I. WHAT TRUE PRAYER IS

Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart and soul to God, through Christ, with the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to the Word, for the good of the church, with submission, in faith, to the will of God. In this description are seven things that we need to consider:

1. Prayer is to be sincere.

Prayer is a sincere pouring out of the soul to God. Sincerity runs through all the graces of God in us, and influences all the actions of a Christian, or else our actions are not really from God. It is the same with prayer, as shown when David speaks about prayer, “I cried out to [the Lord] with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened [to my prayer]” (Psalm 66:17, 18).

Part of the exercise of prayer is sincerity, without which God will not look upon it as prayer in its proper sense. God says in his Word, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). The lack of this sincerity made the Lord reject the prayers in Hosea 7:14, where he said, “They do not cry out to me from their hearts,” that is, in sincerity, “but wail upon their beds.” Their prayers were only a fake, a hypocritical show, only to be seen by men, and applauded by them.

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Tags: Bunyan, John Bunyan

What is the 10/40 Window?

The 10/40 Window is the rectangular area of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. The 10/40 Window is often called “The Resistant Belt” and includes the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. The original 10/40 Window included only countries with at least 50% of their land mass within 10 and 40 degrees north latitude. The revised 10/40 Window includes several additional countries, such as Indonesia, that are close to 10 or 40 degrees north latitude and have high concentrations of unreached peoples.  An estimated 4.50 billion individuals residing in approximately 8,717 distinct people groups are in the revised 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window is home to some of the largest unreached people groups in the world such as the Shaikh, Yadava, Turks, Moroccan Arabs, Pushtun, Jat and Burmese.

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“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Ethical behaviorism is a term Psychologists use which defines righteousness exclusively in terms of what a person does or does not do. In this sense, a righteous person is one who does the right things and avoids the wrong things. An unrighteous person is one who does the wrong things and avoids the right things. Defined this way, righteousness is a quality that can be judged by an observation of someone’s behavior. Virtue and uprightness is purely a matter of outer conduct without any hint of what goes on inside you.

William Hordern illustrates well how this definition of righteousness is the definition held by the world:

The law enforcement institutions of society are concerned with right behavior. They do not care why people obey the law, so long as they obey it. The person who breaks no laws is righteous in their sight regardless of the motivation that produces law abiding behavior.

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Tags: Tchividjian, Tullian Tchividjian

Jay Dharan is the theological editor at ROE, and also the founding contributor at Beacon of Truth, an Evangelical ministry aimed at promoting the supremacy and sufficiency of the gospel.

Christians have often observed the fact that the vigour and growth of the church is largely dependant upon its leadership. Anyone who even has a cursory knowledge of church history knows that all the great leaders of the past were pastors. Whether it is Athanasius, Irenaeus or Augustine from the patristic era or Martin Luther and John Calvin from the Reformation of the sixteenth century or John Owen or Jonathan Edwards or Andrew Fuller of the Puritan heritage, they were all pastors. True, they were great theologians, however they worked out their theology in the context of their pastoral ministry.  It cannot be denied that throughout her history, the church experienced genuine revival and reformation through the ministry of her faithful shepherds. God, the Holy Spirit usually uses the faithful preaching and labour of a pastor to bring such revival and reformation to the church. It can also be observed negatively from the history of God’s covenant people, that heresy and false religion also abounded through the ministry of shepherds, obviously the false ones. It is suffice to say, how goes the pastor, thus goes the church. It seems worthwhile therefore to consider the essential qualities to be displayed by a man engaged in this vital ministry of being a pastor. In order to see how a pastor is sketched in the New Testament, we will try to expound Acts 20:18-35. The reason for the choice of this passage is due to its historical context. The passage deals with Paul’s final meeting with the Ephesian elders at Miletus. It records his farewell address to them and contains a summary of his pastoral ministry among them. Final words are by nature never trivial, and most often reveals that which is of primary importance to the speaker. Thus Paul’s final exhortation to the Ephesian elders reveals his own priorities in pastoral ministry. They thus sketch a New Testament pastor, as seen in the ministry of Paul among the Ephesians. In Paul’s summary of his pastoral ministry among them, we find seven descriptions of a genuine pastor, which are:  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Jay Dharan, Jay M Nair

A great inventor is to make bread without flour, and he is preparing the plan of a house which is to have no foundations. Wonderful! Isn’t it? We are no longer to eat grapes as they come from the vines—they are so old-fashioned: we are to have them after they have been squeezed in a patent press, and have been fashioned into cakes of mathematical shape. We should not be at all surprised to hear that our steam-boats are all a mistake, and have become things of the past, being in fact superseded by electrified table-cloths, which each man withdraws from his dining-table, spreads on the top of the water, and then uses as an instantaneously-prepared raft, which he steers with his knife and fork.

When this comes about, we shall still be found sticking to the unchanged and unchangeable Word of God. There will be no new God, nor a new devil, and we shall never have a new Savior, nor a new atonement: why should we then be either attracted or alarmed by the error and nonsense which everywhere plead for a hearing because they are new? What is their newness to us; we are not children, nor frequenters of playhouses? Truly, to such a new toy or a new play has immense attractions; but men care less about the age of a thing than about its intrinsic value.

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Tags: C.H. Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon

“How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?” – Psalm 13. 2

We have, in a former discourse, considered the importance of looking into our own hearts; but that counsel is not applicable in all cases. There is such a thing as to pore on our guilt and wretchedness, to the overlooking of our highest mercies. Though it be proper to know our own hearts, for the purpose of conviction, yet if we expect consolation from this quarter, we shall find ourselves sadly disappointed.

Such, for a time, appears to have been the case of David. He seems to have been in great distress; and, as is common in such cases, his thoughts turned inward, casting in his mind what he should do, and what would be the end of things. While thus exercised, he had “sorrow in his heart daily:” but, betaking himself to God for relief, he succeeded; trusting in his mercy, “his heart rejoiced in his salvation.”

There are many persons who, when in trouble, imitate David in the former part of this experience: I wish we may imitate him in the latter. In discoursing on the subject, I shall first notice the disconsolate situation of the psalmist, with the remedy to which he repaired under it; and then inquire to what cases it is applicable among us, and whether the same remedy be not equally adapted to our relief as to his.

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Tags: Andrew Fuller, Fuller