Prayer, not just a wish list anymore!

I've been working through a book called "Message of Prayer" by Timothy Chester from the Bible Speaks Today series. I have been challenged and enlighted by each chapter. Prayer is something that is assumed we know how to do. It is often described as simply talking to God. It is something we hear at meal times, in church services, at Bible study and we often muddle through on our own.

Now I'm a pastor and I have a seminary degree, that means I should have this stuff nailed, the truth is far from it. Prayer is an area that I must continually work on, develop and grow in. The truth is, as wonderful as it is to have the direct access to the throne of God that prayer provides, this side of eternity there is something lacking. Until that day there will be the barrier of my feeble humaness and my continued battle with the flesh that distracts and leads astray. Too often it is easy to slide into a pattern of simply coming to God with a laundry list of requests. To watch over our loved ones, our un-born child, our church, our school and the various people we know are going through various struggles. Bringing these things to God in prayer are important but prayer can be and is intended to be much more than *just* that.

That is one of the motivations for working through this particular book. Another motivation is an up-coming message I'm preparing on prayer. One message isn't going to cut it but I know I can never cover everything in one shot. This is something I'll circle back to again and again because it is so important. I finished the first hunderd or so pages and I'm really in awe of the depth and bredth of prayer. What I like about this book is that it is expositions on specific passages, all of them very familiar but seeing them through the lens of prayer has been a challenge and a joy. It is proving to be a blessing and something I must allow to digest.

More posts will be forthcoming...

What cost are you willing to pay??

This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday and so we'll be looking at John 12 on Sunday. As I have been preparing I'm struck by the different reactions to Jesus.


We first have Mary, who anoints Jesus with the costly perfume, which we are told was worth about a year's wages. Let's put this in perspective. "Bethany" the village where this takes place means "House of the poor." It was located just a short distance outside of Jerusalem and so it was kind of like the little suburb where people who can't afford to live in the city live. This was not a village that was known for extravagance. Further, a year's salary, if we assume even a day labourer was a substantial sum. Today in BC the minimum wage is $8.75 which is $70 a day, $350 for a 40 hour work week, $17,500 for a 50 week work-year. That's a lot of money! Even more if that is all you've got. Where Mary got this perfume or how she managed to pay for it we're not told but she poured out this extravagant gift on Jesus without any expectation of anything in return. You see, she had already figured out who Jesus was and was willing to give Him the very best of what she had.


Judas on the other hand didn't understand who Jesus was. He had followed this guy for three years figuring He was going to lead a revolt & overthrow the Romans and when that happened, Judas would be in His inner circle. Judas had been getting impatient however, he wasn't seeing a return on his investment. Three years of following Jesus, going where ever he took them hadn't amounted to much yet so Judas had begun skimming a little out of the collective funds of the group. In the end he would betray the one he'd followed.


Then we see the religious leaders who, we are told in vv 9-10 were no longer content with getting Jesus out of the picture but were plotting to kill Lazarus as well. We've got to remember that political games and opportunism are nothing new. The religious leadership was made up primarily of two parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who didn't get along all that well. Lazarus was causing trouble for both of them though because many people were believing in Jesus because of him. Lazarus also caused big problems for the Sadducees because they didn't believe in a future resurrection of the dead and the presence of someone who had risen from the dead posed a slight problem for this conviction. These leaders were willing to go to any length to ensure that their way of thinking and the power they held were not challenged.


Finally, we have the crowds that welcomed Jesus with great fanfare as He came into Jerusalem. They waived palm branches and cried Hosanna! They were welcoming a king. They thought He was going to liberate them from political oppression. They missed that Jesus was coming to free them from a much greater oppression. When it became clear that Jesus wasn't going to do what they wanted Him to, His support quickly vanished.


The question is, do we give all we have? Do we hedge our bets and unscrupulously set aside for our best interests? Do we plot the downfall of anyone who opposes us or threatens our way of thinking, rather than consider we might be wrong? Do we enthusiastically cheer with the crowd and quietly scatter when it doesn't go the way we thought it would?


What cost are we willing to pay?

What's in the Bible Vol. 5

OK I'm excited. This is a great series that I've been very impressed with for content and songs that I can't get out of my head.

We'll be adding this to our collection very soon!

Great book, great deal

Just a heads up! I got the flyer for Gateway Christian Books in Maple Ridge and they had The Big Picture Story Bible on sale for $12.99. We picked one up and are really impressed with it. It is well written and illustrated. It also comes with 2 CDs of the author reading the book. The authors have done a very good job at summarizing the Biblical narrative so that it is not just a collection of Bible stories but one continuing narrative.


Another children's book that does this well (but is much shorter) is What God Has Always Wanted: The Bible's Big Idea from Genesis Through Revelation which is a "read in one sitting" children's book that summarizes the big story of the Bible.


Too many Christian children's book are just fluff and it can be difficult to find quality ones. These two are definitely high caliber and will be read many times by our little Daykin tribe in the years ahead.


We also picked up two volumes of "Whats in the Bible" which were also on sale and a set of videos that also do a fabulous job at telling the story of the Bible. I have become increasingly aware of how important it is to teach the grand narrative of the Bible, especially to our children. It is not enough to teach the individual stories, we must teach the grand narrative that holds them all together. We must teach that they are all about God & His plan for all of us.

Lazarus, come forth! and its OK to cry

This week I'm preaching from John 11, the raising of Lazarus. This is an interesting passage with Jesus' escalating conflict with and rejection by the religious leadership. Given all that had happened in the previous chapters and the escalating attempts on His life He's headed out into the countryside for a little while. While He's gone, His dear friend Lazarus falls ill, very ill. 


What strikes me most in this passage is that well known verse, "Jesus wept."  Here is the God of the universe, weeping, not just at the death of His friend, He knew He was about to raise Lazarus, but for His fallen creation. It is a reminder that Jesus has experienced the pain of loss, much greater than we can imagine. As well, He is not some distant, uncaring God. Our fallen state grieves Him so much that He came to earth to live as one of us and die for us. 


The writer of Hebrews tells us.


Hebrews 4:14-15 (ESV)
¹⁴ Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.




Jesus wept. He still grieves the lost. He is still God. He understands what we face in life far better than we can imagine.

Abide, remain, dwell, stick to and other synonyms...

I was asked a question this week by a member of my congregation about John 8, a passage I preached from a couple weeks ago. Her question was specifically about v31 and what it means to abide. John 8:31-32 reads "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (ESV)  She had looked it up in the dictionary and found "to wait, to stay, to remain stable"


It is a reminder of two things 1) the Bible is not originally written in English and 2) Though some of the brightest and most godly men in the world pour themselves into translation work, language (and especially English) is a moving target. As such, some translations use words that are in the process of falling out of use. (side note: modern translations such as the NIV, ESV, NASB, HCSB, NLT are all good translations, none are perfect but all have been done diligently by men and women who have devoted much of their lives to such work and all of these translations can be trusted! That said, each translation is governed by a particular translation philosophy which influences decisions that must be made. That is why it is often good to check more than one translation if you're stuck on passage.)


The word that is in the Greek is "meno" and it has a broad range of meanings including abide, remain, stay, continue, belong, hold, keep on, dwell, and other ideas in that stream. "Abide" is one of those words that we just don't use much any more. The NIV translates it in this verse as "hold to" the NASB as "continue in" all of which are reasonable choices. What I find interesting is that just a couple verse later the same word pops up twice, translated as 'remain' "³⁵ The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever." John 8:35 (ESV) There is clearly a sense of permanence in this passage.


As I thought about it more, I'm not surprised that a perfectly good word like 'abide' would be falling out of use. How many people 'abide' in the same home for their whole life? How many people are 'abiding' in their marriages with a sense of permanence, of sticking to it and holding on? How many of us have 'abiding' employment? We live in an increasingly temporary society and yet Jesus tells us to abide in His word. To hold firm to our faith in Him. To recognize e are not slaves who have no permanent place in the family, rather, we have been given the PERMANENT status of sons and daughters of GOD! 


May we all learn to hold on, to stay firm, to stick to it, to abide.

The rumble of the rain

Do you ever find that it rains hardest as you are walking from your office to home? I was sitting in my study one evening last week working on my message for Sunday when, just as I was about to pack up to walk home I heard a rumble. It started off as a quiet, low rumble but grew, and grew. I looked out my window and it looked like the whole parking lot was dancing. The rumble I was hearing was the rain hitting the roof so hard and in such quantity that the whole building seemed to shake. The thing is, I didn't have the car. Dana was working an evening shift, part of the reason I was working late. It had been quite pleasant, and dry, only a short time earlier but now it was quite UN-pleasant and VERY wet.

Now the reality is, God made us amazingly waterproof and a 10 minute walk in the rain isn't going to kill me, just make me uncomfortable. I don't like being uncomfortable. Its funny, I wrote only first line of this post that night, little did I know that only a day later, tragedy would strike the other side of the ocean. That for days, the media would be obsessed with showing us every piece of footage they can find of whole towns in ruin, of a whole country in crisis.

When you see images of whole towns swept away, getting a little wet on the walk home doesn't seem to matter much. It is yet another reminder that we live in a world that is fallen, broken and shrouded in darkness.

I preached on Sunday from John 8 where Jesus says "I am the light of the world." This past week reminded us all of how badly we need Him.

"For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now"
Romans 8:22

I'm just about to head out and what you know, it started raining again...