January 8th, 2007 by 
dowboy
Read: Luke 17:1-19
For every ten who ask, there is only one who thanks. It is my observation as a parent that I do not need to educate my children into the art of asking for things, but I do need to teach them how to say thank you. Last time we looked at a hard word to say to God - the word ‘sorry’, and this time we are looking at another hard word to say to God - ‘thank you’. But just as saying sorry, or confession, is a vital part of prayer, so is saying thank you, or thanksgiving. And so we reach the last of our six studies into what the Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches us about prayer in A.98 - “Prayer is an offering up to God of our desires, for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, with due confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies” by looking at what the Catechism has to tell us of the unbreakable link between prayer and thanksgiving. I want to see three things tonight about thanksgiving in prayer - first, the fundamentals of thanksgiving - things we need to understand about thanksgiving before we go any further; secondly, the fund of thanksgiving - things we are to give thanks for; lastly, the foundation of thanksgiving or why we need to give thanks to God for what He gives us. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 13th, 2006 by dowboy
Read: Psalm 51:1-19
To get a politician to say sorry, is like trying to get a chicken to fly. Sorry is the hardest word. If we find it hard to say sorry to other people, do we find it hard to say sorry to God? How do we say sorry to God for all the ways in which we sin against Him? In A. 98 of the Shorter Catechism we are told that it is through prayer, and particularly prayer ‘with confession of our sins’. Confession of sin – saying sorry to God – is a vital part of prayer. I want to ask three questions tonight about the link between prayer and the confession of our sins to God. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 5th, 2006 by dowboy
Read: John 14:13, 14
What is sharper, the scabbard or the sword – the leather casing the sword is stored in, or the sword itself? Of course, it is the sword. What is stronger, to pray and put at the end of each prayer, “for Jesus’ sake”, or to really pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So often, when we are praying, we superstitiously use the mere name of Jesus as a full stop or a way of being confident that God will listen to us. But that is to be a prayer warrior with a scabbard and no sword. Rather, we long to pray with true power and effectiveness, and according to the Shorter Catechism A.98, that is achieved by praying in the name of Christ. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 22nd, 2006 by dowboy
Christmas time beckons and children are busy dreaming up what they want from Santa Claus. Santa is a remarkably accommodating chap, but even he struggles sometimes to answer the letters he gets at this time of year. Parents are either unwilling or unable to get what their children want. We, earthly parents, know what is best for our children and sometimes we just know that what they want isn’t good for them, and so we don’t give it to them. We only give them things which we want them to have. The same law applies in prayer - we may ask for a thousand different things, but God will only give us those things which He wants to give us - in the language of Answer 98 of the Shorter Catechism, the answer we have been studying this term, He will only give us those things which are agreeable to His will. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 19th, 2006 by dowboy
In a world of increasing fragmentation and suspicion, what is one of the things which every human being has in common; something every Homo sapiens does every day? The answer is pray. In fact, as a species we should not be called Homo Sapiens - the man who is wise, but Homo orans - the man who prays. Given that prayer is something every single person in the whole world does everyday, what does the Bible, as understood through the lens of the Shorter Catechism, have to tell us about who we should pray to? After all, when I say everyone prays, I do not say that everyone prays to the same god - some pray to themselves, urging themselves on to better performances in their work or leisure; some pray to false gods, others kneel down at the altar of their possessions and family to pray. But what about us, to whom do we pray? We are given the answer in the Shorter Catechism A.98 - “Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God“. For prayer to be true prayer, its primary ingredient must be that it is offered up to the God of the Bible - not ourselves, not the gods of the other religions, not the god of materialism or ’spirituality’, but the God of the Bible. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 3rd, 2006 by dowboy
Read: Matthew 6:5-15
Ask any Christian and he or she will tell you that prayer is one of the hardest elements of their faith - it is one of the hardest things to keep doing. There can be many different reasons why it is so difficult - in-discipline, unbelief, over-busy-ness and so on. But I think one of the reasons we don’t pray as we should is that we don’t really understand prayer and why it is so important to our Christian lives.
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Prayer in the Shorter Catechism (6): And Thankful Acknowledgement of His Mercies