“Prayer is the application of want to Him who only can relieve it, the voice of sin to Him who alone can pardon it. It is the urgency of poverty, the prostration of humility, the fervency of penitence, the confidence of trust. It is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of the soul. It is the ‘Lord, save us, we perish,’ of drowning Peter [Matt. 8:15]; the cry of faith to the ear of mercy.

“Adoration is the noblest employment of created beings; confession, the natural language of guilty creatures; gratitude, the spontaneous expression of pardoned sinners. Prayer is desire; it is not a mere conception of the mind, nor a mere effort of the intellect, nor an act of the memory; but an elevation of the soul towards its Maker; a pressing sense of our own ignorance and infirmity; a consciousness of the perfection of God, of His readiness to hear, of His power to help, of His willingness to save. It is not an emotion produced in the senses, nor an effect wrought by the imagination; but a determination of the will, and effusion of the heart.”

—Hannah More (1745-1833), Practical Piety: or the Influence of the Religion of the Heart on the Conduct of Life (New York: The American Tract Society, 1811), p. 83.

Notice the usage of ‘want’ in that day is different than in ours; we ‘want’ out of essentially coveting, yet here ‘want’ connotes a deep, unmet desire for a true need to be satisfied.

 

Good words from a godly woman, who labored for the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and the common good of all:

“Christianity bears all the marks of a divine original; it came down from heaven, and its gracious purpose is to carry us up thither. Its author is God. It was foretold from the beginning, by prophecies, which grew clearer and brighter as they approached the period of their accomplishment. It was confirmed by miracles, which continued till the religion they illustrated was established. It was ratified by the blood of its Author. Its doctrines are pure, sublime, consistent. Its precepts just and holy. Its worship is spiritual. Its service reasonable, and rendered practicable by the offers of Divine aid to human weaknesses. It is sanctioned by the promise of eternal happiness to the faithful, and the threat of everlasting misery to the disobedient. It had no collusion with power, for power sought to crush it. It should not be in any league with the world, for it set out by declaring itself the enemy of the world;—it reprobated its maxims, it showed the vanity of its glories, the danger of its riches, the emptiness of its pleasures.

“Christianity, though the most perfect rule of life that ever was devised, is far from being barely a rule of life . . . .  This religion does not consist in an external conformity to practices which, though right in themselves, may be adopted from human motives, and to answer secular purposes. It is not a religion of forms, and modes, and decencies. It is being transformed into the image of God. It is being like-minded with Christ. It is considering Him as our sanctification [how we change], as well as our redemption [the way we are rescued]. It is endeavoring to live to Him here, that we may live with Him herafter. It is desiring earnestly to surrender our will to His, our heart to the conduct of His Spirit, our live to the guidance of His Word.

“The change in the human heart, which the Scriptures declare to be necessary, they represent to be not so much an old principle improved, as a new one created; not educed out of the former character, but implanted in the new one.”

—Hannah More (1745-1833), Practical Piety: or the Influence of the Religion of the Heart on the Conduct of Life (New York: The American Tract Society, 1811), pp. 11-12, emphasis added.

 

“There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.”
—John Calvin

 

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like Yours.
All the nations you have made shall come
and worship before You, O Lord,
and shall glorify Your name.
For You are great and do wondrous things;
You alone are God.
Teach me Your way, O LORD,
that I may walk in Your truth;
unite my heart to fear Your name.
I give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify Your name forever.
For great is Your steadfast love toward me;
You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
—Psalm 86:8-13, ESV

 

Is the best way to teach boys to love reading by pandering to their tastes? (Like a book about all things gross: Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty.)

Is it by bribing them with video games?

Thomas Spence writes in the Wall Street Journal (9/24):

When I was a young boy, America’s elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can’t read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Read the rest here including a very good strategy for getting boys to read.

(Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys’ attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?)

 

“The most important part of Christian piety is taught by him who inflames men with a love for it. A wise king, in educating his son for true wisdom, spends much more time on motivation than on information, as if the love of wisdom were almost the attainment of it.”

—Desiderious Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), from a letter to Paul Voltz, dated August 14, 1518, later published as the preface to Erasmus’ Enchridion.

 

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) wrote On The Four Loves [read]. Recently in a seminary course (the history of Christian spirituality), we delved into Bernard’s writings. So good, meaty and challenging. Seems he was writing for our age, as well as to his.

Consider this outline on the four levels of love:

1. The first degree of love: When one loves oneself for self’s sake
2. The second degree of love: When one loves God for one’s own good
3. The third degree of love: When one loves God for God’s sake
4. The fourth degree of love: When one loves oneself for the sake of God

In our culture, what is considered “loving God?”

Is not the second degree commonly thought of as real Christianity? (Loving God for what He can do for me — rescue me, give me a good life.) We are fine if people stop there, and make the appeal as “do you want to go to heaven when you die?” as the essence of the good news of Jesus. Here’s good news — we posture it —God can do stuff for you. Don’t you want it?

(But, what if you ‘accept’ Jesus and life becomes harder and others reject you? How would that be good? How could we continue to love God when He doesn’t meet our expectations?!)

We are (I am) so prone to love God more for what He can do for us than for WHO He is. The third level of love is enthralled with who God is. The fourth then moves into sacrifice, giving up one’s own self-love as the ultimate and into a seemingly ‘radical’ life of love and worship. This must become the new goal; it shall be our reasonable response to all of who God is in Christ (see Romans 12:1-8).

Ask yourself: Is my heart on a trajectory towards the third and fourth levels of love as Bernard describes? Why not? How can this trend be reversed?

 

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”

— John Wesley (1703-1791)

Now the questions:

• Why do I want to do good towards others? Is it from compulsion, or guilt or shame? Or is it compelled by love, which is will endure and sacrifice for their sake?
• Why won’t I do good towards others? What keeps me from thinking of others more than myself (Romans 12:3)? Which of my comforts can be traded to comfort others?