40 Days of Prayer | Week 6

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40 Days of Prayer | Week 6 Written by Pastor Eric Stiller

Day 33 | “Gospel Balance” | Sunday, April 6 Scripture 18 … keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. Ephesians 6:18-20 Devotional Paul spoke the gospel with boldness wherever he went. That was why he was in chains in the first place! And yet here he asks the Ephesians to pray all the more for him, that he would proclaim the mystery of the gospel with ever more boldness. Paul knew that we are all tempted to stay silent in the face of possible condemnation. “I am not ashamed of the gospel,” he wrote, fully aware that fear of shame and scorn is, far too often, all that is necessary to silence us. We need boldness, for we are by nature people who wish to avoid ridicule. But we also need humility, for those of us who are naturally bold are often merely bold in the flesh – we add to the inherent offense of the gospel by adding our own! The only thing that will give us both boldness and humility is the gospel. In the gospel we find the humility we need, for only the gospel reminds us that we are “ambassadors in chains”, broken sinners saved from our self-wrought chains of sin only by the sheer grace of God! But in the gospel we also find the boldness we need, for from the foundation of the world, Christ loved us so much that he would die even for sinners like us. Boldness and humility – let us pray for both! Prayer Ah Lord God, we yearn to be a people that boldly yet humbly proclaim your word to broken sinners. Father, you know that we fear the sneers and jibes of the world around us. Wishing not to appear naïve or foolish, we let them scoff and shame us into silence. We pray to you, give us the boldness we need. But Lord, you also know that we think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and far too often we make the gospel more offensive than it already is by adding to it our own haughtiness and insensitivity. Forgive us, O God, and give us yet again an ever greater understanding and apprehension of the gospel. For only the gospel can make us bold and confident in your love, yet keep us in chains of humility, remembering that we would still be enchained by sin were it not for your radical intervention on our behalf. Amen, and amen. © 2014 Central Presbyterian Church

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Day 34 | “True Justice” | Monday, April 7 Scripture 16 "If I have withheld anything that the poor desired, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, 17or have eaten my morsel alone, and the fatherless has not eaten of it 18(for from my youth the fatherless grew up with me as with a father, and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow), 19if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing, or the needy without covering, 20if his body has not blessed me, and if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep, 21if I have raised my hand against the fatherless, because I saw my help in the gate, 22then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder, and let my arm be broken from its socket. Job 31:16-22 Devotional The fifth and final mark of a revived church that we shall consider is compassionate social concern. As we look at this passage from Job, one thing strikes us immediately. We are accustomed, in our day and age, to consider justice as the act of setting to right things that are wrong. But we are selective in how we apply that principle, for what we consider criminal and what God says is a crime are vastly different. We think that if we are generous with our resources and money, giving to the poor and helping the unfortunate, that we are doing a great service. But we do not tend to think that if we withhold these resources that we are thereby being unjust. “My resources are mine to do with as I please,” we say. “If I choose to give, good for me, but I am not a criminal if I choose to keep them.” And that is where this passage says we are dead wrong. Allowing the hungry to go unfed or the poor to go without help is an act of injustice, according to the Bible. Job’s defense of his righteousness here hinges on his positive acts on behalf of the poor. It does not depend on simply refraining from immorality. Biblical justice centers on being proactively engaged in using all our resources for the wellbeing of others, and if we are not doing that, we are actually guilty of great iniquity! Prayer Lord God, we are so easily satisfied with ourselves, and our puny concepts of righteousness and justice. We so often conceive of it as simply refraining from doing certain acts that you have prohibited, such as murder or adultery. But what if our world were one where allowing poverty, hunger, and homelessness to even exist were the greatest crime that could possibly be committed? Ah Lord, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but that is exactly our position, for that is precisely the world that you ordained, and how we trample your holy law ever day! Father, revive us, we pray! Give us a holy yearning for the kind of justice you require, the kind that hates poverty of all kinds as much as it hates immorality. Lord, we pray that you would empower and enable us to bear fruit in keeping with

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repentance, that we would become radically generous with all the resources with which you have blessed us so abundantly. You did not entrust them to us so we could squander them on ourselves, but so that we could build your kingdom, and show forth your heart of mercy to a broken, hurting world. Give us grace to that end, for Jesus’ sake we pray.

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Day 35 | “Gospel Trajectory” | Tuesday, April 8 Scripture 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. 18He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy 10:16-19 Devotional Yes, God’s call on our lives is that we would be radically generous to the people around us, especially those who are in greatest need. But notice here the trajectory of our generosity. It is human nature to think that blessing, wellbeing, and the favor of God are dependent on our own efforts. In such a view, we serve and bless others in order that we may be blessed by God. But this passage (like so many others throughout the Bible) completely demolishes that view. For to what does God appeal when he commands us to love the sojourner, the alien, the stranger, the fatherless, and the orphan? He does not appeal to our behavior, but to our hearts! We are to love the sojourner. Why? Not in order to gain the blessing of God’s salvation, but because we have already received it! “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” God is commanding us to pass along the blessing we have already been given. “Do unto others as I have done unto you!” The trajectory of religion always has us working so hard to gain God’s blessing. We are reaching up to Him. But gospel trajectory has us responding in gratitude and love to the blessing that has already been poured out on us. He is reaching down to us, and asking us to reach out to others on that basis, and no other. Prayer Merciful, Loving Father, we were sojourners ourselves, slaves in the land of bondage to sin and death. But you, in your steadfast love and mercy, brought us out by the death and resurrection of your son Jesus Christ. You loved us, you saved us, and you delivered us. It is only by your grace that we now stand in your favor. Lord, let us never deceive ourselves into thinking that by our own effort we could ever gain your blessing, that we could ever earn or merit your love and favor. But let us fix our eyes upon the cross, and see there the love and sacrifice that alone can give us the motivation and power to love others and serve them as you would have us do. Let our lives be oriented along the lines of a gospel trajectory, and save us from falling back into dead works. Oh Lord, let us serve others with all our strength and might. But let it always be the response of hearts that have been signed by grace and circumcised by the love of our Lord Jesus, who was cut off from the Father in order that we might be welcomed into his bosom.

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Day 36 | “Becoming Stakeholders” | Wednesday, April 9 Scripture 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. Genesis 12:5-8 Devotional Abram (whom we know better as Abraham) left a life of comfort and familiarity because God called him to sojourn in the land of Canaan. He would thereafter live the life of a nomad, wandering through the land and living in tents. And yet he was called to pitch his tent in that land, and no other. He lived amidst a people who were ignorant of, or at least indifferent to, his God – pagans and idolators (how shocking!) – but he became a stakeholder in that place, leveraging all his resources for their wellbeing. When marauding kings raided Sodom and Gomorrah (which are synonymous with hedonistic decadence), he took his men and risked his own life to win back what had been taken from them (Gen. 14). Later, when God was getting ready to destroy these places for their sin, Abraham interceded on their behalf, pleading with God to have mercy on them if only for the sake of a few righteous, which God was only too ready to do (Gen. 18). Do you see? Abraham lived in a land where he was a stranger, calling on a God that no one else knew (theologically exclusive), and all the while he poured his life and his resources into the place (socially inclusive). Do we invest the best of what we have into our community? For all the sin and immorality that surrounds us, do we see our city as a place beloved of God? And are we willing to become stakeholders there for the sake of the gospel? Prayer Lord God, all too often we see the world and culture around us as being completely opposed to you (which so often it is), and therefore feel only too justified in abandoning it to destruction. Forgive us for our folly! You called your servant Abraham into the heart of one of the most decadent places in history, in order that he might be a blessing to them! He put down stakes in that place and called on your name, loving and serving the people around him, investing in their wellbeing and plowing his life and resources into that land. Lord, help us to become stakeholders in the communities in which we live. Give us a passionate, burning heart for the lost souls around us. Help us to plow our lives and resources into the

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city, praying for its welfare. Bring revival and renewal to this place! Let it be said among the cities around us, “The Lord has done great things among them!” O Lord, do great things among us, mighty things by the power of your Holy Spirit.

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Day 37 | “Signs of Life” | Thursday, April 10 Scripture 31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' 37Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' 40And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Matthew 25:31-40 Devotional Jesus said, “By their fruit you will know them.” And what kind of fruit does he say will distinguish his true followers from the false? Not that they were great worshipers, or great prayer warriors, or great Bible readers (although all these things are no doubt important). The fruit that marks out Christ’s followers as truly his own is their love and care for the needy ones around them. As the sign of genuine life in a tree is fruit, so the sign of genuine faith is caring for the needy. But notice one last thing: the fruit is not the source of life, but its evidence. The gospel courses through every image the Lord gives us, and this one is no exception. Our care for the needy is the evidence that the life of Jesus is already in us. It is not the way we gain that life. Christ died on the tree of death, so we could be grafted into the tree of life. Prayer Lord Jesus, you are our life, our health, our vitality, and our joy. And because you are all this to us, you are also our example. As you cared for the poor, the helpless, and the needy, so you call us to do the same. Give us grace to serve you joyfully and mightily! Let our care for the needy be the sign of Christ-life within us. But Lord, save us from doing so in a vain attempt to win your approval or favor. Help us to always keep our eyes on you, and off ourselves. When we stop looking at how we are doing, and focus on what you yourself did, we will not only see what it is we are to do, we will gain the power to actually do it. Revive your church, O Lord! We are so quick to grow lethargic in our service to those around us. Help us to always keep your cross in view, and fill us with your resurrection power, that we might truly be the community of self-giving lovers of humanity you have called us to be.

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Day 38 | “The Healing of the Nations” | Friday, April 11 Scripture 1Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. Acts 13:1 Devotional A revived church is a multi-ethnic church. Since Cyrene was on the north coast of Africa, and Niger is Latin for “black”, it is most likely that Simeon and Lucius were Africans. This verse gives us a fascinating glimpse not just into the makeup of the early church, but into its very leadership. Jews, Greeks, Africans, and many others were laboring together for the sake of the gospel. They were able to do so because any differences between them had been healed by the gospel. When Jesus preached his first sermon (Luke 4), his townspeople were ready to throw him off the edge of a cliff. Why? In large part because their prejudice against Gentiles prevented them from believing that the gospel was available to all without distinction between race, gender, socio-economic class, etc. The day will come when people of every nation, tribe, and tongue will worship the Lord as one people (Rev. 7:9), and the church is called to that vision even today. If we are honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that St. Louis has some deep and significant problems in this regard. Part of the church’s mission in this community is to be an agent of racial healing. Let us pray that the Lord will revive us in this area as well! Prayer Heavenly Father, one day you will gather together a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, and they will stand before your throne and before the Lamb of God, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and they will cry out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Holy Lord God, we acknowledge before you that there are deep and tragic wounds in our city, wounds of racial hatred, wounds of segregation, cankers of divisiveness and alienation that eat away at this community. Bring revival to your church, and through us to your city, O Lord! Bring healing, and renewal, and awakening, and bring a spirit of reconciliation to the many tribes throughout our city that remain at odds with each other. We ask that you will make your gospel powerful and mighty among us, and that it would be as a tree of life, for the healing of the nations. Help us to put away the fear and suspicion that divides us, and to embrace each other as children of God, for it is only your gospel that can accomplish this, O Lord.

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Day 39 | “Neighbor Love” | Saturday, April 12 Scripture 29But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 30Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.34He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' 36Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" 37He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise." Luke 10:29-37 Devotional The lawyer wasn’t really interested in people. He was interested in himself. In essence, he was asking, “What is the limit of my responsibility? What is the least I can do and still have eternal life?” Jesus’ parable taught him two revolutionary things. First, neighbor love is expressed by meeting their needs: physical, material, medical, financial. It would have been useless for the Samaritan to stand by the wounded man and simply pray for him, and then walk on blithely about his business, leaving the answer to his prayer to someone else. Second, the question is not, “Who is my neighbor?” but, “To whom will you be a neighbor?” There is a big difference between these two. The first seeks to fix criteria, the second seeks to foster compassion. There are no limits to true neighbor love, only the lengths we will go to express it. Christ didn’t simply pray for us from heaven, “Oh Father, please help them.” He came to be a neighbor to us, who had made ourselves enemies to him. He did it tangibly, physically, materially – with real nails, real wood, and real blood. Only the gospel can give us the power we need to be a neighbor. Prayer Lord Jesus, we thank you that you were not content to remain in heaven, looking sorrowfully and perhaps even forlornly at our distress and sin, yet uninvolved and unwilling to come down and get your hands dirty in helping us. You laid aside your own comfort in order to take the infinite resources at your command and pour them out for the sake of our salvation and healing. Nothing was more inconvenient than what you did for us on the cross. And yet we so often look at our neighbor’s needs as inconvenient, bothersome, and a little too much for us to get involved. We ask that you will melt our hearts by your gospel, and impart to us the

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compassion you experience in the depths of your bowels for us, that we may know what true neighbor love is: the heart’s unendurable agony at the suffering and misery of another, even (and even especially) one we might be tempted to call “enemy”.

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Day 40 | “Is the Story Over?” | Sunday, April 13 Scripture 46And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mark 15:46 Devotional When Joseph rolled the stone against the tomb, everyone assumed that was it. End of story. It was great while it lasted, but now it was over. They mourned and wept (Mark 15:10). But they were not expecting a resurrection. Revival was nowhere on their radar. And yet they were on the edge of the single most transformative event in the history of the cosmos. The ironic thing is, Jesus had told them repeatedly, “On the third day I will rise from the dead.” Jesus told them to expect God’s miraculous, intervening, mighty action in this world. He told them to expect revival. Do we expect it? What’s next for us now? We have been praying for 40 days that God would revive our church and our world. Do we really believe he will do it? Is this the end of the story? Do we roll the stone against the tomb and say, “It was nice while it lasted?” Revival has always been birthed in prayer. Sometimes it has taken years, even decades of praying, before the revival has come. Is the Lord’s church worth it? Is God’s world worth it? Is this the end of the story, or just the beginning? Will you continue to pray that God would bring renewal, awakening, and revival to this parched land? Prayer Loving Father, thank you for the opportunity to gather in prayer with our brothers and sisters these past days and weeks. Thank you for reviving our souls by the gift of salvation, and we thank you that you have been at work in our hearts and lives even as we’ve prayed. Lord, we ask that you will give us expectant, persevering hearts. We pray that you will encourage us and embolden us to continue to pray to you, Mighty Maker of the Universe, Reviver of Souls, Risen Lord of the Cosmos, to bring revival to us personally, revival to your church, and through us, that you would bring revival to our city, our nation, and our world. Let us not roll the stone against the tomb, but help us to hope, to wait, to act, and to pray fervently and consistently that we would see your Holy Spirit mightily at work in our midst. For we ask all of these things in the Marvelous, Wonderful, Beautiful, and Powerful name of our risen Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ! All to the praise of your glory! Alleluia, and amen!

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Acknowledgements Writing these devotions and prayers has been joyful at times, and toilsome at times. At all times it has been an incredibly enriching endeavor for me, and I hope and pray that it has been so for you, too. Many thanks to those who have offered me so much encouragement and support, and to all of you who have labored so devotedly with me in praying for revival. I would be intolerably grieved to allow anyone to continue under the impression that these devotions were hatched unaided in my own mind. The writers, preachers, thinkers, and scholars who have influenced and guided my thoughts in these matters are too extensive to list here, but I cannot leave unnamed those on whose shoulders I have stood most dependently: Timothy Keller, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, C.S. Lewis, and Oswald Chambers. If you know their work and thought, then no doubt you have recognized it in these devotions and prayers. My grateful thanks to them, and to the Lord Jesus for making them. Soli Deo Gloria! Pastor Eric Stiller

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