William Petruzzo

Revelation 22:1-5:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

If the end times prophecies were given as an encouragement and comfort to the church as she endures through hardship, then this passage is the the consummation. When all is said is done and all that is done is finished, Jesus’ servants will see his face at last. That’s powerful imagery.

That is nourishing food to produce spiritual stamina.

A friend recently shared a quote from Matt Chandler, speaking about the church:

“What you win them with, you’ll keep them with.”

The words are an admonishment to the church, namely here in America. It’s grown large, in many ways, as a product of being “large” in its production. In fact, just moments ago a friend an I jested about using Power Point for our small group worship, but feared the group might grow too big and we might need to buy a building.

If people are coming in and sitting in our congregations because of good music, nice lighting, tasty donuts and tickling words, then the moment those begin to shift, those folks will be gone.

Donuts cannot save a soul. A person receives the Gospel because it is good news, not because of a preacher’s pearly whites. Therefore, if we want to see people follow Christ, if we want to see people renounce the world and give their lives to glory of God, then we must preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For many, the frills will have to be abandoned completely. For others, they’ll only need to be refocused.

But, in all cases, the Gospel must return to the limelight. Grace, justification, sanctification, glorification–from the pulpit.

If you’re like me, and I’m sure that at least some of you are, prayer is not something that comes easily. I don’t mean the act of opening your mouth and speaking to God, I mean the discipline to pray for things until you see them answered.

You probably hear of that person who faithfully prayed for so-and-so for 10 years until finally the Lord answered the prayer and saved them, or healed their cancer, or reunited their marriage, or whatever. If you’re like me, you’ve probably looked on those people with a sense of wonder, curious about how exactly they’ve been so faithful, but at the same time thinking in the back of your mind that it’s just isn’t going to be you.

Personally, that is my experience. Or, at least it was as a younger believer. Early on, it became clear from reading the Word and Church history that prayer was profoundly important. I respected people that prayed and who were, in part at least, identified as “a person of prayer”. I knew that it was virtuous, it was important, and that God answered prayers. But, never could I grasp the action in the ways that some seemed to be able to.

I went through many different seasons of prayer practice, all of which would be beneficial, but eventually fade.

There were times when I would pray, almost exclusively in groups. There were times when I attempted to focus on constant prayer–praying during every day activities. There were times when I would attempt to spend very extended periods of time in prayer (This one was profoundly affecting, but it wasn’t too long before burning out). There were also times when I would try and put my prayer life in my car, or other moving exercises–like taking walks.

All of these faded out. Sometimes I would try and combine them, mix them, or do them exclusively. I would try and keep prayer journals, or lists. Still, it always faded out.

But, in all of these experiences, I think that I’ve begun to pin point the (practical) corner stones of a fruitful prayer life. (Please remember, I’m speaking in a practical sense. There are spiritual foundations that must be in place before a believer can hope to see real, faithful and fruitful progress in their prayer life.)

1. Consistence

In all areas of our lives we plan ahead. When we want to get in shape, we plan time to be at the gym. When we want to excel in school, we plan time to study. I don’t think a person’s prayer life is much different in that respect. So, consistence is a major key. You’ll never get in shape if you only go to the gym when you feel like it and when you happen to have the time. So it is with our prayer lives. So consistency is absolutely foundational.

Time daily should be designated for prayer. The decision to pray should not be made based on the moment’s desire to pray (although, I believe that desire will come) or not to pray, but based on the decision and commitment made to the Lord. Therefore, there will be times of prayer that feel hollow, or mechanical, but this is necessary, I believe, as it softens the heart and paves the way for more natural prayer in the future. But likewise, there will also be wonderful, heart gushing times of prayer as well.

2. Persistence

Say you got a job 30 minutes away. The first day of your job, you got in your car and started driving, not knowing exactly where you’re office is or how to get there. You might have a general idea, but nothing concrete. You end up driving around for a few hours until you eventually stumble on it. The next day, you do the same thing. Uncertain of where you’re going, you spend a long time driving around until eventually you show up. Every morning, you go through the same thing, over and over again. At this rate, you’re going to burn out. Constantly forgetting where you’re going and forgetting how to get there will take a toll on you.

Prayer, I think, is a lot like that. We should approach prayer with a plan. Know what you’re going to pray for, know who you’re going to pray for. Plan for it. Don’t get burned out trying to navigate through all the different things in the world you could possibly pray for. Know what you’re going to be praying for, plan to pray and be persistent in those prayers. Don’t be chained to only those prayers, but be chained to them, none the less.

My Strategy

Although these are some of the keys saints have approached prayer with for hundreds of years, there are lots of ways these things can flesh out in a persons life, I think. Thanks to a good friend’s suggestion, this is what I’ve been doing:

I bought a white board. I divided the white board up into 7 days. Each day I have written the things I pray for daily. Then, spread out over all seven days are the different concerns of my life and the lives of friends, family and the church. Then, when a new concern arises, I can quickly add it to the plan for a day, a week or longer. In this way, I have a plan for approaching prayer. I do not forget different people’s concerns, nor do I become overwhelmed with more prayer than I can handle at one time.

This method also offers some personal accountability. Each day of the week, I can mark whether or not I prayed that day, in order to help build consistency. So far, it’s proving effective.

Here is a snapshot of my board:

Some things on the board are erased each week, some are never erased. This method forces me to devote specific time to prayer, but keeps me focus and on track, without preventing me from going beyond what’s there.

If you’re seeking a prayer method, you might consider cloning mine or using and modifying it to best suite you. White board supplies will run you about $20 - $30 if you can find them new, but significantly less if you can find them at a garage sale.

So, don’t let yourself make excuses for not praying. Let’s make it a truly regular part of our lives!

A few weeks ago, I posted my reaction to a teaching in church on Colossians 1:15-16:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

What had struck me is this idea that the creator of all things, and the purpose of all things willingly died on behalf of his creation in order to bring them back to him. That is a stunning reality. When you take these verses in Colossians and apply them to the cross, it’s hard not to be take aback.

Well, tonight, during the eleven o’clock Christmas Eve service at church, I was struck with a similar wonder.

Often times when I read words like these in Colossians, the image that goes through my head is of the man-Jesus. The bearded teacher, leading his disciples about, healing the sick and calling sinners to his side and performing astounding miracles. When I think of “the image of the invisible God,” it’s hard not to picture this Jesus. When I think of who “all things” were created for, this is very often the Jesus who enters my mind.

But that wasn’t the entirety of Jesus’ humanity. Yes, indeed, Jesus is the messiah, yes a prophet and a teacher and a miracle worker. Yes, he was the human being who was tempted in the desert after fasting for 40 days. And yes, he was the human being who shed blood–just like ours–on behalf of his people. But what else was he?

He was a baby.

This baby is the image of the invisible God. This baby is the firstborn over all creation. By this baby all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things were created for and through this baby!

This is the God we serve, and this God condescended creation and humbled himself, not only to death–but to birth!

Christmas is an astounding holiday–it’s insanity that we forget it.

So today at church, the electricity went out.

The Chesapeake Bay are suffered an ice storm last night and apparently a pretty large tree knocked over some power lines–about 10 minutes before the start of the church’s second service of the day. The mixup had people scrambling to figure out what to do.

When I arrived just a minute or two after the first song began I thought that the dark sanctuary and excessive candles were a gimmick for the holidays. But, it wasn’t long before I realized that the microphones weren’t on and the projector wasn’t feeding the congregation the lines to the songs.

I stumbled through looking for a seat. It was dark. I mean really dark. I almost stepped on a baby that was left in a car carrier in the aisle (what were they thinking?). I finally found a seat on the far left side of the sanctuary. Now, because of the way the room is laid out, the far right side of the room has trouble hearing things that are said from the stage–well, at least when there’s no power amplifying the noises. So, when I settled into my seat, the sound of the worship team singing was muffled and the sounds of the congregations around me were much easier to hear than elsewhere in the room. Which leads me to my first observation.

I laughed. Almost no one around me was singing. We weren’t singing new songs. They were Christmas carols. Ones that many of us have grown up with. They were things that people should have known–or at least for the most part. Yet, no one was singing. It was almost uncanny. Everyone just stood there, all wrestling to put up with the discomfort of an awkwardly quiet room, no one bold enough to just sing regardless of what everyone else thought.

After a few minutes, a friend who’d seen me come in came and found me and brought me closer to the middle of the room where there were a collection of my friends already sitting. Once I got reseated, I found more people singing, but soon after the pastor got up to preach. There begins my second observation.

The preaching in many ways was nearly crippled at the loss of its projector. The teaching was from the beginning of Colossians. The preacher’s usual method was to guide the congregation through the exegesis of the passage using the projector as a scriptural guide or the congregation. It also would serve to provide the scripture for those that didn’t have bibles (which, thanks to the projector, is almost everyone). Well, this morning, no projector meant no visual aid. We were left to the skill of a preacher to keep us on the same page. (All things considered, he did a fairly good job).

If the lack of projector didn’t cause enough problems, the building was, itself, designed to support a certain type of service and is really unforgiving if you try to break out of that mold. No electricity meant no lights. In a room designed without windows, even those who had their bibles had no hope in being able to read them–it was just too dark.

So, we had a room filled with about 350 people and when the most basic of the church’s comforts were taken away the congregations dependance on them were highlighted.

For me, the event posed a good question: Where is the line between using the comforts and conveniences of modern technology to help encourage our faith, and stunting our own maturing process with those comforts and conveniences?

What do you think?

Something I think that I’m really critical of, at least in my mind, is the church’s general approach to accountability. I rarely see accountability “groups” or “partners” last very long or produce the kinds of results they were hoping for–that is, victory over chronic sin.

After a conversation last night, I think I’ve managed to nail down my grievance with the way most accountability groups work.

If we recognize that in the Christian there are now two natures–Christ’s nature and our old, sinful nature–then we see that in us there are two opposing motives working at pretty much any given time (we can see Paul begin to describe this through Romans 7 and 8). The sanctification process is, by the Spirit, the Christ nature in us winning.

But, most of the time, accountability groups fail to act in light of this spiritual dichotomy in us. In a negative sense, they attempt to beat down the sinful nature, or the sin in particular, inside the person in hopes of therefore achieving victory over the sin.

To make my point clear, I’ll use the example that started the conversation last night.

Lets say there’s two men. One man feels that the Lord wants him to overcome his addiction to smoking. So, he says to his friend– and accountability partner–”I need to quit smoking. Will you please help me to quit smoking?”. The friend of course agrees.

Some time goes by and sooner or later, the man has a lapse in judgment and buys a pack of cigarettes. When his friend sees them in his car, he is very upset at him. He takes the cigarettes, throws them out the window, then threatens something along the lines of, “If I see you have bought cigarettes again, I’m going to punch you in the face.”

The friend’s hope is that fear and shame will cause the man to flee from his addiction to smoking. The friend is attempting to beat down the sin and the sinful nature to achieve victory.

But, this isn’t going to work. It never does.

We don’t have to look far into scripture to see that there were thousands of years of biblical history in which God repeatedly punched Israel in the face for their constant and chronic sins. They always returned to them.

If man’s brutal attack on his sin and sinful nature could have been successful, Jesus would not have needed to die. Man has never, by sheer will power, or fear, been able to truly defeat sin–and where he has overcome the sins of his hands, they took up residence in his heart. Christ must be the solution to our sin both in justification and sanctification.

So, it seems to me that if accountability largely fails as it attempts to attack and beat down sin and the sinful nature, an adjustment is warranted.

Rather than attacking, in a negative sense, the sin and the sinful nature, accountability ought to appeal positively to Christ’s nature in the believer. If a believer is true, then in him exists the will to stop sinning (Matthew 26:41). No only in his hands but also his heart. Accountability groups ought to seek to encourage in the believer Christ’s nature to increase and overtake sin and the sinful nature.

Man has never and will never be able to overcome sin by his flesh, fore “nothing good dwells in the flesh” (Romans 7:18). To overcome sin, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s faith in Christ (Colossians 1:27). Accountability groups should be made up primarily of exhortation and encouragement and almost never of rebuke.

After all, encouragement is one of the church’s primary callings to itself.

Therefore, I believe that in committed accountability relationships, encouragement of a believer’s new nature will go vastly farther than any violent attack on sin and the nature that produces it.

This morning at church, the pastor at my church began a short series for Advent titled, “The Supremacy of Christ.” He began with Colossians 1:15-16. It goes like this:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

The sermon was fantastic. Unfortunately, the preacher did not bring the message expressly back to the fullness of the Gospel, but it was outstanding nonetheless. And, while the preacher did not bring things home, my own heart did.

As I read the words of Colossians, the magnitude of the cross struck afresh. Jesus is the image (“the exact representation”, Hebrews 1:3) of the invisible God. Meaning, the same God who spoke the world into creation in the beginning of Genesis. The same God who flooded the world. The same God who led the Israelites out of Egypt through the Red Sea and into the desert. Jesus is our perfect picture, our exact representation of that God.

Then, not only is he the perfect representation, he’s also the means by which everything—everything—has come into existence. You and me, everything seen and unseen. Felt and unfelt. Known and unknown. Everything, has been created by the means of Jesus.

Then, not only that, but everything, at least in some sense, was created for him. There is nothing that is withheld from Christ, for his glory. It is all for him.

And that God, that very member of the triune God, stepped down, onto earth and died a sinners death. A death on behalf of sinning creatures who, since the beginning, have defamed him and countless times attempt to dethrone him. That is the God, the Christ, the Jesus who hung on the cross for you and for me. The firstborn over all creation, graciously and wonderfully dying a sinners death for love, for righteousness, for justice. To bring about justification, repentance, propitiation, reconciliation and sanctification.

How can we not glorify that Jesus. Let’s ask that question, how?

I’ve spent the last few days with Indelible Grace Music. I’m sure some of you are familiar with the project, but others are not. The idea behind the ministry is honorable and frankly, just plain cool. The gist, although over simplified, is to reproduce very old, often forgotten, hymns for a new generation of Christian worshippers and thinkers. Here’s a quick excerpt from the statement on their website:

We want to be a voice calling our generation back to something rich and solid and beyond the fluff and the trendy. We want to remind God’s people that thinking and worship are not mutually exclusive, and that not everything worth knowing happened in the last three years. We want to invite the Church to appreciate her heritage without idolizing it. We want to open up a world of passion and truth and make it more that just an archaic curiosity for the religiously sentimental. We believe worship is formative, and that it does matter what we think.

Pretty cool, right? I agree. I stumbled on Indelible Grace while looking for really excellent renditions and arrangements of old hymns. You’d be surprised how few there really are. In fact, if you search for hymns on Amazon MP3, you’ll come up with several thousand results that all sound more or less exactly the same.

Then, while doing my monthly peruse of eMusic (read about it here), I came across Indelible Grace’s Music. I was stunned. They literally have a plethora of modern hymn arrangements, something like 85 of them. While there are a handful I’m really not enthusiastic about (i.e., really cheesy), the majority of them are performed with a great deal of care and, dare I say, relevance.

Most of the arrangements range from mellow indie-folk melodies, to heavier rock, to full blown southern-slide-guitar country. The performers also range from people I’ve never heard of, to bigger names in Christian music, like Derek Webb.

Indelible Grace also makes implementing hymn arrangements into worship services relatively easy. On their website you’ll find pretty comprehensive listings of hymns they perform, as well as lyrics and chord charts for various instruments.

I would very much like to see churches put Indelible Grace’s hard work to good use in their local congregations. Because the words we sing are indeed formative. And, in many ways they do shape our theologies and our ideas about God. In fact, I fairly often hear people quote songs, thinking they’re quoting scripture. If that is the case, then let’s bring real depth and real substance into our songs. Lets sing hymns.

Here are some of my favorite recordings from Indelible Grace Music so far:

O Help My Unbelief
Album: Wake Thy Slumbering Children

Come Then, Lord Jesus
Album: Wake Thy Slumbering Children

Hear Our Prayer (The Litany Song)
Album: Wake Thy Slumbering Children

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go
Album: Indelible Grace Side B

O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
Album: Indelible Grace Side A

O Come and Mourn
Album: For All the Saints

Not What My Hands Have Done
Album: For All the Saints

Lead Me On O King Eternal
Album: Beams of Heaven

Jesus Lover of My Soul
Album: Beams of Heaven

Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah
Album: Beams of Heaven

Poor Sinner Dejected With Fear
Album: Pilgrim Days

This list is in no wise exhaustive. There are many other great recordings on these albums, but this list is a pretty good taste of what’s there. If you like what you hear in these, I would strongly recommend you go ahead and buy the albums. You won’t be disappointed. But, good news!

Get Indelible Grace Music for FREE!

I’m probably breaking some rules somewhere, but I just think that this music will be a great blessing to many, so I’m going suggest it anyway.

On eMusic now, if you’ve never signed up, then sign up! They’ll give you 50 songs for free. They’re yours to keep. When you sign up, you’ll have to give them a credit card so that when the month is over they can start charging you the subscription fee, but it’s a trial. So, just cancel before the month is up and it wont cost you anything. But for the purposes today, the trial will get you about 4 out of 6 of the Indelible Grace albums.

So, get on there. Sign up. Download the Indelible Grace Music. Cancel your account right away. Or, keep the service going. It really is great.

Tim Keller, in The Prodigal God, makes uses the story of the Prodigal son to make some telling statements about the church, and us personally. He says this:

“Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches are appealing to the younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.

Ouch. Dang. Let’s heed that warning.

I just got home from a nearly two hour conversation about church practice and theory. Not by any means a bad conversation, however, in all that time, it’s easy to become distracted from the heart of ecclesiological doctrines. I thought the quotation of this old hymn was in order.

There is more substance in the four minute hymn written by by Samuel Stone over 100 years ago, The Church’s One Foundation. It’s a nearly complete history and ecclesiology.

The church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,
Yet one over all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping;
Their cry goes up, "How long?"
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

The church shall never perish,
Her dear Lord to defend
To guide, sustain and cherish,
Is with her to the end
Though there be those that hate her,
And false sons in her pale
Against a foe or traitor,
She ever shall prevail

Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
‘Til, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blessed,
And the great church victorious
Shall be the church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won.
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee.