The sermon this past Sunday was about our desire as a church family to be totally dependent on God in prayer. Turning away from our anxiety and coming to Him with everything, big and small, offering specific, sustained and submissive prayers. Prayers that acknowledge His sovereign care over us. Prayers that trust in His wisdom and timing. In other words, we are not coming to God with our demands in order to ask him to do what we want done. Instead in prayer we are called to submit ourselves, to submit our agendas and our needs to God’s will. "Thy will be done."

I mentioned an acronym (A.C.T.S.) to help guide or give structure to our prayers. Adoration (praising God), Confession (of sins), Thanksgiving and Supplication (asking God to supply our needs and hear our requests).

Here is another very helpful set of principles for effective prayer from the book "Practical Prayer" by Derek Prime.

1. We must be in fellowship with God: Reconciled to God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

2. We must be obedient to God: By putting away sin, by maintaining right relationships with others, and by striving to abide in Christ.

3. We must depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on our behalf: We pray in His name.

4. We must exercise faith: Believing prayer has the assurance that we may receive beyond all our asking.

5. We must be ready for action, for faith and works go together: Having prayed, we must be the instruments on occasions by means of which God answers our prayers.

6. We must honestly desire God’s will to be done and His name to be glorified.

7. We must pray with sincerity: God has no time for hypocrites who make a lot of show without reality in their hearts, but He promises to be near those who call upon Him in truth.

What do you think about any or all of these?

First off, let me say thank you to everyone who has left a comment on the blog. I really appreciate your feedback, great thoughts and reflections, as I said in the first post, the goal of this exercise is to spark both biblical thinking and online discussion/dialogue.

This past week our church's worship committee met and among other things a decision was made to review/audit the songs and hymns we sing in the Sunday morning service. The two main criteria being singability and content... whether or not a certain chorus or hymn is well suited for congregational singing, but more so whether it is biblical/God-centered. In other words, the measure of a good worship song is not so much about style as it is about substance.

With this in mind, here is a very thought provoking quote aimed at eliciting your (gracious) feedback...

"The great hymns of the church are on the way out. They are not gone entirely, but they are going and in their place have come trite jingles that have more in common with contemporary advertising ditties than the psalms. The problem here is not so much the style of the music, though trite words fit best with trite tunes and harmonies. Rather it is with the content of the songs. The old hymns expressed the theology of the Bible in profound and perceptive ways and with winsome memorable language. Today’s songs are focused on ourselves. They reflect our shallow or nonexistent theology and do almost nothing to elevate our thoughts about God. Worst of all are songs that merely repeat a trite idea, word, or phrase over and over again. Songs like this are not worship, though they may give the church-goer a religious feeling. They are mantras, which belong more in a gathering of New Agers than among the worshiping people of God."

- James Montgomery Boice

The book of Romans is in many ways the highest point in all of scripture. In it we find some of the clearest and most profound teaching on sin and salvation. For example, after spending two chapters (3 and 4) dealing with how sinners are made right with or "justified" before God, Paul gives us one of the most astounding statements ever to be written...

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

Romans 5:1-5

Rejoice in our suffering? He can't be serious, that must be a misprint! The problem of pain is one of the most difficult issues we can face in this world and one of the most common objections to the existence of God. Why then would Paul say that we should rejoice in our suffering?

Have you ever thought about that? Here is how Jerry Bridges answers this question in his book Trusting God...

"Paul says that we should rejoice in our trials because of their beneficial results. It is not the adversity considered in itself that is to be the ground of our joy. Rather, it is the expectation of the results, the development of our character that should cause us to rejoice in adversity. God does not ask us to rejoice because we have lost our job, or a loved one has been stricken with cancer, or a child has been born with an incurable birth defect. But He does tell us to rejoice because we believe He is in control of those circumstances and is at work through them for our ultimate good."

Let me start by thanking everyone for making our family feel so much at home here in the valley. It is hard to believe that it has been nearly three months since we moved to Arnprior to serve First Baptist.