Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

Chapter Thirteen: Reviving Prayer

The author of Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything, Adrian Warnock, continues with the topic of revival, and focuses in on prayer.  And he immediately grabs the reader’s attention by stating that:

• this chapter on prayer is “potentially the most important chapter in this whole book”
• ‘reviving prayer’ will lead to the most dramatic and immediate changes in the average Christian’s experience, but
• we need to overcome our prayerlessness.

Got your interest?  Well, here are the highlights of the chapter – but they’re no substitute for getting into the book yourself.  What has the resurrection of Jesus got to do with reviving prayer?  It motivates us to pray with boldness because we know God is alive and more than able to answer prayer, given that He is able to raise the dead!

Revivals in history started with prayer meetings.  Is there a particular type of prayer that is one of the catalysts for a sovereign Lord to bring revival?  Adrian uses the prayers of Elijah in 1 Kings 17-19 to reveal the nature of reviving prayer.  In sum, it looks like this:

• plainly recognises the situation requiring God’s intervention (“don’t deny it or put a brave face on it”)
• passionate intercession before God, consistent with His biblical revelation
• calling on God to act today as He has in history. viz. “Do it again, Lord!” (see Hab 3:2)
• a heart centred on God’s glory and not our own
• asking God to bring repentance – He does it, not us
• asking God, in a bold manner, to act – and when He does don’t be floored (contra. Acts 12:15)
• be persistent in waiting on God, and discerning as to when the answers from God are beginning to flow.

My own life is not characterised by consistent reviving prayer.  It needs to be.  What about you?  Your church?

The churches in Melbourne need revival.  This wonderful city needs revival.  What about where you live?

The challenge presented by Adrian is right on – ask the One, who is in the business of bringing life where there is death, to send the fire of revival.

Here’s a short post on a really helpful section at the very end of:

Chapter Eight: Life Between the Cross and the Coming.

Graham Cole highlights three ‘commissions’ that Christians are to obey, as we live for Jesus in the world:

1. Creation Commission (Gen 1:28).  Our exercise of dominion is one of both care and control (eg. Gen 2:15).  I would put it this way: care for the environment is one aspect of being a follower of Jesus and a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
2. Discipling Commission (Matt 28:18-20).  God calls His people to make disciples – of all nations.
3. Moral Commission (Matt 22:37-39).  The Creation and Discipling Commissions are “to be shaped by love of God and love of neighbour.”  Indeed, as Graham rightly concludes: “Without love, creation care and discipling others become vacuous.  We gain nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3).”

If you have appropriated the peace dividend, how then are we to live?  That’s the very practical question addressed in the next chapter of God the Peacemaker by Graham Cole:

Chapter Eight: Life Between the Cross and the Coming

How should followers of the Lord Jesus live?  By faith.  And our author gives an excellent exposition of what walking by faith, and not by sight, looks like.  Living by faith means:

• always trusting God, including in the age to come
• living a life of love (Gal 5:6)
• the opposite to living by fear and by sight (Matt 8:26; 2 Cor 5:7)
• giving our total allegiance to the One who won our redemption (1 Cor 6:19f)
• responding to Christ’s love in a “self-donating lifestyle” (eg. Phil 1:13-26). Simply put, Christ is worth it!
• living as a true servant (“worthy of the Gospel”), exemplified in the Lord Jesus’ “great stooping both in incarnation and atonement” (Phil 2:5-11)
• being prepared to suffer for Christ (2 Cor 11:23-28; 1 Pt 4:12-16).  This is the reality for so many of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world
• attracting spiritual opposition from the demonic.  The devil has not disappeared; he is behind human hostility to the gospel and is to be resisted (1 Pt 5:8f).  The armour against his attacks are defensive (shield of faith, breastplate of righteousness, helmut of salvation) and offensive (the Word of God).  Prayer is crucial.  It needs to be specific and gospel focussed (Eph 6:14-20)
• living now, in the reality of what we will be – “Spirit-impelled resurrection life.”  In the most practical of ways, this means worshipping the Lord through the offering of our whole person as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1-2).  The individual believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) as is the corporate Body (1 Cor 3:16-17) and that’s what needs to be displayed – not a physical Temple.

Living by faith (I think of it as being ‘up close and personal with Jesus, as we walk around the Sea of Galilee together’) means living as Kingdom people.  Graham zeroes in on two of the beatitudes in Matt 5-7: ‘blessed are the merciful’ and ‘blessed are the peacemakers.’  When we are ‘shalom-bringers’ we are acting like God in character.  And active peacemaking will be in sync with justice – reconciliation requires that wrongs are confronted and acknowledged.

As those who have appropriated the peace dividend (ie. those who are caught up in God’s reclamation project), we have a story to tell the world.  And it is undertaken by:

• evangelists, gifted by the risen Christ and equipped by His Spirit (Eph 4:11-13) to tell the story.  Our author gives a succinct account of the gospel content and proclamation approaches in the Acts of the Apostles.
• witnesses.  Every believer is not gifted to be an evangelist but every believer has a story to tell – of God’s ways and deeds.
• apologists.  Again, every believer has the task of answering questions raised by the gospel (1 Pt 3:13-16).  And we are to do so with gentleness and respect – if there is offence its source must be the gospel itself and not our manner!

Life between the Cross and the Coming is a life lived in the Spirit - the great applier of our salvation.  Graham provides a helpful overview on “filling” as seen in Luke/Acts.  And then in considering the Spirit’s role (in relation to the Trinity), he comments:

“…the Holy Spirit…uses our evangelism, witness, apology, shalom-making and mercy-showing…to bring to fruition the divine plan.”

This is a great chapter, linking biblical theology with helpful historical theology examples, with a focus on the way we live out our daily lives now, in this age.  There will be wonderful benefit in chewing on the contents of this chapter with our Bibles open, and hearts submissive to the Spirit’s transforming work.

Music often has a profound impact on us.  Over the last twenty years or so, as we have witnessed and experienced significant suffering with our son, the hymn, ‘It is well with my soul‘, never ceases to stir our hearts and clear the tear ducts!  Horatio Spafford (1828-1888) composed these words in the aftermath of extreme suffering.

If you enjoyed the singing of Wintley Phipps on the previous post, then turn up the volume, get out the tissues and praise God for His strengthening presence in the midst of severe suffering:

Death.  It’s confronting.  LIfe is precious and it hangs by a slender thread.  That’s how Adrian Warnock, author of Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything introduces:

Chapter 12: Send a Resurrection, O Lord!

The great news of course is that “God is an expert in revival.”  What happens when someone turns to Jesus in faith?  A spiritually dead person is united with a life-giving Person.

And with this introduction, Adrian focuses on revivals – when the church en masse experiences more fully the change made possible by the resurrection.  Aussie Stuart Piggin is quoted on the nature of revival:

“It is a powerful intensification by Jesus of the Holy Spirit’s normal activity.”

This is a terrific chapter by Adrian.  He comments:

• ‘revival’ is available to all Christians individually – it is quantitatively, but not qualitatively different, to our normal experience
• both through the Acts of the Apostles and church history, the Church has grown in fits and starts
• since Acts is Scripture, “it must have a role in forming our doctrine and practice” – right on!
• Acts is a “model account of how church mission should ideally proceed”
• the pattern of revival in Acts is also seen in church history:
  • period of intense emphasis on prayer in the church
  • dramatic work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers
  • inevitable impact on those outside
• whenever a group of people experience a revival, prayer and the Word of God are emphasised.

And these are the subjects of the next two chapters in Raised with Christ.

Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report recently provided a quotable quote on the Resurrection. The author being interviewed commented, “Christianity is losing market share, if you think about it in business terms.” Here’s Colbert’s response:

“Well, of course, but Jesus always wins in the end. I mean, Jesus loves to run up the odds. You saw what he did the last time he was here. He let them think they had him on the ropes, and then three days later, BOOM! He comes back, they clean up at the table.”

We should not be surprised by those down through the centuries who have claimed to be the Second Coming of Jesus.  Why? Because the Lord Himself told His disciples that this would happen, as recorded in Mark 13:21-23.

In recent times, there have been a number of ‘messiahs’ in the news.  ABC Nightline carried this report on the 11th June:

The Lord Jesus is returning.  Two angels gave the disciples, having just witnessed Jesus ascend at the conclusion of His earthly ministry, this assurance:

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?  This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven “ (Acts 1:11, NIV)

The certain return of the Lord Jesus will be unmistakeable.  Come Lord Jesus!

Ed Stetzer is a prolific writer on mission, President of LifeWay Research and a frequent conference speaker for a wide variety of churches.  He recently spoke at Dwell London.  Ed gave a seminar for cross-cultural workers to help them understand the current evangelical movement.  Adrian Warnock has helpfully posted some of what Ed said here, including:

“Ed spoke about what he called the pragmatic evangelical movement …Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. Big global influence. Saddleback is probably the most influential church in the world. …Many think pragmatic is a bad word. But it just means determining what works. …

Traditional evangelicals …would have conferences about for example creationism vs evolution. Must prove these things to be true… Rick Warren is a very conservative evangelical on almost all issues but he says “what people really want to know is how God can change their life or marriage”. Many traditional evangelicals rushed into pragmatic evangelicalism as they were so fed up of dry dead theology.

A decade ago, Purpose Driven was the most influential Christian movement in the world. Very broad reaching. In the the USA, these movements are still influential, but not like they were ten years ago…. Willow Creek originally spoke about being seeker driven. Stage driven. Take into account the local expressions of music and drama. Willow Creek was also influential but less globally. The seeker paradigm of ministry has declined in influence, and Willow itself has changed their own paradigm. When they realized they needed to change their way to disciple, and announced that they were changing, many people went after them in a nasty way, especially online.

Younger evangelicals …are building on or charting new directions. Younger evangelicals can be found among a number of different groups: 1. Hyper-contemporary . Desire for “in your face,” eg series on sex with aggressive titles that get complaints. Gets media attention and they like it….The idea is that in the modern world it is harder to get peoples attention. So the desire is to cut through the noise and get people to notice. In an all consuming passion to reach the unchurched they often offend the Christians. In a way they are a continuation of the seeker movement but “louder.”

2. Emerging Church.  These should be considered as several different groups:Relevants A lot of this is just about being relevant. Appropriate to the culture. Same understanding of the gospel but engage in a different way.  Reconstructionists want to change the way we do church. They believe in the gospel. Believe in conversion. But believe that much of what had been done in church harms the gospel. So we see, House Church, Missional,  incarnational models. The reality is indeed that many churches do need to change.  Revisionists like Maclaren want to rethink the gospel want a bigger gospel, more societal. Some want to ditch the idea of gospel as a transaction altogether.

3 New reformed. These respond to society by wanting to go deeper. Time magazine thinks that this idea is one of the most influential ideas (including secular ones)  in modern America. Different varieties eg charismatic reformed. John Macarthur and Driscoll are very different for example. A lot of younger reformed evangelicals became reformed in response to more vague churches they grew up in.  There is much to rejoice about, but much to be anxious about also. There is a level of anger in some that is so concerning that they are nick-named the “TR” =truly reformed. Fortunately there are also the “WR” =winsomely reformed. Many in more traditional forms criticize. Actually the new reformed have something in common with the emerging in that they want to correct the common gospel, in this case they want a bloodier one with more emphasis on cross and resurrection. There is a growing evidence of dissatisfaction with evangelicalism. People feel that they are not seeing the results that they thought they would. There is much experimentation that is going on, and coming up with new expressions of church. Stetzer calls this Evangelical angst.People are seeking a model. Unsure about who they are. There is a drive to reclaim the centre, because the edges are fuzzy. We live in a time of Tumult. Many are dissatisfied with the results so far, unsure what the future holds.”

Are evangelicals more fractured and polarised than any time in history? I’m not sure. 21st century travel and digital communications certainly makes dissemination of new trends, movements, theologies and practices quite different to any prior times.  But we are certainly living in an era of what Ed calls ‘evangelical angst’ and struggling with our expression of Jesus’ words in John 17:20-21.  That’s why John Armstrong’s call in your church is too small: why unity in Christ’s mission is vital to the future of the Church is so vital – for those both within ‘evangelicalism’ and right across Christ’s Church.  We will blog through this book in the near future.

Chapter Seven: The ‘peace  dividend’

What a great title for chapter seven in God the Peacemaker.  The sacrifice of Jesus Christ brings shalom – at three levels: personal, corporate and cosmic.

And our author, Graham Cole, notes that this peace is objective – think in terms of ‘peace with’ or ‘peace between.’

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Personal

The personal benefits that flow from the atonement include union with Christ, forgiveness of sins, cleansing from sin, justification, redemption, adoption and reconciliation.  Here are some points that caught my eye in Graham’s excellent treatment:

• Union with Christ: foundational and secured by the Holy Spirit.  ”…the same Spirit who animated Christ’s humanity animates that of the believer’s own.  Thus the gap between the one and the many is bridged , and that that between past and present.”  The challenge for everyone is: ‘are we in Christ or in Adam?’
• Forgiveness: absolutely key in salvation.  The reality of sin means that unless sin is dealt with, the individual faces the prospect of divine judgment.  Especially emphasised in Luke/Acts.  Forgiveness shows itself in doing good to the other (eg. Gen 50:21).  This ‘blessing’ aspect of forgiveness is emphasised in the forgiveness seminar, part of the extremely practical Grant Mullen training DVDs, Transformation, featured in our monthly Free-in-Christ at Deep Creek.
• Justification: Cole does not agree with the NT Wright/New Perspective equation of justification=covenant membership.  Why?  Because of the themes of wrath and condemnation in Romans.  However, our author comments, “I am more comfortable in seeing covenant membership as a benefit of justification.” Cole also expresses concern with NT Wright’s position on final justification on the basis of an entire life.  According to Cole, this negatively impacts personal assurance of salvation.  So is Cole slamming Wright?  Not at all.   He expresses appreciation for “Wright’s many fine contributions to New Testament scholarship.”  And this is so wonderfully characteristic of Graham Cole’s irenic tone in interacting with others.  It is seen throughout God the Peacemaker; I witnessed it again over the weekend during Graham’s keynote address and a seminar on the ‘Trinity without tiers’ at the just concluded Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) International Conference 2010.
• Adoption: the ‘crowning blessing’ secured by Christ’s redemption.  Cole dismisses ‘second blessing theology’: there is no separation between adoption and the gift of the Spirit.
• Reconciliation: a cause for celebration!  Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 is the unfolding “story of estrangement and reconciliation.”

Corporate

God is building a new humanity – reconciled with Him; reconciled with one another (Eph 2:19-22).  Cole comments powerfully:

“Christians who maintain walls of hostility between themselves and others at the interpersonal level need to revisit the cross, the Pauline practice and the words  of Jesus himself ‘Blessed are the peacemakers (Matt 5:9).”

Cosmic

“The scope of the reconciliaiton and peacemaking effected by Christ is breathtaking” (see Col 1:15-20).  How are the ‘powers and authorities’ (Col 2:15) disarmed?  Through the forgiveness of sins on the basis of the cross (Col 2:13).  In one sentence, our author summarises much deep theology: “Christus Victor needs the explanatory power of substitutionary atonement.”  Absolutely!

Read chapter seven of God the Peacemaker slowly, with your Bible open and let the wonder of what Jesus has done, what He is doing, and will bring to completion, fill your heart with great joy, impacting the way we live now.