July 31, 2017 Show with Dr. Stan Gale on “The Prayer of Jehoshaphat: Seeing Beyond Life’s Storms” AND “The Writing Pastor”

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arns.

The Prayer of Jehoshaphat and the Need for Biblical Caution

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arns and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this very last day of July, July 31st, 2017, and I am delighted to have as a returning guest today someone who is certainly one of my favorite guests, Dr. Stanley D. Gale.

He is pastor of discipleship at Iron Works Church of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which is a congregation within the Presbyterian Church in America. He's also the author of What is Spiritual Warfare and Why Do We Pray? and he's founder and director of Community Houses of Prayer.

Today we are discussing one of his books, The Prayer of Jehoshaphat, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms, and during the second hour, we're going to be addressing the theme, The Writing Pastor. For all of you pastors out there who are either aspiring authors or you already are an author or at least have written things that have yet to be published.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Stanley D. Gale. I do as well, and in studio with me is my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Hello once again, it's good to be on.

Who is also an aspiring author and has a book in the works. Actually right now on eschatology.

That's correct.

Why don't you briefly, before we even go into our topic for the first hour, Reverend Buzz, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about the book that you're working on.

Well, it's a much bigger undertaking than I expected it to be. I guess anybody who's written would probably say the same thing, but it started as a series of lectures years ago, and I just kept adding to it and adding to it, and I finally decided, well, this needs to get out, so I'm putting it in book form.

But I'm still in the process of expanding it because there's a lot more research to do, and I'm making good progress, but there's so much to do that I have no idea when it's going to be finished.

So, in other words, when this book actually goes out in print,.

Jesus will have returned.

Or the book cover will say, In Loving Memory of the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

I'll have to change all the dates that I set in it.

But, well, we will have updates, God willing, in the weeks, months, and possibly years to come.

Well, I have a goal, so I mean, I want to finish it this year.

Alrighty. Well, the first hour is on a topic that is something that will obviously be of meaning to anybody, whether they're a Christian or not a Christian who may be listening to this program, and that is Seeing Beyond Life's Storms.

The actual title is The Prayer of Jehoshaphat. And before we even go into that title and that theme, what was the catalyst that led you to write this book? I have a sneaky suspicion that it may have been that you wanted to give a biblically orthodox response to the prayer of Jabez, but I might be wrong.

Something just occurred to me, brother, that I never noticed before. I don't know if anybody ever has told you this, but you sound somewhat like Tom Brokaw.

I have heard that before. I was teaching in Belgium one time, and then evidently that was the...

In fact, I would love it if sometime you could record a little segment that I could air throughout my broadcast from time to time saying, This is Tom Brokaw, and you're listening to Iron Germans, Iron Radio.

I don't know if that would be good or bad for my audience. But I'm going to give our audience our email address right now. It is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com if you have a question for Dr. Stanley D. Gale.

If you are asking about the writing pastor, if you could put that in the subject line so we can make sure that we know to save that for the second hour of the program. But chrisarnsen at gmail .com is our email address if you have a question about seeing beyond life's storms.

And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And this topic automatically lends itself to the possibility of people asking about personal and private matters that would compel them not to identify themselves.

And I understand that, and you may remain anonymous if such is the case. But if that's not the case, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence. I want to read the prayer of Jehoshaphat, and then you can give us the context in which this prayer was said.

And the prayer is found in 2 Chronicles 20, verses 6 through 13. O Lord, the God of our fathers, are you not God in the heavens? And are you not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in your hands so that no one can stand against you.

Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it to the descendants of Abraham, your friend forever? They have lived in it and have built you a sanctuary there for your name, saying, Should evil come upon us, the sword or judgment, or pestilence or famine, we will stand before this house and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and deliver us.

Now behold the sons of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you did not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt. They turned aside from them and did not destroy them. See how they are rewarding us by coming to drive us out from your possession, which you have given us as an inheritance.

O our God, will you not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us, nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on you. If you could give us the context surrounding that very powerful prayer.

The context is, bring the camera, people, what?

Now, I'm assuming that you are applying the lessons learned from this story, this historical account in 2 Chronicles. You are desiring that listeners in the 21st century and readers in the 21st century apply these lessons to their lives today.

Before we give you some time to give us those applications to everyday life, when those of our listeners are facing what seem to be insurmountable trials. Not only as individuals, but as groups, as families, as churches, as nations.

Do we not need to be very cautious when we apply biblical stories to our own lives, to current events that are surrounding us? Not that there aren't lessons to be learned in nearly every page in the scripture for what we are going through today, personally or nationally.

But sometimes people misapply stories in the scriptures, historical accounts, and they come up with all kinds of bizarre conclusions when they do that. Sometimes eschatologically or sometimes they develop sometimes even heretical ideas.

Sometimes people will view the United States of America with the same kinds of blessings promised to the nation of Israel or even the current day nation of Israel in the Middle East. They will make it synonymous with the Israel that existed in the Old Covenant and so on.

If you could just give us some words of caution, if you believe that that is indeed the case, if you agree with what I'm saying.

I agree. God, why he would think that... I'm not thinking in terms of any kind of... There are certain things that we can...

Yeah, and very often people seem to thrive on the notion that they can apply biblical accounts to current events, stories on the news, because it keeps them excited. And in their minds, this is the way we prove to the world that the scriptures are indeed true and inerrant.

And they feel excited that they are involved in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, so they think, by running to a headline in the news and basically applying it to something, to some scriptural account.

And, of course, that has been going on for centuries. Even in the current past two centuries, the 20th century and the one that we're in now, you had Hitler and so on. If anybody would seem to be fulfilling some kind of a biblical prophecy of the Antichrist or something like that, or the Beast of Revelation, you might immediately think, wow, who else could it be?

It must be Hitler. Look what he's doing, or look what he has done, and so on. But that thing can go on and on, and that is an unfortunate fact that people seem to thrive on that as a necessity to believe in the inerrancy of scriptures, isn't it?

Well, it sounds to me like...

They're all answers, right?

That is not my approach.

It leaves too many unanswered questions, too, because if I'm supposed to interpret the Bible by the news, I don't know if it's Fox or CNN.

Well, I think it involves both, because the Bible does say, and even now you have many Antichrists among you. But anyway, if you could apply some of the lessons to be learned from this story of Jehoshaphat that we can rightly apply to our own lives when we are going through trials, and as you have even given us the subtitle to your book, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms, how can we see beyond life's storms using this chapter of the Scriptures in 2 Chronicles as a guideline?

James, and extended by his... We remind these things, because sometimes when we're in trial...

I'm going to start taking some of our listener questions now. Let's see here. We have John in Simsbury, Connecticut. And I have to enlarge John's font on his email, because it's microscopic. And let's see here.

John says, How do we discern the difference from spiritual warfare and the problems we create for ourselves?

Hmm.

That's John in Simsbury, Connecticut.

You bring this in my life. One and two, God... And then in Genesis 4, he did not bring his...

Amen. Well, thank you, John, for an excellent question. And thank you also for providing us your mailing address in Simsbury, Connecticut, where we are going to be mailing you a free copy of the book that we are discussing for the first hour, The Prayer of Jehoshaphat, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms, by our guest, Dr. Stanley D. Gale.

Compliments of P &R Publishing, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be shipping that out to you. So keep your eye open for a package that says CVBBS .com in the return address section of the shipping label.

That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings of CVBBS .com for faithfully supporting Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio ever since we first launched here in Carlisle, or relaunched, I should say, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

And we also thank Bryce Craig and our friends at P &R Publishing for faithfully supplying us with books every time we interview one of their authors. We're going to be going to a break right now. If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And you may remain anonymous if it's about a personal or private matter. And we will get to as many of you who are already waiting to have your questions asked and answered as time permits, God willing.

And so don't go away. We are going to be right back with Dr. Stanley DeGale and more of Seeing Beyond Life's Storms. One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.

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Prayer, Sovereignty, and the Care of the Mourning

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is Dr. Stanley D. Gale, Pastor of Discipleship at Iron Works Church of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing his book for the first hour, The Prayer of Jehoshaphat, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms. During the second hour, we will address the theme, The Writing Pastor. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. If you are writing about The Writing Pastor, please put that in the subject line so we can save that question for the second hour of our program.

And once again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We have Daniel in San Jose, California. And his question is, Can you ask Dr. Gale to explain the severity of a healthy prayer life, as well as where our minds need to be focused before we pray?

Not just praying so nonchalantly. And then he has a second question that I will address after you address the first one.

Nothing is impossible.

And the second question that we have from Daniel in San Jose, California is, let's see, I lost it here. Oh, here it is. We often pray for the things we think we need in life. But shouldn't we be praying for God's will to be done in our lives first, namely pursuing holiness, growing in a wider and deeper love for Christ?

I'm not sure it's a first in Christ. In fact, let me mention one other thing, crying out to God to continue to pray.

Amen. And I don't know if you would agree with me, Dr. Gale, but I might want to highly recommend to our listeners, and perhaps even specifically the listener that wrote the question, a book called The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers and devotions by Arthur Bennett, which is published by The Banner of Truth.

And I don't believe that Christians should ever mechanically and artificially recite prayers, even the prayer that is known as the Lord's Prayer or lesser known as the Disciples Prayer, the Our Father, as it's probably most commonly known, especially those of people in like, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church and perhaps some of the more liturgical Protestant churches very often recite that prayer like the prayer of the pagans and repetitiously without meaning, without even thought to what the words are.

So I'm not suggesting that you would use a book like The Valley of Vision in that manner, but don't you think that a book like that might help educate people what they may or what they should include in their prayers, basically kind of like a blueprint to move on from there after you've learned what other great folks, great brothers and sisters in Christ, have prayed in the past?

The Valley of Vision is excellent. And sometimes we are...

And while I would not want to accuse our listener who asked the question, Daniel, in say, San Jose, California of this, but there could be people that want to appear to be pious and say that our prayers should only be involving or praying for more holiness and deeper love for Christ and neglect the fact that we should be certainly praying for every one of our needs and that our needs are not trivial in the eyes or ears of God or in the mind and heart of God, that there is nothing wrong with approaching Him for our personal physical needs, our monetary needs, and the needs that are involved in our emotions and when we're going through depression and all kinds of things.

Isn't that a genuine part of our daily prayer life?

I certainly think so. I appreciate Daniel's question. Praying for the needs. One of the things, a summer resort, and then you...

Amen. Well, Daniel, in San Jose, California, you have won a free copy of The Prayer of Jehoshaphat, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms, compliments of P &R Publishing, and also compliments of CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

So make sure we have your full mailing address where CVBBS .com can ship that book out to you. Let's see. We have Joe in Slovenia who says,. It seems to me that a strong underlying basis for Jehoshaphat's prayer is his settled belief in God's absolute sovereignty.

How should we pray back to God His promises to us appropriately? And let me pray with a greater... Let me read that back, I should say, with a greater emphasis. How should we pray back to God His promises to us appropriately?

What would our prayers look like if we prayed in our day based on faith in God's complete sovereignty over all of life? Thanks for ministering to Christ's body around the world. That's Joe in Slovenia.

Well, that's a great thing that God's knowledge of God's sovereignty is saying that there is purpose. God meets us according to His needs. We want to be attentive.

Amen. By the way, thank you, Joe in Slovenia, and thank you for giving us an American address where your daughter lives in Georgia where we will ship a copy of the book, The Prayer of Jehoshaphat, Seeing Beyond Life's Storms, compliments of the publishers, P &R Publishing, and also compliments of CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

And we have probably one of the most difficult areas in life that anyone could possibly face involved in a question from Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. What words of encouragement would you offer from the Scriptures to someone like myself who has gone through the tragedy of suicide of a close relative who professed Christ as Savior and Lord?

Could you read that again?

What words of encouragement would you offer from the Scriptures to someone like myself who has gone through the tragedy of suicide of a close relative who professed Christ as Savior and Lord? Well, that last part of the question obviously gives great hope, but obviously there are a lot of controversies involved in someone who is regenerate committing that act.

But if you could respond to the best of your ability to Gordy's question.

We reject God, but that's not what God's intention is, that these things are not bound by His knowledge. But then one of the beauties...

In fact, if you could pick up right where you left off there when we return from our break.

I will do that.

And if anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Stanley D. Gale. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.

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The Writing Pastor and the Discipline of Craft

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio www .wlie540am .com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor.

And if anybody would like to hear an excellent interview I conducted on the old Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program broadcasting out of WNYG Radio in New York with Pastor Bill Shishko, who you just heard promoting his program A Visit to the Pastor's Study.

Pastor Bill and I, among many other things, have discussed the theme of suicide. In fact, the program of which I speak is an hour-long discussion solely on the issue of a Christian's response to suicide.

So Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, I emailed you a link where you can listen to that one-hour interview on YouTube. And if anybody else would like to hear that discussion with Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination who is currently a domestic missionary with Reformation Metro New York, you can hear that interview.

If you send me an email requesting that link, that YouTube link, I will send it to you. You can also just look up on YouTube yourself, Bill Shishko, S-H-I-S-H-K-O, suicide, and it will bring you to that discussion, God willing.

And before I return to our discussion with Dr. Stanley D. Gale, I have some important announcements to make from some of our sponsors. This week, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, featuring such speakers as Pastor Don Curran of HeartCry Missionary Society, the organization founded by Paul Washer, my friend Pastor Mac Tomlinson, who is an author and pastor of the Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, Pastor Jesse Barrington, who is the pastor of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, the sister church of Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, who has a radio station that airs Iron Sharpens Iron radio every day, twice a day, and even one time every day in prime morning drive time, in a pre-recorded fashion.

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If you'd like to register for the G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and I hope to see you there, God willing, in January at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's Booth at the G3 Conference.

Please tell everybody running these events, if you contact them, that you heard about the events through Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And now I must ask you for that embarrassing and uncomfortable request, but the request of money.

The advertisers that keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air have urged me to make public appeals for donations and also for new advertisers. Those of you who have listened to this program going back to 2005, 2006, know that for years I never made a single public appeal for donations or advertising, but financial needs are so urgent right now, my advertisers have compelled me to make these public appeals.

So if you can donate to us, go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click on Support, and you will see an address where you can mail a check made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Only do so if you have adequate funds above and beyond your ability to support not only your family but your local church, where I hope you are a member of a good Bible-believing church locally.