The Study Corner    

Philippians 4:6-7

6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (ESV)

Why do we pray? Is it because the Bible says to? Partly, yes, but it goes much deeper than that to me. Prayer is a privilege. Prayer is a direct line of communication and communion with our Father, the God of all creation, being facilitated by the perfection of his Trinitarian being. The Spirit helps us convey our prayers even when all we can let out is a sob and a tear, or we are so confused and scared we don’t know what to say to God. Our Lord Jesus Christ takes the prayers of an unholy sinner and covers them with his blood and forgiveness making them worthy to present to His Father. Our Father God receives these prayers as a loving Father who listens to His children in pure and perfect love. I pray because I want to talk to my Father in Heaven, not only out of Biblical commands, but also out of Joy that I am allowed unlimited audiences with the highest authority in the Universe.

Is there anything that can hinder our prayers? There certainly is. This is not an all-inclusive list, but I will try to list some of the Biblical conditions for prayers to be answered, but remember all things are up to God and his plan, not your wanton desires.

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Sin is bad. I know I sound like a preschooler explaining sin, but so many people seem to miss the mark on sin that I felt I should get back to the basics. This post is not about sin per-say, but about how we sin in responding to sin. As a sinner, I know I’ve fallen short, but I also know that sometimes I sin when I’m responding to my sin and trying to repent of my sin. I will provide a very short, and nowhere near complete, list of some common sinful responses to sin. Not only will this help you avoid some of the most common pitfalls in responding to your own sin, but will also help you recognize brothers and sisters in Christ who are using the same tactics to dodge their own sin. We can’t love our fellow Christians if we are unwilling to help them in love. (I will discuss Biblical discipline and shepherding in another post.)

1. We minimize our sin. We like to say, “Oh well, at least I didn’t kill someone like that other person.” We like to make it seem that as long as there is someone else out there sinning worse than we are that we are fine and get ourselves out of our guilty feelings.
2. We legitimize our sin. We believe our sin is different from anyone else’s. We may even try to say that since God, in His gracious nature, used it for His grace and purposes, that it was good that we sinned in that way. This is a despicable lie to us, and a horrible affront to the grace of God. We are trying to use His grace to justify our sin as a good thing, not the evil it truly is.
3. We shift the blame. This is the oldest response to sin in the book. Literally. Adam and Eve did this right off the bat. Eve blamed Satan and Adam blamed Eve and God since he made her. We can see how well that excuse worked in Genesis 3.
4. We rationalize our sin. We try to rationalize some extenuating circumstances usually by wearing down listeners by speaking profusely. Trying to convince the listener with their perspectives, motives, and the conditions surrounding their sin. We try to convince others to sympathize with us so as to compel them to excuse our sin.
5. We distract from our sin. We try to backpedal with the someone misunderstood us, or we were just joking, or the person who brought it up was just being mean and jealous excuses.
6. We partially confess our sin. In pride, we only tell part of our sin when we should simply, clearly, honestly, and completely tell all that we have done. Remember, God knows what you have done, don’t act dishonestly with the one from whom your grace flows.
7. We limit the regret of our sin. This is what Paul refers to as “worldly grief” (2 Cor 7:10). We don’t truly put our sin to death, we only regret the consequences, or effects, of it not the actual sin.

This should give you a bit to chew on. We are to love sinners. To be able to love sinners we absolutely must take their sin seriously, the same way God does. If we don’t we rob ourselves, and every other sinner, the divine dignity which God grants to us as His image bearers. This may be best summed up by Plantinga, “We ought to pay evildoers, including ourselves, of the ‘intolerable compliment’ of taking them seriously as moral agents, of holding them accountable for their wrongdoing. This is a mark of our respect for their dignity and weight as human beings.” Sin is a corruption of us, we were not meant for it. To allow ourselves or other sinners to respond to our sin by sinning further is unloving and even cruel towards us and God.

The temptation is to look for elements of human sovereignty in our deliverance, to theorize ways to hold God responsible for our mistakes, and to hope that there might not be some degree of truth in Satan’s claim that man can be “as God” (Genesis 3:5). We have to mature in the faith and become familiar with Scripture before we begin to overcome this temptation in our lives.

Ephesians 2:8-9

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (ESV)

I have a confession to make.

“My name is Melody, and I have in the past and continue to struggle with worshiping idols.”

Wow. That really makes me sound like a horrible person. I realize, though, that apart from Christ, I am a horrible person.
Totally self-centered, prideful, hateful, rude, spiteful. Without Jesus, I would not be worth anything, and would not be worthy to
enter into a relationship with The Most High God. It takes recognizing this to begin to allow God to change my heart.

I was recently reading the Bible and my husband and I were discussing the Word, as we often do together. We came upon Exodus 32.
This particular story stuck out to me as a clear reminder of how some of us behave concerning idol worship.

Exodus 32:1-6

32:1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. (ESV)

When the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron. “Up,” they said, “Up, make us gods who shall x go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

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Many of us growing up often heard or sang the children’s song “O Be Careful”

O be careful little mouth what you say
O be careful little mouth what you say
There’s a Father up above
And He’s looking down in love
So, be careful little mouth what you say

You may thing it’s a cute way to remind kids to be nice to others, and without discounting that I’ll also focus on what Jesus says:

[bibleblock]Matthew 12:36-37[/bibleblock]

Does this mean all we have to is speak nicely and God will judge us as justified and righteous?  No, quite the opposite in fact.  Stepping back to verse 34 Jesus says, “… out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”  This is addressing that the words that you speak are indicative of what you truly believe and hold in your heart, and if your heart is on God, then your words should be honoring, glorifying, and pointing to Him.

So, as long as we keep our mouths shut, we’ll be fine? While this is a good idea and a very wise idea (Proverbs 13:3), the words that come out are not the only thing to think on.

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Faith as primarily translated in the New Testament scriptures is the Greek word πίστις (pistis) which the NAS Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible with Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Dictionaries defines as follows:

assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity;  i.e. Credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly, constancy in such profession; by extension, the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself — assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.

While being rooted in the word πείθω (peitho), which means “to persuade; to convince (by argument, true or false)”, it is not peitho, and the difference must be noted to understand its application.

Peitho is plain and simply not faith.  It is never translated as faith anywhere in the NASB or Strongs transliterations anywhere that I can find. It is translated as assure (1), confident (3), convinced (7), followed (2), have confidence (2), having confidence (2), listen (1), obey (3), obeying (1), persuade (4), persuaded (8), etc.  The word pistis however is translated as faith (238), faithfulness (3), pledge (1), proof (1).

I think the single synonym for pistis would be assurance.  Be that as it may, I still believe it is best to ask the bible what is defines faith as.

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