Category Archives: CPCC

Christians are to be counter-cultural…

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If we are born-again by the grace of God, with a sure hope of heaven and eternity, what should we do and be in this world?

Dr. John R. W. Stott observes in his fine book on the Sermon on the Mount:

“For the essential theme of the whole Bible from beginning to end is that God’s historical purpose is to call out a people for himself; that this people is a ‘holy’ people, set apart from the world to belong to him and to obey him; and that its vocation is to be true to its identity, that is, to be ‘holy’ or ‘different’ in all its outlook and behavior.” [page 17]

“…the followers of Jesus are to be different — different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most compete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counter-culture. Here is a Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships — all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian counter-culture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.” {p. 19]

Saturday’s Prayer & Praise Breakfast

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Saturday is our 15th annual Prayer & Praise Breakfast at church — an important conclusion to our Week of Prayer (with daily prayer meetings in homes). After we eat, we sing, I open the Word of God, then all share testimonies from the week before we spend one more session together in prayer.

The testimonies are not all “answers to prayers” but often are about how the week challenged (or changed) the person, and how thankful they are. And this is good! Our aim on Saturday morning is to raise praises and give thanks to the Lord!

In my sharing (on Romans 15:13), I plan to warn against cynicism and how it can undermine prayer. One of the key weapons against cynicism is thankfulness:

“Nothing undercuts cynicism more than a spirit of thankfulness. You begin to realize that your whole life is a gift. Thankfulness isn’t a matter of forcing yourself to see the happy side of life. That would be returning to näive optimism. Thanking God restores the natural order of our dependence upon God. It enables us to see life as it really is.”

— Paul Miller in his book, A PRAYING LIFE, page 89

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