THE SIX P's

In Sunday’s sermon I mentioned six groups, each of which start with P, that I pray for regularly because I believe serving them in the various ways they need is important for fulfilling the Great Commission God has given us. 

 

Proximate Community

We must first reach those closest to us, including family, friends, community, co-workers, fellow students, those from other countries God is bringing to us, and speaking into the public arena to display our love and to set the stage for evangelism. Starting here is not only  important since those who don’t make disciples at home probably won’t be involved in places farther away, but also since disciplemaking can help to raise up an army of people who can pray, send, support, and go when it comes to missions. 

 

Present Missionaries

This group is important since these are the folks that God has called us to send out and support so that missions throughout the world can take place. When we are not loving and supporting our missionaries well, we are hurting the church’s effectiveness in the Great Commission. The opposite takes place when we love and support them well.

 

Pastors Undertrained

 Through much of the world where the Spirit of God is moving and people are coming to Jesus as their Savior in large numbers, most pastors have less training than the average Christian attending church services on Sunday mornings in the United States. To serve this group well ultimately encourages and strengthens and brings greater health to the churches they lead and their oversight of discipling. This is a crucial part of the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19-20). 

 

Peoples Unreached

One third of the world, three billion people, have no access to a Bible or the gospel, no Christians around to tell them about the gospel, and no churches to serve them or nurture them if they would come to Christ. It is estimated that 160,000 people a day die and go into a Christless eternity. If Christians will obey Jesus Christ and go to these people, it will mean bringing greater spiritual health to the church so that there will be people who make the sacrifice to go to unreached peoples and to stay with it. This is especially true when one realizes that unreached peoples are in some of the hardest places and people groups to reach. 

 

Poor and Persecuted

There are many throughout the world who are poor materially and to help minister to their physical needs often opens them up more to respond in genuine faith to the gospel (Acts 4:32-34; 1 John 3:16-18). This, then is an important aspect of fulfilling the Great Commission.

 

At the same time, the church throughout the world is often materially poor and suffering due to persecution. When Christians minister to fellow Christians in these circumstances, they are helping these front-line believers to continue to carry out the Great Commission and to do so fruitfully. 

 

Parentless

Finally, an important group to serve throughout the world are those in need of orphan care, including those in the foster care system, and/or those who need to be adopted. In most of these lives much pain and need are found. Helping to love such children not only can open the door for them to hear and respond to the gospel, but it also gives a powerful picture of the gospel in that it is true of all genuine Christians that God adopts them into his family and gives them a right to all the privileges of his children (Rom. 8:15-17; Gal. 3:26; 4:5; Eph. 1:5; 1 Jn. 3:1). 

 

Response        

How can we respond?  It is simple. Begin to pray for these six groups of people. As you pray for them, seek to learn as much as you can about them. Not only pray for the needs they have but also ask God how you can serve each one. Are there things he would have you do beyond pray? Watch and see how God answers you.

 

Joyfully serving these six groups with you!

 

Tom

How Jesus Prays

As I said in Sunday’s sermon, Luke emphasizes the prayer life of Jesus more than any other Gospel writer. He showed us in the passage we looked at (Luke 4:42-44) that Jesus drew closer to God the Father, gained direction, and gained strength for his mission through prayer. We emphasized that we should follow his example in this as in everything. After all, as disciples of Jesus, we should emulate him (Luke 6:40; 1 John 2:6). And what is more, Jesus wants us to follow him and become like him (Luke 6:40; 9:23). 

 

This brings up an important question we should ask if we are going to follow his model in prayer: How did Jesus pray?  

 

There are at least five answers we can give.

 

To begin, Jesus prayed in accordance with Scripture. We know this because his very last words before he died on the cross consisted of a prayer to the Father that quoted Psalm 31:5: “Into your hands I commit my spirit!” The fact that Jesus would both pray and quote Scripture as he did it as the last thing before death shows how much a part of his life communication with the Father was (note that he prayed for his current and future disciples on the night he was betrayed, just before going to the cross! John 17), yet also communication that was according to Scripture. It is because of this, in part, that Jesus calls his disciples to pray in accordance with his Word (John 15:7). 

 

Next, Jesus prayed that God would help him carry out his mission. We know this  because of his wrestling with the Father in prayer when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he committed himself to do the will of the Father (see Lk. 22:42). This is also apparent from his spending time in prayer at key times during his public ministry (e.g. Luke 4:1-2, 42 [in light of Mk. 1:35]). One of the best ways we know this is by looking at his prayer for his current and future disciples in John 17. Finally, it is seen in how he teaches his disciples to pray. He teaches them to pray for the glory of God, God’s will to be done, and for the kingdom to advance, i.e. to pray for the mission to which God has called them (see Luke 10:2; 11:2-4). 

 

What is more, Jesus did not only ask the Father for what he needed, he also praised and thanked the Father (Mt. 11:25; Lk. 10:21). This is in keeping with the Psalms, that Old Testament book that chronicles the worship life of God’s people (e.g. Psalms 100, 106, 107). 

 

Also, we can say that Jesus prayed about all kinds of things, as is seen in his Garden of Gethsemane prayer (Luke 22:42) and his petition he made to the Father for himself as part of his prayer in John 17 (see verses 1-5). 

 

Finally, what is most remarkable is that Jesus continually prays for all his followers (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). There is little that should give us more comfort than the reality Jesus is continually praying for us. The Scottish pastor and author, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, once wrote: “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” 

 

The life of Jesus shows us he is our Savior, the one who intercedes for us that we might be saved to the uttermost (Heb. 7:25), he is our source, the one through whom we have bold access in prayer to the Father’s throne of grace (Heb. 4:16), and finally he is our standard for how to pray, as we saw above. 

 

Be encouraged Christian, and may we be able to say what King David did: “But I give myself to prayer” (Psalm 109:4). 

 

Joyfully praying through and like Jesus with you!

 

Tom

Glory In Our Savior

On Sunday we looked at some treasures that Luke uncovered about Jesus Christ in his Gospel, Luke 4:16-21. I said that this is in keeping with what has happened through the history of the church, as teachers have called the church to focus upon the greatness of Christ for the sake of worship and faith. Here are some examples.

 

1. John Calvin (16th c. French pastor in Geneva) in his commentary on Col. 1:12 writes: "For how comes it that we are carried about with so many strange doctrines, (Hebrews 13: 9) but because the excellence of Christ is not perceived by us? For Christ alone makes all other things suddenly vanish. Hence there is nothing that Satan so much endeavours to accomplish as to bring on mists with the view of obscuring Christ, because he knows, that by this means the way is opened up for every kind of falsehood. This, therefore, is the only means of retaining, as well as restoring pure doctrine—to place Christ before the view such as he is with all his blessings, that his excellence may be truly perceived." 

 

2. John Owen (17th c. British author and teacher), in Communion With God, 104, writes: “Christ is [the saints’] delight, their crown, their rejoicing, their life, food, health, strength, desire, righteousness, salvation, and blessedness. Without Christ they have nothing. In Christ they shall find all things. Christ has, from the foundation of the world, been the hope, expectation, desire, and delight of all believers.” 

 

3. Robert Murray McCheyene (19th c. Scottish pastor) adds: "Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief. Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in His beams. Feel His all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in His almighty arms. . . . Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him." 

 

4. Modern-day teacher and writer, Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ, 9-10, comments: "Jesus Christ, God’s perfect Son, is the Beloved of the Father, the Song of the angels, the Logic of creation, the great Mystery of godliness, the bottomless Spring of life, comfort and joy. We were made to find our satisfaction, our heart’s rest, in him." 

"He is not a mere topic, a subject we can pick out from a menu of options. Without him, our gospel or our system—however coherent, “grace-filled” or “Bible-based”—simply is not Christian. It will only be Christian to the extent that it is about him....

"I’m going to dare to say, in fact, that most of our Christian problems and errors of thought come about precisely through forgetting or marginalizing Christ.

"...consider Christ, that he might become more central for you, that you might know him better, treasure him more and enter into his joy. That, happily, is just how we will most honor the Father: by sharing his own everlasting delight in his Son (Jn 5: 23)."

 

One of the treasures we looked at in the sermon was that Jesus serves as our standard and source for the development of godly habits. A “habit” means that which has become customary to do (i.e. what is almost always done) through repetition. Another way to word this is that through much repetition an attitude or action becomes more entrenched and second-nature to a person. 

 

Some key Bible passages that deal with the importance of developing godly habits include the following: 

1. “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7)

 

2. “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil: (Heb. 5:14).

 

The Bible also speaks of the reality of bad habits, even to the point they can feel like they are enslaving: 

1. “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24-25)

 

2. “They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! … They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” (2 Peter 2:14, 19)

 

Joyfully Glorying In Our Savior With You,

 

Tom