Looking at Christ

Leading a congregation of God’s people to the throne of grace is a great privilege but not an easy thing. Here are a few key resources and then a few more practical suggestions. Tim Keller on Kingdom-centred prayer Matt Fuller on 4 reasons every church needs a time of confession and How to keep it fresh iServe Africa on How to lead a prayer meeting One objective for the person leading prayer from the front: help us all pray together in a way that glorifies God. 9 guides for leading that kind of prayer:  Pray prayers – This is perhaps the most important point. Don’t just say prayers, pray them. Engage your heart and mind and talk to your Father. Speak as one speaking to the living God. Boldly with trembling. Sorrowful and rejoicing. Don't make statements about God - it's not a sermon; don't tell us what you "hope" will happen - that isn't prayer; and don't spend time telling us what you are going to pray, just go for it and pray to the Lord our God. Keep...

“Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at his disposition, and listening to his voice in the depth of our hearts.” (attributed to Mother Teresa) There at least two big problems with the Mother Teresa definition. This is not the biblical definition of prayer. This is not even the biblical definition of guidance. On the second one, see this resource on guidance (iServe Africa 2017) or the What's Next series on this blog. On prayer, the Mother Teresa definition (if it really was hers) flies completely in the face of the biblical evidence which points overwhelmingly towards prayer as an activity of asking God . Look at all of the apostle Paul’s prayers. Look at the illustrations of prayer that Jesus gives in Luke 11:5-13. Asking for bread… Whoever asks receives… If your son asks for a fish… Give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. For a fuller argument look at the first chapter of Jensen and Payne’s Prayer and the Voice of God . It is true that prayer...

It has been claimed that an over-dependence on the leadership criteria in Titus 1 (and 1 Timothy 3) - e.g. in pastor/planter job descriptions and job adverts - has led to a lowering of the bar - a watered-down, lowest-common-denominator, pedestrian, tick-box exercise. Surely what we really need in our church leaders is not cookie-cutter, reasonably-satisfactory ‘church managers’ but rather courageous, passionate, world-denying, full-of-the-Spirit ‘mighty men’ who will endure suffering, pray desperately, preach fervently. I would argue that a careful, contextual reading of Titus 1 does not give us a mundane tick list but rather is calling for exactly the Spirit-filled leaders that we need. The Elder is a miracle “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” So how are you going to find Cretans who are faithful, good, hard-working – men who fulfil the criteria of Titus 1:6-9? Only by a miracle of God’s grace. Only by the glorious truth of the gospel producing godliness (T...

Bible words have Bible meanings." So said Alec Motyer. Or maybe David Jackman. Probably both. What is holiness? You can go down the Hebrew etymology route and focus on separation and consecration. You can go down the systematic theology route and look at the Creator's transcendent otherness or his absolute purity (in him there is no darkness at all). But what about a biblical theology approach? The garden-city-temple The first reference to holiness is to the seventh day (Gen. 2:3) - not just a separate day but a blessed day, a day of God's rest, God's satisfaction in and enjoyment of his good creation, focused on the garden-temple where the LORD dwells with humanity amid beauty and abundance. The last reference in the Scriptures is to the Holy City (Rev. 21:2, 10; 22:19) - the bride, the bejeweled ephod, the holy of holies, the blessed garden city where access to the tree of life is restored. As Richard Coekin has pointed out, in the same way that a beautiful garden is...

I sit at a small table listening to a seminar. The speaker is an expert in their field. They've travelled a long way to be here. The audience is quietly attentive, leaning forward to catch every drop of wisdom. There are nibbles and handouts on the table. The speaker continues fluidly. I start to feel queasy.   "I feel like vomiting - and all of a sudden, there it is: the Nausea." (Satre, Nausea , 1938, p. 176 in Penguin Classics edition, Baldick translation) Why do I feel this spinning, motion sickness, almost vertigo? I know why. The realisation lands with a suffocating heaviness. What I'm hearing through the mouth of the speaker is very largely AI-generated. I know it (at least 95% sure) because I've spent quite a bit of time using AI tools recently. Partly it's the presentation slides. It's the beige background and serif font (favoured by Claude and Gamma). It's the the three-column format and the little icons at the beginning of a content bar and ...

He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (Titus 1:9) What are the deep roots of those two voices - encouragement and rebuke? There are many - the nature of truth, goodness, God, the gospel - but one deep root is that the undershepherd/friend-of-the-bridegroom should be a man after the own heart of the Great Shepherd/Bridegroom (Jer. 3:15; John 3:29; 2 Cor. 11:2) who speaks with the same voice as the Great Shepherd/Bridegroom (Luke 10:16; John 10:16; Eph. 2:17). As Luther said, "Let me and everyone who speaks of the word of Christ freely boast that our mouths are the mouths of Christ" (A Sincere Admonition, 1522). So how does Christ feel towards and speak to his church? Richard Sibbes is particularly helpful on this.  The bruised reed and the smouldering church In probably his best known and loved work, Sibbes expounds Isaiah 42:3 (quoted and fulfilled in Jesus in Mat...