Category: Faith

Rev. Steve Richardson opened the Church at War Conference at Trinity Bible Church delivering the first sermon on November 17, 2022. His sermon is titled “Seeking God Through Prayer.” Richardson is a Canadian pastor who was fined and threatened with imprisonment from the Canadian government and ultimately lost his church for refusing to limit worship gatherings to 10 people.

The rest of this article describes Richardson’s message, but reading this summary is like “looking through a glass dimly” compared to listening to the message firsthand:

Historical revivals. Richardson opens his message by describing historical revivals. Parishioners would sit outside in the pouring rain listening to the Word preached. Others continue in prayer and worship inside the church after the worship service and benediction, and still after a second benediction, until past midnight. Children as young as eight and teenagers are gathering to read the Bible and worship God.

Costs of revival. He also asks listeners how often they have prayed more than 30 minutes this week? While not prescriptive, it is a benchmark for comparing our prayer life. John MacArthur describes fervent and answered prayer as a mark of true faith.

Considering the fervent and faithful practice described both by Richardson and MacArthur, this sermon asks us, “Are we ready for revival?”

Need for revival. Many can see a need for political and societal revival in our nation when the government places more restrictions on worship than on aborting a child, when the state backs hospitals that surgically and permanently remove healthy body parts of children too young to drive, when the state backs public schools that teach gender dysphoria to impressionable children learning to tie their shoes, when public school teachers are required to be trained on Marxist ideologies of critical theory, or when the state forces healthy people to decide between losing their income or taking another shot that is unnecessary and proven to harm some who received it once.

However, Richardson challenges us to ask if we would be satisfied if God grants prayers for political and societal change as long as he does not give us Himself. Are we really seeking God? Or do we seek God to grant us favor and grant us our wishes? In Exodus 33:18, Moses asked to see God in His glory. Richardson diagnoses the disease in our generation of the church as laziness, as seen in the lukewarm church in Laodicea.

Traits of revival. Gospel revival has distinct traits which all come from the Word of God. While this list is not exhaustive, and I may have forgotten key elements, I think it provides a useful starting point to compare true gospel revival versus other spiritual experiences that claim to be revivals.

• People are convicted of their sins and fallen nature before a holy God.
• Conviction leads people to repentance, committing to turn from sinful ways.
• Believers have a hunger for the Word and truth. This can include reading, hearing, memorizing, and meditating on the Word, but should be sufficient to saturate the believer’s life to achieve the next trait:
• Believers have a conviction to remember and obey the Word such that their lives show a gospel transformation. (James 1:22)
• The prayer life of believers are revived with persistent prayer. (Luke 18:1)
• Prayers are seeking God’s will. (Matthew 6:33)
• Believers are using their gifts joyfully to serve God.
• Believers are glad to assemble with other believers to praise God. (Acts 2:46)
• Believers are evangelizing the lost, sharing the good news of the gospel. The Great Commission is being fulfilled (Matthew 28:18-20).

Are you ready for revival if God takes hold of your heart to change in these areas? Spending more time in prayer, alone and in fellowship? Stepping out of your comfort zone to evangelize strangers? Spending more time in the Word, not only reading it but memorizing and meditating on it? Spending more time listening to faithful preaching? Spending enough time with God to see Him convicting you in areas where sin remains and seeing His power to live a new life?

If we have no desire for drawing nearing to God, we should check whether our faith is real, as I John encourages its readers to affirm. In little time, I found one resource from John MacArthur describing elements of real faith.

Jesus called the churches in Revelation to be revived by turning to their first love and turning from their sinful practices. Given the state of our society, government, and churches, we need God’s grace and mercy to “rend the heavens” (Richardson quote) and bring revival to our own hearts and then to those around us.

A brief background on Richardson. Richardson is formerly a pastor in Tillsonburg, Ontario within the Canadian Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) Church. He held strong conviction to conduct church with his members without limiting in-person attendance to 10 people per Canadian health guidelines. Pastors may base this conviction on Hebrews 10:25 which commands believes not to forsake assembling. He was fined and threatened with imprisonment by the Canadian government for violating the mandates, and his presbytery applied pressure on him to follow the government mandates. Through a series of events, Richardson left the ARP for Vanguard presbytery and lost his church. Richardson is currently working as a teacher at King Alfred Academy in Ontario.

34But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the great and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” -Matthew 22:34-39

I have had container gardens in two prior years since moving to the suburbs in 2018: a tomato garden and a corn, bean, and squash garden. This year I have been in a different home which had two raised beds already in the backyard, and I have had more space to combine a variety of vegetables. My spring garden this year has been a learning experience. I combined kale, spinach, rosemary, thyme, sage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and two mints, spearmint and peppermint, into one raised bed. By the end of spring, the mints had expanded so much that they were climbing the broccoli plants and causing the broccoli to lean over. The mints were my most prolific plants hands down.

Our church today had a sermon on Matthew 22 with two exhortations: to love Christ with our whole heart and to be joyful. Much more could be said to reproduce the sermon here, but I will focus on my personal application. The image of mint expanding abundantly and boundlessly in my garden was a vivid image of how our love of Christ should crowd out competing thoughts that would steal our joy. While I experience joy in Christ whenever I seek it, I admittedly find that the concerns of the world-dating/marriage, work, community, housework, etc.-often can choke out my joy in Christ instead of vice versa.

My prayer for this week is to seek joy in Christ whenever I am tempted to let circumstances steal my joy and gratitude for His work.

Would you like to buy a t-shirt to support a good cause? I designed a shirt with the help of Fund the Nations to raise funds for an upcoming mission trip to Germany: https://houstonsfirst.focusmissions.com/!/#/9694/germany–2019/participants/127455/donate

This t-shirt can serve as a great conversation starter about your faith and how God cares about the needy. The phrase Be for the sojourner and logo comes from Deuteronomy 24:19-22 where the Israelites are instructed to leave margins on their harvest for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. They were called to leave some sheaves of wheat, olives, grapes, etc. in the field and on the trees for the less fortunate to feed themselves.

In the same manner today we are called to give a portion of what the Lord has blessed us with for the needy: helping the refugees that are here as long as God has them here, helping the orphans, the widows, and other needy. This same calling is what motivates me to give my time and resources to travel to Germany and see what God is doing among them to bring them hope for this live and assurance of salvation. I hope you will also become part of my story on this trip and purchase a shirt, become a prayer partner, and/or support the trip financially. Thank you!

¹⁹ “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. ²⁰ When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. ²¹ When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. ²² You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this.

Deuteronomy 24:19-22 [ESV]

I have decided to start a series on contentment since this is a subject that is important to maintain a strong walk in Christ. It is hard to hold discontentment in our hearts and not house one of its nefarious siblings: jealousy, envy, greed, lust, and selfish ambition. All of these anti-values mar the Christian testimony and render Satan effective in his schemes for our lives.

For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

James 3:16

If we look around at our community of friends, coworkers, and family, we will see that many people, and even Christians, in today’s world are continually seeking something to bring them contentment or joy. They could be seeking achievement, relationships, pleasure, leisure, investments, alcohol, hobbies and toys, even showy acts of service, our own earthly kingdom in family or work, or simply busyness to distract from discontentment. Most of these are not wrong in their own right, but they are wrong when they fill the hole in our lives that only God can fill. They are wrong when they become idols that we expect to bring us contentment and joy.

Why do we seek these things for contentment? I think it is because they do give a temporary, fleeting contentment or joy. However, when they stop providing that temporary happiness, we then might blame that object of our affections that gave us temporary joy and think that somehow we need to put more effort into that object, really an idol, until it starts to reproduce that contentment or joy we thought we once had. Else, we switch to another idol of choice since we have now forgotten how it also failed us in the past.

What are some tangible examples? Maybe we place our hopes in our children, and we place undue burdens on them when they fail to provide us contentment with their achievements. Maybe we place it in a relationship or spouse and become bitter when they don’t value us. We might seek contentment in building an empire at work, which would cause us to exercise some quite unhealthy behaviors to support allies in our network and harm others. This discontentment and self-seeking can manifest itself in a myriad of ways.

The reality is that contentment is not based on our circumstances or these seemingly tangible aspects of our lives. The Apostle Paul sacrificed religious standing, prosperity, and relative safety for the gospel of Christ. He followed Christ in an ancient and brutal Roman world with jealous Pharisaical Jewish leaders where he suffered imprisonment and harassment. Despite all of these hardships, Paul wrote,

Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

Philippians 4:11-12

Had Paul followed the easy and wide road as a Pharisee, he would have seen the temple where he worshiped demolished, seen his religious hierarchy ended by the Romans, and ultimately lost eternal life. Instead Paul sacrificed temporary hardships for eternal gain and became the most prolific writer of the New Testament.

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:14

In summary, we see that God who knows how we are made and what we need, and He tells us that contentment is not in our circumstances but comes from pressing toward the highest prize of spreading His glory.