Underground Exiles

The Tombstone of the great Jonathan Edwards

Right now I’m reading the Complete Works of Jonathan Edwards, published by the Banner of Truth Trust in 2 volumes.

Volume 2 contains an interesting work of Rev. Edwards called An Humble Attempt To Promote Explicit Agreement And Visible Union Of God’s People In Extraordinary Prayer For the Revival of Religion And The Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom On Earth.  I just love titles from the eighteenth century; they certainly don’t leave you guessing on what the author intends to say.  I think the words of Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones are significant and bear reading on the subject of Jonathan Edwards:

“In my early days in the ministry there were no books which helped me more, both personally and in respect of my preaching, than this two-volume edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards…I devoured these volumes and literally just read and read them. It is certainly true that they helped me more than anything else. If I had the power I would make these two volumes compulsory reading for all ministers! Edwards seems to satisfy all round; he really was an amazing man.”

So for the next posts on undergroundexiles.com, I’m going to blog my way through Edward’s call to extraordinary prayer and post my thoughts as I read this amazing work.

Prayer is a practice that requires discipline, and discipline is the one thing I consistently seem to lack. It is an easy thing to fall into a habit of slack, infrequent prayer, and that’s lately what I’ve done.

“Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of Him that we are capable of in this life.” - William Law, A Serious Call To A Devout And Holy Life

I am a pattern-oriented kind of guy, and if I don’t set a pattern, then I am not likely to follow through on anything, and I know this about myself. I need a set time and place where I engage in prayer every day, and I’ve let that practice slip.

On this particular topic I highly recommend the work that I’ve quoted above, A Serious Call To A Devout And Holy Life, by William Law. There is much of that particular work that I just don’t find helpful at all, but there is much that I have found very helpful. For instance, there is this quote:

“It is as much your duty to rise to pray, as to pray when you are risen. And if you are late at your prayers, you offer to God the prayers of and idle, lazy worshiper that rises to prayers as idle servants rise to their labor.”

Read more…

Praying for the cross in our own lives requires seeing the cross for what it is.

It’s not a golden symbol just to be hung around our necks as an ornament, or to decorate our walls. It’s not a magical sign we can wave in front of our faces to ward off evil. It’s an instrument of death.

We must bring the cross to bear in every area of our lives, so that we may slay our sin with it, and be crushed under its weight.

A few weeks ago, I realized that Jesus doesn’t say that we are to take up His cross and follow Him, but to take up our cross and follow Him. There isn’t a single person that is qualified to take up anyone’s cross but their own, much less the cross the God-man, Jesus Christ.

Prayer, earnestly pray, that Christ would reveal your cross to you, so that you may shoulder its burden, and get started dying. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, that when Jesus calls a man, He calls him to come and die. The method of our death will be the cross that God has appointed for us from eternity past.

It’s high time that as Christians we pray for the Cross, and get busy dying…

So here we go:

I’m reading through a load of New and Old Testament passages on prayer, while simultaneously trying to pick apart Calvin’s comments on prayer in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, and I’ve been very convicted by one recurring theme.

Prayer is intimately connected to passion. And passion, ladies and gents, is one of a number of things that is severely lacking in my own prayer life.

The single, unifying passion of all prayer is Jesus. As the image says,

“obsesssively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus…”

All prayer is about Jesus and His kingdom, and is directed towards Jesus for the triumph of His kingdom. If Jesus isn’t at the center, it just isn’t really prayer.

So why this obsession with Jesus?

Read more…

Some recommended reading for all of the fellow exiles for this week:

Institutes Of The Christian Religion, by John Calvin (particularly Book 3, chapter 20 on the subject of prayer.)

Unfortunately, Calvin has gotten a bad reputation as a dry, harsh theologian, and it’s been forgotten that in addition to being a first-rank theologian, the man was a pastor who had a burning heart for Christ and His people.

As I’ve re-opened up the prayer account, I’m going to use Calvin’s thoughts on prayer as a jumping off point for a series on the subject of prayer.

Stick around, and we’ll jump in next time!