Prayer Meeting 28/6/2022

Intimacy And Confession Strengthens Our Resilience Towards Temptation

Well, our last prayer meeting we entitled: ‘God I Know What’s Wrong With Me ,I’m Missing You’, and I truly hope for sure as the Lord continues to lead us, that is something we truly recognise with much more ease. That indeed we fully know the difference between carnal distractions and communion and intimacy with God. Even better than noticing, would of course be that we are never out of communion with God. For me that ought to be our greatest desire and surely the more we taste and see that the Lord is good, the more we spend that time in prayer and intimacy with Him, the less we will ever feel the need or desire to leave it, and when we do we quickly recognise what’s the problem.

Here is a quote from Thomas Brooks that I read at the last prayer meeting, as we spoke of his writing on The Privy Key Of Heaven, or as we called it: ‘private prayer’.

How can you say you love me when you never acquaint me with your secrets? How can you say you love me when you never bestow any private visits upon me? How can you say you are my children yet be so closed and reserved as you are?

Isn’t it shocking, that we can have such interaction with our flesh and such passivity to God? The time we give to our desires of the flesh, the effort we put in to scroll for carnal wants, yet we can’t, as Sibbes says: ‘Walk across the room and open the door’.

Okay, tonight’s puritan prayer is from ‘The Valley Of Vison’ page 138-139. The prayer is entitled: ‘Confessions And Petitions’.

HOLY LORD,

I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find thy mind in thy Word, of neglect to seek thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, But I bless thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ; Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do thou rule over me in liberty and power. I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused - I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to thy rule. I thank thee for thy wisdom and thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross. No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction. Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in thee. Then I shall bless thee, God of Jeshurun, for helping me to be upright. 

Again, as we unfold tonight’s teaching this prayer will gather more weight. Thomas Brooks, again in his writings on closet prayer, writes this:

You cannot have too frequent communion with God, you cannot have too frequent intercourse with Jesus, you cannot have your hearts too frequently with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and with the peace that passes understanding, you cannot have heaven too frequently brought down into our hearts, nor you cannot have your hearts too frequently carried up to heaven; therefore you cannot be too frequent in closet prayers.

Isn’t it amazing that we are very frequently tempted, very frequently worldly minded, very frequently in trials, very frequently self-absorbed? Ask yourself, how often are you tempted, angered, fearful, consumed, distracted, carnal-minded? Would they all add up to very frequently? Yes, I’m sure is the answer. Yet we are way, way less frequent in our prayers and private devotional time. The question is therefore this: How often do we frequent sin compared to our frequenting ourselves with the Lord? Brooks writes:

First be frequent in closet prayer, and not now and then only. He will never make any yearnings for closet prayer, that is not frequent in closet prayer.

Or in other words, if we don’t spend time doing it, we won’t crave it. We crave what we devote ourselves to, and as we have said, the carnal things are no substitute to what we gain blessing from, from spending time with the Lord. Isn’t it amazing that we are very frequently tempted, very frequently worldly-minded, very frequently in trials, very frequently self-absorbed, yet we are less frequent in our prayers and private devotional time with the Lord?

Where does that passivity come from? Well, we have talked much over the weeks of different reasons, I do believe however, like brooks says:

There is no greater hindrance to secret prayer in all the world, than secret sin.

This for me is the greatest hindrance to secret prayer, I would add, heart rendering prayer, genuine prayer and lengthy, genuine, vulnerable, humble prayers. How can we say we love God, when we don’t miss Him or desire to pour our hearts out to Him? How can we desire to crucify our flesh when we have secret sin we won’t bear to God?

Your weak prayer life has no greater hindrance than hidden sin. How much does it hinder our coming boldly to God, or even humbly for that matter? How much is our prayer calculated, how much of our prayers have no heart-bearing flow because we are unwilling to bring our secret sins or our habitual disobedience to the Lord? We can even enter into prayer with our minds firmly fixed on avoiding them. They don’t even come into the prayer, some dare not touch them lest they be exposed and confronted, lest that carnal desire be challenged. Many would rather pray a pretence, ‘absent in spirit prayer’ about anything else, rather than touch the sin that they are hiding. Brooks writes:

There is an antipathy betwixt secret sinning and secret prayer.

Meaning there is a very strong dislike, there is a total aversion between secret prayers and hidden sin. Intimate communion with God and hidden sins are not intimate. They love to stay well apart. Or should I say, the hidden sin loves to stay apart; God doesn’t. Brooks writes:

Though men labour to hide their ways from others, and from themselves yet it is but to labour in vain to endeavour to hide them from God.

Proverbs 5:21

For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord,
And He ponders all his paths.

Note here that, as MacArthur says in his study bible, the Lord is merciful and withholds immediate judgement. I could add this: if we spent more intimate time with God, we would see He is indeed a merciful God, as well as an all-knowing God. As brooks says, to ignore it ‘is not only derogatory to his omniscience but also his mercy’. No sin is less seen by God than any other. Those hidden and those open are in the same view of the Lord almighty. Therefore, as I’ve said countless times over the years, it is therefore only man you are hiding them from, and therefore man whom you are worshipping.

How could Jesus be all our sacrifice for all our sins if He was only able to die for the sins we show? Jesus died and took the punishment for the sins of His chosen people. Now that does not mean we ought to continue, nor should we even desire to, do so but it should lead us to a cry from our hearts, for mercy and to confess, and ask for forgiveness. Surely then, as we enter into more sustained time, more heart-rendering time with God, He will continue to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:8-10

⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

As we enter into prayer with God and humble ourselves, our God-conscience grows, our holiness and desire to live righteous grows. Brooks writes: ‘conscience is God’s spy in the bosom’. That bosom, that heart, that deep intimate place, is expanded when we commune with God. Our conscience is then so much more easily pierced, because we are not hardening our hearts from it. Intimacy with God grows and expands our conscience. Our God-centred heart expands and sin becomes much more convicting, it can’t stand in the environment our hearts are now living in, due to our continued intimacy and love, and openness, and soul-bearing we have with the Lord; the Holy Spirit is full and pumping in our very veins.

You see brothers and sisters, intimacy, closet prayers, deep crying to deep, not only brings God’s mercy to cover our sin but it fills us with a deeper conscience that we are deeply convicted whenever we go near it. Time with the Lord not only cleanses us, but it fills us with a holy conviction as we live out our lives. Intimacy with God, communion with God, secret prayers, private prayer times, deeply pouring our hearts out to Him as a loving advocate who loves us so much He has already paid for our sin, gives us the most extraordinary armour to withstand temptation and trails and carnal things.

We will have arms and help, and remedies to fight sin and temptation when we spent time with the Lord, and take all our hidden sins to Him. It will build us up in ways that our conscience will be pierced as soon as we are tempted. You will surely see the trouble coming, and as we have spoken recently, resist the devil and he will flee. A fleeing devil will always be seen around a secret sin-confessor, a secret prayer believer, an intimate follower of God.

I will simply add this as I close: take all your sins, all your disobedience, all your carnal pursuits, all your unwillingness to the Lord, who already knows them. Take all your baggage to Him. Hold nothing back, keep doing it, let Him cover you and protect you. Often God will leave it with you and Him if you go to Him with an open heart. He wants not to humiliate you, nor does He want others’ hearts to be hurt by it. God is not in the business of discouraging His saints, His chosen, so He would much rather deal with it with you alone. God is not in the business of having your sins infect others with pain and doubt. Hence we ought to take all to Him, lest it spill onto everyone.

Let your closet prayer build up your resilience and righteousness towards all future temptations and trials. If we would but spent time continually with the Lord, we would not need to constantly confess our disobedience. Although we all sin, and to say we don’t is to lie as John has wrote. But for sure we certainly would not be so arrogant in hiding it or denying it. We would be way more ready to face the temptations as they arise, we would be able to discern our weaknesses, we would be able to, and be more strengthened to turn from it and deny ourselves.

Consistently spending secret time in prayer and devotion, will most certainly give us the level of conscience to resist the devil, until he flees. No resistance; no intimacy. No intimacy; no confession. No confession; no intimacy. No intimacy; no resilience, and it goes on and on. What makes the devil flee? It is our holiness and close communion with God; it is our fullness of the Spirit; it is our fully awakened God-conscience that makes him flee. Because it’s when we are like that, that it truly shows up his lies, it shows him up as a rejector of God.

The devil does not want to look like one who was evil and thrown out of heaven. He wants to look like he is God and is in charge, and in fact that its him whom we should worship. So when we are in a deep communion with God, we are not in the dark but walk as angels of the light, we are filled with the presence of God, the devil flees because he knows he will be exposed as a fake and we will see him exactly as he is. So he flees from our presence and waits for another moment . That moment when it comes (and it will), through our private prayers, our intimate confession, will keep us close to God, and when the devil comes he will get the same treatment again.

I will close by reading the same prayer. I’m sure it will be more impacting now.

‘The Valley Of Vison’ page 138-139, entitled: ‘Confessions And Petitions’:

HOLY LORD,

I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find thy mind in thy Word, of neglect to seek thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, But I bless thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ; Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do thou rule over me in liberty and power. I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused - I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to thy rule. I thank thee for thy wisdom and thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross. No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction. Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in thee. Then I shall bless thee, God of Jeshurun, for helping me to be upright. 

Amen.