O Fountain of All Good,

Destroy in me every lofty thought,
Break pride to pieces and scatter it to the winds,
Annihilate each clinging shred self-righteousness,
Implant in me true lowliness of spirit,
Abase me to self-loathing and self-abhorrence,
Open in me a fount of penitential tears,
Break me, then bind me up;

Thus will my heart be a prepared dwelling for my God;
Then can the Father take up his abode in me,
Then can the blessed Jesus come with healing in his touch,
The can the Holy Spirit descend in sanctifying grace;

O Holy Trinity, three Persons and one God,
inhabit me, a temple consecrated to thy glory.

When thou art present, evil cannot abide;
In thy fellowship is fullness of joy,
Beneath thy smile is peace of conscience,
By thy side no fears disturb,
no apprehensions banish rest of mind,
With thee my heart shall bloom with fragrance;
Make me meet, through repentance,
for thine indwelling.

Nothing exceeds thy power,
Nothing is too great for thee to do,
Nothing too good for thee to give,
Infinite is thy might, boundless thy love,
limitless thy grace, glorious thy saving name.

Let angels sing for
sinners repenting,
prodigals restored,
backsliders reclaimed,
Satan’s captives released,
blind eyes opened,
broken hearts bound up,
the despondent cheered,
the self-righteous stripped,
the formalist driven from a refuge of lies,
the ignorant enlightened,
and saints built up in their holy faith.

I ask great things of a great God.

— The Great God, from The Valley of Vision

… you’re going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things — you’re gonna tell me I’m supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he’s in Phoenix, Arizona?

Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.

Besides the absolutely foolishness, bitterness and anger within this pastor’s heart, his prayer was a bit more disturbing than on the surface.

Then it hits me like a freight train.  His sermon and prayer is goes against the Word of God.  You know, the Bible.

Using Scriptures, let me translate Anderson’s “I pray for Obama to die”:

“I really believe that Jesus Christ is not King of kings and not Lord of lords and He is not reigning and ruling over all creation. Furthermore, while I claim to be a Christian and a pastor, by praying what I am praying, I am showing my ignorance in the word of God. If I had at least, some point in my life, actually crack the Bible open and simply skimmed a page or two, then I would have read Daniel 2:20-23, Matthew 22:15-22, Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-25 in how are we suppose to respond to civil authority.

But since I don’t read the Bible in the first place, I have no clue what is coming for me when I don’t shepherd His flock well according to Jeremiah (read the entire book) and Matthew 18:6 cf. Luke 17:1-4.

Furthermore, since I am not praying for Obama’s salvation but rather His damnation, I have gone ahead judged Obama. However, if I actually believed Jesus Christ to be King of kings and Lord of lords and I actually read the Bible specially Matthew 7:1-5 to not to judge others and in Revelation 20:11-15 when Jesus is the one who judges, I would have known there is no way God would answer that prayer.

Thankfully, my God is a merciful and gracious and good God. I know by Romans 9:16, it is not by my will or Obama’s will that Obama be saved but rather God will have mercy on those whom He will have mercy on. “

“I had two seminary students come up to me to ask me about working in ministry full time.  You know the type: fresh faced, pastel colored knit shirts and full of enthusiasm.  They asked, “What’s it like to work in fulltime ministry” and asked it in such a tone as though it will be totally swell.

I broke it down for them like this.

Back in high school, I was a quarterback on the football team.  We are out doing scrimmages, offense versus defense, which meant no pads and thus no tackling and so you would think.

On one particular play, I step back to pass and this humongous, 6 foot something, 300+lb lineman is in a full on charge for me.  I wouldn’t know because he is right outside my peripheral vision.  I am not bracing for it all.

I get totally blindsided by this lineman but that isn’t even the worst part.  As he crashes into me, he leads into the tackle, knee first right into my groin.  I get laid out flat.  I am curled up in a fetal position from all the pain.  As I am about to blackout from the pain, all of my friends and teammates are standing in a circle around me, laughing at me in my intense pain.

Imagine that happening day in and day out.

That, my friends, it what it means to be in full-time ministry especially when you are called to one of the offices (Ephesians 4:11-16).”

I am not saying I have felt the full impact of that tackle just yet but I got my taste this weekend:

I got good news that my friend’s sister had a wonderful date with a guy. (Praise God!)

Just found out a couple weeks ago, I find out that my co-worker’s husband of 30 years passed away.

Just a week ago, a child in one of my friend’s classes, his dad, 39 years old, passed away from a heart attack.

Found out today that a husband been cheating on his wife for quite sometime decided yesterday, he no longer wanted to keep cheating and thus, left his wife.

On my own, sack after knee-to-the-groin sack will surely defeat me.

However, I know that I know I am called by God and equipped accordingly to do His will.  However, it is never a one-and-done empowering (akin to Superman).  It is a constant breaking and begging of God for His grace, mercy and strength.

God, fill me with your Spirit.  Just for today.  Give me enough strength to make it back to bed tonight, if I can even make it back to bed.  If by your mercy, I wake up tomorrow, we get to do this all over again.   I love you, Lord.  Thank you for judging me faithful and appointing me to Your service.

When you don’t call out sinners to repent and break themselves before the Almighty God, don’t be shocked when people are not attracted to God.

When you ignore the Holy Spirit of the Bible who is God, don’t be shocked when you see your church lose power that only comes from God.

When you put too much emphasis on the Holy Spirit instead of the Triune God, don’t be shocked when you see your numbers dwindled year after year.

When you don’t preach the gospel and don’t center everything upon Christ and his precious work on the Cross, don’t be shocked when you have to close your church doors for good.

When you don’t pray, don’t be shocked that God seems not to answer your prayers.

When you don’t read your Bible, don’t be shocked that you feel like God is silent.

When you don’t make every effort to love one another, don’t be shocked that you sometimes question God’s love for you.

In other words…

When I don’t proclaim the gospel of God with my mouth and actions…

When I try to ignore and emphasize parts of the Bible when I want to because it makes me feel better…

When I don’t call sinners to repent…

When I don’t call the self-righteous to humble themselves…

When I don’t pray…

When I don’t read the Bible…

When I don’t love  others as God has loved me…

When I don’t place God a distant first in my life…

I cannot be shocked if it feels like God is nowhere near me.

But in the middle of my wilderness, when I think You are nowhere near me and that there is possibility that You have forsaken me…

I will call out Your Name.

God, despite the best that I can do, be near me.

Me: Did you like the book?

Her: Oh I love the book.  The main character, Michael, sounds exactly like you.

Me: That would make sense since the Book of Hosea is one of my favorite books in the Bible.

Her: Yep except you have a hard time following up on the things you say you are going to do.

The wicked side of me says that was an unfair swift kick to the tenders.

The sanctified side of me says that was a much needed swift kick to the tenders.

I stopped and let the Holy Spirit examine my heart and my life and let Him start to go to work on me.

The more I evaluated, the more I knew she was right on.

Tuesday night, I got a message from a friend from church asking a small group of us to pray over her friend who had a rare form of cancer in which there was no hope for a cure.  The doctors wanted to examine her just so that they would have research for any future cases.

I considered it an honour to pray for a sister in Christ.

I told the group to give me a day to pray over what to pray about.

Holy Spirit hits me with 1 Peter 3:8-22 to 1 Peter 4:1-19 and the theme on how to suffer well.

Next day, I am face with writing the prayer.  I am tempted to think, “it won’t be a big deal… they are not going to miss my prayers… I can skip it.”

But the Spirit of God quicken me.

Two words: follow up.

I poured my heart into that prayer.  I wanted to lift her up to the only God who knows us, who heals our broken bodies and and the only One who gives us joy and comfort.

In that one moment, I followed up.

Following up is an area at which I suck at.  More to come.

Christ above all.

Save them.

I don’t mean just their lives.

Save them.

Because You once saved me.

Amen.

The main way that God deepens, strengthens and awakens confidence in prayer is not through answered prayer. It’s by the word of the living God! When God says, “I hear you,” we should believe him.

So when my confidence in prayer languishes and I feel like, “Why spend 10 or 15 more minutes here?,” my strategy for rebuilding my confidence is not to catalog all the answers. One of the reasons for this is that they’re all ambiguous, even the biblical prayers.

If you’re skeptical enough you can always say, “It would’ve happened anyway.” Always! It can be something absolutely stunning, like if you were praying over a tumor and it shrank under your hand. “Well, it was ready to do that anyway.” You cannot get confidence if there is a skeptical voice inside of you constantly saying, “Answers don’t do it because they’re all ambiguous.”

So if you base your confidence in prayer on answers to prayer, and you have a heart that is always wondering, you’ll never have confidence. And I think I have that heart! I’m a really skeptical guy! I hear some story about an amazing healing and my first thought is, “Got some doctor records?” That’s the way I’m wired! So if I’m going to keep praying and believing prayer, it’s going to be through Jesus getting in my face and saying

Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things [or, as it says in Luke, the Holy Spirit] to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

Now that’s Jesus getting in my face and saying, “You couldn’t believe me. I’m telling you that if you know how to give your child something good, your Father does it too!”

So I think at that point you pursue it a little further and say, “OK, I trust you Jesus. I believe you.” And then you let your heart go on this Father idea. And you go to other texts in the Bible where he is called your Father. And you see that you are therefore his heir, and he loves his children. He will always do good for his children, and he wants his children to ask him for things!

And so if you go to enough passages of Scripture where God is telling you how inclined he is to your prayer, you either are going to throw the Bible out or you are going to start growing in confidence: “God hears me! God hears me!”

I’ll give you an example just from this morning. I was praying this morning for my children and for myself from Ephesians 3:14-19, where it says,

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ…

And I stopped. I have prayed that for myself hundreds of times. Hundreds. And it hit me. I’ve been praying this prayer for 29 years at this church, that God would grant me to know the height and depth and length and breadth, the love of Christ that passes knowledge. And do you know what came into my mind? “That’s the reason you have seen what you have seen about the nature of the love of God being the glorification of himself in people’s lives.”

My way of talking about the love of God today is that you are loved, not when God makes much of you, but when he, at great cost to himself, gives you the inclination to make much of him and the joy of making much of him.

I do not believe I would have seen that if I had not prayed that prayer a hundred times. So now, of course the skeptic would say, “I think you would’ve thought of that even if you hadn’t prayed that prayer. I think you would’ve seen that in the Bible and you would’ve taught it even though you hadn’t prayed that prayer.” To which I would say, “I guess that’s what you’re going to believe. But this morning at the bottom of my soul it seemed to me that God was saying, ‘The reason you see what you see is because you’ve asked to see it a hundred times. I’ve heard you. It’s no accident that you’ve seen John 11:1-6 in relation to John 17:1-5, and 24 the way you do. I don’t give everybody that. I give it to you. I give it to a hundred others, thousands of others. I give it to people who want it so bad. They pray Ephesians 3:14-19 over and over and over and over. And I store it up in a bottle, and then one day in a conversation with somebody or while you’re studying the Bible I pour it out, and you see what you would not have seen.’” That’s the way it works for me.

So I get subjective confirmations like that. I can’t prove them. And if you’re mathematically oriented, demanding proof, you won’t ever get it. But if you’re desperate to have help, God will give you the help; and he will show you along the way, from time to time, “I gave you that help. I gave you that help. The only reason you’re a believer still is that I gave you that help.”

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

No.

If gays were forbidden to marry, would that prevent them from being with each other?

No.

Is abortion a choice?  Is being gay a choice?

Or has God has judged us all and given us up to what we desire in our hearts?

Romans 1:18-32 (ESV) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

We did not choose to abort babies.

We did not choose to be gay.

God gave us up to our hearts.

We pray.

That God is sovereign.

That He rules over all.

That He appoints leaders and those in power.

That He softens our hearts.

That He gives us His wisdom to know His love for us.

That He saves us from the pit of death.

Not as soon as Jean prayed for me, I had a battle last night.

Let me say that because my strength and shield are of God that nearly all the time, I feel nigh invincible.

I am not so cocky that things won’t get to me and hurt me.  I know they will.  I am fighting a battle.  I am in a war.  I can’t expect to fight and not get hurt in a serious way.  But whatever injuries, critical, crippling or otherwise, I know my God will protect, heal, deliver and restore.  My God has it all.  Whom shall I fear?

Then just last night, I was helping out a friend who used to be in porn and saved by the grace of God Almighty.  Unfortunately, she still has images/videos all over the internet many of which she has no control over.

She wanted me to respond to a myspace wall post from a guy.  So I go to the guy’s myspace page to send him a message by posting a comment when I have to scroll to the bottom of his profile.

Let us say we know now he is an “old” fan of my friend.  In other words, he had a picture of my friend that I wish I hadn’t seen.

In the past, that one pic would have broken me.  Satan and his armies launched a million exploding arrows upon me day after day and this time, one hit me square in the chest.

This time, I felt the sting of the pierce.  I feel my skin lit on fire.  I smell the stench of cooked human flesh as the arrow exploded.  I hear the armies of Satan laugh with a victorious roar.  It is enough to take the breath out of me.

I know the arrow is there.  I know it hurts like all hell.  My mind wanted to race a million miles a minute and ease the pain away.  The flesh knew what to do.  My flesh thought he had life again.

But my spirit is born and sustained by God.  Without stopping in my tracks and through gritted teeth and eyes full of tears from the pain and torment, God reached out, pulled that arrow out and healed of my pain.  In my joy and thankfulness, I reached out to His hand, kissed it and told him, “I love You”.

This is how God is so good.  Glory to God in the highest.