Confessing shallow prayer and repentance: Clip from Consider Revival V

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January 25, 2022

The ministers in 1651 recognized they were guilty of ignoring the secret life of prayer. They were quick to speak of God, to teach of God, to think of God. But they rarely sought discipline in the quiet discipline of speaking to God, learning from God, and meditating on God and His Word. And even after recognizing that, they saw their repentance was shallow. One thing feeds the other. True repentance feeds true prayer and true prayer feeds true repentance.

00:02: And I think universally we could all say prayer is a very difficult thing.
00:09: I would throw in another one of those. In our day and age, as busy as we are, as noisy as we are, it becomes more and more precious to me, at least, to find that quiet place and quiet moment to get with God, as he says, in secret prayer.
00:30: Benar puts it like this, why is there so much speaking, yet so little prayer?
00:36: Why is there so much running to and fro, yet so little prayer? Why so many meetings with our fellow men, yet so few meetings with God?
00:47: Yeah, and if you think that Andrew Benar, or this is Horatius Benar, if you think that Horatius is just talking, you can read something of the lives of the
00:57: Benar boys. They are particularly distinguished by prayer. His Andrew Benar's diary reads like a prayer journal.
01:05: It's like a book on how to pray. It's just the most extraordinary diary for that. Well my last one is where they talk about the sin, and I'm going to put it in our language, the sin of allowing a shallow form of repentance to serve for the real thing.
01:25: This is how they say it, not given to reflect upon our own ways, nor allowing conviction to have a thorough work upon us.
01:37: So two things, they start off, I just don't really give time to thinking about how
01:44: I'm living out the Christian life. You know, I skim along the surface. Second, I do not, when
01:49: I do feel conviction in a sermon, or in a book, or a quiet time, I do not allow that conviction to work thoroughly through every aspect.
02:00: So I'm going to stop there for a second. Steve, I have found that as I grow older, I can, you know, you do find yourself, if you're not careful, you can become kind of hardened to religious truth.
02:13: You think, well, I've heard it a thousand times, or I've said it a thousand times. But I do find that by the grace of God, my heart is still able to be tender toward God, and I hear these things, and I think, it's true,
02:25: God, it's me. But here's what I have found very difficult.
02:31: I have found it very difficult a week later, even when I'm focusing on it, to be able to give evidence of one single thing
02:41: I've done differently after conviction. Now, I've thought about it. I've talked to God about it.
02:47: But if you say, okay, but okay, I understand that, and I'm not saying you're disingenuous, but can you tell me one habit that's been changed?
02:55: One thing that's added to your life? One thing that's removed from your life? It is, it seems to me like it would be easier to roll a giant boulder up a hill than to get
03:05: John Snyder to make a concrete change. Now, it does happen, but it's never without real kind of soul -searching and shame and saying,
03:18: John, you did it again. You appreciated the sermon. You loved the book. You talked to someone about the chapter, and next week, you haven't altered anything.
03:27: You have lived in a land of good intentions. They go on to say this.
03:33: It says, deceiving ourselves, how? By resting upon absence from and abhorrence of evils from the light of a natural conscience and looking upon the same as an evidence of a real change of state and nature.
03:50: In other words, my natural conscience, I hear someone talking about, oh, this is so bad.
03:56: People are acting like this. And you think, well, I feel fine about that. I'm not bothered at all because I'm not that kind of person.
04:03: And you think that just because your conscience isn't bothered without seriously examining and praying about the matter, you think you're sinless.
04:11: And you rest in that false sense of righteousness, self -deceit.
04:19: So I find that very easy to do as I hear other people mention, like, oh, you hear sins of our culture mentioned.
04:26: I think, well, I'm not doing it. And so I'm just fine. So a very easy way to deceive ourselves.
04:34: Thanks for watching the clip. We hope it was spiritually beneficial for you. We really do appreciate being able to interact with you through the comments.
04:41: So if you have questions or just comments you'd like to leave, leave them below and we'll get back to them as we have a chance.