Take Words With You: Scripture Promises & Prayers

This newly updated 5th Edition of Take Words with You contains over 2500 Scripture promises and prayers. For the first time, a simple “Method of Prayer” is introduced that makes the manual both functional and faith-building. This resource promises to be strategic for anyone seeking to grow in their prayer life and see more of their prayers answered.

Tim Kerr has been a pastor of Sovereign Grace Church Toronto since its beginning in the summer of 2004.

22 Life Lessons on Prayer

Prayer has the potential to be something that is both hard and easy. It is easy in the sense that you don’t have to be of high intelligence or possess any special abilities to engage in prayer. It is open to the “little” and the “least”. It is the language of the dependent and the desperate. And that includes all of us, if we are looking at our lives honestly.

Tim Kerr has been a pastor of Sovereign Grace Church Toronto since its beginning in the summer of 2004.

What Is God Working in Us Through this Season?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Welcome back to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Hey Mark, you talked a couple of weeks ago about what you saw God revealing in Sovereign Grace pastors and some of the encouraging things you saw there. I wanted to ask you today, just turn it a little bit differently, and ask you what you think God might be working in us, growing us and changing us when it comes to this season of navigating through the pandemic.

Mark Prater:

It's a timely question because God is using this pandemic to work in all of us, the pastors and members of Sovereign Grace Churches. And you know, the first response is, I don't know all that God is doing, but my faith has been stirred recently as I've observed what God is doing in us as a family of churches. It really is captured in Romans 5:3-4, “We rejoice in our sufferings knowing that our suffering produces endurance.” So there's an endurance that we are growing in as a denomination. “And endurance produces character” and there's a growing character, Christ's character, that I see in our pastors and the members of our churches. “And character produces hope.” And during this time we have the hope of the gospel and that hope is being deepened. And I just think this work in us is preparing us for how God is about to use us.

Benjamin Kreps:

I think so too. What are your thoughts about what it is that God might be preparing us for going forward?

Mark Prater:

I think God's going to use this pandemic to bring about a wonderful advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like you and like many of our pastors, and probably many of our members, we’re praying for revival. Ray Ortland encourages us that way so well. And I think we're going to participate in that, especially when we're able to gather together again as churches. I just really believe unbelievers and the unchurched are going to come out of this pandemic coming into our churches and we want to be prepared to give them hope that has been deepened in our lives.  

By the way, John Piper just wrote a book. Many guys will probably see this by the time his podcast arrives in their inbox: Coronavirus and Christ. The president of Desiring God reached out to C.J. yesterday and said, we want to give that book to all the members and pastors of Sovereign Grace Churches. The e-book is available for free, but we'll send you the hard copy as well. So, our pastors will probably have received an email by the time they get this podcast and you tell Erin how many you need and we're going to send those out.

Benjamin Kreps:

That's wonderful. I haven't read the book yet but I have seen some excerpts and I’m hearing good things about it. You had mentioned there was a quote in the book that you enjoyed as you were thinking about preparing for the future and what God's working in us in this season. Do you want to share that quote with us? 

Mark Prater:

I can't wait to share this quote because it has stirred my faith for what God is about to do through our family of churches. This is what Piper says, “We may think the Coronavirus outbreak is a setback for world missions. I doubt it.” It sounds like Piper, doesn't it? “God's ways often include apparent setbacks that result in great advances.” And I just think we're about to participate in a great advancement of the gospel.

Benjamin Kreps:

May it be so. I think that there is an opportunity here for us to sort of recalibrate, you know, as we think about (and think through maybe more deeply than we ever have) our ecclesiology and missiology and how we want to function as a church moving forward. And I think that could be a wonderful blessing for us to be forced to pause and reflect on these things in preparation for what's ahead. Anything else you want to add?

Mark Prater:

Well, as we reflect, let's do what Romans exhorts us to do. Let's rejoice. Let’s encourage one another in the growth that God is doing in us so that our joy overflows as God uses us to advance the gospel. Let's rejoice.

Benjamin Kreps:

Amen. Speaking to a friend in Sovereign Grace, another pastor, I loved what he said when it came to that category of hope that you described that God is doing where he's been exhorting his church. We're not just getting excited and hoping for being together again on a Sunday. This is an opportunity for our hope to deepen in the great day when actually we'll be gathered with all the believers throughout history, with Christ. And so, trust that God's doing that in us as well.

Mark Prater:

May that be.

Benjamin Kreps:

Thanks, Mark. And thank you, everybody, for watching the podcast and we'll be back right here very soon. See you then.

Mark Prater is the Executive Director of Sovereign Grace Churches and has served as an elder at Covenant Fellowship Church since 2002. 

Tears May Tarry for Now: Trusting God in Times to Weep

When I answered the phone that evening, I heard my daughter-in-law’s trembling voice: “I just found out that my sister may have only twenty-four hours left to live.”

She immediately caught a flight to California, hoping to be with her oldest sister one last time. The next morning, I received this text message: “I didn’t make it. She passed away.” Her sister’s passing came just five days after the anniversary of her mom’s death, six years earlier. Of course, there were tears. Many tears.

Whether you are enduring the loss of your loved one, facing your parents’ divorce, discovering your husband’s unfaithfulness, abiding your teenager’s hostility, learning about your friend’s betrayal, or experiencing a breakup with the man you thought you’d marry — painful and perplexing circumstances bring forth tears. Naturally, we all desperately wish we could avoid such heartbreak, and we would do anything to prevent this kind of anguish for those we love. But truth be told, we can’t. This is the painful reality of living in a fallen world.

Tears Are Facts of Life

Tears are a fact of life and an expression of the pain we experience. The little book of Ecclesiastes prepares us to interpret our tears. In his famous poem in the third chapter, the author identifies seasons and times marked out for us in this life by our sovereign God, including seasons of sadness: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to weep” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4).

If, for you, it is “a time to weep,” your emotion is not a deficiency of faith: God has appointed your tears, and it is appropriate to cry. While it may seem like you will never be happy again, your crying won’t last forever. Weeping has its time — meaning, it has a beginning and an ending date. 

This is not to suggest you will one day be unmoved by what is causing your tears; certain painful experiences will remain with us always. But Ecclesiastes tells us that God also has appointed “a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Or, as the psalmist puts it, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Though it may be hard to believe right now, you will laugh again someday. 

Granted, in times of grief, it’s hard to see beyond our tears, hard to imagine past the time of pain to a time of mirth. But more is happening in seasons of sadness than we may realize.

What We Know (and Don’t)

In his infinite wisdom, our Heavenly Father is weaving the painful threads of our life into a grand design; he is making something beautiful from our tears: “He has made everything [even times to weep] beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Rarely, though, do we see the beauty God is creating. Our vision is filled with the devastation of our suffering and questions overflow with our tears. Why me, Lord? Why this? How can anything good come from so much pain?

It is part of our DNA to want to know and understand. We recognize that there is a bigger picture, a wider purpose for our suffering because “[God] has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We want to figure out what God is doing, but we are stopped short when we discover that God also has placed limitations upon our capacity to comprehend: “yet . . . [man] cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This ability to perceive, and yet not perceive, is a work of God.

In other words, both our desire to make sense of our tears and our inability to make sense of them have been ordained by God. As J.I. Packer writes, God “has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out . . . in our own lives.” When we accept that we know something, but cannot know all, we will stop striving to figure everything out. Our angst will subside and a sweet peace will pervade our souls. We can simply cry before our Lord and trust him to create something beautiful for his glory.

Bright Spots in Bleak Seasons

To help us endure times of grief, God provides us with gifts each day, and surprising gifts, at that! “Everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil — this is God’s gift to man” (Ecclesiastes 3:13). Ordinarily, we think of food and drink simply as nourishment for our bodies, but they are more than fuel for living. As John Calvin writes, “If we ponder to what end God created food, we shall find that he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer.” 

During a weeping time for me (and for my whole family), a friend sent us chocolate croissants with Samuel Rutherford’s famous quotation written on the card (only slightly reworded): “When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest [croissants].” Not only were those the best croissants I have ever eaten, they also brought me cheer in the midst of a bleak season. 

At this same time, I was helping one of my daughters launch her small business; not something we would have started if we knew what was coming. But each day as we worked from morning until night — setting up a workspace, ordering supplies, framing artwork, fulfilling orders — we realized that God had provided this endeavor as a helpful distraction from our pain. The simple pleasures of food and drink and work really are wonderful gifts from God in times of weeping. 

Time to Weep — and Grow

When we turn to God in our tears, times of weeping also become our times of greatest growth. Ecclesiastes tells us that God uses our appointed season of sorrow to teach us to fear him: “God has done it, so that people fear before him” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).

While it might seem like we have stalled, or even digressed spiritually in the midst of our tears, the opposite is true. God is at work in our lives to bring about growth in godliness. He appoints “a time to weep” in order to reveal himself to us in deeper ways than we have ever known. He is sovereignly leading us through this valley of tears so that we might come to trust and treasure Jesus Christ above all.

So, to my daughter-in-law and to all who are weeping: look to Christ, your Savior, who walked this earth, wept over sinful, suffering humanity, and went to the cross in our place. No matter how long and hard this painful season, may you find comfort as you recall the truth of Ecclesiastes 3: God is creating beauty, providing you with gifts each day, and teaching you to fear him. 

And one day soon, “a time to weep” will be no more. For God himself “will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Carolyn Mahaney is the wife of C.J. Mahaney and a homemaker who has written several books with her daughter, including True Feelings and True Beauty. They are presently writing a book on Ecclesiastes. Carolyn and her husband have four children and twelve grandchildren.

(This article was originally published on Desiring God on March 29, 2020.)