Over at the Desiring God blog John Piper recently shared this quote by Jonathan Edwards from his work “Religious Affections.” If you ever want to know how to pray for me, pray for this.

All gracious affections that are a sweet odor to Christ, and that fill the soul of a Christian with a heavenly sweetness and fragrancy, are broken hearted affections. A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is a humble broken hearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit; and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior.

It reminded me of Isaiah 66:1-2-

Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? 2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word. -NASB Copyright © 1995 by The Lockman Foundation

You can download a powerful message on this text for free here.

This last week the New Attitude Blog posted an entry entitled “The Gospel Matters on Monday.” It is an interview on bringing the gospel to work. Here are some highlights. Enjoy.

On Sunday we’re pretty gospel centered. We sing the gospel, we hear a message containing about the gospel, we discuss gospel issues with a friend. But when we walk into the office Monday morning the gospel is shoved out of our minds by meetings and projects and tasks.

So what does the gospel have to say to us as we walk in the office doors on Monday morning?

To help us answer the question we talked to Brad Edson—a businessman we respect both for his commitment to the gospel and his success in the marketplace.

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Na: How does business fit into the life of a Christian? Is it just what we have to do to pay the bills?

Brad: We all want to go out and shape our culture and affect it for Christ. There are few places where we have a better opportunity to do that than in the marketplace. The Bible calls us to be his image bearers throughout the world and every time we go to our jobs we have this opportunity. Almost all of us are engaged in the marketplace where the exchange of ideas, goods, and services intersect with public policy, academics, and culture in general. (more…)

Here’s the info for Sunday.  Looking forward to a great time of worshiping Christ with all of you.  We will be taking the Lord’s Supper together this Sunday as well.

Text-

Judges 7

Songs-

Come and Welcome

Oh Lord Your Love

Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners

One Pure and Holy Passion

Jesus, Lover of My Soul

Create In Me a Clean Heart

I Asked the Lord

How Deep the Father’s Love

Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds recently posted on praying out loud. It reminded me of advice an author had recounted somewhere else (in some book on pastoral ministry) that encouraged him to pray out loud whenever possible. When I have practiced this advice I have often found it helpful for bringing greater concentration and passion to my prayers.

Justin’s initial post brought up the subject in this way.

In listening to an old lecture recently by J. I. Packer, he made the comment that it was not until after the 17th century (as far as he could tell) that people started doing silent prayers and reading as opposed to praying and reading out loud.

For most evangelicals, silence represents the vast majority of our reading and praying. But I wonder if that’s to our detriment. One of the great enemies to Bible reading and praying is a wandering mind–and one of the great ways to make your mind wander is to do everything in your mind without involving your voice and ears!

The next day David Powlison wrote a guest post that delved deeper into this idea. Here are some highlights.

Many years ago I worked through the psalms looking for the vocal cues. By my count, more than 95% of the psalms portray or invite audible words directed to God. You “hear” what is written, because so much of it is out loud: crying out, the sound of my voice, songs, shouts, the tongue and lips, asking God to listen, groaning, roaring, seeking, calling on, making requests, and so forth. In the mere handful of psalms with no vertical verbalization, the psalm speaks about people in relation to God (e.g., Ps. 1), or speaks from God (e.g., Ps. 110), or speaks to other people (e.g., Ps. 49). An audible response is then the most natural thing in the world.

In the verbal actions of the psalms—rejoicing, asking for help, and expressing thanks (cf. 1 Thess. 5:16-18)—we talk to someone else, in this case, God himself. It’s fair to say that having a “quiet time” is a misnomer. We should more properly have a “noisy time.” By talking out loud we live the reality that we are talking with another person, not simply talking to ourselves inside our own heads. Of course “silent prayers” are not wrong—1 Samuel 1:13, Nehemiah 2:4, and, likely, Genesis 24:45—but they are the exception. And even in such silent prayers, the essentially verbal nature of prayer is still operative, though the speaking is “subvocal.” Words could be spoken out loud if the situation warranted or the state of mind allowed. (more…)

Owen Strachan posted the following on the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood blog a while back (by the way- their website contains an incredible store of resources on biblical manhood and womanhood). His words should make us think about how we choose a vocation in general as well as specific positions or jobs that might be set before us.  What drives your decisions?

“A man who really gets Ephesians 5 is the kind of man who will be willing to work two jobs and live in a trailer to enable his wife to be the primary caregiver of his children.”

This line from a recent post and JBMW contribution by Dr. Russell Moore affected me profoundly. I would imagine that this comment would sound strange to many ears. Why on earth would anyone live in a trailer park if they don’t (absolutely) have to? In a materialistic society (and a materialistic church, maybe?), there is perhaps no sharper ideological razor to be applied in making familial decisions than that of economic concerns.

What do I mean? Simply this: many of us in American evangelicalism so prize material comfort that we will allow almost nothing to impede our pursuit of it. So, for example, when it comes down to determining such basic questions like where we will live and how we will live, we are often quite ready to sacrifice things like family time, home life, and discipleship for things like a nicer home, more cars, better accouterments. I am not against these things or a nice standard of living on their own terms, but I am against them when they compromise the quality of our family life We don’t realize in making this exchange that we have taken the culture and its ideals as our guide. Accordingly, we have left the Word and its wisdom behind. The Scripture teaches us that the things that truly matter cannot be measured in dollars and cents, even though many–the Proverbs famously groups the materialistic masses under the moniker “fool”–believe the opposite. The result? Husbands and wives alike work themselves into the ground, and the children suffer and grow angry, and the family slowly falls apart, the cycle to be damningly repeated again a generation later. (more…)