Take it to the Lord in Prayer

A couple years ago a started keeping a journal. Actually, I have several notebooks that I write in, and they are in no particular order and there isn't much rhyme or reason to the system. It probably would have been better to have one and start at the beginning and go to the end, but where is the fun in that? Anytime I am reading, I have the notebook beside me to catch my thoughts, jot memorable quotes, argue at length with the author, or apply what I have learned. This has been a tremendous help in my devotional life by going slowly through a book and writing down what I have learned or needed to apply to my heart. You really should not read a book without a pen in hand. 

The nice thing about doing this is going back through your notes. You can see how the Lord is bringing you along and remember things you forgot. I was reading through one of my journals and found this entry from a couple years ago when I was working my way through a puritan work.

Don’t hide your failures, faults, and sorrow from God. There is a temptation to deeply bury our sin and our pain and to straighten up before we go to God.

1. You are not able to “hide” anything from God
2. A Christian does not need to hide from God
3. We do not need to fix ourselves before coming to Christ.

This is my temptation. That I’m too sad or to broken to pray. But that is exactly when I need prayer most of all. I’m forgiven, loved, and cared for by my Priest-King- Saviour. I shouldn’t try to atone for my own sins with my tears and break the reed that Christ would not break. Yes, confess. Mortify. Repent. But keep going till you reach the healing cross. 

Prayer and Care

"Carefulness and prayer cannot stand together. In every thing - great and small - let your requests be made known. They who by a preposterous shame or distrustful modesty, cover, stifle, or keep in their desires, as if they were either too small or too great, must be racked with care; from which they are entirely delivered, who pour them out with a free and filial confidence."

John Wesley on Philippians 4:6

In Christ

“How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son – not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us”

Book 3 of The Institutes of Christian religion
Picture courtesy of BGM.


 John Piper well said:

"Do you want to be free from the blinding effects of spiritual ignorance? Do you want to have the righteousness of Christ credited to your account and be accepted and acquitted and justified by God? Do you want to have the sanctifying power of Christ in your life helping you overcome canceled sin? Do you want to be delivered in the end from misery and death? If so – and I pray that you do – then cherish your union with Christ. Love being united to him. Grow in your grasp of these things. Live in them. Savor them. Carry them with you through the day. Make them your meditation day and night. Think often on what it means to be united to Christ. What it means that "by God's doing you are in Christ Jesus"

I Rejoice; Rejoice Ye!

Alexander MacLaren  on Philippians 4:4 from Expositions of Holy Scripture:

"It has been well said that this whole epistle may be summed up in two short sentences: ‘I rejoice’; ‘Rejoice ye!’ The word and the thing crop up in every chapter, like some hidden brook, ever and anon sparkling out into the sunshine from beneath the shadows. This continual refrain of gladness is all the more remarkable if we remember the Apostle’s circumstances. The letter shows him to us as a prisoner, dependent on Christian charity for a living, having no man like-minded to cheer his solitude; uncertain as to ‘how it shall be with me,’ and obliged to contemplate the possibility of being ‘offered,’ or poured out as a libation, ‘on the sacrifice and service of your faith.’ Yet out of all the darkness his clear notes ring jubilant; and this sunny epistle comes from the pen of a prisoner who did not know but that to-morrow he might be a martyr."