This prayer crushed me as I was reading it this morning....Thought I'd share it.
"O changeless God, Under the conviction of Thy Spirit I learn that the more I do, the worse I am, the more I know, the less I know, the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am, the more I love, the more there is to love. O wretched man that I am! O Lord, I have a wild heart, and cannot stand before Thee; I am like a bird before a man. How little I love Thy truth and ways! I neglect prayer, by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly, by knowing Thou hast saved my soul. Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite, who sins more safely because grace abounds, who tells his lusts that Christ's blood cleanseth them, who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved, who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholily. My mind is a bucket without a bottom, with no spiritual understanding, no desire for the Lord's Day, ever learning but never reaching the truth, always at the gospel-well but never holding water. My conscience is without conviction or contrition, with nothing to repent of. My will is without power of decision or resolution. My heart is without affection, and full of leaks. My memory has no retention, so I forget easily the lessons learned, and Thy truths seep away. Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of Grace."
" God's love is an exercise of His goodness toward individual sinners whereby, having identified Himself with their welfare, He has given His Son to be their savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation." - J.I. Packer, "Knowing God"
Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find Thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ. Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do Thou rule over me in liberty and power.
I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with Thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to Thy rule. I thank Thee for Thy wisdom and Thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross.
No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If Thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction. Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of Thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in Thee. Then I shall bless Thee, God of jeshurun, for helping me to be upright.
I was recently given an opportunity at the church I attend to give a sermonette on the content of a verse from the song "Rock of Ages". I have also embedded the song 'Rock of Ages' that the Redemption Hill band recently recorded below. The audio for the sermonette can be heard here
Nothing in my hand I bring Simply to the cross I cling Naked, come to Thee for dress Helpless look to Thee for grace Foul, I to the fountain fly Wash me, Savior, or I die
Three words immediately stand out in reading this verse: Naked, Helpless, and Foul. These words describe who we are apart from God’s grace, and they display why our need for grace is so great. While we may look at our own lives and hesitate to identify ourselves by any of these words, the Bible clearly states that because of our sin we have become depraved, willfully and actively plunging ourselves into darkness, away from the presence of a Holy God. We may compare ourselves to others, make a resume’s worth of good deeds that we have done, or we may even sweep our dirt under the rug of our own justification, but all of these actions only serve to confirm the reality that apart from grace we are naked, helpless, foul and destitute.
In our nakedness, we become like our first parents, stricken with guilt because of our sinfulness, ashamed because we fail to meet the required standards of God’s law, and condemned because we feel the weight of the judgment we deserve. In vanity, we attempt to hide from the light, blame others for our transgressions, and we seek to cover ourselves with fig leaves of self-justification and pride. We become Laodiceans, deceiving ourselves by thinking that we are rich, prosperous, and in need of nothing, when the truth is that we are wretched, pitiable, poor blind and naked. We need covering.
In our helplessness, we are weak, enslaved by sin, and steadily stumbling over the sin that so easily besets us. We are powerless, like the invalid man at the pool of Siloam, unable to help ourselves after so many years of inability. No amount of labor, efforts, or emotion can save us. Apart from grace, we are guilty in a courtroom where all the evidence is stacked against us and the victim is the Judge: helpless. We need strength.
In our foulness, we are like Lazarus, dead – in our sins and transgressions, lying in the tomb we have made for ourselves, and everyday without Life is a day that we become more soiled and polluted. Our attempt to wash ourselves with the rags of our own righteousness only ends in failure because our rags are soiled too. We need cleansing.
The sum of the state of our nakedness, helplessness, and foulness equals to nothing, and therefore there is nothing that we can bring to The Most High to atone for our sins. Our hands are as dirty as they are empty and in the realization of this there remains only one thing to say: Wash me Savior or I die! At the cross we find cleansing and fullness.
At the cross we have clothing for our nakedness, garments of skins for our fig leaves, righteousness for our sinfulness. At the cross we have grace for our helplessness, strength in our weakness, and an Advocate for our trial. At the cross we have a fountain of cleansing from our filth, beauty for our ashes, and resurrection at our funerals. Wash me Savior, or I die! Wash me Savior or I die! Wash me Savior or I die!
Do we worship the one true God in truth? Or are ideas of God such that in reality we do not believe in the Christian God, but in some other, just as the Muslim or Jew or Jehovah's Witness does not believe in the Christian God, but in some other?
You may say, how can I tell? Well, the test is this. The God of the Bible has spoken in his Son. The light of the knowledge of his glory is given to us in the face of Jesus Christ. Do I look habitually to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as showing me the final truth about the nature and the grace of God? Do I see all the purposes of God as centering upon him?
If I have been enabled to see this, and in mind and heart to go to Calvary and lay hold of the Calvary solution, then I can know that I truly worship the true God, and that he is my God, and that I am even now enjoying eternal life, according to our Lord's own definition, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent"(John 17:3)
I’ll start from the scripture in James. James 1:26-27 says “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” The word for religious/religion in verses 26 and 27 is the greek word θρησκεια (* yes, I copied and pasted…I do not know Greek) which can be used interchangeably with worhip/worshipping. Colossians 2:18 uses the same word when it says “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels…” So, if we were to use the word worship in James 1:26-27 rather than religion, it seems to clarify what James really thinks about religion or worship. “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person’s (worship) is worthless. (Worship) that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this….” With this understanding, I don’t think it’s wrong to say that Christianity is a religion, and I do. Saying Christianity is a religion is no different than saying basketball is a religion, or shopping is a religion, or stockbroking. Sinful humans religion (used as a verb) anything and everything. We worship things and people. We talk about them with the utmost delight, we spend serious amounts of time with them, and we devote and sacrifice for the things we worship – thereby making the objects of our affections our religion. I’m guilty of making basketball a religion; Lust a religion; People’s opinions of me a religion. I really did nothing different than a Bhuddist or a Muslim. I sought to please a god, namely, myself and I was doing everything I could to appease that god. I think religion is worship and true religion is true worship of God: Father, Son and Spirit. Jesus says that true worshippers worship God in Spirit and in truth (John 4:23). The only TRUE religion and TRUE worship is centered on God: Father, Son and Spirit. Any other religion is false in the sense that its worship is centered on something or someone other than God. It’s really worship, it’s just really false. It is possible for people to even worship Christianity and not worship God. Worship of going to church, getting into community, and worship of doing what Christians do is all worship of Christianity, and a person may do these things and not be worshipping God at all. This is why I think it is wrong in a sense to say Christianity is a religion. If people do "Christianity" on the grounds of trying to appease a deity, either themselves or God, then “Christianity” becomes like every other system – a false “religion” or worship. Also, when I hear people say “It’s not religion, its relationship.”, I sort of scratch my head. True, Christianity is firstly and foremost a relationship with God, but if we leave it here, then it is left where any other relationship is, just a correlation between friends. But Christianity is a religion because it involves worship. It involves devotion and submission and obedience (although not dead ritualistic practices), and these things are all grounded on a relational factor: love and grace. So my answer to the question “Is Christianity a religion or a relationship?” is …Its both.
