Cornerstone Man Blog

"I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: 'Early will I seek thee'; 'Thou shalt early hear my voice.' Family prayer loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me. The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed, the lamp not trimmed. Then when in secret prayer the soul is often out of tune, I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see his face first, to get my soul near him before it is near another."  (Robert Murray McCheyne)

"If you have not received something from God that you want very badly, realize that the decision to withhold that thing from you has been made by the One who loved you so much that He gave His Son for you.  Surely, such a God is most happy to freely give you all things truly needful for your eternal good.  It must be, then, that God is withholding that thing from you because it is not ultimately in your best interest to have it right now.  He is seeking to do a richer work and thereby impart to you some greater good that can only come to you through the absence of the thing that you desire.  Hence, you must view the withholding itself as a gift from an all-wise God who knows how to love you better than you know how to love yourself, and you must open your heart to the greater good that He is seeking to impart to you.

Additionally, remember that God gave His Son for you and delivered over His Son to suffer to the fullest extent in order to save you and make you His child.  Therefore, if the Father were to withhold anything from you that is essential to your eternal good, such withholding would be an insult to His Son.  Hence, you can rest assured that God is giving you all things truly needful for your ultimate good, not simply because He loves you, but also because He loves His Son who suffered so much for you.

We are “for us” and so is God.  But God is more intelligent and wise in His actions “for us” than we would ever be toward ourselves.  If we had full sovereignty, we would destroy ourselves (& others) in the way we went about giving ourselves everything that we thought we needed.  So let us thank God for what He gives us, and let us thank Him for what He withholds from us, knowing that His choices toward us are always best and will always redound to His greatest glory and our greatest good."  (from Milton Vincent's sermon, "What Shall We Say to These Things?", preached March 4, 2012)

Pornography is a universal temptation precisely because it does exactly what the satanic powers wish to do. It lashes out at the Trinitarian nature of reality, a loving communion of persons, replacing it with a masturbatory Unitarianism.

And pornography strikes out against the picture of Christ and his church by disrupting the one-flesh union, leaving couples like our prehistoric ancestors, hiding from one another and from God in the darkness of shame.

And pornography rages, as Satan always does, against Incarnation (1 Jn. 4:2-3), replacing flesh-to-flesh intimacy with the illusion of fleshless intimacy."  (from Russell Moore at russellmoore.com, in his January 23, 2012 blog entitled, "Should I Marry a Man with Pornography Struggles?  My Reponse")

Lord, help me not to think too much of tomorrow’s battles,

lest I grow discouraged in the face of what confronts me today.

Lord, help me to make much of yesterday’s victories,

cherishing them as wonders wrought by You

and as indicators of Your power to help me always.

But save me, Lord, from making too much of yesterday’s victories,

as if those victories are to my credit,

and as if yesterday’s grace makes failure impossible today.

Help me to think of today, of Your abiding presence with me,

and of Your loving resolve to make me more than a conqueror today.

"Within the Christian vision for marriage, here’s what it means to fall in love.  It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, ‘I see who God is making you, and it excites me!  I want to be part of that.  I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne.  And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, ‘I always knew you could be like this.  I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!’”  (The Meaning of Marriage, by Timothy and Kathy Keller)

After Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, they became seized with fear regarding their newly discovered nakedness.  They immediately began hiding from one another, from God, and even from themselves.  Given the fact that husbands and wives have been doing the same thing ever since, we have here an ancient explanation as to why prayer in marriage is so difficult.

Prayer, by its very nature, is coming to God, rather than running from Him.  Prayer is dependence upon God, rather than independence from Him.  Prayer is nakedness, self-disclosure, and vulnerability before God and man, rather than the nervous concealing that comes so naturally to us.  Hence, there is nothing that cuts against the grain of our fallen tendencies more than praying with our spouse.

The Genesis narrative tells us that God did not want the first husband and wife hiding from Him and from each other, so He slew an animal and clothed them both with garments fashioned from the skin of that animal.  Adorned with such attire, Adam and Eve can now approach each other with confidence. Whenever Adam looks at Eve, he sees her dressed in the atoning garb. Whenever Eve looks upon Adam, she sees him dressed in the same God-given material. From now on, whenever they look upon one another, they see not each other's sin, but the skin of the animal which God had sacrificed for them.  Even more wonderfully, Adam and Eve now can come to God and enjoy fellowship with Him.  The need to hide is removed.  They have atonement.  Their shame is covered.  They now can come freely into God's presence and enjoy full communion with Him again.  Because of God's provision, husband and wife can come together, and together they can approach God.

The slain animal prefigures Christ's atoning sacrifice; and the skin of the animal prefigures the righteousness of Christ that God Himself places upon us who are believers in Him.  A husband and wife who have atonement through Christ and who are fitly clothed with His perfect righteousness can now come together into God’s presence and pray.   A married couple thusly adorned and together before God in prayer is enjoying Eden’s greatest treasure -- the fellowship of husband and wife with God.

“We tell ourselves, ‘Strong Christians pray a lot.  If I were a stronger Christian, I’d pray more.’  Strong Christians do pray more, but they pray more because they realize how weak they are.  They don’t try to hide it from themselves.  Weakness is the channel that allows them to access grace.”  (Paul Miller, A Praying Life)