Getting in Under the radar!

What various hindrances we meet
In coming to a mercy seat;
Yet who that knows the worth of prayer,
But wishes to be often there.

Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw,
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love,
Brings every blessing from above.

Restraining prayer, we cease to fight;
Prayer makes the Christian’s armor bright;
And Satan trembles, when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.

While Moses stood with arms spread wide,
Success was found on Israel’s side;
But when through weariness they failed,
That moment Amalek prevailed.

Have you no words? Ah, think again,
Words flow apace when you complain;
And fill your fellow creature’s ear
With the sad tale of all your care.

Were half the breath thus vainly spent,
To Heav’n in supplication sent;
Your cheerful song would oft’ner be,
“Hear what the Lord has done for me.”

William Cowper (1731-1800)

Husbands

Reasons to love your wife:

#1 You are truthfully showing what Christ is like (Eph 5:25)

#2, #3, #4 ....(!!!):

A small word, but the most ambitious of all ideas!

(p10-11) In Ephesians 6:4, Paul is in fact requiring Christian fathers to provide their children with a 'paideia' of the Lord.

What we call education is more strictly a subset of paideia. Formal education is essential to the process of paideia, of course, but the boundaries of paideia are much wider than the boundaries of what we understand as education.

Far more is envolved in this than taking the kids to church or having the occassional time of devotions in the home, as important as such things are. And more to the point, far more is involved than simply providing the kids with a Christian curriculum 9-5 weekdays. {'simply' ... yeah right!!}

Wilson draws on Jaeger's study of paideia. Paideia to the ancient Greeks was an enormous deal, a huge ideological task. They were concerned with nothing less than shaping the ideal man to take his place in the ideal culture! And the point of paideia was to bring that culture about. This paideia word would have ranked alongside words like 'philosphy' in terms of cultural potency. In our culture 'democracy' might get close. We are not talking a take-it-or-leave-it word - like whatever the Greek is for shoelaces!

In the ancient word paideia was all-encompassing and involved nothing less than the enculturation of the future citizen. This happened in the class room, but also as he walked along the streets of his city to and from school, it included walking by the temple and the whole of life pretty much!

So, fathers, bring your children up in the enculturation of the Lord right through from the shoes they wear, to the music they listen to, from the films they watch to the way they ride their bike, from what they read to the position they adopt when they pray, from the pictures on their walls to the way they speak to you!

What does this look like? I have no idea. Yet. And so I take 2 Timothy 3:16 to set my course.

Not half-soaked

In the light of Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 children should live in an environment dominated by Scripture.

We must not dismiss such passages as pertaining only to a simple agrarian culture. If life in the latter half of the twentieth century is more complex, it does not follow that we have less need for instruction in the law of God! If God wanted children then to think about everything in the light of His Word, then this practice is certainly necessary now. In a more complex society there is more to think about.

So teaching needs to happen all the time - walking, sitting, driving etc. God wants the children of his people soaked in His instruction, in an environment conditioned by his word.

What can this look like? Well, to begin with here are some ideas:
-hours of bible tapes/CD's as drive or go to sleep
-singing hymns as drive, walk, go to sleep
-conversation at table about all of life in light of God
-DW taught his children words for things by getting them to say the word ('tree') and then answering the question 'and who made (trees)?'
-family times reading / applying and praying in the Scriptures

Parents who want their children to be equipped to face the world that will exist twenty years from now will need to give this kind of comprehensive instruction in God's words.

from p48.

Strange Glory

[There is a ] slander that says because Christianity teaches that man is head of his home, it permits men to abuse their wives. What the Bible really teaches is very different. According to the Bible, to be the leader means to sacrifice oneself for the other, as Christ sacrificed Himself for the Church. If Christ is the pattern for the husband – and He is – then what the Bible calls for is self-sacrificial love that glorifies the wife. This is not a view that promotes abuse of any kind. [Ralph Smith, Trinity and Reality, p66]

The first chapter of Ephesians therefore helps us to make sense of the fifth chapter.

If you come to the fifth chapter with the wrong assumptions about what is going on, you will be hopelessly overwhelmed by a rigid Marriage Law.

If all that Christ’s coming did was raise the ethical standard to a higher level, then our condidtion is hopeless. But if we have received the grace revealed in the Incarnation – the grace St. Paul prayed that we might have in Ephesians 1:17-18 – what then? If you have the spirit of wisdom and revelation, how will you think of your husband or wife? If the eyes of your understanding are enlightened and you know how the saints are a glorious inheritance for Christ, then you know what a husband and a wife are. And you will not know it until then.

(Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering p9)

Bitesize Jonah (1)

At Grace CC we are looking at Jonah in the mornings and Ephesians in the evenings at the mo. And so I've been thinking...about storms and fish and God's sovereignty. Today I came across this:

It is a wonderful thing that the whole machinery of nature should be made subservient to the divine purpose of the salvation of the redeemed....Here is this common looking Jew - Jonah .... and for this one man - this altogether unamiable prophet - the sea must be tossed in tempest and a whole ship full of people must have their lives put in jeopardy. This truth is a very far reaching one. You cannot well exaggerate it. The vast universe is but a platform for the display of God's grace...(Spurgeon in Men and Women of the Old Testament, p179)

Of course we know that God is not only concerned with Jonah, but also with the 120 000 Ninevites who are ignorant and condemned (Jonah 4:11) and to who he is sending this disobedient 'dove of faithfulness'.


But the point stands and it is stated with mind-blowing Christ centred clarity in Ephesians:

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will
(Eph 1:11)

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills everything in every way. (Eph 1:19-23)

Spurgeon's application of this truth is lovely:

It is a strange sight, O Christian, that you should be an important item in the universe, and yet that you should not know it, or care about it; that for you all things are keeping their proper place and time, and yet that you are the only one who does not seem to perceive it; and, therefore, you fall into a dull, lethargic, sleepy state. Everything around you is awake for your good, yet you yourself are slumbering even as the fugitive prophet was while the storm was raging. (p180)