Borrowing from Bonhoeffer - The Importance of Morning Prayer – Purity
975
Purity 975 02/24/2023 Purity 975 Podcast
Purity 975 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the sun sinking into the horizon over
a darkened beach and the breaking waves of the Atlantic comes to us from yours
truly as this was the last photo I took of last night’s sunset on my last day vacationing
in Myrtle Beach.
Well, It’s Friday and I know of a few people who
would have liked it to stay Thursday forever, but time marches on and so will I
as I will be traveling to not so sunny suburbs outside of Baltimore, Maryland
today as I know my limitations and have a reservation at an Embassy Suites to
stay at tonight as I break my return trek to chilly upstate NY into atwo day journey.
So no 13-14 hour marathon drive for me. I prefer to
fly and when I am not flying I prefer to drive in the day time and so I hope to
get to my pit stop before sunset, with time to possibly take a swim, and to
enjoy some snacks at the manager’s reception.
The great white north can wait a day.
But because of my desire to “get ‘er done” – as in
to hit the road this morning without delays from “over-blogging”, I have
decided to enlist some help with today’s post from an old friend, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
As I stated yesterday, my intent for Lent is to go
through the 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that is being offered from BibleGateway
dot com, the link is on the blog again if you want to join the journey. (https://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/40-day-journey-dietrich-bonhoeffer/2023/02/23)
Yesterday I played catchup while in my hotel room by
going through days 1 & 2, so if you are keeping score at home we are on Day
3 of Lent. The way it works is there are
40 days of Lent, but they are not necessarily sequential in the way you may
think. Basically, the countdown begins
on Ash Wednesday and we count each day as a “Lent Day” except for the Sundays
between Ash Wednesday and Easter, If you count all those weekdays and Saturdays
between Ash Wednesday to Easter if actually works out to 40 days! I did it twice.
Anyway because I plan to be on the road at 6am today,
I have taken the liberty of preparing this message in advance on Thursday night,
and decided to do the third Day of the 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
as the material for the post and to demonstrate how a morning devotional is
done.
It turns out that the subject of the “devo” is the
importance of morning prayer, so without further ado I present Day 3 from the
40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and with my responses.
From – 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (https://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/40-day-journey-dietrich-bonhoeffer/2023/02/25) - go to Biblegateway dot com to sign up.
Day 3
Bonhoeffer writes:
"This order and discipline must be sought and found in the
morning prayer. It will stand the test at work. Prayer offered in early morning
is decisive for the day. The wasted time we are ashamed of, the temptations we
succumb to, the weakness and discouragement in our work, the disorder and lack
of discipline in our thinking and in our dealings with other people․ all these very
frequently have their cause in our neglect of morning prayer. The ordering and
scheduling of our time will become more secure when it comes from prayer."
Biblical Wisdom
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went
out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. Mark 1:35
Questions to Ponder
- In what ways might “prayer
offered in the morning” be “decisive for the day”?
M.T. Clark: Morning prayer can set a foundation for the day as
we come before God to connect with Him relationally to give thanks, make
supplications, and seek guidance. Morning
prayer can be “decisive for the day” as it can be used by the Lord to give use
strength and guidance to accomplish His will for the day. Morning prayer can be
where we make the decision to be faithful to follow the Lord and to be open and
available for Him to use us each day.
·
Do you agree that
many of the problems we encounter have “their cause in our neglect of morning
prayer”? Why, or why not?
M.T. Clark: I agree that many of the problems we can encounter
could have their cause in our neglect of morning prayer because without the
regular practice of morning prayer we start our day outside of the comfort of
the peace of the Lord’s presence which would make us subject to spiritual
attacks from the spiritual forces of darkness or we could simply “forget who we
are in Christ” as our intention to live as Christians is undermined when we
fail to practice what we preach.
- How can prayer lead to the
“ordering and scheduling of our time”?
M.T. Clark – Prayer is a great way to bring our problems and
concerns before the Lord to receive His wisdom and guidance to order our lives.
When we are intentional about establishing a scheduled time of prayer each day
it should naturally follow that we seek to resolve problems and accomplish our
goals in a ordered and scheduled way, to do what is right according to and for
God.
Psalm Fragment
Give ear to my words, O Lord;
give heed to my sighing.
Listen to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch. Psalm 5:1-3
Journal Reflections
- Write about how you usually
spend your mornings. What do you do before work or school?
M.T. Clark: Besides Sundays, I schedule approximately 4 hours
for my daily spiritual practice that includes: physical exercise, prayer, Bible
Study, and jounraling/blogging daily.
- Are you satisfied with the
way you spend your mornings? If not, how would you like to spend your
mornings?
M.T. Clark: Overall, I am satisfied with the way I spend my
mornings because my morning prayer and other disciplines have provided me with
the time with and wisdom from the Lord that I need.
- How is prayer presently a
part of your morning? Any changes you would like to make?
M.T. Clark: I pray every
morning but have struggled at times with shallow prayers or with distractions
during prayer. If I could change anything, it would be for my focus to be on
the Lord and for me to discern the Lord’s will for more effective prayers.
Prayer for Today
Lord, show me a
time in the morning when I can listen to you for the day ahead and when I can
talk to you for the day ahead.
M.T. Clark: IN Jesus’ Name Amen!
Okay, well that is how
you do a morning devotional for Lent! I would like to thank the Lord, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, and the folks at BibleGateway dot com for providing this
resource. If you would like to join the
40 Day Journey with Dietrcih Bonhoeffer for Lent go to the link for Day 1 and
sign up: (https://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/40-day-journey-dietrich-bonhoeffer/2023/02/23)
Well, the devo
provided us with some food for thought, some encouragement, and some Bible
verses so because of that and because I am traveling today, I will skip the
Bible verse of the Day, and I may choose to share Day 4 of the 40 Day Journey
with Bonhoeffer as I will be travelling on Saturday as well. But just like many things on the path of Christian
Discipleship, I guess, we will see what will happen when we get there.
Until then I ask
for your prayers for safe travels and encourage you to continue in or to
develop a scheduled time for morning prayer because it really can be “decisive
for the day” and lay the foundation for a lifestyle of “walking and talking
with God".
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink’s “The
Sovereignty of God.”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
By ARTHUR W. PINK
CHAPTER SEVEN
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND THE HUMAN WILL
3. The Impotency of the Human Will concludes
The superficial work
of many of the professional evangelists of the last fifty years is largely
responsible for the erroneous views now current upon the bondage of the natural man, encouraged by the laziness of those in
the pew in their failure to “prove
all things” (1 Thess. 5:21). The average evangelical pulpit conveys the
impression that it lies wholly in the power of the sinner whether or not he
shall be saved. It is said that “God has done His part, now man must do his.”
Alas, what can a lifeless man do, and
man by nature is “dead in trespasses
and sins” (Eph. 2:1)! If this were really believed there would be more
dependence upon the Holy Spirit to come in with His miracle-working power and
less confidence in our attempts to
“win men for Christ.”
When addressing the
unsaved, preachers often draw an analogy between God’s sending of the Gospel to
the sinner, and a sick man in bed with some healing medicine on a table by his
side: all he needs to do is reach forth his hand and take it. But in order for
this illustration to be in any wise true to the picture which Scripture gives
us of the fallen and depraved sinner, the sick man in bed must be described as one
who is blind (Eph. 4:18) so that he cannot see the medicine, his hand paralyzed
(Rom. 5:6) so that he is unable to reach forth for it, and his heart not only
devoid of all confidence in the medicine but filled with hatred against the
physician himself (John 15:18). O what superficial views of man’s desperate
plight are now entertained! Christ came here not to help those who were willing
to help themselves, but to do for His people what they were incapable of doing
for themselves: “To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the
prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house” (Isa. 42:7).
Now in conclusion let
us anticipate and dispose of the usual and inevitable objection—Why preach the Gospel if man is powerless to
respond? Why did the sinner come to Christ if sin has so enslaved him that
he has no power in himself to come?
Reply: We do not preach the Gospel because
we believe that men are free moral agents and therefore capable of
receiving Christ, but we preach it because
we are commanded to do so (Mark 16:15); and though to them that perish it
is foolishness yet, “unto us which
are saved it is the power of God” (1
Cor. 1:18). “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God
is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25). The sinner is dead in trespasses and sins
(Eph. 2:1), and a dead man is utterly incapable of willing anything, hence it
is that “they that are in the flesh (the unregenerate) cannot please God” (Rom.
8:8).
To fleshly wisdom it
appears the height of folly to preach the Gospel to those that are dead, and therefore beyond the reach of doing anything themselves. Yes, but God’s ways
are different from ours. It pleases God “by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).
Man may deem it folly to prophesy to “dead
bones” and to say unto them, “O, ye dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord”
(Ezek. 37:4). Ah! but then it is the Word of
the Lord, and the words He speaks “they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Wise men standing by the grave of
Lazarus might pronounce it an evidence of insanity when the Lord addressed a dead man with the words, “Lazarus, Come
forth.” Ah! but He who thus spake was and is Himself the Resurrection and the
Life, and at His word even the dead
live! We go forth to preach the Gospel, then, not because we believe that
sinners have within themselves the power to receive the Saviour it proclaims
but because the Gospel itself is the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, and because we know that
“as many as were ordained to eternal life” (Acts 13:48) shall believe (John 6:37; 10:16—note the “shall’s”!) in God’s
appointed time, for it is written “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power” (Psa. 110:13)!
What we have set
forth in this chapter is not a product of “modern thought”; no indeed, it is at
direct variance with it. It is those of the past few generations who have departed so far from the teachings of
their scripturally-instructed fathers. In the thirty-nine Articles of the Church
of England we read, “The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that
he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works
to faith, and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without
the grace of God by Christ preventing us (being before-hand with us), that we
may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will”
(Article 10). In the Westminster Catechism of Faith (adopted by the
Presbyterians) we read, “The sinfulness of that state whereinto man fell,
consisteth in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the wont of that righteousness
wherein he was created, and the corruption of his nature, whereby he is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made
opposite unto all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually” (Answer to
question 25). So in the Baptists’ Philadelphian Confession of Faith, 1742, we
read, “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual
good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from
good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or
to prepare himself thereunto” (Chapter 9).[1]
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tomorrow------------------------
Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
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