I am on the mailing list for 9 Marks Ministries, a ministry of Mark Dever and Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Today they sent out the latest edition of their journal which is on discipleship. You can access the edition here, and I hope you will! It's very helpful and steers the church in the right direction, namely, toward obeying Jesus' command in Matthew 28:18-20.
“We may be assured of this—the secret of all failure is our failure in secret prayer” (12). So writes the anonymous author of the classic little book on prayer entitled, The Kneeling Christian (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids: 1971). He means that the reason we so often fall into sin or live in discouragement or fail to bear fruit is because we do not cling to God in Christ above all things. We do not diligently seek him or lean on him or plead with him or draw on his strength. We give ourselves to busyness over communion with God and in this way we seek to accomplish in our flesh what can only be accomplished in the power of the Spirit. Giving first place to what our dear author calls “secret prayer” is indeed a key to the Spirit-filled life but let’s be clear: prayer is not magic, rather, it’s a relationship. It’s not as if we simply have to file requests with God, being careful to use just the right words so that we can get him to respond as we wish. God is not a vending m
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