Desiring God Blog : Posts from 2007

This week's sermon: "Pray Like This: Hallowed Be Your Name"

Prayer is intentionally conveying a message to God.

It's for the private room, and it's for family, small gatherings, and worship services. Prayer is for everywhere all the time.

We pray because God tell us to and because it increases our joy. It is a staggeringly awesome privilege and it glorifies the Father and his Son.

In his model prayer, the first thing Jesus instructs us to ask the Father is to make his name hallowed. This is first, above all others.

The most central, supreme, and overarching concern in prayer is to plead with God that God would make his name supremely valuable in the minds and hearts of people.

As 2007 comes to an end (already?) my heart is full of gratitude to God for three remarkable groups of people that by God’s grace made the ministry at DG happen this year. They are gifts from the Father to me and to all who benefit from this gospel outreach.

The first are my precious partners in the day to day work at DG. The DG staff, about 35 full and part-time people, are some of the most godly, creative, resourceful, and life-giving people I know. I’m simply spoiled. The DG office is like a taste of heaven because these folks are so wonderful. I love these dear friends.

The second group is the DG Board of Directors. Sam Crabtree, Peter Hedstrom, Mitch Pearson, and John Piper are men whose prayer-soaked wisdom guides the ship of DG. I don’t deserve to have such leaders. And I am doubly-blessed to have John Knight step off the board to join the staff this January.…

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Listen

It seemed to us that if the focus of the pastors conference is going to be on the pastor as father—both of a church and a family—then having the sons along could enable them to catch a vision of what it is that their fathers are called to and what the challenges are that their fathers face.

Asking the fathers to come is, in part, a means of showing respect. And wouldn't it be awesome to see a few hundred three-generation teams at the conference, all hearing messages about God as our father, pastors as fathers, and missions as fathering? Asking fathers and sons to come is a way of building into the manhood of sons, fathers, and grandfathers a sense of what a great calling it is to be a man, a father, and a leader of a church.

If those boys could hear 1,300 men sing around that theme I think it just might be absolutely life-changing for some of them. They…

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Finally. Al Mohler has published his own book.

His forthcoming work Culture Shift is vintage Mohler—and that’s a very good thing.

Culture Shift is a compilation of twenty key posts from his blog that have been worked together to provide a coherent message on Christian cultural engagement, especially in the public political realm.

Mohler’s impetus for Christian engagement, stated with clarity several times in the book, is the greatest and second commandments. Christians first love God and then, flowing from that, love their neighbor. And loving your neighbor does not mean withdrawing but engaging and providing a Christian perspective and presence in the public arena for the glory of God and the good of others.

Mohler is very careful to never leave the gospel behind in all his culture talk. He explicitly comes back to the gospel and its advance and its…

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Most of us are not called to leave our home and move our families around the world to minister to unreached peoples. But that means we are called to support those who do.

Frontiers is currently raising money to send 50 new teams to unreached Muslims. Their U.S. director, Bob Blincoe, writes in his latest newsletter,

In partnership with churches across America, Frontiers' goal is to send, in the next five years, new church planting teams to 50 "unengaged" Muslim people groups of 100,000 or more. ... By unengaged, I mean they are not only unreached, but entirely without any effective church planting work.

The money they raise will cover the costs of "recruiting, training, deployment, on-field supervision and coaching, member care, technology and communications support, and other vital services."

Any gifts given by the end of the year wi…

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If you enjoyed Jon Bloom’s post-Christmas wisdom, you might like a 400-year-old version of the same point in verse by George Herbert.

This is one of my all-time favorite poems:

The Pulley

When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him kee…

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Come to the pastors conference for only $100, if you register by the end of the year.

I love my wife. Today is her 60th birthday. I got her permission to say that.

We have had significant talks in recent months about aging. Not all the accompaniments are visible, and not all are expected. But some things are firm—forever. That’s because of Christ. I wanted Noël to feel that. Hence the poem.

Losses

On Turning Sixty

Toward sixty, losses multiply.
The pace and pain we cannot stop:
How suddenly the petals dry,
And as if in agreement, drop.

And sometimes even little buds
Are lost, cut off before they bloom,
And heaven nourishes with floods
Of hopeful tears, her second womb.

How many petals yet will fall
Before the aging stems are bare?
How many losses till the call
For us, my friend, to join her there?

But if you count them, though they sting…

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Each year Christmas night finds members of my family feeling some melancholy. After weeks of anticipation, the Christmas celebrations have flashed by us and are suddenly gone. And we’re left standing, watching the Christmas taillights and music fade into the night.

But it’s possible that this moment of melancholy may be the best teaching moment of the whole season. Because as long as the beautiful gifts remain unopened around the tree and the events are still ahead of us, they can appear to be the hope we are waiting for. But when the tree is empty and events are past, we realize we are longing for a lasting hope.

So last night, as Pam and I tucked our kids into bed, we talked about a few things with them:

• Gifts and events can’t fill the soul. God gives us such things to enjoy. They are expressions of his generosity as well as ours, but gifts and celebrations them…

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