Sometimes, while scanning blog feeds, the posts start to mix together and produce interesting insights. Tonight was a good example.
First, take a look at this Baptist Press post by Keith Manuel (Louisiana Baptist Convention employee). He writes about the digestive dangers of too much grain for sheep and then makes a point about Christians. We’re like sheep who eat too much of the good stuff (Bible teaching) and need to go to the fields to get the grain (witnessing). I don’t want to make fun (it’s a good point), but I really though the post was headed for some bathroom humor. In my immature mind, sheep that get bloated go out to the fields for other reasons too. Anyway, here is what he did say:
As Christians, we could learn from sheep. I’m certainly not opposed to the study of the Word of God, however there is a strange disconnect when someone is full of knowledge but never applies what they learn, nor gives that information away.
They become bloated sheep in danger of dying.
How is it that someone can know so much about Jesus but never share that information with a lost person? Is it biblically correct to know so much about the Scriptures but never convey that knowledge to other people?
Biblical Christianity is not an academic exercise; it is living faith or faith living through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Second, the Internet Monk linked to this story about Dr Rowan Williams (head of the Church of England). The Anglican primate wants churches to focus less on activities and more on praying. The back story is his failing attempts to keep the national communion of Anglicans form splitting. Beside all that mess, he makes a good point about prayer. While talking about a particular church’s busy calendar (noticeboard) he says:
That noticeboard used to worry me and it still does. It seems to me it speaks of an idea of the church which supposes that the church is about human beings doing things. When you looked at that church you would have thought, what a lot of things they do there. But I’m still wondering if anyone ever asked, does God do things here? It seemed to be just a slight risk that there was hardly any room in the week for God to find his way in among all these activities.
Now, let me try to connect the two stories. Our Louisiana Baptist brother has rightly observed a problem of believers who just hear the Word and really don’t do it. Perhaps the missing element is not only failure to do personal evangelism. Maybe our problem is much worse — we’re not receiving the scriptures as an act of communion with God through prayer. The Bible does become an academic exercise when we fail to engage with God. This is a horrible judgment on our hardened hearts! When we rely on our brains to do the spiritual work, we never truly come in contact with God through his Word.
This disconnect can’t be bridged by doing more works. It is a spiritual problem that needs grace not human effort. To merely add more busyness and activities would push God even farther from our time of Bible study. We must bring back the prayer meetings and seek fresh grace from the Savior to overcome our hard Bible-suppressing hearts. Then we will have the Gospel-changed lives and Gospel-changed hearts that will be zealous to spread the Gospel message.
Amen. I couldn’t agree more.
Tony,
I’m with you on this observation. I want to point out something else about prayer in our churches. Despite the busyness in the church and *people doing things* I think our prayers reflect as much.
How many prayers are Kingdom focused? So much (all?) of prayer requests and time is focused on illness or grief or whatever will make one feel better. It’s very *me* focused.
Mark
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Prayer is agonizingly exhausting, excruciatingly painful, tediously boring at times, trite, dull, exciting, motivating beyond words to describle, long, drawn out exercises, repetitious. One can pray once and get what one asks for, and pray for years and never get it. I once prayed, “Lord, send me a ride from this town to the next, and from the next on home.” Within five minutes, a driver stopped and gave me a ride to the next town. I walked a block and a half there and a car full of kids stopped and offered to take me to my grandfather’s home 14 miles out in the country over gravel roads. About an hour after I had said the prayer, I was sitting in my grandfather’s house. On the other hand, I have been praying for a Great Awakening for 36 years and things have steadily grown worse. As it is said, THE DARKEST HOUR IS JUST BEFORE THE DAWN OR AS THE WORD OF GOD PUTS IT, AT EVENING TIME IT SHALL BE LIGHT (Zech 14:7). Shall I give up in discouragement? I have prayed for loved ones ever since I was converted. A few have shown some evidence of salvation. As they use to say in the cotton fields, “Bear down. Get with it.” North Carolina has an interesting idiom, “Haul Buggy.” It is sort of like, “Gettin out of Dodge.” But the idea I want to stress is let us really give ourselves to seeking God’s face for the most outrageous blessings. Mr. Spurgeon’s prayers for the whole earth to be converted, when he believed in particular redemption (limited atonement as some mistakenly call it), are most moving. Matthew T. Yates was launched into missions (he was Southern Baptists’ first missionary to China) by a church which knew only of Christ dying for the church???? Could it be that particular redemption is like a paradoxical intervention. Our Lord surely let the woman of Canaan know it, when he said (and she surely heard), “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” She was no Israelite, no Jew, but she heard Him and she came and fell down before Him in worship. Amazing. Then He took up the issue of her total depravity and reprobation – only He did not use those technical terms; He chose one most repulsive, one that she surely knew… Read more »