The Glory of God in the Lord’s Prayer

Listened to an excellent sermon this evening, from Iver Martin, at Stornoway Free Church prayer meeting.   It was just a brief overview of the Lord’s Prayer, touching on each of the petitions.

Iver’s main idea was the orderliness of the prayer – and how the order is a help to Christians not in the specific layout of their prayers, but in the priorities that move them in prayer.

I was incidentally struck by the orderliness of the prayer in terms of the work of the Gospel.

1. The God we pray to has made himself known to us as our Father, but also as the one enthroned in Heaven.   We need to see God in this way, because if we don’t, we cannot clearly continue in this prayer.
2. Our first priority in prayer is to pray for the widespread reception of and respect for his reputation (I take “name” to equate to “reputation”, and “hallowed” to mean “reverently or worshipfully set apart”).
3. When we think about Paul’s understanding of what happens in conversion (2 Cor. 4) it is in relation to how people see the glory of God revealed in Christ.   In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus moves from the Father’s reputation (what we see) to the “coming of the Kingdom” – a reference to, among other things, the bringing in of new worshippers through conversion.
4. It is only after this that the chain of priorities moves on to the Father’s will being done.

With all the pressing moral issues of the day – be it same-sex marriage, or Sunday opening at the Stornoway Golf Course – it’s helpful to remember that the Kingdom isn’t built up be men and women becoming more outwardly righteous.    In fact, outward righteousness is very seriously offensive to God.

The outward “will of the Father” righteousness that we want to see expressed in the land can only really come about if people are brought to see the marvel of the reputation God jealously wants for himself.   If people are brought to respond to Grace with Faith in Christ.

That doesn’t mean the outward righteousness “will of the Father” stuff doesn’t matter.   But it does mean that there is a huge danger the Church will not see the desired return to righteousness if it over-prioritizes the outward doing the Father’s will ahead of the publishing of God’s reputation.   The order matters – and time and time again the Church has lost sight of this, even to the point of possibly no longer being the Church.

A real danger?   Yes, because Christians can, and do, find greater temporal satisfaction in the cut and thrust of winning political victories, than in the dying to self that is involved in winning souls.

Hello 2011. (part 1)

Hello 2011.

Here’s what I’m excited about this year (in no particular order):

1. John Piper returning from Leave of Absence.
Right now, in my tiny little Scottish circle, the phrase “returning from leave of absence” means a bit of unnecessary distraction down in Glasgow. But this really cheered me up this morning. John Piper is a “ledge“. I cannot underestimate how excited I am about how God uses this man – from Theology challenging New Perspective-ism to regular preaching; from conferences and book tours to his twitter account, I have not ceased to find his ministry a blessing to my own soul, and to the wider Church.

Please God, accept my thanks for John Piper, and bless his return to work.

2. Kincraig Free Church Youth Camp
Neil DM has asked Dolina and I to help out as leaders at his camp in July. Free Church camps are great, and it’s good to be finally able to return after having to take a break 3 years ago due to a spinal surgery. Neil and Day are really great people, and the prospect of getting our old camp team back together (sort of) will be fun.

Please God, accept my thanks for the Free Church’s Youth Camps program, and bless them all this summer.

3. Marriage
Dolina & I are now half way through year 2, still in love and still learning. The more I reflect on Ephesians 5 the more I come to appreciate Christ-like covenant love – and that’s largely down to my long-suffering wife. I’m glad God has the coming year for us mapped out in detail, because a lot of time we don’t have a clue.

Please God, accept my praise for giving me such a wonderful wife, and bless us in your service together.

4. Sleat & Strath
My congregation has a big year ahead. Later this month we’re moving to start a Sunday afternoon meeting in Broadford. Broadford is a tough place, and not been very fruitful ground for the Gospel for a long time. We’ve already made a start with a mercy ministry in the Mustard Seed Café, and God has blessed us in that, taking care of all the little concerns we’ve had about it. It seems clear He has a plan for this work.

Please God, accept my thanks for giving me a call to serve you, and glorify your name in that call.

5. Cinema
I would be lying and giving a false impression of my life if I didn’t include films… 2011 looks set to be full of awesomeness. This, at the BBC, covers most titles on the list.

Please God, accept my thanks for giving us creativity and an in-built love of stories, but please, let the stories be good, and our appreciation of them turn the greatest story of all.

(Part 2 will follow – it was about my excitement for the Church in the UK, but after hearing about Liam Goligher moving to Philadelphia it outgrew a blog post.)

Why I need the Gospel.

For sure, I’ve not blogged in a while.   Life in a small, West Coast community (that’s Scottish West Coast, not US) has just been a bit mad, with things in the church going well some days, coasting a lot of days, and down right saddening some days too.   I’ve come to not use the word depressing, because I’m trying to watch my language.

The last few weeks though, I’ve come back to thinking about what we’re about as a church.   What do we stand for each day?   I think these are two very different questions.   What we’re about is maybe not what we stand for.   Very often, we’re about the Gospel (or at least we know we should be!), but we stand for all sorts of other things – some helpful, so less so.   What I’ve realised is that somewhere in the last few months, I lost track a bit.   I got happily into the rut of things just ticking along, accepting all the odd little things in my church, and thinking they are just life, this is who we are, so lets all get along.

I forgot that my church needs constant reminders about what we’re about, so that the things we stand for day to day are about that.

So what are we about?

We’re about the Gospel. We’re not about chastising our community for immoral behaviour – in particular “Working on the Sabbath”.   We’re not about giving people who think they are good a cosy network where they can feel reassured in their pious church attendance and generally moral lifestyles.   We’ll shortly be swinging by that all important “communion season” again – and again there’ll be Christians who’ll stay away because they’re not good enough, and non-Christians who want to come because they think they are.  Closer to home, I’m feeling the burden of my own sinful lifestyle, the way I find satisfaction in all the wrong things.   God, and his love, is not my chief delight.

We’re about the Gospel – free grace, offered by a God who delights in saving death-deserving rebels, so that we will be freed to live to praise him through renewed lives marked by love.   What I’ve realised is that not only does my Church need reminders of this all time, I do too!

I feel like the least worthy of all Christians, and this is why I need and love the Gospel.

Making deals you come to regret

I’ve moved house, moved congregations, and all that!   So no blogs for a while, sorry.

This week, I’m all stressed out, because I think I made a deal without realising the cost.

Last Sunday, I was talking to the kids at church.   I told them we had would be taking communion next Sunday, and asked them if they had any idea what communion was all about.  Being faced with about 10 blank faces, I realised something was amiss.

Had they, I asked, ever been to a communion service?   Shaking of heads.   So, did they know that we passed around a loaf of break, and a shared a cup of wine?   More shaking heads.   This is a megaproblem.   If kids growing up in the church don’t know what communion is like, let alone what it represents, or indeed what is actually going on, how can we expect them to take it seriously when they reach an age of responsibility.

Truth is, this is another example of how we, in my beloved Free Church, don’t take the Gospel all that seriously.   It’s great that people come to church services, but we don’t expect them to see what it’s really about.   Communion forces us to remember that we exist to exalt Jesus Christ.   It teaches us that his life, ended at Golgotha, is the single most important event in the world and that without this focus, the Church is nothing.

But, coming back to the narrative, the kids don’t know any of that.   So, I made a deal with them:  If you come next week, you’ll sit in for the whole service, and I’ll preach foryour benefit, so that you’ be able to understand what communion is all about.   The work involved is more than usual.

EDIT: In the end, none of the kids came that Sunday.

Should James (and young pastors everywhere) Blog?

I’ve not yet figured out how to link sites on comment posts, so this will need to do.

James was blogging on whether or not he should blog. He’s got a hugely wise quote from Carl Trueman, on the dangers of young pastors blogging.

Maybe I need to listen to that. I’ve found a helpful tonic, Abraham Piper (son of John, webguy at Desiring God) giving 6 reasons why pastors should blog. It’s nice. Maybe I need to listen to these wise guys.

And there I’ve broken two rules about blogging! 1. These are not my own thoughts. 2. I’ve just linked someone else and said nothing new. Cheers.

Dial-up depression and two other ailments

There are really three things in this post – three things that have been bothering me the last few weeks.

Dial-up connections have left me feeling a bit flat these last few weeks. That’s probably because in some ways I’ve come to depend on fast internet connections for some spiritual relief. Let me give you some examples. I can’t look at the pictures on James’ blog. The White Horse Inn, Micheal Horton’s radio programme – last week, I managed to download 25 minutes of audio. The programme is 35 minutes long. The strange thing is that when you download an MP3, the audio file will play to the point the download failed. So mid-sentence, it was gone. The same with my weekly fixes of Tim Keller and John Piper. Dial-up connections leave me asking how did we live a few years ago, when fast internet connections were only available in college?

The reason for all this is of course recovery. I’m really thankful for my mum. Mrs. Matheson is simply the best mum in the world. I’ve been living at her dial-up house for a month now, since leaving hospital. Everything has been going well – we haven’t really had any disputes / fall outs, as we frequently disagree on the practical answer to “How now shall we live?” Clearly an answer to prayer. In relation to other ailments, I’m hoping to be back to some semblance of work and ministry soon – the physiotherapy man doesn’t want to see me as often, and the medical team at Raigmore Hospital are happy to never see me again. God made the human body a wonderful thing. So he gets the glory.

The last ailment is being as yet “unmarried”. I say “as yet” because shortly before I was hospitalised, Dolina agreed to marry me at some undisclosed point in the future. That was amazing. But the ailment is still one I suffer from, and it has left me wondering about the way my church generally treats single people in their late 20s and 30s. So many of my friends have left the Free Church at this stage because they genuinely felt the Free Church had no place for them. I used to argue against this – thinking the complaint was not “no place” but rather “nothing to offer”. I don’t believe for a second that the Church has nothing to offer anyone – we have the Gospel, don’t we?

But having no place is something much worse. We’ve been duped into thinking that the way the church grows is through parent and toddler groups, through families making connections, through creche facilities that will make Sunday mornings more attractive, through kids clubs at the school holidays that might “hopefully” bring some of said kids into church youth groups and in time see them converted(!). Finally, sad to say it, we think we will grow through having attractive ministers in place – attractive in that they have a nice wife and sweet kids who will give the impression that this church is a safe place for other people with nice wives and sweet kids.

What happened to growing the Church through knowing and telling the Gospel? Experience might be flawed here, but in mine it tends to be young “as yet” unmarried 20/30-somethings that have the most contact with people outside the church. Once you get married your circle of friends tends to be more tightly drawn in, more fixed. Surely the “as yet” unmarried people in their 20s/30s are the very people we should be empowering to go and share the faith with those outside who need the gospel.

I’m not saying all these other things are wrong in and of themselves, but if they are the things we look for, the things that give our churches purpose and our members a sense of “doing something”, then they are obfuscating the Gospel. So that’s my third ailment – being “as yet” unmarried is some kind of leprous poison chalice for a church fixated with image, not gospel.

Three Weeks in Hospital – mad mad mad goings on

This is probably a null post, but I wanted to say two or three things quickly.

I slipped a disk, spend almost three weeks in Hospital, and was discharged today. It was sore, but I am deeply humblied to think that thet recovery I’ve made is more than I ever deserve – resolutions about the deployment of my weakness at God’s disposal will follow.

Secondly, the ward staff in 3A at Raigmore Hospital are really good at what they do. Hats off to them.

Thirdly, my good friend David Strain is going to take up a pastoral charge in America, i.e. he’s leaving behind London, the Free Church, and maybe a lot of heartache too. He, and Sheena will also be leaving their families behind, which is a huge sacrifice to make for the Gospel, but as a friend recently told me, we can never out-give God, so I’m sure the blessings for the Strains will be extreme. So prayers for David & family.

But… what does this mean for my church? When it comes to preaching David is one of the most dedicated guys I know. It’s a sad day for the church in Scotland and the UK when we lose men of his caliber. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest… …and maybe ask the American church to lay off our ministers – I think our need is greater.