Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

Last Sunday we commenced a five-week series from the Psalms, Talking Back to God.  James Duff, our Young Families and Young Adults Pastor, preached a great message from Ps 90.  Each year we incorporate five weeks or so of journeying through the Pslams.  This year I was greatly inspired by this book on the psalms:

Have you ever felt like talking back to God?  That’s the question posed by Lynn Anderson in Talking Back to God: Speaking your Heart to God Through the Psalms.  This is not a verse-by-verse commentary on the Psalms.  It is much more than that!

In Lynn’s words, the book is a “humble guide for talking back to God using the Psalms.”

And the book certainly achieves its purpose for those who take up the challenge to pray one psalm a day – not legalistically, but with heart orientation to pursue God.

In the current circumstances of our family, with cancer rapidly producing very large tears in my wife’s body, I was struck by the opening lines of chapter 8 where Lynn enters into the wonders of Ps 23.  Here’s Lynn’s experience:

“Soon after I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I tossed through some long nights with dark shadows and my faith seemed terribly weak.  Several mornings in a row, my first waking thought was, ‘I have death in my body.’…

So one of those dark mornings I ventured to confess this to Carolyn.

“I have death in my body,” I said.

“Of course you do,” she replied.  ”So do I.  So does everyone.  But you also have life in your body.  And we going to celebrate life.”"

What is your experience as you go to the regular spiritual gym of the Psalms?  My own experience is that of Lynn’s:

“Even when we are too weak to see it ourselves, the Psalms remind us of God’s strength available to us.  They remind us that we can talk back to God – even when we feel as if death is in our bodies.”

An Opinion piece by Amy Welborn in USA Today looks at Pope Benedict’s recently released Light of the World comprising interviews with German journalist, Peter Seewald.

I haven’t read the book but a few paragraphs by Amy stood out:

“The thing is, he really believes the stuff. Really. He believes that God exists and we exist because God loves us. We’re free to love him back, or not. So the basic job of the church is to be Christ in the world, inviting human beings to find love and truth. To find themselves. As Benedict puts it in Light of the World, the church “communicates the light of Christ…”

“In short, Pope Benedict is saying: It’s not my job to either change the teaching or declare you eternally condemned for your failures in living it. That’s God’s job. And I’m not God.

This pleases hardly anyone, of course. It doesn’t fit with our favored ideologies or our scripts of what it means to be liberal or conservative or even religious. But to an 83-year-old man convinced of the gift of God’s love and truth and who says to his interviewer that when he prays, he really does no more than come as a “simple beggar before God,” it does.

You might even call it … powerful.”

Pope Benedict is a man who clearly loves the Lord and needs our ongoing prayers.

We’ve been recently chatting amongst our Worship Leaders about how to better integrate the Lord’s Prayer into our Corporate Celebrations and avoid ‘going through the motions’ repetition.  Obviously using some different formats can be helpful  - one of which is reflective words on the screen.

A great example is the following video from Dan Stevers, a wonderfully creative producer whose material is available at WorshipHouse Media:

‘If I can just figure out how to please God, then He’ll give me what I want.’ Ever tempted to think like that?  Brandon O’Brien, in an excellent post The Real Threat of Pagan Christianity, in Christianity Today’s blog comments that such thinking is like pagan religions where protocols are developed to control the power of the deities.

Provocative?  Certainly, but his thesis is flushed out in:

• the personal pain of infertility in his marriage and praying for children;
• the approach sometimes to take portions of Scripture that are not promises (eg. Proverbs) but apply them in fact as promises.  This is something currently much on my mind as I prepare to commence a preaching series from the Book of Proverbs this coming Sunday; and,
• our confidence, sometimes, in our human formulations of how God acts in the world and then starting to think in terms of how we can be sure He’ll behave the way we need Him to.

So what is biblical Christianity?  O’Brien answers:

“Biblical Christianity is trusting that God will make those things happen (or He won’t) not because of what I do, but because of His love for me in Christ. And that’s something I can’t manipulate.”

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.

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.

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I remember coming home from primary school and asking my Dad, “Are we from Scotland?”   “No.  We’re from Ireland.”  No more information.  With a surname like ‘McArdle’ either origin seemed reasonable.

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Many years later at the graveside of an uncle, his son and my  cousin announced to me, “Hey Rod, I’ve being doing some investigations.  Our family tree goes all the way back to Scotland.  In the 17th century, we, along with many other Catholics, fled the Protestants of Scotland and ended up in Ireland (on the south-east section of the current Ireland / Northern Ireland border).”

So,  both answers were right! Scottish and Irish.

And so here’s a prayer attributed to St Patrick:

As I arise today,
may the strength of God pilot me,
the power of God uphold me,
the wisdom of God guide me.
May the eye of God look before me,
the ear of God hear me,
the word of God speak for me.
May the hand of God protect me,
the way of God lie before me,
the shield of God defend me,
the host of God save me.
May Christ shield me today.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit,
Christ when I stand,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Amen

Now that’s a great prayer, whether Irish, Scottish or Aussie!

A church service was held outdoors in the courtyard at St. Martine de Tour church in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Picture: Damon Winter/The New York Times

See here for an illuminating article in The New York Times on the tenacity and vibrancy of Haitian Christians in the midst of unspeakable suffering.

The reporter, Deborah Sontag, recounts:

“Another man attending the evangelical service introduced his wife, eight months pregnant, who sat on the pavement blank-faced. “A concrete block fell on her stomach, and we don’t know if the baby is still alive,” said the man, Ricot Calixte, 28. “Prayer can help, I think. As I still breathe, I have faith.””

Let’s join Ricot in praying for his wife and unborn baby.