Prayer - Ask for Anything? (Part Three)

Part Three - Ask, Seek and Knock
 

We're embarking, God willing, on a study of passages in the Bible - specifically the New Testament - that appear to promise that God will grant all our prayer requests. I will resist the temptation to recap again! The previous two introductory articles are still on the blog, and you should start with them if you have not already read them.

The first passage to look at is Matthew 7:7-11.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

The first thing to note is that if you read carefully you cannot find a promise that we will receive everything that we ask for. Jesus says, "everyone who asks receives". He does not say, "everyone who asks receives everything he asks for".

The emphasis is on the asking, not on the receiving. We are being encouraged to ask, seek and knock. These are three degrees of requesting things from God. Sometimes we may just ask. Sometimes we may have to work a little harder and have to seek to find what we need from God. Sometimes we may have to knock, as if the door is closed. The point is that, however hard it seems to get through to God, He is always there waiting to answer us. If we ask He will answer. If we seek Him we will find Him. If we have to knock, He will most certainly open the door to us. Jesus is encouraging us that God loves us, and therefore we should not neglect to come to Him.

Secondly, Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater when He asks how a human father treats his son. Those of us who are parents, and those who know good parents, will see the parallel. If one of my children comes and asks for something, I will definitely give them something good. I want to give good things to my children. And that is true even though I am "evil" in comparison to the perfect God. It does not mean that I give my children everything they ask for. Sometimes they may ask for things that are good in themselves, but I may refuse because it may not be best at that time, or I may refuse because I have something better to give them.

I had an example of this in the last year. One of my children moved up from Primary to Secondary school this year. He desperately wanted to go to the Secondary school that most of his school friends were moving up to. He did not want to be separated from those friends. But Heidi and I knew that it would be better if he went to a different school. He pleaded with us constantly to change our minds and send him to his preferred school. It was heartbreaking! But the beginning of September came along, and he started his new school, and even after the first day he acknowledged that we had made the right decision. We denied his request, because we knew that we could give him something better.

I was going to say that God treats us like children, but it's more than that. We are God's adopted children. "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are." (1 John 3:1) He knows what is good for us better than we do. He loves us better than we love our own children. He has infinitely more knowledge of the good things we need. And just as we would prefer to have parents who give us what is good for us, not just what we want, so we should have the same attitude towards God.

The point is that God, as our heavenly Father, knows the good that we need better than we do, and He loves to give us those good things. So we should always ask Him, as a child asks his father.

I remember another example where one of my children came to ask me for something, and he was wringing his hands nervously as he asked, as if he thought I would bite his head off. It brought a tear to my eye. I never want my children to be afraid to ask me for things. I just want them to know that I will only give them what I believe is good for them. And that is exactly what the point of this passage is. God does not want us to shy away from asking for things. He simply wants us to understand that He will only give us what is good for us. If we ask for something that fits in with that, He is only too happy to give it to us. It gives Him the same pleasure that I get in being able to give my children things that they ask for.

Finally, Jesus said these words in his "sermon on the mount", which runs all the way through chapters 5 to 7 in Matthew's gospel. We should always read things in context, and therefore we cannot ignore the rest of the sermon when we try to understand a part of it. And one of the things that is striking when you read the context is that less than ten verses earlier, in 6:33, Jesus introduces the idea of seeking. He says, "But seek first [God's] kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

He has been chiding us for worrying about earthly needs (6:25-34), having earthly treasures (6:19-24), and telling us that our highest need is to seek the kingdom of our heavenly Father. Then in 7:7 he tells us that if we seek then we will find. If we seek the kingdom of God we will find it. We are to be Godward in our asking, our seeking and our knocking, and He will not only bring us into His kingdom but give us many good and needful things (which are much less important) for this life as well.

At this point it's probably relevant to bring in the other passage I wanted to cover today, and that is Luke 11:9-10. It's exactly the same as Matthew 7:7-11, but in a slightly different context.

The parable that Jesus tells in the preceding verses in Luke 9:5-8 confirms what I said earlier:

Then Jesus said to them, 'Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him." And suppose the one inside answers, "Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.'

Your friend will give you what you need simply because you ask boldly, even if not because he is your friend. God is greater than that, but the point is that you must ask boldly. Here again the asking, not the receiving, is the point of the passage.

But the particular thing to note with the teaching in Luke 9, is the way Jesus ends the section in verse 13: "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

Seeking first God's kingdom (Matthew 6:33), laying up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:20), involves asking for the Holy Spirit. He is the one we need to make us into the people our Father wants us to be. He is the one, when we are tempted to worry about earthly things like where we will live, what we will wear or what we will eat, who will change our perspective. With Him we will be able to say with Jesus, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work." (John 4:34) That is truly seeking the kingdom of our heavenly Father, and when we seek we will find.

So to sum up what we have learnt from these two passages:

• We ought to be encouraged to ask God boldly for what we need;

• We ought humbly acknowledge God as our heavenly Father, who knows what is best for us and who loves us, and will give us what is best;

• We ought to pray for what will enable us to glorify our heavenly Father by seeking His kingdom before anything else;

• We ought to pray specifically for the Holy Spirit to fill us more and more.

And if you want further encouragement for your prayers, I'd commend to you John Piper's sermon on Matthew 7, which you can find at the following link: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/ask-your-father-in-heaven

Next time we will, God willing, look at the first pre-requisite for our prayers, and that is to have faith.

Prayer - Ask for Anything? (Part Two)

Part Two - More Thoughts...

In Part One of this series I laid out a number of Bible verses, mostly quotes from Jesus himself, that seem to suggest that we should expect to receive everything that we ask for in prayer. I painstakingly studied each of these passages, asking myself whether that is really what they are trying to tell us, and if not what are we to learn?

I guess it's worth saying that my main conclusion is that we are not to expect that we will receive everything that we ask for in prayer. For one thing, we could state the obvious and say that if we pray for things that are sinful then we cannot expect to receive those. But also, two or more people may pray for good things that cannot be possible at the same time. David Needham tells a story that illustrates this in his book, Close to His Majesty (Multnomah Press, 1987):

Imagine two farmers in the USA: One raises wheat, and the other, just down the road, raises tomatoes. Both farmers have very large payments due on their mortgages. Everything hinges on harvest time. A crop failure would mean the loss of the farm. Let's complicate things a little more. In each family the farmer's wife is very sick and in need of expensive surgery. Without it, there is little hope of improvement. And one more thing: both families are faithfully walking with God.

It's evening. Each family listens intently to the weather forecast. There's a fifty-fifty chance of rain this particular night. The wheat farmer is well aware that his fields need one more heavy, soaking rain to bring the grain through to the harvest. With that, the farm could be theirs and his wife might be able to walk again.

Down the road, the other farmer knows that his tomatoes are right at their prime - ready to be harvested. But if the rains come, not only will his fields become a muddy bog, making it impossible to harvest, but also the moisture would trigger a blight that would destroy the entire crop. Without the harvest, they will lose everything.

After the weather report, each family gathers around the bed in the room where Mum is resting. Each family prays…

You get the picture. Some prayers conflict with each other, not in the sense of good things and bad things, but simply in the same sense as rain or not rain. God does not promise, in the Bible, to order everything miraculously in response to the wishes of His children - ordering everything to suit each individual, so that each individual had their own individual reality! Philosophically speaking, if miracles were the order of the day then there would be no such thing as miracles! So that is not the way God promises to work ordinarily. So there will, logically, always be some people who do not receive what they ask for.

Also, if God gave everything that we asked simply because we asked, then He would not be God. He would be akin to Aladdin's genie and we would be God! God is God, and we are subservient to Him, not the other way around. John Piper makes the point, in his sermon on Matthew 7:7-11 (http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/ask-your-father-in-heaven), that we should not want to receive everything we ask either. He says, "the reason I say that we would not want to get everything we asked is because we would then have to bear the burden of infinite wisdom which we do not have. We simply don’t know enough to infallibly decide how every decision will turn out and what the next events in our lives, let alone in history, should be."

Not only that, but there are examples in the Bible itself, where prayer requests go unfulfilled. I will skip the ones where persistent prayer requests are eventually granted - such as the women in the Old Testament who were barren and, after years of pleading with the Lord, they received the baby they had asked for - although we must not forget them.

Take, for example, Jesus on the night that He was betrayed. He prayed at Gethsemane, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39) That was a request that even the Son of God was not granted.

The other example I would mention is Paul, who was afflicted by what he called a "thorn in my flesh". We are not told exactly what it was, but we can deduce that it caused him some discomfort. He says, in 2 Corinthians 12:7ff, "To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassing great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'" Paul "pleaded" three times in prayer for relief from this affliction, and yet God did not grant his request.

However, these points aside, how should we look at passages that seem to suggest, or even clearly say, that we can, as Christians, ask the Lord for whatever we want, and He will grant our requests? I believe that the Bible is God's Word, and as such it is consistent, trustworthy and true. If I were to come to a conclusion that some Bible passages teach one thing and others show something mutually exclusive, then my confidence in the Bible would be undermined. Ultimately if I cannot have confidence in the Bible as God's Word, which it clearly teaches it is, then I could not have confidence in knowing the truth about God or His way of salvation through Jesus Christ. The stakes are that high.

Hence, we must look seriously at what the Bible says, and be able to reconcile different passages with each other. If we conclude that we are not necessarily to expect to receive everything we ask for in prayer, simply because we ask, then the question really is, what does God promise through Jesus and His apostles in relation to receiving what we ask for in prayer? I want to look more carefully at the words, and more carefully at the context, and find out what our mindset needs to be, so that we can have the right attitude and expectations.

So I hope to lead you through a study of the passages that I have studied, and show how I have come to conclusions I have reached. I will try to show why I don't think these passages teach that we should expect the granting of our requests automatically. But I also want, more positively, to draw out how these passages should challenge and change the way that we pray.

I have struggled to think of the best way to present these studies in a series of shortish blog articles, so that I can best share what I've learned. The method I've settled on is to go through passage by passage, drawing out applications at appropriate points. The headings I mentioned at the end of the last article will turn into application points, and may be augmented and adjusted as I go along. Sorry. It just shows what can happen when you publish bit by bit before you have actually finished the whole thing!

I hope that as I share what I've learnt we will all increase in confidence in the Scriptures and learn to pray in a way that brings glory to our Lord and Saviour.

And so yet again I have introduced the subject without going into the detail! Sorry. I promise we will dive straight into the detail next time, and you won't have to wait so long for that!

Prayer - Ask for Anything?

Part One - What's the Problem?

One morning as I was having my daily Bible reading and prayer time, I read a passage that sent me into a bit of a spin. It was James chapter 5. Verses 14-15 read, "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven." I had to challenge myself. Do I really believe this? This appears to say that if a Christian is sick, and healing is prayed for, then that person will definitely be healed. But I then thought of all the Christians I know who have been sick and have not been healed, even though prayers have been offered to God. If the Bible promises healing for all who pray for healing, and even one Christian does not get the healing that is requested, then doesn't that undermine that trustworthiness of the Bible?

Given my own situation, of serious illness, I could not leave those questions hanging. I had to push for some answers. (I have to admit that I cannot use personal experience to challenge the Bible, mainly because the Lord has graciously answered many prayers in my case. I am in complete remission, and my cancer is gone. The doctors can't say it is cured, because they can only say that if it doesn't come back within 5-10 years. But "complete remission" is still a pretty amazing answer to prayer, and I thank God for the chemotherapy and for the doctors who gave the treatment. God has also provided for us in many ways as a family, materially, physically and emotionally. So I am very grateful, and acutely aware that my questions may be unfair. I may only be reflecting my own lack of faith, and my own weak understanding of God's care for His children. So I push for answers with a humble attitude, asking for more faith as well as illumination.)

As I started to look into this question, however, I started to realise that I was not dealing with an isolated verse in the letter of James. Promises like this are made consistently throughout the New Testament. Let me list the verses that piled even more weight into my problem:

Jesus said, "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Luke 11:9-10)

Again, in a slightly different context, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:7-8)

Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20)

Jesus also said, "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:19-20)

On another occasion, Jesus said, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." (Mark 11:24)

Six times in the space of three chapters in John's gospel, Jesus makes similar statements:

"And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." (John 14:13-14)

"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you." (John 15:7)

"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name." (John 15:16)

"I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete." (John 16:23-24)

James, in his letter, says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." (James 1:5-8)

He also says later on, "You do not have, because you do not ask God." (James 4:2)

The apostle John says in his first letter, "Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him." (1 John 3:21-22)

He goes on to say, "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him." (1 John 5:14-15)

Hence the question I am now drawn into is not the question I originally set out with. It is much deeper. I started out questioning whether God really promises to heal every Christian for whom prayers are said. The questions I now find myself with are these: Does the New Testament promise that God will infallibly give His children whatever we ask for in prayer? If not, what should we learn from those passages that speak in those terms?

I'm afraid I've now run out of space to share my thoughts on those questions. That's the trouble with writing on such serious subjects on a blog! I hope that the survey of passages above has provoked your interest, and that you are feeling as keen as I was to find the answers. But don't worry, I'm not going to leave it at that. I will share my thoughts in future pieces, soon, although I'm not claiming to have found all the answers! Here are the headings I will use in the next few articles:

• The conditions for receiving what we ask for:

• Have faith;
• Ask according to God's will;
• Ask in Jesus' name;
• Abiding in Christ, and His words abiding in us;
• Ask for the right reasons;
• Keep his commandments and do what pleases Him;

• The humility required to pray in Jesus' name;
• The importance of praying as a church;
• God is our loving Heavenly Father and we can ask Him anything;
• The emphasis is on the asking, not on the receiving.

So I'll leave it there for now. Let me know if you have any thoughts. Please also join me in praying that we will understand how we ought to pray, so that we may do so with confidence and joy.

Reflections on Hardship - Thank God I'm Better!

After nearly 2 months in hospital at the beginning of the year, followed by more than 4 months of chemotherapy, I was given the news that my cancer no longer shows up on any scans. I am in complete remission. The news was the best we could possibly have heard as a family, and is certainly the best news I've had for a long time. We praise God for the healing, which was an answer to the prayers of many people.

Of course, there is still the small matter of getting my body fit again after the hammering it has taken, both from the disease and from the treatment. And then further mountains to climb in getting back into work. But that's another story!

My reflection this time around is on the phrase I used a few lines above, which is the sort that comes naturally to Christians - "we praise God for the healing". Why do we praise God? Wasn't it the doctors and the chemotherapy that made me better? The doctors even said from the start that they thought there was a good chance I would do very well from the treatment. So this is in no sense a "miraculous" healing. And yet I still thank God that I'm better.

Christians, you see, believe in a God who uses means. "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father." (James 1:17) The gift of drugs that make us better, the gift of doctors and nurses with the skill to use them, the gift of researchers to discover their good effects, the gift of prosperity to be able to afford them; all these gifts come from God, who made everything and holds the whole universe in the palm of His hand. Further there is the gift of prayer, by which we can ask God specifically for His help.

We often may long for the miraculous in our lives - the miraculous cure, the miraculous provision of money or food, the miraculous guidance to do the right thing. And those things certainly do happen when God wants to do them. But God's normal way of working is through things He has already created. When He sent the 10 plagues on Egypt to force Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery, he sent natural disasters. When He parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape the pursuit of the Egyptians, He used a "strong east wind" (Exodus 14:21). As He spreads the good news about Jesus and the salvation we can receive through Him, He uses evangelists, missionaries, apostles, preachers, ordinary Christians. As He teaches us about Himself, He uses prophets, kings, poets, writers whose collected works make up the Bible.

For me, when I ask God for help, I don't really mind if He uses a miracle or uses means. Whenever help comes, and in whatever way, I know that it is from God, who loves me as His child in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm sure I remember in one episode of The Simpsons there is a scene where Homer is shipwrecked and is floating around on some driftwood. He prays to God to save Him. Soon afterwards a ship comes past and throws him a lifeline, saying, "here climb aboard, we're here to rescue you." Homer's reply is something like, "no it's ok, God's going to save me!" Of course as the ship goes out of sight we then hear the inevitable, "Doh!" We're so often like that, not recognising God's hand in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.

But, as one person said to me, if God made the cure and gave the skill, etc, who made the cancer in the first place? The challenge is whether I am selective in seeing God's hand at work. Do I think God only works in the good things, and is only reacting to the random bad things? If God is powerful enough to use means to make me better, wouldn't He also be powerful enough to prevent cancer in the first place?

If the challenge comes from an atheist, my response could be summarised as saying, "who are you to talk about good and bad? You don't believe anything is good or bad, just different configurations of atoms."

But from the standpoint of faith, the Bible is clear. Nothing is outside of God's divine power. Paul, in Ephesians 1:11, speaks of God as being the one who "works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will". In Romans 8:28 he says that, "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him". If you read the book of Job, where poor Job suffers horribly, bereavement, financial ruin, bodily pain, you read that the suffering would not have been possible without God's express permission. God's hand was at work behind the sufferings of Jesus and the sins that led to them: The disciples acknowledged to God in prayer afterwards that Herod and Pilate "did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen." (Acts 4:28) I don't believe you can read the Bible and escape the conclusion that God plans everything, good and bad, whilst remaining perfect and holy in His character and motives.

Therefore, I am happy to say that God made the cancer, and planned that I should be laid low under it for a time. I don't think, because of what the Bible says, that is saying that God is doing anything wrong. On the contrary, because I believe God is in control I can have confidence that even the worst of suffering is for my good… And it will take me a lifetime and probably the whole of eternity to learn that "my good" is to find my treasure in Christ, the ultimate treasure.

Job's response to suffering was, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:20)

As the prophet Habakkuk watched the Jews carted off into exile, his response was, "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation." (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

Some of us struggle because God is not obliged to give us reasons for our sufferings. Perhaps, you know, we wouldn't understand the reasons even if He were to tell us. How can we humans, who are like specks of dust compared to the Creator of the whole intricate and vast universe, hope to understand, even if we were to add all our brain power together?

The point is to trust God. He is good and He knows what He is doing.

I guess I see it a little bit like this (and I know that this is a poor analogy). When I was in hospital I trusted the doctors and nurses to do the best or me. But sometimes they had to do things to me that hurt in order to progress with either diagnosis or treatment. I had endoscopies that were really painful, because of where my gut was so inflamed. The naso-gastric tube was very unpleasant. The bone marrow biopsy was uncomfortable to say the least. I hated having a cannula inserted into my veins. And then there was the daily blood test. The phlebotomist or the doctor would come along and jab a needle in my arm to get me to bleed. Every time they give a little warning a split second before the needed goes in, so that it's not a complete shock. "Sharp scratch!" they say. What if, in the context of the eternity we have to look forward to, all our pains, hardships and sufferings are like that? What if all that pain that we feel so acutely now will seem like just a "sharp scratch" when we look back from eternity?

For the Christian, we can take comfort from Paul, who says, "this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." (2 Corinthians 4:17) Incidentally, Paul's light momentary afflictions included imprisonment, beatings, shipwreck, venomous snake bite, persecution, and eventually execution.

For the unbeliever, the same applies. The pains and sufferings of this life are a "sharp scratch" in comparison to the eternity of pain that Hell will be.

For the believer the pain keeps us looking to Jesus, praying to Him, trusting in His goodness and His love for us. For the unbeliever the pain warns of more to come, and to urges them to seek the only true escape route - repentance and faith in Jesus.

So I do thank God for making me better. But ultimately, I want to be able to say with Paul, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:12-13)

When Things are Not Clear

One of the reasons I have lapsed in my blogging over the last couple of months is that I stumbled on a verse I read in my daily Bible reading. When I say I stumbled, I mean that I met a mental block and my faith was tested.

Ok, the verse was James 5:15, "And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up."

For those who followed my blog over the last 8 months, and for those who know me well, the reason for my stumbling will be immediately apparent. I have been very sick, suffering with cancer. And obviously I have prayed quite a bit for healing and help. Reading that verse again made me shiver, because in reading it that morning it seemed as if James was saying that there is no need for a Christian to suffer with illness. If we suffer with illness all we need to do is call the elders, have them pray for us, and we'll get better. Simple as that!! And I started to argue in my mind - not only did this not seem to hold true, but it also seemed to contradict other parts of the Bible.

I will write more about my conclusions with regard to that particular issue next time. For now I just wanted to reflect on the process that I went through to resolve the issue in my mind.

All Christians hit these difficult issues either practically in life or when we read the Bible. How do we resolve them? I'll list what I did. I'm not saying this is definitive, or that I did everything right. I probably could have done things differently, or done different things. You may have other things that you do in these situations, and if so please share in the comments box. But what I did helped in this case, so there is probably some merit in sharing. It's also worth saying that I didn't do these things in a strict order. I'll talk about them in a logical order, but in reality I went back and forth between all of them throughout the whole investigation. It's more of an iterative process than a linear process.

1. See if someone else has found the answer

The first thing I normally do, and I did in this case, was to see if I have any books on the issue in question. I looked through my bookcase for a book on prayer. Unfortunately I didn't have one! I would have liked to look in Tim Chester's book, The Message of Prayer, but I cannot afford to buy lots of books at the moment. If I'd had the time I could have asked my local library to get it in, but I didn't.

So the next thing I did was to go searching the internet. There are positives and negatives to this. It is true that you can find advice on just about anything on the internet, but not everything you find is reliable. So you have to be discerning. In fact, if you don't read much Christian stuff, or you don't know who the most reliable and doctrinally sound writers are, then I would advise against searching the internet. Ask your pastor/vicar, or friends who are Christians, which websites they find helpful and bookmark them.

One of my personal favourites is www.desiringgod.org. It contains just about everything that John Piper has ever written or said in a sermon, and he is one of the most helpful writers I have found over the last few years. He takes the Bible seriously and his teaching always leads you to God, rather than glorifying himself as a writer or speaker. So I looked at that website.

Sometimes you will find a satisfactory answer at this stage, and you need go no further. However in my case I wasn't satisfied with the answer I initially found in John Piper's sermons on James 5. On the other hand I did get some further clues, and this is something to watch out for too. He referred to difficult passages on prayer in Mark 11, amongst other things. So I looked those up and it highlighted to me that I had a bigger issue than just James 5. There appear to be a number of passages that give a similarly broad and certain promise of answered prayer.

2. Share the burden

Having done some initial investigation I had at least clarified what I had a problem with. So I started to ask other Christians what they thought about the issue.

Now I should advise you to normally speak to your pastor, or someone in your church with teaching responsibilities, such as a housegroup leader. They are the ones who have been given the responsibility to teach us, so we should go to them to help us. I have to admit that in my case I didn't do this. Instead I chatted with a few of the more experienced Christians that I know - friends and family.

I think that part of the reason we are often reluctant to go to pastors and leaders is that we don't want to appear stupid. We want to appear as those who have avidly lapped up their teaching and now know everything. We don't want to appear weak and doubtful. But this is wrong. It may be the church has an intimidating ethos, where most people act in public as if they have everything sewn up. But there is normally more than a small element of sinful pride within ourselves, which worries about what people think about us. In fact it's the aggregation of the sinful pride of many individuals within a church that gives rise to the intimidating ethos within the group.

Whoever you go to for help with your questions, just be honest with them. Our purpose within the body of Christ is to help each other. No-one is perfect. All believers in this life are on a journey of faith, and we all experience ups and downs along the way. We should share our experiences and learnings honestly, and share our questions and doubts honestly too.

3. Find all the relevant passages

In my case the people I spoke to did not have all the answers I wanted. They sympathised and agreed that it is a difficult question. They also affirmed some of the ideas I had, so I knew that they were worthy of further investigation. However, I needed to do a bit more work, investigating for myself in the Bible.

So I assembled a list of all the passages that appeared to speak about the same subject - the success of faithful prayer. I also assembled a list of passages that give background information on the subject and put the subject in a wider context. So, for instance, I made sure that I thought about the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6. I also had another list of passages that gave practical examples of prayer in the New Testament (I skipped the Old Testament partly because the Psalms would have kept me occupied for months (!), and partly because my problem was in New Testament teaching and therefore I most needed New Testament background).

I found those passages using a concordance. A concordance, for those who have never used one, is a book that lists all the references to particular words in the Bible. You will normally find a short concordance in the back of a "study Bible". An "exhaustive concordance" is one that goes through every single word mentioned in the Bible (except words like "the", "a", "and", and "but") and gives lists of all the instances of those words, with chapter and verse references.

In fact, in this case I wasn't actually using my concordance. I used a great internet resource: www.biblegateway.com. On this website you can search for words and get the list of verses, or you can search for specific verses, out of many different translations of the Bible (and in several languages). It's really useful, especially if you do most things on a computer, as I seem to do nowadays.

You have to use your brain here, though. The concordance will only tell you instances of words. You have to edit that list to only include passages that are relevant to your investigation. And you have to think of synonyms and alternative ways of expressing the ideas you want to investigate, so you may need to do several searches to make sure you have covered everything.

4. Look at the context of each passage

Now comes the time consuming part! Each of the verses you identified needs to be read in context. We've all seen on TV where "sound bites" taken out of someone's conversation can give a completely incorrect impression of what they were actually trying to say. The same is true of the Bible, where we can read a verse out of context and miss the whole point of what the passage is trying to say.

So in my case I had assembled about 10 or 12 verses, and I went through each one, looking at the surrounding context. What I mean by the surrounding context is the verses before and after. How far you go back before the verse in question, and how far you follow on after the verse, is subjective. I tended to try and identify a "major section", which in some cases was the whole of a sermon or discourse, or a particular section of an argument in a letter. In the case of the verses in James' letter, I took the whole letter as the context. It's only five chapters, so I might miss something if I divide it down into sections too small.

In looking at the context you really have to paraphrase the argument that the writer is trying to present, or the thing that the writer wants us to understand from a narrative. The question is, "what's the point?" It's looking at the big picture and asking what the major points are. By doing that you get a better feel for things like hyperbole (exaggeration!) or irony.

5. Study each passage

Studying each passage is an art rather than a science, but there are various tools you can use. One of those tools I will mention below. Basically the purpose is to get clear on the meaning of a small section within the context of the big section.

One of the hardest things, I find, is sometimes actually trying to understand the flow of a passage or an argument. Sometimes different bits of teaching will be put next to each other by an author, or even narratives involving completely different events, without the author explicitly telling us how they link together. Is there a chronological link between events? Or is there a thematic link? And if there is a thematic link, what's the theme? Are they steps in an argument?

Looking at parallel passages, or allusions, can help too. For instance, Mark 11:24 was one of the verses I was investigating. Matthew also records the same incident in Matthew 21:21. But Matthew tells it slightly differently, which leads you to ask why. And then the answer to that explains what they are each trying to emphasise by including the incident in their accounts.

Ask questions, think laterally, look at patterns within the passage. Do everything you need to do to really understand what the author is trying to get across.

6. Do word studies if necessary

One way that you can get some light on a particular passage is to analyse the use of a particular key word or phrase that you may have picked up. If you are up for it you can investigate the Greek or Hebrew original languages even if you don't know any Greek or Hebrew - you just need a concordance that has Greek and Hebrew references. That highlights where the particular word in the original language is translated in different ways in the English version.

By looking at other passages that use the same word or phrase, you can often get a lot of insight into what the writers meant by it. For instance, when I was looking at John 14:13 and John 16:24 I noticed the use of the phrase "in my name". In John 14:13, Jesus says, "I will do whatever you ask in my name." What did he mean by "in my name"? So I found a bunch of places, especially in the New Testament, and especially spoken by Jesus, that include that phrase. I looked to see what this meant in different contexts, so that I could build up a picture of what it meant when Jesus said it in the passage I was primarily looking at.

7. Read commentaries

Commentaries are books written by Bible scholars to go through and explain books of the Bible verse by verse. Each commentator will have their own style and emphasis, as well as unique insights and way of looking at things. But their aim is to go verse by verse through particular books and give a deep insight into what we should get from them.

Commentaries are very useful when you have found the Bible passages that you need more light on. But I find that they are most useful when you have first done a lot of the studying outlined above. That way I find that I will have more specific questions and issues that I would like to find the answers to.

But sometimes you find that the commentaries don't comment on the particular questions you have. That's frustrating. But their lack of comment on your questions may, in fact, be telling in itself, especially if you have scoured two or three different commentaries on the same book. You may be asking the wrong questions. That happened to me on several occasions while I was studying the passages on prayer recently.

As a word of caution, remember that commentaries are not the Bible, and they are written by fallible, sinful, human beings, just like you and me. Many commentators are very knowledgeable and give great insights, but they are still not exempt from making mistakes. Read these books with discernment, and do not just accept what they say.

8. Summarise your findings

After you have amassed all this study material, you have to see whether it is leading in a consistent direction to a conclusion. Weigh the different pieces of information carefully, and decide what you believe.

9. Ask the ultimate author

Above all things, throughout the whole process, pray. James 1:5 says, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask God." We get our guidance from God's Word, and He lives within us in His Holy Spirit. We rely on Him. Without Him we cannot understand anything. So we should acknowledge that and pray often, humbly and earnestly for understanding.


Well, those are a few thoughts. You will have to wait for a future article to judge how successful I was in the study on prayer. It took me about two months altogether. So sometimes it does take a bit of wrestling and hard work.

I would also recommend these kinds of methods when you have a practical issue for which you need Biblical guidance (e.g. you want to find out if it is right for a Christian to date a non-Christian, or whether it is acceptable for Christians to drink alcohol, etc.).

Perhaps there will be another opportunity to write more on this, but for now I'll just finish by recommending a book that helped me. It's What to do on Thursday by Jay E. Adams (Timeless Texts, 1995). The subtitle is A Layman's Guide to the Practical Use of the Scriptures, and that just about sums it up. It's premise is that it's all very well reading the Bible and hearing it preached on a Sunday, but what do you do on a Thursday when you have a practical issue to resolve and want to know the right thing to do? How do you get the Bible's guidance? So what Adams does is give you a process like the steps I outlined above, but much more detailed (and from the perspective of an experienced pastor and counsellor).

All the best with your own studies!

Thank God for the Church

I wanted to write an article that expresses my feelings of gratitude and praise for the church I belong to with my family - St Mary's, Eastrop, Basingstoke. But I wanted to do that in a way that glorifies God and encourages all Christians to see in some measure the true value and glory of the wider church in general. So I first of all want to encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow members of St Mary's. But my encouragement to other Christians is that you should see the great blessing of belonging to a church, as well as attending.

It is more than 18 years since I first moved to Basingstoke and came to St Mary's. I found the welcome there to be warm and was drawn in, as a young single Christian man, to the fellowship. I got involved in leading the music in the services, and in leading services, preaching, teaching at housegroups, evangelism, and in helping with some of the teaching and activities for young people. But my involvement has varied over time, and certainly has been much less since we had kids. I met my wife at St Mary's, was married at St Mary's, and had all my four children baptised as infants at St Mary's. And things have changed subtly and matured over time. Clive Hawkins is still the rector, but curates, associate pastors, ministry trainees, youth workers, housegroup leaders have come and gone. The "new building" is no longer new! And our styles of worship, our evangelistic activities and other regular activities have evolved.

But, over the past four or five years, and especially in the last year, I have really experienced first hand St Mary's as a Christian community. I really can't tell you all the ways we have needed help, counselling and support as a family. But I can say that we would not have got through the past few years without the church.

The most overwhelming example has been this year. I was taken ill and rushed to hospital on Christmas Day, and I stayed there until the middle of February. I was diagnosed with cancer and started having chemotherapy during that time.

Heidi and the kids were well supported by church members while I was in hospital. They had a rota going whereby meals would be delivered to them every day, so that Heidi did not have the worry of having to do that.

I was visited in hospital, not just by Clive and other leaders, but by quite a few members of the church. Being in hospital can be boring, apart from the unpleasantness of illness, so just having people come to chat was great.

Since I came home, and have not been able to work while going through the chemotherapy treatment, things have been tough financially. And whilst it is true that most of the financial support that has kept us from going deeper into debt in the last few months has come from state benefits, we have also been humbled by the generous and spontaneous donations of Christian brothers and sisters both at St Mary's and beyond. Some gifts have been anonymous, some direct. We have not asked for anything, and yet people have seen our need and given generously. Without those gifts we would be seriously struggling.

One Christian friend left some cash in our house without telling us after visiting one day. When we sent a text message later on to ask if it was their cash, the response we got back was simply, "Acts 4:34". This verse is from a passage that speaks of how the early church ensured that there was "not a needy person among them" because they shared their possessions. This brought a tear to my eye, not only with gratitude, but because it was clear that their generosity was not just because we were friends. This was a gift following the example of love in the early church, and in response to the love of Christ who "was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Church members have also helped us out with a variety of jobs that I didn't have the energy or strength for.

And we have been constantly upheld in prayer. This is something that I cannot fully grasp. People at St Mary's have mentioned us to the only God, the Creator of the Universe, in their prayers! There are so many other things to pray about and pray for, and yet they pray for us. But it doesn't just stop at St Mary's, or in England for that matter. I am aware of brothers and sisters praying for us privately and in churches around my own country, and in Canada, the USA and India - people I don't even know!

I should say that we have received a lot of help from other people outside St Mary's and outside of the wider church as well, including some of our unbelieving friends and family, which really is equally appreciated. If they are reading this I do not want them to feel that I think less of their help and their gifts than those of Christians. I am not trying to say that Christians are more caring than anyone else. And I am not trying to say that people at St Mary's are more loving than other people. The Lord indeed provides for His people through many divers means - but that is something to write about another time!

I am only trying to say that church is much more than a Sunday thing, and we have experienced that over the last few years for us, both through St Mary's and through the wider church around the world. You see, the way that love, support and care works, in this context at least, sets church apart from, say, the help received from a charity or a social club, or from close friends and family. We have been treated with generosity in many cases spontaneously and without direction from the church leadership, so it's not a formal organisational thing. We have also received help and been offered help from people within the church that we don't even know very well. These are not necessarily our close friends at church who are helping us out. People want to help because Jesus Christ has loved them, and they want to share that love as he commanded.

I was reflecting on this. And I was thinking how little teaching the Bible contains on the things we normally associate with church - church buildings, church government, church meetings, church music. When the New Testament speaks about church it has much more to say about relationships as a group of people. In fact, it fundamentally addresses us as a church and not as individuals. It's what John Frame calls "one-anothering" in one of his books that I'm reading at the moment (Salvation Belongs to the LORD, P&R Books, 2006).

Peter says, in 1 Peter 2:9-10, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God's] own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people…"

Paul, in Ephesians 4, speaks of the church as "the body of Christ" (v12). And he says that the reason God gave apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists was, "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…"

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, again uses the analogy of Christ's body to describe the church, where, "there are many parts, yet one body." (v20) His thrust is that different people in the church have different gifts and talents, and therefore different roles, but we all need each other.

But after talking very practically about everyone having different gifts and needing each other, and the fact that it is good to desire the higher gifts, Paul says, "and I will show you a still more excellent way." (1 Corinthians 12:31) He then goes on, in the well-known passage in chapter 13, to say that exercising these gifts with love is more important than anything else. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." (13:1-3)

And that reminded me of what Jesus said in John 13:35, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples…" What did he say next? If you have a great choir and sing nicely every week? If you read your Bible and pray every day? If you wear an ichthus, fish, badge at work? If you refrain from swearing and getting drunk? If you give up every Sunday to meet with Christians and hear preaching from the Bible? None of these things are bad. Some are very good and essential. But they are not what Jesus said. Jesus said, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

John expands on that in his first letter: "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth." (1 John 3:16-18)

Love within the church community, and love for those outside the church, is to be the main defining mark of our Christianity and our churches. And that's what I have experienced in St Mary's, Eastrop, Basingstoke, whatever our faults and foibles in all sorts of other areas. And that's why I thank God for St Mary's and for his grace towards me through the church there and the wider church. And I want to encourage all my brothers and sisters to keep on loving, because in your love God is working His love through you.

But I also wanted to share this for the sake of some of my friends and family, who would call themselves Christians and have a strong belief in Jesus Christ, and yet are not members of a church. They have a variety of reasons. Some don't think it's important. Some haven't made a huge effort to find a church to go to, and say they can't find one. Some are put off by superficiality in Sunday services. Some are shy. Some didn't like the last church they went to and have been put off. Some are simply chickening out.

I don't judge anyone. But my heart aches for them, whatever their reasons, because they are cutting themselves off from one of the main channels of God's love for them. ¬¬I do also believe that God commands us to meet together as Christians, and to align ourselves with other Christians publicly by belonging to a visible church. And therefore staying away from church whilst wanting to call yourself a Christian is sinful. However, my main concern is that without the support of the church they will fail to grow and will eventually fall away from Christ altogether.

There are, however, at least two objections that these Christian non-church people might throw at me for my audacity:

First, the concept of church in the Bible encompasses both a visible church and an invisible church. All believers, those who have faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and their eternal life, are part of the invisible church. We don't get a choice. We are all automatically part of it by God's choosing of us before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), and then his calling us into it (1 Peter 2:9). Therefore, they might argue that they are already part of the church, Christ's body, and they don't need to actually go to church on Sunday or belong to a church in this life.

But this overlooks at least two things.

It overlooks that the New Testament never speaks to anyone outside the visible church. The gospels and the letters were written to people who had relationships with other Christians in churches - good or bad. We are told to love one another visibly and obviously so that people will know that we follow Christ. How can we display that love for one another if we do not do it in the context of a visible church? If New Testament Christians had issues with other Christians they were never given the option of ostracising themselves and acting as an independent, lone believer. They were taught how to act, speak, learn, grow, submit, love, care, build up, edify, in the context of the church.

More importantly it also overlooks the fact that the invisible church doctrine was conceived in order to highlight a particular truth, and not to minimise the importance of physically belonging to a church in this life. The invisible church concept is important when we consider that Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" (Matthew 7:21-23) So Jesus knew that there would be some in the visible church whom we would think are genuine believers, but he would know them to be "workers of lawlessness". He also said, "I know my own and my own know me." (John 10:14) So whilst the visible church may be a mixture of true Christians, the deluded and the "wolves in sheep's clothing", we can be sure that, "the Lord knows those who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19).

Second, they may say that they just don't get anything out of the meetings at the local churches. They may say that they publicly confess that they are Christians, and are part of the wider church because they have ad hoc fellowship with other Christians. And I may have been misunderstood earlier as saying that meeting together on Sundays is not important, because the main thing about church is the relationships and not the meetings.

However, the thing about the meetings is that these are the focal point. We meet on a Sunday to worship God, to hear His Word, to pray to Him and to sing praises to Him, to visibly show that as a group of people this is what we are all about. "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people." (1 Peter 2:10) God's people, not just a random group of people. God's people, not a networking group or a therapy group or a commune. Our purpose is to, "proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvellous light." (v9) And when we meet and do what we do, we say to the world, "we are God's people and we proclaim His excellencies, we rely on Him, we trust Him, we learn from Him, we praise Him. He is our God, and Jesus Christ is our Saviour!"

It's also an expression of love for each other, because in our meetings we build each other up and encourage one another through Bible teaching and through prayer. So if we treat Sunday services with apathy or lack of commitment we are effectively saying that we don't care about our brothers and sisters - we can't be bothered. Christianity without meeting with other Christians is all about what we can get out of God directly, whilst refusing to be His means of helping, loving and caring for our brothers and sisters in Christ. The church is one of the main means that He uses to help His people, and yet we both refuse that channel for ourselves, and refuse to be part of that channel for others, if we refuse to be part of a church. We want help from Him directly - in the way we determine, rather than the way He reveals. In short it's self-centred rather than God-centred, and is therefore not true Christianity.

I have gone on long enough. I hope you see why I thank God for the church - my own local church at St Mary's and the wider church - especially in my time of need. And I hope that if you are reading this as a Christian you will place importance on the church, and give yourself to it. And I pray that as we give ourselves first to God, and then to each other, we may visibly demonstrate the love of Christ and thereby commend the gospel to the watching world.

"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." (Ephesians 3:20-21)

For the Encouragement of Faithful Doubters - Part Two

Times of doubt

A while ago I wrote to encourage those who are worried that they don't have strong enough faith. I was, to be honest, concerned that my previous reflections may be overly dogmatic, and end up discouraging those who read and say, "I still don't get it!" I don't want to give the impression that I have everything sewn up, and that having everything "sewn up" and solidly grounded is part of the character of saving faith. I want my public reflections to be encouraging and not discouraging.

So I pointed out that nothing can be absolutely crystal clear to us in this life, both because of our finiteness and because of our sinful nature. I showed the examples of those we sometime see as the great men of faith in the Bible, who quite often went through times of doubt and fear. I pointed out that salvation comes through believing in Jesus Christ, in having faith, not a certain amount of faith. And I held out the Bible as God's means to lead us into greater knowledge and certainty about the hope that we have, to enable us to grow in faith.

I hope that was helpful, and pray that these reflections will be an encouragement to grow through studying deeply in the Word of God, relying on the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see ever more clearly the wonder and glory of Jesus Christ.

But it also made me think about some of the times of doubt I've had in my own life, and the way that I have been brought back from the brink of unbelief. I admit that when I talk about "the brink of unbelief" that's a little over-dramatic. By God's grace, I have never even temporarily given up my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But that doesn't mean I have not had times when I have seriously questioned what I believe, and have times when I simply do not know the answers.

Sometimes I have come across difficult passages in the Bible that I can't make sense out of, and seem inconsistent with other teachings. And I have thought to myself, "What if this isn't true? What if this undermines everything? What if my faith is misplaced?"

Sometimes I have envied the prosperity and "freedom" of those who do not follow God. Like the psalmist, "I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills… always carefree, they increase their wealth. Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure." (Psalm 73:3-13) Freedom to be promiscuous, freedom to get pleasure out of life and get what I want without caring about anyone else - surely that would be easier sometimes. Am I restricting my own progress and enjoyment in life because of something that I simply accept from an old book?

Some unbelieving friends may have told me not to be so hard on myself at those times, though they never got the chance because I have always kept these thoughts to myself. You see, many unbelievers admire faith in other people. They see noble qualities, selflessness, love and giving, grounded in a kind of hope and certainty that they simply don't have. They wish they could have that, but they accept that they don't. They would think it a shame for someone to give up such a faith, because they want to believe that it is possible.

I may have mentioned elsewhere how I was intrigued by the film, The Invention of Lying, written by and starring Ricky Gervais. It's what I would call a double philosophical satire. It mocks Christianity, because it wants to make out that God is just a concept made up by people who really want to believe there is something more than emptiness in life. But it also mocks anti-Christian philosophy, because it wants to point out that faith brings about great things and great feelings. The worst position in the world, it implies, is to know for sure that God is a fantasy and yet have to get by in life.

But I just don't get that. For me, either life is something or it isn't. Truth is truth, and I can't change it. If God exists and Jesus is the Saviour of the world then I have to accept that as true. If it's not true, then I must live consistently with that alternative. There is no point living my life as if God exists, and that I can have the hope of eternal life through the death and resurrection of Christ, if it's not true. Paul said the same thing too. He said, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." (1 Corinthians 15:19) There is nothing noble or praiseworthy about faith in something that is not true. Like the dying man in the desert who staggers on towards the mirage on the horizon, we would be pitiable, not pious.

What are the alternatives?

But what has brought me "back from the brink" time and time again is the emptiness of the alternatives. And this was brought home to me again while listening to John Piper preach on John 6:68 (you can find a transcript of the sermon, and the audio and video, at http://tinyurl.com/2vpvhak).

In John 6, Jesus feeds a huge crowd of people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish. He is then tracked down all the way to the other side of the lake, because this miracle has made him so popular. Condensing the story somewhat, Jesus treats this popularity with contempt, seeing that all the crowd wants is a miracle worker to carry on feeding them. He therefore gives them some pretty strong and difficult teaching, not only about the nature of his person, his mission and the ultimate gift he came to give, but also the inability of man to come to him without God's inner working. "No-one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him," he concludes in 6:65.

The result, we are told in v66, is that, "from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him."

Jesus then turns to the twelve who are left with him, and asks them, "You do not want to leave me too, do you?" (v67)

"Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.'" (v68) Who else is there to turn to? Every other alternative is empty. To quote John Piper, "'Lord, to whom shall we go?' In that simple question, Peter is saying, We’ve considered it. We’ve allowed ourselves to ponder what it might be like to turn away from you."

In one Christian Fellowship meeting at work, when I worked in Windsor, instead of sharing testimonies about how the members became Christians, we were asked to share the answer to the question, "Why am I still a Christian?" It was a very valuable session, which I think came from the recognition that sometimes maintaining a life of faith as a Christian is hard. How do we do it? In the face of being told day-in, and day-out, in the media, in comedy sketches, by friends, work colleagues and family members, how stupid we are; how repressed we are; how the world's problems are all down to people like us (ref Dawkins and Hitchens, etc al); how we are bigoted, prudish, killjoys; why do we persevere in faith? When we find things in the Bible that we don't understand, when we face hardships that we can't explain, when we see evil in the world, why do we keep going?

My answer was the same as Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" The alternatives are empty, they do not make sense. I've heard what atheist philosophers have to say. I've listened to other religions. Faced with the impulse to be rational, I have put a lot of consideration into that question. And no other alternative works. Far from the Christian worldview being a leap of blind, irrational, faith, it is the only rational choice. Of course, that's just my testimony. It doesn't prove anything. And it does not mean that I just dismiss the problems that I face - in life and in thinking - or that I have every area of life and existence "sewn up". I simply see enough to know that God is real, that I deserve His wrath for the ways I dishonour Him, that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead so that I can have that wrath taken away from me, and that through faith in Jesus I can look forward to a wonderful future when God finally brings an end to this present age. I say to Jesus, "'You have the words of eternal life!' (John 6:68) I trust you. Every other alternative is either empty and hollow, or dishonouring to God. So I will continue to cling to you by faith, even when my tiny, sin-tainted mind cannot fathom the answers to the questions that arise from life."

The main alternative, living in Western culture that has lost its Christian foundations and that is increasingly secular and godless, is the prevailing secular atheism and pluralism. This is where most of my unbelieving friends and family come from when they look at my faith with varying degrees of scepticism (this may be the scepticism of pity, which "tolerates" faith only when it does not impinge on their "freedom"; or it may be the scepticism of admiration, which wants the faith without the restrictions on personal autonomy). And so, whether they like it or not, I feel the pressure to conform and live like them.

The apparent attractions are obvious. Conforming is easy. I wouldn't have to say unpopular things about abortion being the murder of a child; or about homosexual, pre-marital or extra-marital sexual acts being sinful. I wouldn't have to be seen as repressive and prudish in my complaints about what gets shown on TV and in the media. I wouldn't have to offend my friends and family with the unstated implication of my faith, which is the implication that they are sinners (along with me) and are facing an eternity in hell. I wouldn't have to face the laughter of the intelligentsia when I say I believe that the whole universe and the whole spectrum of existence was created by God, let alone that I am one of these terrible fanatics who believes that He did it in six days. Ok, so I would drop out of the support net of the church, which is widely acknowledged as a great force for social good on both a personal and cultural level. But on the other hand I could do my own thing, without worrying whether it's right or wrong. I could choose to follow my own path to my own happiness. I could follow money, or power, or sexual pleasure, or all three! I could save time and mental energy on prayer and Bible study. I wouldn't have to worry if the Bible said something I didn't understand. I could go on with the list of the apparent attractions of secularism.

But having been attracted, and having thought about it, I still call them "apparent" attractions. They are superficial, because when I start to dig deeper and examine the foundations of this secular worldview that appears so attractive, it crumbles. I would have to give up too much in terms of rationality. I would have to live in a world of wishful thinking. Let me give you a brief example.

Atheism, because it denies the existence of God, has to posit an alternative theory for the existence of everything. It normally suggests the theory of evolution. Note that I put it that way. If you look into atheist philosophy it is never put the other way around. So we never hear of people being persuaded there is no God because of evolution being the way everything came into existence. For one thing, evolution is still a theory. It is not a fact, as popular presentations of science would have you believe. People believe evolution because they want to believe something about their origins and the origin of life and existence. If God did not create everything, how did it get here? (There are other basic philosophical questions that we could consider - such as, what is reality or how do we know anything - but I don't want to go on too long.)

Existence (broader than just simply life) is either meaningful or meaningless. Being meaningful or meaningless are mutually exclusive. The atheistic theory of evolution says that every present form of existence has randomly formed over billions of years by a process of mutation and the survival of certain of those random formations. The implication of that belief is that every form of existence is meaningless. It's meaningless in the sense that evolution implies no significant difference between forms of existence. E.g. A human is just a different formation of matter to an elephant or a tree. E.g. Life and non-life are just different ways for matter to react within itself. E.g. Love, hate, good and evil are just different reactions within the different formations of matter. But if it's all randomly formed, then distinctions between formations and reactions are meaningless (by applying the definition - if the distinctions between things don't ultimately signify anything then they are meaningless).

The thing I find empty about today's atheism is the shrug that everything may all in fact be meaningless and with no ultimate significance: lymphoma or good health - equally meaningless; love or war - equally meaningless; care for our children or abuse them - equally meaningless; kill people or heal people - equally meaningless!

And yet everybody lives as if existence has meaning, in that everybody gives significance to things, and to things that happen. What I ask is where the significance comes from, and why do we live that way. If you reject God as ultimately being behind everything, then you are left with randomness, which doesn't give significance to anything. It's at that point that I believe that the Christian worldview provides consistency (living solidly based on belief), but atheism does not (because atheists say there is no meaning, but act as if there is).

And coming back to the point, therefore, I find that I would have to give up too much if I were to give up the Christian faith. I could go for the ease of conformity with the secularism of the age, and give up my allegedly restrictive faith. But I would have to then accept a view that ultimately says that nothing has any meaning, or everything has no meaning. And yet I would find it impossible, honestly, to live that way. Can I see the love of my wife and children as meaningless? Can I see the terror and awfulness of war and oppression as insignificant? Can I cry real tears? Can I feel real joy? Can I have real fun? Can I experience real love? Can I know real guilt? Can I know real forgiveness? I honestly cannot accept these things are unreal, illusory, meaningless or insignificant. And therefore I cannot accept atheism.

To whom shall we go?

And so I am forced back to God, in Christ, where I find real love, feel real guilt, experience real forgiveness, real sadness and real joy. Because He made the world and made me in His image, and that gives me the capacity to understand these things and really feel them. He gives me a concept of sin, judgment and justice which explains the evil in the world. He gives me hope. I find atheism bankrupt. Atheists have to live in a dream world of wishful thinking. As hard as it is to be a Christian, or to understand some aspects of theology, it is the only worldview that makes sense and fits with reality as we experience it.

So don't be afraid to consider the alternatives to Christianity. But dig into the roots. You will find that every alternative ultimately crumbles into a heap of inconsistencies and irrationality. And so you always come back to Christ, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3) and say, with Peter, "You have the words of eternal life!"

What is prayer?

"Do not be anxious about anything," says Paul, "but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." (Philippians 4:6) James writes, "Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray." (James 5:13)

If we turn to Matthew 26, when Jesus was "sorrowful and troubled" (v37) in Gethsemane, we find that his response was earnest prayer. "Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed…" (v39). If the Son of God felt the need to pray in his darkest hour, then we should too. In fact, in that very hour Jesus told his disciples to do just that. He had asked his disciples to keep watch with him, but they feel asleep. When he rose from praying and found them sleeping, he said to Peter, "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation." (v41)

Prayer is one of those typically religious things. Most religions have prayer as one of their core ingredients. Muslims pray, Jews pray, Hindus pray, Sikhs pray, even the Roman pagans used to pray. But that can lead to confusion. I didn't even understand the definition given in Wikipedia: "Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional connection to some greater power in the universe through deliberate practice." The fact is that the concept of prayer is different - sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically - in different religions. That is not a surprise, since every religion differs in its view of God, mankind and the relationship between God and mankind. Since prayer is, at the very least, about communication by human beings, different religions will have different views and practices when it comes to prayer, depending on, a) who or what that religion says we must communicate with, and b) how said entity/entities prefer or demand to be communicated with according to that religion.

So we must beware of having a view of prayer that is a kind of eclectic mishmash gleaned from the pluralistic culture of our day. As Christians we must let the Bible guide us when it comes to prayer. And since when tough times come prayer feels most necessary and natural, we need to know what to pray in those times and what to expect.

For Christians prayer could simply be defined as the way that we speak to God. Let's not confuse things by talking about listening to God in prayer! God's communication to us might come while we are praying. But it isn't prayer. God speaking to us comes through much more diverse means. Mainly God speaks through His prophets and apostles, and therefore through the Bible. But we may also refer to the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, for example, as "the Lord told me". But when the direction of communication is from us to God there is only one way of describing it - prayer.

It's also worth pointing out that prayer is communication between persons. Our God is a "personal" God. That doesn't mean that we each have our own individual God! I don't mean "personal" in the same sense someone might have a "personal shopper" or a "personal identification number" - i.e. an individual thing that can only relate to one individual person. God is personal in the sense that he exists in a way that relates to us as persons. Human beings were the only creatures made "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:27). And so He does not have the same relationship with animals and trees as He does with human beings. Because we are made in the image of God, we are wired to specially relate to Him. The communication between God and human beings is person to person. And therefore the way that we communicate with God will be very similar to the way that we communicate with other human persons.

I make that last point because there are other religions that see prayer as simply connecting to a higher power. Their concept of god is simply a powerful being or a mystical concept or such like. Therefore, their gods cannot be communicated with on the same level. For them, prayer is something different than talking. When I visited Bangalore in India on business once, I had the opportunity to visit the ISKCON temple on the Saturday and to go to the local Anglican church on the Sunday. It struck me that one of the main differences between the Hinduism practised by ISKCON and true Biblical Christianity is visible in worship and prayer. Hindus say mindless mantras, in this particular case the Hare Krishna. Christians use intelligible, propositional, linguistically rational, communication. The Hindu aim is to use the mere sound waves from the Hare Krishna mantra, said over and over for hours on end, to revive a state of Krishna consciousness. The Christian aim is to communicate in words that people understand, an intelligible message from God and an intelligible prayer to God.

We speak to God, he hears, he understands and he answers.

But to say that prayer is "speaking to God" is to state only a very basic truth. When human beings speak to their creator it is a very special form of communication. Because God infinitely transcends us, the communication with him will naturally transcend any other person-to-person communication. Think about the most obvious differences. We are limited by space, time and by physical and mental capacities. We will only be heard by other people if we speak out loud (telepaths are extremely rare, if they exist at all in reality) or write or make signals. We can only be "heard" by people within an audible or visual range, or by those who are able to receive our written communication. The audible or visual range of our communication can be extended by technology (printed books, the postal system, telephones, video, internet, etc.), but not infinitely. There will never be any way for a human being to communicate with everyone on the planet. God, on the other hand, can hear the thoughts of our hearts, so that we can think our prayers quietly and he hears them. We can only concentrate on receiving communication from a limited number of sources. God hears all the prayers that are directed to him, and can in the same instant take in prayers from an infinite number of sources. He sees and hears everything in the whole universe all the time. We are limited to communicating in languages that we understand. God is not limited by language. Prayer may be "speaking to God", but God's transcendence means that speaking to him is something very special.

But we should push further. When human beings speak to God it is not just the transcendence of his nature that we need to consider. In other words it's not just the fact that he is an infinitely greater being that makes speaking with him special. He is our creator. He made us. He made the animals, birds, fish, mountains and flowers too. So we are not just lesser beings, we are subordinate beings. Being lesser or greater does not imply any rights or responsibilities to each other. I am a lesser footballer than Wayne Rooney, but that does not create any relationship between him and me, and neither of us has automatic rights or responsibilities towards each other arising from his greater athletic abilities. However, my children are subordinate to me, owing to the fact that Heidi and I brought them into the world. They owe their existence to us, and therefore that creates rights and responsibilities within the family. Hence, in the same way God's creation of the universe puts the universe under God - subordinate to God. Hence, in prayer we speak not only to a greater being, but to the one who gives us the breath to pray, the strength to live, the environment to survive within, and the mind to understand our needs, our environment and our responsibilities.

Furthermore, he didn't make animals, birds, fish, stars, galaxies, atoms, etc. to relate to him in the same way as human beings. Men and women were made "in his image" and were given authority over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:27-28). So not only are we beings that are subordinate to God, we are subordinate with specific delegated responsibilities. God has given us an active role and purpose within his creation.

It's worth pausing to take note that the recognition of this relationship between human beings and God, our creator, who is the source and ruler of everything, is absolutely fundamental to understanding the meaning of life, the universe and everything. At the very least, it is something you need to understand if you want to understand Christianity. In this age of postmodernism people tend to look at Christianity from the outside with a kind of watered down caricature of God. If you look at the cartoons and the satires of Christianity you would tend to find God pictured as a man with a white beard sitting on a cloud. In one classic episode of The Simpsons, God comes to sit down next to Homer beside the swimming pool in heaven! He is that great being who sometimes does things in the world and sometimes chooses not to, who has a place called "heaven" for people who choose to honour him before they die. In that view, we are lesser beings than God, but in no way subordinate to him, and certainly with no responsibility to him. It's like me and Wayne Rooney: greater than me, but not in any way implying any responsibility. By contrast, the Christian view of God and man, which we take as being revealed by God himself in the Bible, is that he created us to have delegated authority in the universe, and therefore he has a right to demand our service, our allegiance, and we have a responsibility to live the lives he has given us in a way that honours him.

So when we pray we are speaking to the one who has created us and given us a role of great responsibility within his creation. This should fill us with awe.

Dropbox is worth a try!

If you like to either backup files from your computer to an internet storage site, or need access to up to date versions of files on different computers, then Dropbox is probably worth looking into.

You can get 2Gb of free online storage / backup space by clicking on the link below:

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTIyNzg0NzM5

I’ve been trying it for a while and it works better than iDisk, which is part of the MobileMe package. I found the following review, which backs up (please forgive the pun!) what I was thinking myself (can’t vouch for this blogger’s command of the English language, unfortunately, but he makes some good points!). http://tinyurl.com/yawhewk

It works on Windows or Mac or Linux. There is a small piece of inobtrusive software to download. After that the automated backing up and file synchronisation happens quickly and quietly in the background. There are other nice features, one of which is that it keeps a history of all the different versions of files that you save (and access every event that happens to your files and folders via an RSS feed – for those so technically inclined!). So if you want to go back to previous versions if you have edited a document, say, and saved it, then you can – very easily. The other thing is that you can share folders with other people very easily, although they have to be dropbox users too. This sharing feature is so much easier than Apple’s iDisk it’s like kindergarten by comparison. It’s also better than google docs, because you can share any type of file, not just office documents.

And if you sign up using the link above, then I get an extra 250 Mb of storage space!

Just thought I would share!

For the Encouragement of Faithful Doubters

Some people seem to have rock solid faith. They talk about God, Jesus, and the world, as if they see things with absolute clarity and as if nothing is going to shake them.

This can be disturbing for people for whom things are not so clear. They feel like they only see parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Some things fit together. Other bits are left to the side and don't seem to have a place. Perhaps they see parts of the Christian message really well - they know that God made the universe, they know they are sinners, they love Jesus for dying on the cross for their eternal salvation, and they pray to God as their Father in heaven. But perhaps other things make them wonder whether they are right to believe. Perhaps they cannot understand why the world seems such a cruel place, or how Jesus could have risen from the dead. Perhaps they wonder how God can continue to love them if they keep letting him down, or how God can overlook their sin without being unjust. Perhaps they can't see how God can be in control as the sovereign ruler over his creation at the same time as holding us responsible for our wrongdoing. Bits of the puzzle are all over the table, and they seem to suggest that the bits that they've already pieced together may not actually go together. Perhaps they should start all over again, they sometimes think. And when they see the confidence of others, they are discouraged, thinking that they can only really be faithful and believe if they have finished the puzzle with total clarity.

If you are in this second group of people, then I am writing this for you. I want to encourage you to press on and not to give up.

There is much that could be said, but I will try to be brief. There are basically four points I want you to understand:
• First, that absolute clarity in our understanding of God, ourselves and the world, is not possible in this life, because of sin and because of our finiteness.
• Second, that many of the great men of faith in the Bible were also struck with doubt and fear at times. We should learn from them.
• Third, the important thing is to have faith, not a certain amount of faith.
• Fourth, that the Bible has been given to us by God as our guide, and therefore greater clarity in life will come from studying it carefully. But we should understand it as a guidebook, and not as a map or Lego instruction book.

So firstly, we should understand that finishing the jigsaw puzzle is not possible in this life, because of sin and because of our finiteness.

Consider what God said through Isaiah. "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.'" (Isaiah 55:8-9) The simple fact that we are created, and God is the Creator, means that there are things that we can never fully grasp.

Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 13:12, "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." So there are things that we only get to see as a "poor reflection" now, but will be made clear in the future when we meet Jesus face to face.

Sin-tainted, finite, human wisdom is just not cut out for the job of getting to grips with God and the meaning of life. Listen to Paul again. "Where is the wise man? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." (1 Corinthians 1:20-21) He goes on to elaborate - Jews look for miracles, but we present Christ as crucified - apparently powerless! Greeks look for wisdom, but we present Christ as crucified - apparently absurd! In human terms this is the foolishness of what we preach. But to those whose eyes are opened by God, what we proclaim is, "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (vv24-25)

Let's be careful here. This is not saying that the Christian faith is an irrational leap of faith. I argue that the Christian faith is completely rational, and in fact is the only worldview that does justice to the world we experience - the nature of reality, how we know things and the way we live our lives. What Paul is saying is that when human beings try to use their own intellect to understand God without listening to what he says, then the result is foolishness. But people don't recognize it as foolishness. They have so constructed their worldview that actually the real truth appears to them as foolishness instead.

True wisdom consists in listening to God and seeing things the way he shows them to be. That's why non-Christian worldviews can all be shown intellectually to be foolishness. I believe that. And I don't believe that's arrogant in any sense, since it is founded on the humble assumption of God's transcendence.

But if the Christian faith is so rational, and the arguments are so logical, why do many more people not believe? Paul gives the answer in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, "if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ."

The only way we can see the truth properly is if God takes away our spiritual blindness. "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6)

When God brings an end to this present universe, and brings us into the New Heavens and New Earth as he promised, we will see his light with pure, crystal clarity. Now, we see even this glorious light as a "poor reflection" by comparison. In between now and then we make progress, which too is given by God. We, "are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory." (2 Corinthians 3:18) "Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16)

So we should not lose heart because we only see a "poor reflection", or because other people seem to see things more clearly than we do. We have been given the "light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ", and this will increase in intensity through our lives until it reaches its perfect fulfillment in eternity. That's why Paul says elsewhere, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." (Philippians 3:12)

Secondly, we need to follow the example of some of the great men of faith in the Bible who had their moments of doubt.

You've heard of "Doubting Thomas", right? Did Jesus condemn him for faltering in his faith?

"Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came [after he had risen from the dead]. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord!'

"But he said to them, 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.'

"A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.'

"Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!'

"Then Jesus told him, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'" (John 20:24-29)

John the Baptist also had a period of doubt, which you can read about in Matthew 11:1-19. Remember John was the one who baptized Jesus at the start of his ministry, and who called out, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29) And yet in Matthew 11:2, we read that he sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"

Did Jesus' answer condemn John for his faltering? No, he commends him, but with a serious encouragement - "Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me." (v6) And then he says that, in spite of this faltering, "Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." (v11)

Both Thomas and John were blessed with seeing first hand the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, walking and working on the earth in Palestine two thousand years ago. They both faltered in their faith and yet were accepted by Jesus. But in both cases Jesus pointed forward to those who would be more greatly blessed - the humble people who would believe in him in the future without seeing first hand - you and me!

My last example is one of my favourites, because it is such a great picture of how we feel in times of doubt.

In Matthew 14:22-33, we have the account of when Jesus walks on water. The disciples had gone on ahead of him in a boat, across the Lake of Galilee, and they got hit by a storm. In the midst of the storm, Jesus came walking out to them on the water! To say they were a bit startled is slightly understating the reaction!

Peter, always the hothead, says, "Lord, if it's you… tell me to come to you on the water." (v28) And Jesus tells him to come.

"Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, 'Lord, save me!'

"Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. 'You of little faith,' he said, 'why did you doubt?'" (vv29-31)

Sometimes we doubt because of stormy situations - maybe hardship, maybe the criticism of others. We should simply cry out, like Peter, "Lord, save me!" And he will reach out his hand and catch us, and then he might just give us a gentle ear-bashing for doubting!

Thirdly, the important thing is to have faith, not a certain amount of faith.

Admittedly, it is a bit imprecise to talk about having a certain size or amount of faith. But Jesus talks like that. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus tells his disciples that great things can be achieved, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed." I mentioned above one of the many occasions when the disciples were rebuked for being of "little faith".

Theologians have tied themselves in knots over the implications of this. How much faith is necessary to be saved? Does that mean there are some things that are essential to believe for salvation, and other things are optional? Or rather, are there some things that it is ok to disagree about, or have doubts about, without calling into question the salvation of a person? But the problem with that way of thinking is that it can give us excuses to avoid repentance. If we say that only certain core truths are necessary to believe for salvation, then it may give us the mistaken impression that we can just choose those and believe whatever we like about everything else.

I don't want to go off here into a huge tangent about the nature of saving faith. There is a necessary place for that, but probably not here.

At the risk of over-simplifying, however, we should see saving faith more as an attitude worked out in actions, rather than intellectual agreement with a set of propositions. Intellectual agreement is part of the story, but not all of it. The attitude of faith is one of trust and love, and this is worked out by persevering in holiness and loving other people.

You may be worrying that your faith is not strong enough to carry on and see you through to salvation. But friend, thankfully the strength of our faith in our own perception is not what is important. Jesus Christ already went to the cross and achieved your salvation. And it is that that assures you of eternal life, even though you are a sinner. We ought to learn that faith is not something that exists within a vacuum. Faith is a belief and hope in someone. And our faith is in Jesus Christ, who bought our salvation for us with his blood on the cross on a particular Friday two-thousand years ago.

As an illustration – and all illustrations have limitations – picture several life rafts floating in the middle of the ocean after a big cruise ship has sunk.

In one of the boats, the occupants lost hope the moment they got into the water. They managed to salvage a few crates of vodka into the dinghy before the ship went down. And they set about drinking themselves into a stupor so that they don’t have to think about their predicament. They don’t know about the international coastguard, and they can’t be bothered with the distress beacon that they can simply switch on. Very soon they are unconscious and dehydrated and they die before the helicopter arrives.

However, the people in some of the rafts have started their distress beacons, sending out signals for someone to come and rescue them. They have recognised their need, and they have called out for help.

In one of those boats, the occupants are experienced sailors and know what is happening to the distress beacon, who is hearing it, and whereabouts they are in the world. They know that the beacon is being picked up, because they have some knowledge of the international coastguard and something about the technology of the beacon. They know what will happen when the distress beacon is heard. They know the sort of helicopter that will arrive, and roughly how long it will take it to reach them. And they’re planning their consumption of food and water in preparation for their rescue. They have such confidence that they immediately set the distress beacon going and set about planning for the arrival of the rescue helicopter.

In another of the boats, the occupants are scared and sea-sick, tired and irritable. They have started their distress beacon because they saw the people in the other boat do it, and it seems like the right thing to do. But they keep arguing with each other over when the helicopter is going to turn up, and what it’s going to be like in the helicopter, and some days they feel like they are never going to be rescued. Some of them are not even sure that anyone is hearing this distress beacon - I mean, it’s a mysterious radio wave that they can’t even hear, so how do they really know anyone is picking up the signal, hearing it, understanding it and acting on it. But most days they continue to watch the sky for signs of rescue.

And yet none of them were aware that a satellite had already seen and transmitted all the events of the ship sinking, and the rescue ships and helicopters had been sent out before the life rafts had entered the water! Did the strength of faith of the people in the life-rafts affect whether they were rescued or not? No! The rescue had already been assured before the life rafts even entered the water, to all those who would recognise their need of rescue and call out with the distress beacon to the one who could rescue them.

And so it is with Christ. He will certainly save all those who call out to him in faith, recognising their need and asking to be rescued, whether their faith is strong and fully knowledgeable or weak and sometimes doubting. The critical work of salvation has been done by Christ alone – the rescue helicopters have been sent out.

The attitude of faith is that we trust the Saviour, and we cling to his words. We may not understand everything God says, but we trust everything he says. We may not have fitted the entire jigsaw puzzle together, but we trust that he is showing us the picture bit by bit. We trust that even though we falter here and now, we see only the "poor reflection", and we will indeed see clearly later.

That's why I addressed this article to "faithful doubters". There is no irony really. All of us will have some doubts at various times. None of us will be able to fit all the pieces of the puzzle in place and see everything clearly this side of Christ's return. But we are called to be faithful and trust him.

Finally, the Bible has been given to us by God as our guide, and therefore greater clarity in life will come from studying it carefully. But we should understand it as a guidebook, and not as a map or Lego instruction book.

There is a great prayer in the first chapter of Colossians. Paul says to the Christians in Colossae that, "we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God…" (Colossians 1:9ff) There is an excellent full exposition of this in A Call to Spiritual Reformation by D.A. Carson. For my purposes in this (not very) short article, I want to point out only one thing.

One of the things that is involved in living a "life worthy of the Lord", and in pleasing him, is "growing in the knowledge of God."

Peter ends his second letter with a similar exhortation: "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:18)

Growth is a necessity. It is part of living faithfully. Jesus also likens his disciples to the branches of a vine. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit…" (John 15:5) We must be branches that grow and bear fruit (see also the full passage, vv1-8).

Two of the main things that God has given us to help us to grow in our knowledge of him are prayer and the Bible.

To grow and be stronger in the faith, ask God: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." (James 1:5)

To grow and be stronger in the faith, use what God has given you already! "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

My final point on this is just a word of caution on how the Bible works in teaching us about God, ourselves and life. I would say that the Bible is more like a travel guidebook, rather than a map or a Lego instruction book!

In our pilgrimage through this life sometimes we wish we had a map. We wish that we had the satellite navigation version of the Bible. In other words it would give us the step-by-step guide to being saved and then a virtually flame-proof route from conversion to heaven. We could then switch off from everything else around us and just follow the voice.

Or we may wish that we had the design drawings for the universe and life, like a Lego instruction book. We want God to lay out before us how everything works, how everything fits together, step-by-step, brick-by-brick. Then we would know how to live in the right way and know what to believe.

But the Bible is not like that. It is full of letters, laws, songs, history, poetry, prophecy, parables, biographies, and so on. Some things we are told explicitly. Some things we are left to work out by implication.

The reason for that is that our lives are not all about getting to the end of the journey, but about the journey itself. We are assured that we will get to the end of the journey, and that the end of the journey will be fantastic. But God has things to show us in this life, while we are on the way - things about himself. He doesn't want us to know about his love in the way that we know Anthony's love for Cleopatra! He wants us to experience it. He doesn't want us to know his glory and greatness in the way that we know the Himalayas and a tidal wave (i.e. remotely). He wants us to experience it. He doesn't just want us to know his forgiveness in the way that we know that King David was forgiven. He wants us to experience it and delight in it.

So the Bible is given to point things out to us, to make us work at understanding God, to show how it has been done before. So it acts more like a tour guide. It helps us to appreciate what we are going to see and experience, and then confirms what we have seen and experienced in the context of God's creation, his love, grace and providence. It is multi-dimensional, showing more than a map or a design drawing could ever do. It works with our experiences and with the Holy Spirit to keep us growing. And therefore it is never a dead book of ancient texts. We will never get bored of it or grow out of it, as it keeps working through our souls day by day, year by year. Sometimes studying the Bible is hard work, but it is always worthwhile. As John Piper says sometimes, "Raking is easier than digging, but you only get leaves. If you dig you may get diamonds." (When I Don't Desire God, Crossway Books, 2004, p126)

Conclusion

OK, so as usual I've made this longer than I thought it would be! I apologise, but I hope that it has helped you and strengthened your faith and trust in our great and loving God. I wanted to encourage people who, though Christians, often see themselves as doubters.

Don't be put off by people who seem to have things "all sewn up", who see things clearly and who seem so confident. I know that I can come across like this sometimes. My confidence is real, but it has not arrived overnight. Neither is it based on exhaustive knowledge or wisdom, or a perfect life. I don't know everything. There are many things I don't understand. I fail time and time again. But "I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day." (2 Timothy 1:12)

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14)

God bless you.