An Election Day Prayer for November 6, 2018

They will be done O' Lord!
Be it for mercy or be it for judgement,
Not my will, but Thy will be done O' Lord...

The Wind Blows Where it Will...

It goes without saying that Western culture continues its slide into moral chaos and darkness. Here in the United States we debate and get all in a frenzy about who gets to use what public bathroom. It is obvious that at many different levels in American culture, Christianity has been minimized and marginalized. There simply is no "moral majority" as it was once defined back in the early 1980's. We see that specifically in the course of our national politics during this current Presidential election year.

The time will soon come and is already knocking at the door when American culture's growing animus and hostility towards Christian faith will flush away the remains and residue of any easy pop "Christianity", and we will find out that to be a Christian and to be faithful to the Gospel is going to cost us those privileges we once thought inviolable. Are you ready to continue giving financially to your church even when you can no longer declare that giving as a charitable deduction on your Federal income tax return? Or what will you do when your church and ministry buildings become subject to local property tax assessments? Those question are just the tip of the iceberg when outright scorn and ridicule and persecution of Christian faith becomes an entrenched part of public policy.

My concern is that amidst the ever growing signs of the approaching whirlwind of God's judgement on a godless secular materialistic narcissistic culture, the church, and the broader evangelical church in particular, will still be caught up in a "we can fix it" mentality where we desperately seek the right incantations to speak and the right rituals to perform that will somehow twist God's arm to the point where He will be forced to take up our "cause".

News flash: God only has one overarching cause, and that one cause is His own glory period. Everything else is subsidiary to His glory.

Our problem in the broader church at large is we have not been brought to the point of utter desperation where all our confidence in our fancy programs and latest evangelical fads and ideas have been stripped away and we are flat on our back with nowhere else to look but up. God will not allow us to claim any glory that rightfully is His alone. We can not make "revival". Revival is the work of the almighty free and sovereign God; the free and sovereign moving of the Holy Spirit working through the proclaimed word of God in the hearts and minds of lost and desperately needy sinners.

We desperately need an outpouring and movement of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, in the lives of our local congregations and our wider local communities, in the church at large, and in an increasingly viciously wicked culture. We can not bring that about by anything of our own saying or doing. It will only happen as a free and sovereign work and moving of God for His own glory. We are left to pleading and begging and desperately crying out that God in sovereign merciful grace for His own glory would grant that outpouring and movement of His Spirit. And in the meantime, revival or not, persecution and distress notwithstanding, we are to remain a faithful remnant; faithful to the Gospel once delivered to the saints.

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!

~ Isaiah 64:1-2

Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus!

The Seventh Word

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. ~ Luke 23:46

These words,"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," have been repeated by countless Christians on their way to death. We Anglicans pray, at the Commendation in the Liturgy for Burial, "Into they hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant." Christians repeat these word in imitation of Jesus and because we assume these are words of comfort as we face the unknown that death names. These words can and should comfort, but that these words comfort us should not hide from us that these last words of Jesus before his death name his willingness to embrace the ice-cold silence of hell. accordingly these words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," are every bit as frightening as Jesus's prior cry of abandonment. Jesus is not comforting himself; he is gesturing to the Father that he is ready to face the final work that only Jesus can do.

Stanley Hauerwas, "Cross-Shattered Christ"

Odds & Ends

"In a age of relativism, orthodoxy is the only possible rebellion left." ~ Peter Kreeft

Living With the Mystery of Unanswered Prayer by Mark Daniels..

A little update on my trek through Credo by Karl Barth: I am through the chapter on the remission of sins. I can only read a page or two at a time and then my brain circuits are at the point of blowing a breaker... I find it odd that reading Barth's Credo has done more to confirm me in orthodox faith then anything I've read since my time in seminary. I find myself loving and embracing the Apostles Creed as a true statement of basic Christian belief and doctrine... It is odd that Barth can come across more orthodox then some of those in the broad tent of Evangelicalism.

It is hot; getting up in the low 90's which for our part of Michigan is hot. Back in May we got a central air conditioner to replace our window AC. It is getting a work out, and we are thankful to have it.

Other books in my reading pile: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury; All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren; War In Heaven (Kindle) by Charles Williams..

About ten days ago we did our annual pilgrimage through Ionia County, Michigan on the David Hwy. This year's field crops look so, so much better then they did on last year's pilgrimage; an indication of the abundance of rain we have had compared to last year's severe drought... We followed the road east past Westphalia where it becomes Price Rd. Supper was at the Big Boy in St. John's and then we came west on M-21. A nice evening with good friends for company...

Standing by the Grave

"UNTO Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister departed, and we commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.

ALMIGHTY God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity; We give thee hearty thanks for the good examples of all those thy servants, who, having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labours. And we beseech thee, that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

MOST merciful Father, who hast been pleased to take unto thyself the soul of this thy servant; Grant to us who are still in our pilgrimage, and who walk as yet by faith, that having served thee with constancy on earth, we may be joined hereafter with thy blessed saints in glory everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

(Excerpts from The Book of Common Prayer (1928); "The Order for The Burial of the Dead".)

From time to time over the years, I have contemplated the fact that in the normal course of providence in a fallen and broken world, eventually we all become orphans. It is not about becoming orphans as children of miner age, though that does happen. It is about how we as adult grown children watch our parents age and weaken physically and sometimes mentally, and that even to the point of dependency on those who had one time been dependent on them, and then succumbing to the final enemy of death.

I have watched over the years as some of my cousins become orphans as my beloved and aged Aunts and Uncles passed on. Over those passing years I have seen friends and acquaintances of my own generation go through the valley of losing beloved mothers and fathers to the grave; to become motherless and fatherless; to become orphaned in this world.

As of this week I and my surviving siblings are half way there. We are now motherless. Today we watched our departed 92 year old mother be laid into the grave alongside of her daughter, our older sister, who left us about two and a half years ago. Our 95 year old father is now bereft of the wife and companion who had been at his side for over 69 years. My sister and brother and I know that eventually our father will also depart from us; that the day will come when we will be left among the orphans of the earth even as both our mother and father have been left orphans by the previous deaths of our grand-parents.

No, we did not use the Anglican liturgy at the memorial service or graveside. Anglicism is not our family church tradition or background, and in fact is some distance from it. But even then, I have just enough familiarity with the Prayer Book service for the burial of the dead that I found comfort and encouragement in its words as I have shared above.

Rather then expound further on the meaning and comfort to be taken from the words quoted above, I will leave it for you the reader to read them again and meditate on the Gospel truth and hope those words convey.

Kyrie, eleison.

This Candle...

"This candle too gives little light,
And does not make the darkness bright.
But keep it lit and you will find:
Far better this than being blind.
One little flame when all is night,
Proves there is such a thing as light.
One answered prayer when all is gone,
Will give you hope to wait for dawn."

~ John Piper "Job"

Aliens and Strangers in this World

I voted in the Michigan Presidential Primary today.

I knew I would not be voting for Scooby-Doo. There was a part of me that wanted to vote for Bullwinkle, but in the end it was Mickey Mouse that got my vote. It is not like I have a lot of enthusiasm or expectations for this one. This is just another election cycle that is proving once again that we live in a culture that is incapable of producing real leadership... We are seeing the fruit of over a century of the influence of secular materialistic thought.

I was thinking today about the contrast of a capitalistic economic system working in a culture still dominated by a Judeo-Christian ethic, versus a capitalistic economy working in a culture dominated by a secular materialistic ethic. The contemplation of that should give us pause regarding blanket uncritical support for such secular materialistic capitalism.

The dirty little "secret" about secular materialism is that it provides no constraint upon the pursuit of a Darwinian survival of the fittest. In fact it feeds and idolizes the survival of the fittest. Forget the Humanist Manifesto! Or any and all altruistic concepts of the greater good.

Like the Jack London character of Wolf Larson, it becomes one's purpose, even duty, to live and squeeze every juicy marrow one can out of one's own life and any who happen to get in the way of that be damned. In the London story, Humphrey Van Weyden's altruistic liberalism paled and wilted in face of the onslaught of Wolf's inexorable unrelenting materialistic hedonistic logic.

This is the world we face. This is the world we as Christians have been called to bear witness to the truth that God is, and He is not silent. A world that loves the darkness because it hides their evil deeds. A world that will not have this Man to rule over them.

That thought should drive us to our knees in earnest prayer. Come quickly Lord Jesus!

~ The Billy Goat ~

The Letter

You wrote that letter to me 40 plus years ago, and I have not seen nor heard from you since then, but it gave me joy to re-read that letter tonight. Wherever you are, may God's blessings be upon you and it is my prayer you live happily ever after...

Peace...

New Mercies Every Morning

"...my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, "My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD."

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

(Lamentations 3:17-25)

"Kyrie eleison!" (Lord have mercy!) has been the heart cry and prayer of the people of God from time immemorial. The more we sense our desperate need, the more we cry out "Kyrie eleison!"

There have been more then a few times over the years when I have found the cry for mercy to be the only prayer I can make. In those times I feel like a sheep that can only bleat one phrase over and over again.

"Lord have mercy..."

The cares of the world press in. You see the needs of others around you and the desperate crying needs of the world at large and sense how quickly your own world could be turned upside down. Your own needs and fears become overwhelming. You have a sense of how vulnerable and fragile your life and world really is, and how it all hangs as by a thread that could so easily break, shattering your world and leaving your life in shambles.

"Lord have mercy..."

So it is that over the past week or so I have found encouragement and joy in meditating on that part of Lamentations 3 that reads "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

His mercies toward His people NEVER end. His mercies are NEW every morning.

Jesus said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matt 6:34). We can also say sufficient unto the day are the mercies thereof.

Each day the mercies of God toward His people are new and fresh. His mercies don't get worn out or wrinkled with age. The reservoir of God's mercy is as limitless and as infinite as God Himself. And we will continue to be the recipiants of those mercies throughout eternity.

Kyrie eleison...

~ The Billy Goat ~

Ramblings

A few short days and it will be Christmas. One more day of work and I get some time off. Work has been a little hectic lately.

I am finishing Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It was written a hundred years ago, but reads like it was written just last year. I highly recommend it. Yes, I know Chesterton was Roman Catholic. Just read it anyways, and have the audacity to appreciate it.

The so called "Health care Bill: There is nothing healthy or caring about it. The real goal is not health, but power and control. We are being betrayed in the name of "health care" and "compassion" and all the other baloney that politicians use to disguise their true intentions.

We have some really neat young people in our church. You can not help but love them. You can not help but pray for them. I am well aware they are not "perfect", but many of them have their heart in the right place, and that is such an encouragement to see.

How do you pray for a fellow Christian believer who in some shape, fashion, or form, is going through some rough waters? Lately I find myself thinking that if I really love you, I want what God wants for you in your current stress. As such, I find myself being more careful not to pray that the trial be taken away, but that you would be given grace to go through the trial, and come out on the other side more conformed to the image of Christ. If we really love one another, that is what we want for each other; to be conformed to the image of Christ.

For to us a child is born,
  to us a son is given,
  and the government will be on his shoulders.
  And he will be called
  Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace
  there will be no end.
  He will reign on David's throne
  and over his kingdom,
  establishing and upholding it
  with justice and righteousness
  from that time on and forever.
  The zeal of the LORD Almighty
  will accomplish this.

(Isaiah 9:6-7)

Peace....

~ The Billy Goat ~

From "The Ministry of Prayer" by Ivan French

"Over the years men of spiritual stature have made strong statements concerning the importance of prayer in the Christian life and experience.

"The man who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution in history to world evangelization" (Andrew Murray).

"The man who can get believers to praying would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known" (Leonard Ravenhill).

Many such opinions might be cited. The statement that "the most important activity in which a Christian may be involved is the exercise of prayer" can be defended by several considerations....."

"The Ministry of Prayer" by Ivan French

[ If you ever sat in a class at Grace Theological Seminary taught by Ivan French, I'd like to hear from you. Add your comment below. I was at GTS from 1973 to 1976, but did not finish. ~ The Billy Goat ~ ]