Prayer Meeting 20/12/2022

• A Responsive Heart

Psalm 27:8

Well what a year it’s been. These meetings have been so equipping for us as a church. It has been great to hear the feedback from them. When we started these meetings we only had a tiny inkling of the format. We however, have almost stumbled into the format we have. Maybe you could say they are way more than prayer meetings. They are meetings where we are learning to both pray and also become more devoted. They are as much devotional meetings as they are prayer meetings.

They have given us great insight also into the wonderful teaching and depth, and faithfulness of the puritans, and the wonderful, humbling and sobering prayers they prayed. Tonight is no different. Tonight I want to take us back to the puritan we started sharing at the start of our prayer meetings, known as the ‘heavenly doctor’ - Richard Sibbes. Isn’t that a wonderful name to be associated with ‘the heavenly doctor’? And every time I read him that’s what it’s like. It’s like visiting this wonderfully wise and very thorough pastoral spiritual doctor who gives you a full examination, then gives both the diagnoses then the prognosis, and then shows us how to treat it in order to get well.

Sibbes however, is not a medical doctor but a heavenly one, so his treatment is one where the Word is the medicine that heals and restores our souls and feeds our spiritually sick and malnourished faith. Tonight we will once again draw from Sibbes. This time on his teaching on his two sermons called ‘The Successful Seeker’. The scripture Sibbes uses for this teaching is Psalm 27:8. Before I read the scripture, let me read, as we do, a puritan prayer fitting for the subject. Tonight I’m going to read a prayer from George Swinnock, he is maybe the easiest of all puritans to read. The prayer is from ‘Into His Presence’, page 180-181. The prayer is entitled ‘From Morning To Night’. Tonight I’m going to read half at the start and close with the second part on page 181.

Rock of Ages, and everlasting Father, teach me so to number my remaining days that I may live every day in the fear of the Lord. Since every day may be my last, may it be my best. May I not undertake my affairs on earth before I have despatched my business with heaven. May nothing cause an eclipse of holiness in my soul; but let your word limit me, and your Spirit guide me. Set a watch over my lips, and be the governor of my heart. My life is a bubble that vanishes with the wind, a day that is soon overtaken by a night. So let me feel how eternity rides upon the back of time, that I may prize time highly, redeem it carefully, improve it faithfully, that eternity may be my friend. May I so cast up my accounts each day that I am always ready for the great audit-day. May I end every day with Christ, the beginning and first-born from the dead, so that I may go to bed as if I were going to my grave, knowing that sleep is the shadow of death. I acknowledge with thankfulness the favours of the day.

- George Swinnock 

Okay, Psalm 27:8

⁸ When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

The scripture starts with David telling us first of what God commanded him to do, and us to do, ‘seek His face’. And the second part is David’s obedience to that command: ‘my heart said to you, “your face, Lord, I will seek.’

For God to say to us, all of us: seek My face. God tells us all, as Sibbes says:

God comes out of that hidden light that he dwells in and discovers himself and his will to his creature, especially in the word.

The very next key thing that Sibbes says that really drew my spirit to this teaching was this:

It is extreme arrogance for man to devise a worship of God.

He adds:

Do we think that God will suffer the creature to serve him as he pleaseth? No, that were to make the creature, which is the servant, to be the master.

The reason my spirit was pierced by that statement was because this is how we worship God so much, and how I worship God too much. We worship Him by not first seeking Him. How can we worship a God we do not seek? How can we serve a God we look not to? How much do we have ‘eyes-wide-shut’ worship and devotion? Box ticking devotion? Box ticking worship and prayer that is blind due to us not seeking His face? How emotionless, how passive, how apathetic is our worship and intimacy with God because we do not seek His face? Or how fake and only emotional is it, if we don’t seek His face but simply allow our feelings to guide us, and call it worship?

This is the exact debate I’ve been having with a few people at the moment, who are defending young people dancing round their church doing the conga. Sibbes calls it: ‘designing our own worship’, which, let’s face it, is no worship at all. Its actions without intimacy, without seeking Him. It’s like having a conversation with someone when they are not listening, but doing so with God almighty Himself. How many times could the Lord say to you: You’re absent here in our encounter. You’re using My name, but you’re not even looking at Me or for Me.

How often are our prayers help prayers, comfort seeking prayers but with no intimacy? With no seeking His face. Let’s not be confused with crying to God in despair and need and seeking His face. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus tells this to the scribes and pharisees.

Matthew 15:7-9

⁷ Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:

⁸ ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth,
And honour Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
⁹ And in vain they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

To not seek God’s face, to not seek Him intimately, yet to worship and pray and use His name is to be one who’s heart is far from Him. It’s to turn your Christian faith back to a man-made one. How often are we only going through the motions, or emotions because we are more consumed with our own life? Some may say: well I didn’t want God to get onboard my plan, I was just ‘zoned out’. Really? Well tell me the last time your son or daughter just ‘zoned out’ but you knew they were onboard your plan, and not really only caring about their own?

We must have a heart that says, whenever we approach God, whenever we pray, or as soon as we are in God’s house, or even throughout our day; ‘day and night’ as Swinnock says - as God prods our conscience, we must say: ‘Lord Thy face I will seek’.

If you had much more of that intimacy with God, how many things would not get on top of you? How many bad choice, or saying what you ought not, or doing what you ought not would have been overcome if in those moments you said: ‘Lord I heard You, Lord I felt You, Lord I will seek Your face’. Instead of: ‘Lord I heard You, Lord I felt You, but Lord I went through the motions but never looked for You; never drew close to You’.

Often I’ve heard people say: ‘I prayed nothing changed’. Yes, well did you seek Him for Him? Or were you seeking only for you, that your dilemma would be fixed? That’s not ‘seek My face’. That’s looking for God to seek you, to worship you, as you are the most important. It’s amazing how we can cry out and seek God about our issues, and pain, and struggle, yet still do so without even seeking Him at all. We are seeking a solution but not seeking Him. Or you might not even be seeking a solution at all but just lip service.

How can we truly surrender our will and ways to His if we won’t surrender ourselves to what He requires? Surely if God commands us to seek Him, and we don’t do so, how then can we know what His will is if we seek not His face? It starts with a command: ‘seek My face’. How can we expect anything else from God when He commands that, and we in turn say no? And saying no is the apathy, is the box ticking, is the ‘I need my need’.

Speaking without seeking, worshipping without engaging, praying without awareness. All this says ‘no, I will not do as You command and seek Your face’. It’s ‘you seek mine’. Or if its total apathy, let’s not bother with either. When God says seek My face, He is saying I’m available, you need Me, you have access to Me. Sibbes says:

Therefore we may observe by the way, that when we are in any dark condition, that a Christian finds not the beams of God shining on him, let him not lay the blame upon God, as if God were a God that delighted to hide himself.

Wonderful sobering words. We have no excuse as believers for thinking that God has someone deserted us, or is not accessible to us . It seems we can especially think that in our deepest darkest times, yet God is not a God who hides from us. No, not at all ‘it is not his delight’ as Sibbes puts it. Sibbes puts it even more simple and clear than that. He says:

If God had not a communicative spearing goodness, he would never have created the world.

It’s that simple - if God didn’t want to be known, and did not want you to access Him, He would remain anonymous and just enjoyed His own creation by Himself. God wants to be known and He created us to have relationship with Him.

We hear in the modern church: God can’t do it without you. Nonsense, God was doing just fine. The Trinity i.e. the Father, Son and Holy Ghost was fine without us. He doesn’t need us.

But as Sibbes points out:

But God delights to communicate and spread his goodness.

He asks us, no, He commands us to seek His face, that we might receive the riches of His goodness, the understanding of His will, and to receive true love and grace and mercy. I wrote a post last week about what happened when I sought God’s face, let me read it.

Before I do let me say, many times I sought God, but I never truly sought His face, never did I truly seek Him. Mostly I did it drunk. But the moment I sought Him earnestly, due to Him drawing me, this is what happened. Let me read this:

Not until the moment, or moments that surrounded my salvation was I ever able to judge myself as so utterly guilty and thoroughly deserving of my own shame and despair. Yet it was in those moments that the gentleness and power of Christ’s mercy and grace cradled me like a new born baby and brought unprecedented comfort and security. The more unworthy I felt, the more comfort I received. Tonight as I read John Newton I am reminded of that time as if it were yesterday. It can be a bit of a cliche to say the greatest gift one can receive this Christmas is that of accepting Christ. However, it truly is beyond compare and lasts for eternity. Again I’m reminded to share this message and this message alone this Christmas, and do so not as we see everywhere, poorly wrapped in cheap sentiment.

I had no goodness in me, I still do not. No one is good. Jesus said so Himself. What we get from God when we seek Him and He grants us access is what Sibbes calls ‘borrowed goodness’. That is in affect is what God is saying when He commands us to seek Him. He is saying: ‘I want to give you My goodness, you have none of your own, have Mine’. How often does God tell us: ‘come to Me, all who are weary’, yet we ignore it. Augustine says:

God spoke often to me but I was ignorant of it.

I think we all can testify to that. I believe even in that, God uses it to show us how futile our own self will is. I don’t know about you, but my life could be way, way richer - by that I mean Christlike, if I was much more reactive to the prompts when the Holy Spirit nudged me to seek His face, and be more like David who God spoke to and David responded: ‘my heart said to me, Lord I will seek Thy face’.

Let me talk on that, in case we miss it. David said ‘my heart said to me’. God spoke into the heart of David. It’s how the Holy Spirit speaks to us. Its where hear it, we feel it in our hearts. The key is not the response - listen to me here. You are all here because you responded. We all sing when the worship is on, that’s responding. We all amen at the end when we pray, that’s responding. But it’s when we answer from the heart, and respond from the heart - that response turns to honest seeking of God.

We can all respond without engaging. David did not simply respond to God’s command to seek His face. David’s heart responded. The response was not an unengaged response. It was one that his whole being answered. In a way that it became the paramount thing above all other things. How shallow and passive is our response? It’s no better at times than the response we give a child who is asking us questions that we know don’t merit any meaningful engagement.

Too often we respond through the head, through habit, but truly we would be all much richer in our lives and bear much fruit if we indeed had responsive hearts, not just heads. Therefore we need to draw unto God. We need to fix our eyes on Him as He calls us to seek Him. We need to take those prompts seriously as a wonderful blessing.

The Lord called and I answered, and said here I am Lord. Here I come Lord. I’m putting everything down and aside. I will seek you alone. It’s a date with God where you cancel all other appointments. No, I will finish doing nothing first. Isn’t that the case? It’s not that you were doing something, it’s that you were doing nothing most the time, or doing something that mattered not, or doing something that you shouldn’t. God won’t call a breastfeeding mother to stop and come seek My face.

I love how Sibbes talks of how the heart will lead us when the heart connects to the heavenly realm. Sibbes writes:

When the heart knows once the heart has enough from heavenward it has enough from heaven.

He adds:

The heart by the work it has of itself, speaks to itself and to the whole man to seek God.

Meaning that when we engage our heart with God and His Word, our own heart drives us towards Him by itself. What a wonderful way God has created us, that by engaging our heart to Him, our heart will hunger and cause us to seek Him more. Brothers and sisters, we need have this responsive heart. Even if it’s only a small spark, it will drive us into His arms. When our heart is touched, then our heart will lead.

Let’s close by reading the rest of the prayer we started with tonight:

Whatever gain I have got in my calling, whatever strength I have received from my food, whatever comfort I have had from my friends, whatever peace, liberty, and protection I have enjoyed, you, Lord, have brought it to me. I receive every day more mercies than there are moments, and borrow sums I can never repay. Lord, I confess there is not a day of my life when I do not break your laws in thought, word and deed. As my sins abound, let my sorrow abound, and let your grace much more abound. Though I can never return your favours, help me to admire and bless you, their fountain. Let the eyes of my soul be open to you in praise before the eyes of my body are shut in sleep. My life is by your providence; oh, that it were according to your precepts! Let every day be so devoted to your praise, and every part of it so employed in your service, that I may be the more prepared to worship you in that place where there is no night, yet always rest, where I shall worship and enjoy you without distraction-perfectly and perpetually.

- George Swinnock 

Amen