Prayer & Preparation for December 4th, 2022
This Lord's Day
Hey church,
Here are some details about this week’s services:
Songs: “Come All Ye Faithful” (Sov. Grace version), “Hallelujah! What a Savior” (Austin Stone
Christmas version), “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone),” “All I Have Is Christ,” & “By Faith”
Sermon text: Ezra 8
Sermon title: “Dependence & Diligence”
Quotes from commentaries I find helpful and/or challenging:
“God’s people today should be equally attentive to detail. God cares about balanced budgets,
matching curtains, sound systems, and so on (Matt. 25:21).”
Dean R. Ulrich
“Whether it is preparing for a summer missions trip or a vacation Bible school, inventories form
part of a necessary prerequisite, no matter how ‘unspiritual’ they may appear to be. Running
short of supplies or realizing that our hearts were unprepared is a potential disaster that must
be addressed before embarking on any spiritual enterprise. Ezra’s concern for details shows
him to be thorough in his preparation, wise in his strategic planning, and accountable to God in
his stewardship of God’s provision.”
Derek W.H. Thomas
Because of Ezra’s call to fasting in verses 21-23, I retraced my steps through John Piper’s
book: A Hunger for God. There’s so much in that book worthy of your attention. In the
introduction he says,
“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you
have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the
world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. God did not
create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn
from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast:
‘This much, O God, I want you.’”
And then, near the end of the book, Piper turns his attention to Ezra 8 and says this:
“But fasting, for Ezra, was not only an expression of humility and desperation; it was an
expression of desiring God with life-and-death seriousness. ‘So we fasted and implored our
God.’ Fasting comes alongside prayer with all its hunger for God and says, ‘We are not able in
ourselves to win this battle. We are not able to change hearts or minds. We are not able to
change worldviews and transform culture… We are not able to heal the endless wounds of
godless ideologies and their bloody deeds. But, O God, you are able! And we turn from reliance on ourselves to you. And we cry out to you and plead that for the sake of your name, and for
the sake of your glory, and for the advancement of your saving purpose in the world, and for
the demonstration of your wisdom and your power and your authority over all things, and for
the sway of your Truth and the relief of the poor and the helpless, act, O God. This much we
hunger for the revelation of your power. With all our thinking and all our writing and all our
doing, we pray and we fast. Come. Manifest your glory…’ May the Lord grant that the greatness
of our calling not paralyze our desires. But may our hunger for private and public displays of the
glory of our great God find release in fasting and prayer and every good work.”
It seems like these are fitting bookends to the content of the book, the one answering to the
other. It seems they fit not only with verses 21-23 of Ezra 8, but also with the tone of the
entire chapter. Please pray for these kinds of results of, and responses to, the preaching this
week.
Would you also please pray for me? Piper includes the following quotes from Jonathan
Edwards and about Thomas Shepard:
“The state of the times extremely requires a fullness of the divine Spirit in ministers, and we
ought to give ourselves no rest till we have obtained it. And in order to [do] this, I should think
ministers, above all persons, ought to be much in secret prayer and fasting…earnestly seeking
for those extraordinary supplies of divine grace from heaven that we need at this day.”
“Shepard thought that he should never do any great things in feeding his flock if he did not
great things in fasting by himself.”
I know this is a call to me to be praying for my ministry among you, but I’m asking you to join
me in praying for these things as well. I need a fullness of God’s Spirit and extraordinary
supplies of divine grace, and I want to feed you well, even this week.
May the God who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead give us grace that is not in vain but
gives us to work diligently, though it is not us who works, but his grace in us. May we be
steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord
our labor is not in vain. And may he give us to do this while depending not on ourselves but on
him who raises the dead, trusting that his grace is sufficient for us and his power is made
perfect in our weakness, so that we are content and boastful in our weaknesses. May his
power rest on us so that when we are weak, then we are strong.
Jeff Tague
