The Blog of Hobbes

“… do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not…”, says Jeremiah, in 45:5. We must not assume that we are all called to greatness. We are not all destined to reach the highest level of our profession or skill. We must go further and say that, in certain situations, we should not even seek greatness, let alone achieve it. But, this kind of talk goes against the grain of our success-obsessed society. It is assumed that, given the opportunity, success and the attainment of our goals is achievable through self-belief and hard work.

But, this clearly fails to take into account the sovereign providence of God, who has given all of us a gift, and also a measure of faith and grace according to which we practice our gift. Paul says that, since we have been given “gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them “in proportion to our faith” (Romans 12:6). This implies that the level of attainment in any activity is limited by God’s bestowal of gift, grace and faith. It also implies that, to use our gifts at a level beyond the measure of our faith and beyond the grace given to us, we will lose the effectiveness and power of the gift.

It would be tragic to spend a whole life striving to attain greatness in a certain sphere, only to realise at the end that we never actually possessed the faith and grace to achieve it. Far better to teach nursery children in God’s grace, than to spend a life struggling vainly to become a philosophy professor. Far better to serve at tables while being full of the Spirit and full of wisdom (Acts 6:1-3), than to grasp at a platform ministry for which we are ill-equipped.

My favourite definition of humility is: “to accept the truth about ourselves, our circumstances and our God”. It may be true that God has given me the grace to teach at seminary. But, it may become evident that I have been given the grace to teach only Sunday School. Even so, if I perform this function according to the measure of faith given to me, then I will receive the same reward as a seminary professor who performs his function according to his faith. We are not called to greatness (in this sense) primarily, but to faithfulness in whatever sphere God places us.

I read the following quote on Thabiti Anyabwile’s blog. I don’t think I’ve read a better quotation on prayer for a long time, perhaps except this one.

This, then, is the prayer of faith: to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. That promise is the only ground for our confidence in asking. Such confidence is not “worked up” from within our emotional life; rather, it is given and supported by what God has said in Scripture.

Truly ‘righteous’ men and women of faith know the value of their heavenly Father’s promises. They go to Him, as children do to a loving human father. They know that if they can say to an earthly father, ‘But, father, you promised…,’ they can both persist in asking and be confident that he will keep his word. How much more our heavenly Father, who has given His Son for our salvation! We have no other grounds of confidence that He hears our prayers. We need none.

Such appeal to God’s promises constitutes what John Calvin, following Turtullian, calls ‘legitimate prayer.’

Some Christians find this disappointing. It seems to remove the mystique from the prayer of faith. Are we not tying down our faith to ask only for what God already has promised? But such disappointment reveals a spiritual malaise: would we rather devise our own spirituality (preferably spectacular) than God’s (frequently modest)?

The struggles we sometimes experience in prayer, then, are often part of the process by which God gradually brings us to ask for only what He has promised to give. The struggle is not our wrestling to bring Him to give us what we desire, but our wrestling with His Word until we are illuminated and subdued by it, saying, ‘Not my will, but Your will be done.’ Then, as Calvin again says, we learn ‘not to ask for more than God allows.’

This is why true prayer can never be divorced from real holiness. The prayer of faith can be made only by the ‘righteous’ man whose life is being more and more aligned with the covenant grace and purposes of God. In the realm of prayer, too (since it is a microcosm of the whole of the Christian life), faith (prayer to the covenant Lord) without works (obedience to the covenant Lord) is dead.

From Sinclair Ferguson, In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel Centered Life (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust), pp. 146-147.

From “The Valley of Vision” (p14):

Help me to honour thee by believing before I feel,
for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith.

So, why is this a “great sin”? Because it undermines and devalues the role of the Word of God as the foundation of faith. It implies our feelings are more trustworthy, or more persuasive, than God. But, it is “hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17) that God uses to birth faith in us - not by giving us appropriate feelings.

God is always true and trustworthy. Feelings are frequently unreliable and deceitful.