The Perichoresis Between Study and Prayer

"As an ex-pietist one of the most vicious laws under which I was placed early on in my Christian life was the 'quiet time.' I was taught to carry a 'verse pack' and to keep a 'quiet time' journal. The younger Christians were to use the '9:59 Plan' and the more mature were to use the '29:59 Plan.' As you can see, a search reveals that it's back.

Recently, as I gathered with the student prayer group (I'm not against prayer!) and again today in Med-Ref, as I tried to explain the rise of monasticism and its appeal, I recounted my early Christian experience with pietism and the law of the quiet time. To have a quiet time, not attendance to the means of grace, was the mark of piety.

Hunted Down

I have derived much spiritual benefit from Dr. David P. Murray's sermons. Though the Scottish accent does certainly please my ears a lot, and though his able use of alliteration in sermon titles and sermon points further serve this, it is his keen exegesis and application that have brought the Gospel home to me over and over again in times of need.

In his latest blog post, insightfully entitled, "God's been hunting me down," he bares his heart wide open, reflecting on the ways God has been dealing with him lately through physical affliction. He realizes that he has been pushing his body to its physical limits and, though he has certainly helped a lot of people through his fervent activity (I've never chanced upon anyone else with as much sermons as him on sermonaudio.com), he acknowledges that he has erred by having engaged in "ministry without spirituality."

Read the post here.

The Better "Daily Devotional"

I'm not certain if the case is the same in the U.S., but I think it would not be a hasty generalization to state that RBC's "Our Daily Bread" is the staple pietist "devotional" literature here in the Philippines. I used to be one of the consumers (stacks of the booklet still bedeck a part of our storeroom). Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone desiring their daily dose of spiritual high. In fact, I wouldn't recommend seeking such highs.

Lest I be taken wrongly, I am not advocating the notion of the unimportance of private devotion. Private Bible study and prayer are indeed important—but they take a back seat to the corporate expression of piety that is manifested in the context of the visible church (read: attending the Sabbath meeting, expecting the covenant of grace renewed through preaching and ratified through the Sacraments). Approaching private devotion in the attitude of seeking emotionally-charged theophanies is a recipe for grounding one's sense of assurance on oneself (subjectively) rather than on Christ's person and finished work (objective), and that would be precarious.

But if you must insist, I can recommend D.A. Carson's "For the Love of God" for your daily devotional needs (just beware of Baptistic innuendos every now and then)—AND THIS(!):





Also available here.

The Right and Wrong in Richard Foster

It is certainly a misconception by many who are vaguely aware of the meat and substance of Reformed theology, piety, and practice that we of the Reformed persuasion are lean on the area of private spiritual devotion. So you have the likes of Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Donald Whitney, et al. filling in the demand for more "instruction" on "spiritual formation," in the hopes of accelerating sanctification.

But whereas Scripture has laid out the three means of grace, i.e., the preaching of the Word, the Sacraments, and prayer, as the ways by which God has promised to meet us, build our faith, and hence produce the gratitude that is the ground of all God-pleasing obedience, gurus of "spiritual discipline" make much of introspection and obsessive "fruit-hunting" through devices that are really extrabiblical, taking more from mysticism than the catholic Christian faith.

Spiritual Disciplines or the Means of Grace?

We've all heard of the various methods that are supposedly the keys to hastening our sanctification. We are people of the new nature, the Christ nature, and we want to be conformed more and more into the image and likeness of Christ—a Spirit-wrought desire. But these methods, the ones we have come to know as spiritual disciplines, are they really the means to the receiving of Christ's enablements? The most famous of these "disciplines" is the proverbial "quiet time" wherein one purposefully sets aside an appropriate amount of time each day to spend in private prayer and Bible study. Now, times of private devotion are commendable and even necessary, but I would venture to say that when the "quiet time" becomes one's chief "means" of the attainment of Christlikeness, as what medieval monasticism and more recent pietism advocate, then we have a problem.

If faith is the way by which we are united to Christ, then we must ask how the Spirit, the Person of the Trinity tasked with the progressive transformation of our characters, creates and strengthens this faith in us. The historical, confessional, Reformed church (another way of saying the church that holds to apostolic doctrine) has always recognized that the Spirit quickens faith through the means of grace. What are these means? No, not journaling, blanking out the mind, or even fasting; they are the Word, the sacraments, and prayer.

It is quite easy to see how the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments cannot be effected in the privacy of one's room when one is alone, and even less appropriately in one's pajamas! This is because the Christian life was meant to be corporate, in the context of the local, visible church. Sanctification will not progress if one is not a member of a local church and receiving the preached Word and sacraments. Times of solitude, though needed sometimes, is not particularly more "spiritual" than being faithful in attending to the means of grace—and attending to the means of grace is not possible without being concomitantly faithful to keeping the Sabbath holy in church attendance.

It really seems to me that if more of us would disrobe ourselves of our monastic habits (def. robe of a monk) and instead put on our best Sunday church clothes, then more Christlikeness would be apparent in us.

"Consider how William Perkins (1558—1602), the father of English Puritanism, described the Christian life. In his 1558 catechism, The Foundation of the Christian Religion Gathered into Six Principles, he made it clear that conversion is not ordinarily a momentary or epochal experience and certainly not chiefly a private religious experience, but rather and ordinarily the result of the prevenient grace of justifying faith which comes through the hearing of the preached gospel and the consequent grace of sanctification received in the means of grace administered in the church. In the first part of the Foundation, Perkins summarizes briefly the six principles. Under the fifth principle he asks,

Q. What are the ordinary or usual means for obtaining faith?
A. Faith cometh only by the preaching of the Word and increaseth daily by it: as also by the administration of the sacraments and prayer.

This is virtually identical to the language of HC Q.65. The only difference between the HC and Perkins is that the latter added prayer as a means of grace, a position later taken up by the Westminster divines in the WCF 14.1.

Many years later, in his 1586 A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration, Perkins addressed the question of how sinners, who are part of Christ's visible church, which is composed of believers and unbelievers, can know that they are in fact Christians, that is, 'in a state of grace.' There can be no question whether Perkins was zealous that Christians have a deep and healthy experience of communion with Christ through His Spirit. Nevertheless, the place where Christians find their assurance in the gospel is in the hearing of it preached and in the administration of the sacraments. Perkins wrote at length about the inward work of the Spirit in convicting sinners of their need for a Savior and the 'benefits of Christ' that accrue to believers, but he always connected these operations of the Spirit to the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments. The empirical evidence to which Perkins appealed was not a peculiar emotional or heightened state of religious experience, but a joyful reception of God's Word preached, regular attendance to the means of grace, and condemnation of those who do not attend to the means of grace" (R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession (New Jersey: P&R Publishing Company, 2008), 334—335).

The Humanism of Individualistic Piety

How many of us have almost slammed our heads against the wall for having failed over and over again at being consistent with our quiet times? I would think the majority. It seems to me that this emphasis on individualistic piety has more to do with the humanism that has infected the church than it does with the application of biblical doctrine. It almost is an unspoken dogma that being unwavering in one's private times of devotion is superior to going to church every Lord's Day in order to partake of God's blessings through the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, corporate prayer and worship, and fellowship among the brethren. I think it's about time that a radical shift in emphasis ensues.

"Many Christians today associate words like piety, devotion, spirituality, and Christian life with things a believer does in private. 'How's your walk?' is shorthand really for asking how well you are keeping up with your personal Bible reading, devotions, and other spiritual disciplines. None of these are wrong, of course. In fact, Jesus modeled getting alone regularly to read Scripture and pray. Nevertheless, a covenantal orientation places much more emphasis on what we do together, with each other and for each other. This in no way entails that we do what we should, but there is an interrelational focus in covenant theology that is different from individualistic pieties. As University of Edinburgh historical theologian David F. Wright notes, 'The piety Calvin advocated was largely communal, churchly. There is much here about `frequenting the sermons` and sharing in the Lord's supper, but very little about individual devotional reading of the Bible or daily routines of prayer, let alone group Bible studies or prayer groups.'"

- Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, ch. 9, p. 179.

Solitude, Times Alone with God

Lk 5:16
But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.

I have come to know myself better and have realized that I truly cannot function as I should, in all godliness and effectiveness, without substantial times of being alone with God. I have observed that indwelling sin gets the upper hand whenever these seasons of solitude are neglected. It is something that must be approached intentionally, though my mind and emotions often speak loudly enough—in manifestations of anxiety, despondency, and a lack of peace—to remind me of this need that must be filled everyday.

Therefore, I have now made a commitment to treat solitude as a critical part of this Christ-ward journey called life. I will take in as much time as required to be abiding in the presence of God, apart from every concern and distraction except the one that seeks to gain vital nourishment from the Vine, and this mingled with worship, meditation, and the feeding on the Word.

These times will be pockets of heaven on earth.

"It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God." - Austin Phelps, The Still Hour or Communion with God, p. 64

Defining the Boundaries of Evangelical Spirituality

Many lovers of the God of the Bible have made it their New Year's resolution to "raise the bar", so to speak, on their spiritual lives. They have come to the conclusion that the way is through the engagement of the so-called spiritual disciplines. I am one of these people.

Below is a link to a valuable piece which I hope and pray will enable the people of God to enjoy God in ways that are in the realm of "spirit and truth". Soli Deo gloria!

Click: Defining the Boundaries of Evangelical Spirituality