Monday 24 November 2014

Orphans and the glory of God

George Muller had one great passion in life - God's glory.

Close behind was his love of orphans.

He believed God loved the orphans more than he did.  And he believed that God would be glorified when the Lord did the impossible - provide for thousands of orphans without any public appeal for money.

Prayer was the key to Muller's life.  He sought God's will through prayer - patiently.  He did not act on the great issues of his life until he was sure of God's will for him.

When Muller became a believer as a young man in 1825, he was fully committed to whatever God wanted him to do.

Through prayer and meditating on God's word, he was guided to a ministry to orphans in Britain.  In the 1800s, many orphans wound up in poor houses where they were abused.

In his book George Muller of Bristol and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God, A. T. Pierson gives an example of Muller's approach to prayer - the construction of five new buildings for orphans between 1845 and 1870.

In 1845, Muller prayed and believed the Lord was leading him to build new housing for the orphans.  People around the four rented buildings were complaining about the noise of the children and there was a rapidly growing demand to house more orphans.  The need was great.

But there were major obstacles, money being one of the major issues.  Muller himself had no money - all he earned went into the orphanages and his other Christian work.

After weighing the pros and cons, he was convinced God wanted him to go ahead with construction of a new building.  So he prayed with the confidence that the money would come and all obstacles removed.

He took this approach to prayer for the orphanages:
  • He brought the need to God - in detail - and prayed until he was certain the new buildings were what God wanted;
  • He wanted all the glory to go to God so he did nothing to publicize the orphanage project;
  • He believed his job was to "wait on God in faith and patience";
  • He meditated on scripture and believed God was speaking to him through what he read; and
  • He constantly praised God for what he was doing - even when things were going badly.
Over the months to come, money came in - some of it in small amounts, some in large.  Along with it, an architect offered his services for free to design the first building.  And he got the first piece of land for a bargain.

The new building was filled with the 300 children from the rented quarters, so Muller prayed for more land and more buildings. Another house for 400 more orphans opened in 1857.  Another two buildings were put up by 1870, caring for more than 2,000 orphans altogether.

Muller's secret was to seek God's will and his glory in what he did.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Praying that God loves

God loves prayers that are fueled by love - love for God and love for others.

I was reminded of this in reading a blog post by Phil Miglioratti on Pray!Network last night.  Pray!Network is a great web site for those interested in prayer, particularly group prayer.

"Ensure that love is the motivating factor in every spoken or silent prayer,"  Miglioratti says.

For example, we could preface a prayer with words such as "Grant us the Father’s heart of love as we pray . . ." or "Break our hearts over the people and problems that break your heart, Lord. . . ."

This is an invitation to the Holy Spirit to fill us with God's love.  As the apostle John says in 1 John 4:7, true, selfless love comes from God.

I am easily caught up in praying for things or ideas or concrete plans.  But what about people?  What about God?

Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, tells of a time when he was exhausted after a service and was sitting on the edge of the church platform when a dirty homeless man came up to him.  The man smelled and Cymbala just wanted him to go, so he offered him money for his needs.

But the man said he didn't want the money - he wanted Jesus.  Cymbala was struck to the heart and asked God for his love.  And he embraced the man in tears and found God's love overcame the dirt and the smell.

Jesus told us that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbours.  Shouldn't that animate our prayers for others as well as our relationship with the Lord?

"Love and prayer are inextricably linked - even in difficult situations," says Miglioratti. "Especially in difficult situations."

He reminds us of Jesus' words in Matthew 5:44: "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Miglioratti has a few suggestions for our prayers:
  • We should pray - and encourage others to pray - that our praises to God will be saturated with love for our Lord;
  • We should pray that we will grow in love for other believers and, particularly, for those who are hard to love; and
  • We should pray with love for the lost and the needy.
In effect, this is a call to consciously seek the heart of God for our prayers.  We know that God loves us and loves all people.  He went so far as to send Jesus to die for us.

Miglioratti suggests that the church in the West is cold - and one reason is that we don't pray with the love of God.

The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 that the greatest gift of all is love - greater than any other spiritual gift.

He finishes his thought in 1 Corinthians 14:1 where he says "Let love be your highest goal!"

Let it be my goal in my prayers.

 

Monday 10 November 2014

God at the controls

I would rather give the controls of an aircraft to an experienced pilot than take over myself.

And yet I am often guilty of telling God in prayer how he should run my life.

I find it hard to yield my efforts at ministry to the one who gave it to me in the first place.

Why?  Probably because I don't trust God enough.  And I'm not tuned to what he is saying.

But Jesus is our example.

In John 14:10, Jesus says: "The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me."


Jesus lived in dependence on the Father.  He did what the Father wanted him to do.


Clearly, he struggled mightily when his crucifixion was imminent.  He prayed to the Father that he be spared the horror of taking on all the sins of the world and the righteous Father turning away from his as the sin bearer.

Yet in Matthew 26:39, Christ yielded and said to the Father: "I want your will to be done, not mine."

The model prayer to God that Christ taught also includes the line: "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Often it is hard to determine what God's will is.

In his book The Prayer Life, the great South African writer Andrew Murray suggests the approach we should take.

He says: "Our first work . . . ought to be to come into God's presence not with our ignorant prayers, not with many words and thoughts, but in the confidence that the divine work of the Holy Spirit is being carried on within us."

He is referring to the apostle Paul's words in Romans 8:26 where he says that the Holy Spirit helps us when we don't know what to pray for.  He adds that the Holy Spirit "prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words".

What Paul is saying is that we don't have to rely on our own wisdom.  We know that the Holy Spirit is praying for us even when we don't know what to say.  And the Holy Spirit "pleads for us believers in harmony with God's will".

So, my job is to stop getting in God's way.  I am to come before God, listen to the Spirit's promptings, and act on what he is telling me to do.

For big things, the great prayer warrior George Muller waited for direction from God.  He would read the scriptures, praying about them and obeying God's promptings for action.  He would be attentive to the things that the Spirit brought to his mind.

Sometimes, that means obeying promptings that don't make sense - like Abram leaving Ur on God's command.  Abram didn't know where God wanted him to go, but he started travelling, taking his family with him.

Abram's obedience led to the formation of the nation of Israel, God's chosen people.

 Imagine if Abram refused to obey God's promptings.  Suppose he wanted to control his life apart from God.  Yielding control to God helped him become a vital part of God's story.

It's something for me to think about. Giving control to God makes all the difference in the world.


Monday 3 November 2014

Gazing at God

When you feel dissatisfied, it's time to gaze at God.

There is nothing so quieting and reassuring than to simply contemplate God in peace.

It is so good that David says in Psalm 27:4:

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."

There are always things to trouble us, to prey on our minds.  But, entering the presence of the Lord and enjoying him alone is like the touch of a cool breeze on a warm summer's day.  It refreshes.

David was always at war as King of Israel.  He had bad relations with some of his children.  He had a lot to worry about.

I have nothing really heavy on my mind right now.  But I have felt something gnawing at me for the last few days - something I can't quite put my finger on.

So, this afternoon, I turned to this lovely passage in Psalm 27 and thought about "gazing upon the beauty of the Lord".

This is a great picture.  In my mind, I see David kneeling before God and just gazing at him in wonder and joy.  I am certain he is doing that now in heaven.

Like David, we don't need to wait until heaven in order to gaze upon him.  We may not see God as clearly as we will when we are with him in eternity.  But we can be aware of him with us - and enjoy him.

Richard Foster, author of Sanctuary of the Soul, recommends that we "put away all obstacles of the heart, all scheming of the mind, all vacillations of the will".  As St. John of the Cross said, it is like a house going still.  We quiet ourselves.

Now, we are ready to relax in his presence, attentive to him.

Sometimes, that is all that happens.  As Foster says: "In silence, we behold the Lord.  Words are not needed for there to be communion.  Most of all, we rest in God's 'wondrous, terrible, gentle, loving, all-embracing silence'."

Often, I have pictured God with me and I am resting in silence with him.  He is just with me and no words are needed.  He extends his peace to me.

At other times, we may want to hear him as he speaks to us.

Mark Virkler, who wrote How to Hear God's Voice, imagines walking with Jesus on a beach and just delighting in his companionship.  He opens his mind to what Jesus is saying.

As Foster says, listening to God means being aware of how God speaks and what he has said in the Bible.  God does not contradict what is said in scripture.  But he does speak to us personally through the promptings of the Spirit in our minds and hearts.

The key to listening is wanting to hear what God has to say.  He may simply be saying: "I love you."  What he has to say is always good, even if he is urging us to change for his sake.

So, after gazing at God, I am no longer dissatisfied.  I am renewed.