Yet, I do believe the Bible clearly teaches God has ordained that some people will have their hearts opened and will come. And my answer is: I take heart, that because of the sovereignty of God, He can save them. He can override it and take out the heart of stone and put in the heart of flesh and cause them to walk in His statutes. What does it mean to have joy in the midst of suffering and sorrow now?
Joy really is a feeling — but let me distinguish it from physical feelings. So when your physical body is actually hurting, it can still be there. Joy and sorrow can be side by side because they rest on different realities.
On Joy: The darkest depths of despair, and the dangerous duty of delight. In 1 Thessalonians , Paul said that one evidence God is at work in you is because you had joy in affliction. You can listen to the full session here. Simply join our Telegram channel for more details!
Jeremy is usually referred to by his last name, but responds to both 'Jeremy' and 'Tsang'. He is an ice cream enthusiast, known by his friends as having the mental age of 40, and by his neighbours as a shower singer. We have to fight for joy, and one of the key ways to fight is to wait for Him. Do you have such joy in your life? What might you have to do — or give up — to have this joy? What situation is God placing you in that requires you to fight for joy? Has God placed a challenging person in your life to grow and mature you?
How might you learn to love that person? Still it is very important for us to call upon him: First, that our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love, and serve him, while we become accustomed in every need to flee to him as to a sacred anchor. Secondly, that there may enter our hearts no desire and no "wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make him a witness, while we learn to set all our wishes before his eyes, and even to pour out our whole hearts.
Thirdly, that we be prepared to receive his benefits with true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving, benefits that our prayer reminds us come from his hand. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. Prayer, like everything else in the Christian life, is for God's glory and for our benefit, in that order. Everything that God does, everything that God allows and ordains, is in the supreme sense for His glory.
It is also true that while God seeks His own glory supremely, man benefits when God is glorified. We pray to glorify God, but we also pray in order to receive the benefits of prayer from His hand. Prayer is for our benefit, even in light of the fact that God knows the end from the beginning.
It is our privilege to bring the whole of our finite existence into the glory of His infinite presence. One of the great themes of the Reformation was the idea that all of life is to be lived under the authority of God, to the glory of God, in the presence of God. Prayer is not simply a soliloquy, a mere exercise in therapeutic self-analysis, or a religious recitation.
Prayer is discourse with the personal God Himself. There, in the act and dynamic of praying, I bring my whole life under His gaze.
Yes, He knows what is in my mind, but I still have the privilege of articulating to Him what is there. He says: "Come. Speak to me. Make your requests known to me. There is something erroneous in the question, "If God knows everything, why pray? On the contrary, prayer is multidimensional. God's sovereignty casts no shadow over the prayer of adoration. God's foreknowledge or determinate counsel does not negate the prayer of praise.
The only thing it should do is give us greater reason for expressing our adoration for who God is. If God knows what I'm going to say before I say it, His knowledge, rather than limiting my prayer, enhances the beauty of my praise.
My wife and I are as close as two people can be. Often I know what she's going to say almost before she says it. We seek her welfare. We pray on her behalf. For those who knew George Floyd best and loved him most, bring them your consolation, and direct their hearts to the God of all comfort. For officers Thomas Lane and Tou Thao and Alexander Kueng, who stood by, we pray that grief and fear will bear the fruit of righteous remorse; and may the seriousness of the killing and the cowardice of the complicity meet with proper penalties.
We pray that the light will banish darkness from their souls the darkness of arrogance and racism and selfishness. We pray for broken hearts, because "a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Pastor Piper hopes that people will turn to God in the midst of this awful present time. Although the economy is torn down, and the world is in a state of downfall, he claims that it is important to look to Jesus because he came down for our sins.
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