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How to Pray Before the Work-Day

Matthew Henry gives some great suggestions for how to start off the day in prayer for your work and family. Quotes are taken from Daily Communion with God: How to Make the Most of Each Day.

1) Pray for your family:

We have families to look after, it may be, and to provide for, and are in care to do well for them; let us then every morning by prayer commit them to God, put them under the conduct and government of his grace, and then we effectually put them under the care and protection of his providence. Holy Job rose up early in the morning to offer burnt-offerings for his children, and we should do so to offer up prayers and supplications for them, according to the number of them all (Job 1:5) (Kindle Loc. 636).

2) Pray for your work

a) for wisdom, for success, for God’s blessing and presence:

We are going about the business of our callings perhaps, let us look up to God in the first place for wisdom and grace to manage them well, in the fear of God, and to abide with him in them; and then we may in faith beg of him to prosper and succeed us in them, to strengthen us for the services of them, to support us under the fatigues of them, to direct the designs of them, and to give us comfort in the gains of them. We have journeys to go, it may be, let us look up to God for his presence with us, and go no whither, where we cannot in faith beg of God to go with us (Loc. 640).

b) for skill and strength:

We have a prospect perhaps of opportunities of doing or getting good, let us look up to God for a heart to every price in our hands, for skill, and will, and courage to improve it, that it may not be a price in the hand of a fool (Loc. 645).

c) for deliverance from temptations particular to that day:

Every day has its temptations too, some perhaps we foresee, but there may be many more that we think not of, and are therefore concerned to be earnest with God, that we may not be led into any temptation, but guarded against every one; that whatever company we come into, we may have wisdom to do good, and no hurt to them; and to get good, and no hurt by them (Loc. 646).

d) for God’s general grace to carry us through the difficulties of the day:

We know not what a day may bring forth; little think in the morning what tidings we may hear, and what events may befall us before night, and should therefore beg of God, grace to carry us through the duties and difficulties which we do not foresee, as well as those which we do; that in order to our standing complete in all the will of God, as the day is, so the strength may be (Loc. 650).

Lost In Your Profession

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was speaking to a group of medical doctors, but this thought applies equally well to a good number of professions and professionals, not just to doctors (and grocers):

Somewhere in Pembrokeshire a tombstone is said to bear the inscription ‘John Jones, born a man, died a grocer.’ There are many whom I have had the privilege of meeting, whose tombstone might well bear the grim epitaph: ‘…born a man, died a doctor’! The greatest danger which confronts the medical man is that he may become lost in his profession…

Quoted in Iain Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939-1981, p. 335

The Doctor wasn’t too lost in his profession to heed the call to gospel ministry. And he wasn’t too lost in the gospel ministry to heed the call to be a husband and a father. What you do does not define you. What you are defines you, and what you do should flow out of that. There is a great danger in taking your identity from what you do rather than what Christ has done for you, and thus what you are in him.

It’s Only Stressful If…

In the 60 Minutes piece on Dick Cheney Sunday night he shared a couple of lines from his doctors that I thought were worth remembering:

  • Hard work never killed anyone.
  • Stress comes from doing something you don’t want to be doing.

He also used the words ‘wonderment’ and ‘magical’ to describe his medical treatment. It’s interesting to hear something of science’s relationship to magic acknowledged on a mainstream news show. I wonder if they’ve read That Hideous Strength.

Here’s a link to the transcript.

Being Busy Is Not Enough

Doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way is not a matter of being saved and then simply working hard. After Jesus ascended, the disciples waited quietly in prayer for the coming of his Spirit. Their first motion was not toward activism – Christ has risen, now let us be busy. Though they looked at the world with Christ’s compassion, they obeyed his clear command to wait before they witnessed. If we who are Christians and therefore indwelt by the Spirit are to preach to our generation with tongues of fire, we also must have something more than activism which men can easily duplicate. We must know something of the power of the Holy Spirit.

-Francis Schaeffer, No Little People, p. 63