Prayer Is for Sinners

“Lord, teach us to pray.” (Luke 11:1)

God answers the prayers of sinners, not perfect people. And you can become perfectly paralyzed in your praying if you do not focus on the cross and realize this.

I could show it from numerous Old Testament texts where God hears the cry of his sinful people, whose very sins had gotten them into the trouble from which they are crying for deliverance (for example, Psalm 38:4, 15; 40:12–13; 107:11–13). But let me show it from Luke 11 — in two ways:

In this version of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2–4), Jesus says, “When you pray, say . . . ” and then in verse 4 he includes this petition, “and forgive us our sins.” So, if you connect the beginning of the prayer with the middle, what he says is, “Whenever you pray, say . . . forgive us our sins.”

I take this to mean that this should be as much a part of all our praying as, “Hallowed be your name.” Which means that Jesus assumes that we need to seek forgiveness virtually every time we pray.

In other words, we are always sinners. Nothing we do is perfect. As Martin Luther said, on his deathbed, “We are beggars. This is true.” Even if we have achieved some measure of obedience before we pray, we always come to the Lord as sinners — all of us. And God does not turn away the prayers of sinners when they pray like this.

The second place we can see this is in Luke 11:13: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Jesus calls his disciples “evil.” Pretty strong language. And he did not mean that they were out of fellowship with him. He did not mean that their prayers could not be answered.

He meant that as long as this fallen age lasts, even his own disciples will have an evil bent that pollutes everything they do, but doesn’t keep them from doing much good as they rely on his grace and power.

We are simultaneously evil and redeemed. We are gradually overcoming our evil by the power of the Holy Spirit. But our native corruption is not obliterated by conversion.

We are sinners and we are beggars. And if we recognize this sin, renounce it, fight it, and cling to the cross of Christ as our hope, then God will hear us and answer our prayers.

John Piper 

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. Galatians 5:13

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

One of the signs that you have stopped trusting God is that you cease to function. You simply drop out of life’s activities. You start fretting over this and that; you get distressed over a loss. When you get oppressed by the devil, what do you do? Close up shop, draw the drapes, go to sleep, get up late. Have you ever been that way? Worry will do that to you.

When you worry it is because you are not trusting God. You may say, “I lost my job.” Well, what are you doing? “I’m sitting around the house.” Well, quit it! You have more opportunity to serve God.

ACTION POINT:

Go down to the church and ask them to put you to work. Go to your local mission and volunteer. Mow a neighbor’s yard. Go shopping for an elderly person. Do what you need to do to find a job and when you’re done…do good! Do good because you’re trusting in the Lord.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Glorify God in Your Body

You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:20)

“Worship” is the term we use to cover all the acts of the heart and mind and body that intentionally express the infinite worth of God. This is what we were created for. It might be singing in church. It might be sweeping the kitchen floor.

Don’t just think about worship services when you think about worship. That is a huge limitation which is not in the Bible. All of life is supposed to be worship.

Take breakfast, for example, or mid morning snacks. First Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Now eating and drinking are about as basic as you can get. What could be more real or more ordinarily human than eating and drinking? And Paul says, in effect, let all your eating and drinking be worship.

Or take sex. Paul says the alternative to fornication is worship.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:18–20)

That is, worship with your body by the way you handle your sexuality.

Or take death for a final example. We will experience death in our bodies. In fact, it will be the last act of the body on this earth. The body bids farewell. How shall we worship in that last act of the body? We see the answer in Philippians 1:20–21. Paul says that his hope is that Christ would be magnified — worshiped, shown to be worthy — in his body by death. Then he adds, “For to me . . . to die is gain.” We express the infinite worth of Christ in dying by counting death as gain.

You have a body. But it is not yours. “You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

You are always in a temple. Always worship.

John Piper 

Is God practical? Or is His head in the clouds?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. 1 Thessalonians 5:8

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A preacher friend was walking away from another friend when this friend called out to him, “Well, so long! Love God. Hate sin. And watch out for trucks!” Now, that’s good advice. Trucks will hurt you if they hit you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re saved or lost.

We all need to love God. We all need to hate sin. But I want to tell you, we’re also human and we need to watch out for the things in life that may hurt us. God has given us the mind of Christ and we need to use that mind (see 1 Corinthians 2:16).

ACTION POINT:

God is very practical. He may dwell in heavenly realms, but His head is not in the clouds. Is your head in the clouds today? Are you alert to the things of this world that could harm you? Be sober. Be alert. And watch out for trucks!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

We Live by Faith

The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Faith is a perfect fit with God’s future grace. It corresponds to the freedom and all-sufficiency of grace. And it calls attention to the glorious trustworthiness of God.

One of the important implications of this conclusion is that the faith that justifies and the faith that sanctifies are not two different kinds of faith. “Sanctify” simply means to make holy or to transform into Christ-likeness. It is all by grace.

Therefore, it must also be through faith. For faith is the act of the soul that connects with grace, and receives it, and channels it as the power of obedience, and guards grace from being nullified through human boasting.

Paul makes this connection between faith and sanctification explicit in Galatians 2:20 (“I live by faith”). Sanctification is by the Spirit and by faith. Which is another way of saying that it is by grace and by faith. The Spirit is “the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29). God’s way of making us holy is by the Spirit; but the Spirit works through faith in the gospel.

The simple reason why the faith that justifies is also the faith that sanctifies is that both justification and sanctification are the work of sovereign grace. And it’s faith that corresponds to grace. Justification and sanctification are not the same kind of work (justification is the imputation of righteousness; sanctification is the impartation of righteousness), but they are both works of grace. Sanctification and justification are “grace upon grace” (John 1:16).

The human corollary of God’s free grace is faith. If both justification and sanctification are works of grace, it is natural that they would both be by faith.

John Piper 

Does God try me under double jeopardy?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Romans 6:4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When Jesus Christ died, not only did He die for us, but we also died with Him. You may say, “Well, what difference does it make whether He died for me or I died with Him? It’s just a play on words.” Oh no it’s not, dear friend.

When you’re dead, then death has no dominion over you whatsoever. You can’t kill a man who is already dead. Let’s suppose a man is put to death for a capital crime he has committed, and yet somehow he is raised back to life. Do you think he can be arrested again for his crime? Absolutely not. That would be double jeopardy. He paid the penalty for his crime.

It’s necessary for you to understand that when Jesus died, you died, and guess what that means for you—the law has no more hold on you! Your sin debt has been paid in full because Jesus died for you and took your penalty. You died with Him.

ACTION POINT:

If you have accepted Jesus’ death on the Cross as payment in full for sins, then there is no more payment to be made. Have you accepted that? Have you asked Him to forgive your sins? When Jesus said on the cross “It is finished!”—friend, it is finished. Praise Him today for what that means for you! You’ve been set free from “the law of sin and death.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

All Hostile to God

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death. (Colossians 1:21–22)

The best news in all the world is that our alienation from God is ended and we are reconciled to the Judge of the universe. God is no longer against us, but for us. Having omnipotent love on our side mightily steels the soul. Life becomes utterly free and daring when the strongest being in the universe is for you.

But Paul’s message of salvation is not good news to those who reject the diagnosis in Colossians 1:21. He says, you “were alienated and hostile in mind.”

How many people do you know who say, “Apart from God’s grace, I am hostile to God in my mind”? People seldom say, “I hate God.” So, what does Paul mean that people are “hostile in mind” to God before they were reconciled by the blood of Christ?

I think he means that the hostility is really there toward the true God, but people do not allow themselves to think about the true God. They imagine God to be the way they would like him to be, which seldom includes any possibility that they might be in really serious trouble with him.

But concerning the God who really exists — a God who is sovereign over all things, including sickness and calamity — we were all hostile to him, Paul says. Deep down, we hated his absolute power and authority.

That any of us is saved is owing to the wonderful truth that the death of Christ obtained the grace by which God conquered our hearts and caused us to love the One we once hated.

Many are still learning not to be hostile to God. It is a good thing that he is gloriously patient.

John Piper