John Stott said, “How dare we push to the circumference what God has placed at the centre.”

Do we include this in our “life plans?” If God puts it at the center of His will in the NT, where do we put it? Crucify the American dream and live unto righteousness.

In 1891, David McIntyre, the son-in-law of the well-known Dr. Andrew Bonar, and Scottish pastor and professor, wrote a little gem of a book called The Hidden Life of Prayer: the Lifeblood of the Christian. The book is short, succinct, and simple, and opens up to the reader the delightful gift of prayer given to the believer by the God of heaven. The book is broken down into eight chapters as follows:

1.       The Life of Prayer

·         McIntyre lays out the Scriptural implication that God’s people will pray as their new natures cry out for the living God.

·         It is the mark of a true believer to pray to his Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit.

2.       The Equipment

·         The equipment for prayer consists of

·   a quiet place,

·   a quiet hour,

·   and a quiet heart.

·         The quiet heart is confident in the acceptance

·   before the Father

·   through the sacrifice of Christ,

·   the enabling grace of the Holy Spirit,

·   and the steadying text of Scripture.

3.       The Direction of the Mind

·         Our attitude as we approach God is to

·   realize the presence of God,

·   deal honestly with Him in His presence,

·   draw near to Him in faith

·         believing no miracle is impossible

·         and believing we are praying to our Father in Christ’s authority.

4.       The Engagement: Worship

·         Our prayers are to praise the Lord in

·   acknowledgment of daily mercies,

·    thanksgiving for the great redemption,

·   or contemplation of  our Father’s perfections.

5.       The Engagement: Confession

·         Confession of sin is the first act of an awakened sinner and the first mark of a gracious spirit.

·         Confession is explicit and balanced with the love of Christ that swallows up sin in a measureless ocean of peace and grace.

6.       The Engagement: Request

·         The prayer of faith that has been brought into conformity with the mind of Christ is

·   subject to the Father’s will,

·   restrained within the interest of Christ,

·   instructed in the truth,

·   energized by the Spirit,

·   interwoven with love and mercy,

·   accompanied with obedience,

·   so earnest it will not accept denial,

·   and seeks an answer.

·         The prayer of faith is restricted to the Word of God and rests on the character of God.

7.       The Hidden Riches of the Secret Place

·         Fellowship with God discovers the excellence of His character, and by beholding Him the soul is transformed as the habit of prayerfulness produces

·   a peace in our trusting spirit.

·   an obedience of our life according to the will of God,

·   and a richer influence and wider usefulness as we ouch other lives.

8.       The Open Recompense

·         When we reach the end of our lives, we should be able to say, “There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised.”

·         Every gracious work that has been accomplished within the kingdom of God has been begun, fostered, and consummated by prayer.

The doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) means that the food that is to feed our souls is to be the Word of God only. You may notice that there is much Scripture in our worship service and when the time to listen to the sermon arrives, the Word of God is usually presented verse by verse from whole books of the Bible. Occasionally there will be a topical sermon, but the general diet of our family's spiritual feeding time is expositional preaching and teaching. There is many reason for this. Timothy Witmer lists ten reasons for preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible in his book, The Shepherd Leader:

1. It identifies exactly what is the heart of the Christian message. (The sheep need the food the Good Shepherd gives in the inspired Word.)
2. It requires that the shepherd concern himself with the intent of the Divine author for every text. (God had a purpose for each part of Scripture.)
3. It respects the integrity of the textual units given through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (Teach each books as it was meant to be taught rather than chopping it up.)
4. It keeps the pastor from riding his favorite hobby horses. (Provides a balanced diet.)
5. It challenges the pastor to preach through the "difficult" or obscure texts and "challenging" truths of the Bible. (Christians need to learn how to think through passages that people like to avoid.)
6. Expository preaching will encourage both pastor and congregation alike to become students of the Bible. (Working through books of the Bible helps to know what to look for and how to apply the Word in our on lives.)
7. Expository preaching gives us boldness in preaching, for we are not expounding our own fallible views but the Word of God. (God's promises are linked to His Word and not our 'wisdom.')
8. It gives confidence to the listener that what he is hearing is not the opinion of man but the Word of God. (God has spoken. Our job is to declare what God has said.)
9. It is of great assistance in sermon planning. (Breaking down the book into connected units of thought takes a lot of pressure off of planning a series.)
10. It provides the context for a long tenure in a particular place. (It takes a long time to preach through the whole counsel of God.)

Last Sunday evening I shared from Ephesians 1-3 what God has done for us through the work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. We then looked in Ephesians 4 to see why He has done this for us; the reason he has saved us. At the end I mentioned an article I've recently read by Colin Marshall called "The Ministry of the Pew." It would be beneficial for you to read the article below and ask how you can better serve others in a simple way on Sunday morning. Obviously we are to be servants all the time, but here's some specific applications for our Sunday morning time together.