that hates Christ, than not to know Christ and enjoy all the benefits and accolades of the world.  

Yet it is better to see this pilgrimage end and end well, like Paul could say has his death approached, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”   It is better to lay the armor down and take up the white robe and fall asleep in Jesus’ arms. (Revelation 6:11).  It is better.  Yet it is not the best!  There is more to come.  Your redemption will not reach its final and complete goal until your resurrection from death occurs and with this the curse is ended and a new heavens and new earth appear.  This is what is best.  This is our grand and glorious destiny.  This is our ultimate hope.   (Revelation 21 and 1 Corinthians 15 see also Job 14:10-15). 

To live is Christ and to die gain means that knowing Christ is the path through the obstacles of this fallen world.  Christ who is the believer’s life is the one who will also bring you safely through death to the dawning of that eternal day.  Faith in Christ for this life and hope in Christ for the life to come carry the saint and are his both our joy and stability.  So is it true for you?  Can you say “for me to live is Christ and to die gain?”  Ask the Lord to help you at least want this to be true and functional in your life.