Jaunt & Concierge for Week 6 of 2024
For much of the time I had a blog, I had two types of articles I often wrote. One was called Jaunt or Gantz Jaunt. The other was Concierge. Both features are references to my past. As a high school quarterback, I once ran 32 yards for the game winning touchdown. A newspaper ran the headline Gantz TD Jaunt Lifts Chiefs. Later in life I worked in and managed hotels. One of my favorite things to do for our guests was to function as a concierge. That is I recommended places of interest, restaurants, and the sort in our local area.
The word jaunt means a short journey for pleasure. Earlier this length I wrote a longer article on my meditations of Ezekiel 37:1-3. These jaunts will be much shorter and are about things I find interesting.
The concierge features will be recommendations of online destinations for the Christian reader.
I hope you will enjoy both aspects of this type of newsletter as you do of the longer discussion of biblical or theological subjects.
A Personal Note
My earthly father, Eugene Gantz, went to be with the Lord recently. I had the honor of preaching his funeral service early this month. Having been born during the beginning of the Great Depression and growing up in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl years, Dad was ready to enter into the rest promised by the Lord. Of all the things he is experiencing now, being with Jesus is the primary joy.
Scripture Meditation - John 11
The primary reference from which I preached Dad’s service was John 11. In this chapter Jesus makes the claim to Martha that
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
—John 11:25-26
This claim is verified later in the chapter with the momentous shout from the Lord,
He (Jesus) cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”
—John 11:43
I am intrigued by this verse. I’m intrigued that Jesus cried out with a loud voice. To cry out goes along with using a loud voice. One doesn’t cry out in a soft voice. Now I’m not sure exactly why Jesus used a loud voice. It doesn’t seem likely that Lazarus was any more able to hear a shout than a whisper in his earthly body. He was dead, and I assume that meant that his ears were dead, too.
But Lazarus did hear. This dead man with dead ears heard the voice of the Lord calling him from the grave.
This harkens back to the previous chapter in which Jesus taught,
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
—John 10:27
So while we may not hear the voice call us forth from an earthly grave only to enter that grave later as did Lazarus, we do hear the call of this good shepherd.
We hear it at conversion when we come to life from being dead in our trespasses and sins. We hear it at death as we cross that river into the presence of the Lord. And we will hear it when the Lord returns.
We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an arch-angel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
—1 Thessalonians 4:15-18
The Culture
I recently saw a young lady working as a hostess of a restaurant wearing a t-shirt that read, Believe in Yourself. That seems to be the mantra of our culture today and I think it is a faulty slogan for life. I like much better the words from the Apostle Paul to the Philippian jailer, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).
Concierge
This week I am recommending three articles on prayer. The main thing in life that I wish I knew more of and was better at is prayer. These articles come from trusted men who probably know a thing or two about the subject. I hope they will spur you on to fresh heights in the time you spend in your prayer closet. Be sure to click on the titles of the articles to read the full thing.
“Not My Will, but Yours”: How to Pray like Jesus
Alistair Begg
I am convinced that the subject of this article is one of the most needed teachings in today’s church. Prayer isn’t about getting your way before God. It is about God getting his way in our lives. Here are four good quotes from the article.
“Not my will, but yours” (Luke 22:42). These five words demonstrate the Son’s submission to the Father—a heart disposition essential to all proper prayer.
This particular night was cold enough for the high priest’s servants to have kindled a fire—yet even in cool temperatures, Jesus sweat profusely on account of His deep anguish.
He wasn’t relying on prayer itself but upon the God who answers prayer according to His wisdom. We recognize with Christ that our faith isn’t in prayer but in our Father who answers prayer. God, who gives good things to those who ask Him, will always give the right thing at the right time, regardless of how wrong it seems in our experience.
In His wisdom, God doesn’t always give us our requests. And we rejoice in that, for we’re often poor judges of what’s good for us and others.
It’s Okay to Just Pray
Tim Challies
Here is some encouragement if you think learning about prayer is too difficult of a task. Here are a couple of quotes to spur you to just pray.
The path to a deepening understanding of prayer does not lead through libraries as much as through closets, and not through reading as much as simply through praying.
And so the task of the Christian is not first to understand prayer, though may be a very good thing, and not first to solve prayer, which I suspect is an impossible thing. Rather, the Christian is to pray, knowing that part of the beauty of prayer is that even if we aren’t confident in how prayer works, we can have confidence in the one who tells us to pray. Even if we haven’t resolved the dilemmas and solved the mysteries, we can trust the one who issues the command and who insists that he hears and responds to our prayers. Our task, our calling, and our joyful duty is to pray.
What Is the Prayer of Faith?
Sinclair Ferguson
What does James mean when you wrote about the prayer of faith? Does it mean that when we pray, we are to just hope really hard that we will get what we want?
I am always eager to read what Sinclair Ferguson writes. In short, this is how Ferguson defines the prayer of faith. It is to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite.
Elijah’s praying is used as an example not because it produced miracle-like effects but because it gives us one of the clearest of all illustrations of what it means for anyone to pray with faith: it is believing God’s revealed Word, taking hold of His covenant commitment to it, and asking Him to keep it.
This, then, is the prayer of faith: to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. That promise is the only ground for our confidence in asking. Such confidence is not “worked up” from within our emotional life; rather, it is given and supported by what God has said in Scripture.
Such appeal to God’s promises constitutes what John Calvin, following Tertullian, calls “legitimate prayer.”
As Calvin again says, we learn “not to ask for more than God allows.”
Quote of the Week
Learn to pray like the Puritan who had nothing to his name but one piece of bread and a glass of water:
“What? All of this and Jesus Christ too?!”
—Scott Sauls