Luther on prayer being undistracted

I read this helpful quote from John Piper's Brothers, we are not professionals (pp.62-63) today. By the way, this book has just been published in Spanish, which is great news!

Martin Luther was once asked by his barber, "Dr. Luther, how do you pray?" Astonishingly, one of the busiest men of the Reformation wrote a forty-page response for his barber, Peter Beskendorf. His words are a great inspiration for us to beware of sacred substitutes.

"A good clever barber must have his thoughts, mind and eyes concentrated upon the razor and the beard and not forget where he is in his stroke and shave. If he keeps talking or looking around or thinking of something else, he is likely to cut a man's mouth or nose - or even his throat. So anything that is to be done well ought to occupy the whole man with all his faculties and members. As the saying goes: he who thinks of many things thinks of nothing and accomplishes no good. How much more must prayer possess the heart exclusively and completely if it is to be a good prayer!"

Spurgeon on health and sickness

"I dare say the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health... with the exception of sickness. If some men that I know of could only be favoured with a month of rheumatism it would be God's grace to mellow them marvellously."

"I'm afraid that all the grace that I have got of all my comfortable and easy times and happy hours might almost lie on a penny but the good that I have received from my sorrows and pains and griefs is altogether incalculable. Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister's library."

quoted by John Piper in Charles Spurgeon: Preaching through Adversity,

John Piper on risk

"If we walk away from risk to keep ourselves safe and solvent, we will waste our lives.

"If Christ is an all-satisfying treasure and promises to provide all our needs, even through famine and nakedness, then to live as though we had all the same values of the world would betray him." (p.107)

"my sense is that in the prosperous West, the danger in the church is not that there are too many overly zealous people who care too deeply about the lost, and invest hazardously in the cause of the Gospel, and ruin their lives with excessive mercy to the poor. For every careless saint who burns himself out and breaks up his family with misdirected zeal, I venture, there are a thousand who coast with the world, treating Jesus like a helpful add-on, but not as an all-satisfying, all-authoritative King in the cause of love." (p.118)

"One of the marks of this peacetime mind-set is what I call an avoidance ethic. In wartime we ask different questions about what to do with our lives than we do in peacetime. We ask: What can I do to advance the cause? What can I do to bring the victory? What sacrifice can I make or what risk can I take to insure the joy of triumph? In peacetime we tend to ask, What can I do to be more comfortable? To have more fun? To avoid trouble and, possibly, avoid sin?" (p.118)

"Since we all live in a world created by television, it is almost impossible to see what has happened to us. The only hope is to read what people were like in previous centuries. Biographies are a great antidote to cultural myopia and chronological snobbery. We have become almost incapable of handling any great truth reverently and deeply. Magnificent things, especially the glory of God, as David Wells says, rest with a kind of “weightlessness” even on the church." (p.121)

"At these moments, when the trifling fog of life clears and I see what I am really on earth to do, I groan over the petty pursuits that waste so many lives—and so much of mine. Just think of the magnitude of sports—a whole section of the daily newspaper. But there is no section on God. Think of the endless resources for making your home and garden more comfortable and impressive. Think of how many tens of thousands of dollars you can spend to buy more car than you need. Think of the time and energy and conversation that go into entertainment and leisure and what we call “fun stuff.” And add to that now the computer that artificially recreates the very games that are already so distant from reality; it is like a multi-layered dreamworld of insignificance expanding into nothingness." (p.125)

Quotes from John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life

Encouragements to persevere

Several readings from John Piper's meditations in A Godward Life have been a great encouragement recently. Here are some quotes and reflections from one.





Talking to Your Tears (on Psalm 126:5-6)
"May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy! He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him." (RSV)

There is nothing inherently sorrowful about sowing seed, says Piper. The point is rather that sowing is a task that must be performed whatever the circumstances or ones spiritual and emotional state. No sowing - no harvest, it's as simple as that.

This, then, is an encouraging to keep going, to persevere, to keep working even when it's the last thing we feel like doing.

The crops won't wait while we finish our grief or solve our problems. If we
are going to eat next winter, we must get out in the field and sow the seed
whether we are crying or not.

This psalm teaches the tough truth that there is work to be done whether I am emotionally up for it or not, and it is
good for me to do it.

So here's the lesson: When there are simple, straightforward jobs to be done,
and you are full of sadness and the tears are flowing easily, go ahead and do
the jobs with tears. Be realistic. Say to your tears: "Tears, I feel you. You
make me want to quit life, but there is a field to be sown (dishes to be washed,
a car to be fixed, a sermon to be written). I know you will wet my face several
times today, but I have work to do and you will just have to go with me. I
intend to take the bag of seeds and sow. If you come along, then you will just
have to wet the rows."

[And] if you do that, the promise of this psalm is that you will "reap with
shouts of joy"... not because the tears of sowing produce the joy of reaping,
but because the sheer sowing produces the reaping. We need to remember this even
when our tears tempt us to give up sowing.

Source: John Piper (1998) A Godward Life: Meditations on the supremacy of God in all of life (Eastbourne: Kingsway), pp.89-90

PS thanks to J-D & Kellee who gave us this book as a wedding present 6+ years ago

Christless leisure

I've already added this quote to Underlined Bits, but thought it was worth putting here too.

Jesus Christ is refreshing, but flight from him into Christless leisure
makes the soul parched. At first it may feel like freedom and fun to skimp on
prayer and neglect the Word, but then we pay: shallowness, prayerlessness,
vulnerability to sin, preoccupation with trifles, superficial relationships, and
a frightening loss of interest in worship and the things of the Spirit.

John Piper (1997) A Godward Life, in ch.34 "Setting Our Minds on Things Above in Summer"