The Stromwall's

[Mark Driscoll]

Here’s what I don’t want you to get – “We have to Pray.” Here’s what I Want you to Get – “We get to pray”

I don’t want you to hear, Pray so that God will love you. No, Pray because God loves you. Don’t pray for people because it is your religious duty, Pray for people because it is your worshipful joy.

[marshillchurch.org]

I was impacted by this message from Mark Driscoll on prayer.

God the Holy Spirit enables us to pray
- He dwells in us to teach us to be prayerful
– Generally , as Christians, our prayers are to be Trinitarian, to the father, through the Son, by the spirit
§ Pray to God as Father … “Our Father who art in heaven …”
§ Romans 8:15 “You Christians have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry abba, or daddy – Father
□ We should respectively but need to pray formally
□ God is a loving father …
□ Dad loves me, dad cares,
- Prayer isnt telling God something he doesn’t know.

“Most of the time prayer is to change our heart, not to move the hand of God.”

Great sermon that greatly ministered to my heart – helps me see the unity among people trusting in Jesus as Lord, Savior and Treasure.

[From Justin Taylor]

From a new sermon by John Piper on humility, summarizing what humility is and does:

1. Humility is glad that God gets all the credit for choosing us so that we boast only in him and not man.
2. Humility happily admits that everything we have is a free gift from God, so that we can’t boast in it.
3. Humility is glad to affirm that God sovereignly governs our heartbeats and safe arrivals, or non-arrivals.
4. The root of Christian humility is the gospel that Christ died for our sins. That’s how sinful I was. That’s how dependent I am.
5. Humility gives itself away in serving everyone, rather than seeking to be served.
6. And humility is glad to affirm that this service is true greatness.

He also answers three worldly objections to humility:

1. Humility makes a person gloomy, dismal, downcast, unhappy
2. Humility makes you fearful and timid
3. Humility makes you passive and removes the driving motor of achievement

I especially appreciated this quote:

Gospel humility frees you from the need to posture and pose and calculate what others think, so that you are free to laugh at what is really funny with the biggest belly laugh. Proud people don’t really let themselves go in laughter. They don’t get red in the face and fall off chairs and twist their faces into the contortions of real free laughter. Proud people need to keep their dignity. The humble are free to howl with laughter.