January 9, 2022January 10, 2022 Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Sermon on the Mount

How Should I Pray? (Part 1)

If your prayer life became your Sunday school’s prayer list, what would people find? Would most of the content focus upon uncle Jimmy’s cancer, Aunt Susie’s arthritis, or cousin Sally’s job hunt? Would your classmates find pleas for Bobby’s salvation or for Lashanda to love her enemies at the office? What would comprise that list?

Our answer to this question proves insightful. As Dr. Albert Mohler, the President of Southern Seminary, noted, “If we really want to know what a person believes, we should listen to them pray.” In other words, our faith is only as deep as the prayers we pray.

At this point, we should not all become self-conscience and begin praying in slow mumbles so that no one can hear us. According to Jesus, God hears in secret. Even if others do not hear us God does. He takes no delight in the mindless, repetitive prayers of unbelief. To pray well, we must pray as God would have us pray.

Our need for prayer help should not surprise us. According to the Scriptures, we do not naturally drift towards goodness. Jesus declared our hearts to be garbage dumps that produce among other things, “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” We come to faith because God mercifully reveals himself to us in his Word through his spirit. He accomplishes our spiritual growth and sanctification in the same manner. We grow in our ability to love God and others through the study of his word. We should not be surprised by our need for help in the spiritual disciplines.

What Do We Say?

When Jesus teaches us to pray, he does not begin with Aunt Judy’s broken leg. He begins with his glory. Jesus said, “Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:7-10).” It is good an appropriate to ask God to provide us with our daily needs. But we must not do so to the exclusion of God’s glory. Our prayers should be filled with a concern for the glory of God.

Hallowed Be Your Name

To accomplish this goal, our prayers should focus on the Hallowing of God’s name. To hallow God is to honor him. The apostle Peter tosses out the term when he wrote, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy (1 Peter 3:15).” To honor the name of God, we must know his name. In other words, we must hollow God as he reveals himself to us in the Scripture. Our salvation depends upon our ability to recognize the name of God. The apostle Peter reminds us, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven among men by which we must be saved.” The soul that prays to the great She God or to Mohamed does not know Jesus. To honor God, we must pray to the Father, Son, and Spirit as God commands. We cannot pray to the God of our imagination.

Practical prayers for honor should concern our hearts and the hearts of those around us. We should pray that God would teach us to revere and worship him with greater sincerity. We should pray that our quiet times and family devotions will make much of God. We should pray that our churches would hallow God’s name when they meet to pray, preach, give, and fellowship as the collected body of Christ.

Lastly, we should pray that God’s name will be glorified among the nations. When we enter this world, we arrive with no intention of honoring God. According to Psalm 53:1, we do not even acknowledge his existence. “The fool says in his heart, ‘“There is no God.”’ When we pray for God’s name to be glorified, we are praying that those at war with God would come to love him. As the retired pastor John Piper noted, “[Worship] is the goal and fuel of mission.” To pray for God’s honor is to pray for missions.

Your Kingdom Come

Next, Jesus instructs us to pray for the coming of his kingdom. As Saint Augustine noted long ago, two kingdoms exist: the kingdom of man whose dominate ethic is selfishness and the kingdom of God whose dominate ethic is love as defined in the beatitudes. When Christians pray for Jesus’s kingdom to come, they pray for Jesus to overthrow the kingdom of darkness with the kingdom of light.

This occurs in two ways. First, we pray for Jesus’s kingdom ethic to take root in our world. We pray for our hearts to become more meek, merciful, and sensitive to sin. We pray for our rules to be just and ask for help to pursue righteousness. And then we beseech Jesus to come back on his white horse. With this phrase, we affirm our desire to see Jesus overthrow the world of death and to fully establish his kingdom which will ensure that every fiber of abuse, sickness, and hatred is vanquished forever to the pits of hell. Our longings for eternity should find expressions in our prayers.

Such prayers of hope also reveal that we correctly understand that Jesus alone can establish perfect justice and mercy. When we pray for Jesus’s kingdom, we affirm that neither human charity nor human political parties can heal this broken world. Our hope is not the next benefit ball nor the next election. It is the coming kingdom of Jesus. For this we should pray.

Your Will Be Done

Lastly, we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, God’s moral will is accomplished perfectly. Heaven is glorious because there neither angel nor saint questions the goodness of God. They know him, love him, and obey him. When we pray, we should pray for such perfect obedience to be found on this earth. When we struggle with pornography, greed, cursing, a biting tongue, or vengeful heart, we should ask God to bring our will into agreement with his. Our prayers should be filled with petitions that seek to unshackle our hearts from the pains of sin.

Similarly, we should pray that the same would be true of our spouses, kids, coworkers, and fellow church members. Instead of attempting to force them to change through the withholding of intimacy for example, we should pray that they will do God’s will do God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven. We should take our concerns about our husband, our wife, and that annoying guy on the third floor to Jesus, imploring him to do what we cannot. We should long for God’s will to be done in our life and the life of everyone on earth as it is done in heaven.

So You Struggle to Pray

A few weeks ago, I did an informal social media poll on prayer. The number one challenged faced by the respondents concerned a lack of focus. As they begin to pray, their minds begin to wonder. Jesus gave us the Lord’s prayer in-part for this very reason. He provided us not with the ultimate prayer to pray but with a framework by which we can focus our prayers. The next time, we find our minds struggling to pray, we should begin with the glory of God. We should pray for his name to be hallowed, for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be done. We should pray as Jesus taught us.

And now we have gotten back to those prayers lists. Does the prayer list of your life resemble the Lord’s prayer? If not, let’s begin today to pray for God’s glory today.

March 21, 2021April 11, 2021 Peter Witkowski Memos

Memo: The Regathered Storm – March 2021

The words sent our souls sprawling across the sands of life. Stunned, April and I tried to comprehend what her oncologist had just said: “Her cancer has grown and we need to discuss new treatment options.” As the wave of bad news receded, April and I found ourselves unexpectedly pulled back into the murky waters of breast cancer as we stared at the walls of the 10^th floor exam room. The doctor went on to tell us that April’s latest scans revealed the formation of 10 new tumors in her liver. All ten had materialized since her lasts scans on December 23rd. One breast cancer tumor measured a centimeter and a half in diameter. She also developed four new insignificant cancerous spots in her lungs. Though the cancer in her bones and breast remain stable, her new cancer growths revealed that her first line of treatment has failed. The first sea wall of protection composed of hormonal treatments has been breached by this dark storm.

We thank God for the past twenty-three months of success. Still, we had longed for more time. Since the medicine had repulsed more than one fear blown wave, we had begun to believe that April’s health was relatively secure. With the storm clouds fading into the horizon, we had begun to build tiny, happy, little structures in the sands of life, basking in the sun of providence. This past Wednesday morning, the waves of breast cancers washed our little sandcastles away and began pulling us back towards the law of averages, a beacon that often proves more ominous than hopeful.

With regards to what happens next, April and I have more questions than answers at this time. On Friday, March 19, April exited the Promise study at The Mayo Clinic and stopped taking her medications. Though she may continue to seek treatment in Minnesota, she and her doctors no longer know which principles of navigation should guide her journey. In an effort to determine what should be the guiding star for the second phase of her treatment, April underwent multiple blood tests and a liver biopsy while at Mayo. The reports should lay anchor within the next two weeks. At that time, she will work with her medical teams at Mayo and UVA to create a second treatment plan. Once we have charted our next course forward through this uncertain storm, we will share that information with you.

Though some things about our circumstances appear set against us, we know our God is forever for us. At times we cannot help but wonder why our good God would allow April’s cancer to flood back into our lives. Our children are so young; our church ministry is so new; and our marriage is so dear. At first glance, his plan for us seemingly does not align with the course that April and I would chart. But if we have been left to our own plans in years past, April and I would not be married; nor would we have our three little kids or our precious church family. Because God did not consult us and our foolish sentiments when forming his plans for us, April and I have the good gifts we that we hold so dearly as the waters rage today. We are confident that the God who has guided our lives by his love to towards the edge of this storm will be with us as we sail into its breakers.

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Thank you for your love, prayers, and never-ending support.

December 24, 2020April 30, 2021 Peter Witkowski Memos

Memo: April’s Cancer Update – Christmas 2020

As we wait for the glories of the Christ child to once again pierce the darkness of Christmas Eve, April and I want to bear witness to how the Christ child has blessed us this December. This past Monday, April endured her latest set of scans replete with needle pricks, swallowable dyes, and not so comfortable beds that drift in an out of large machines. Then like children bouncing around the house the night before Christmas, we waited to unwrap the results. On Wednesday, December 23, 2020 with the help of April’s talented UVA medical team, we unwrapped the latest report and found good news! Though a few new nondescript nodules have dotted the scans like misplaced Christmas light, the overwhelming majority of her tumors have either shrunk or remained stable. One has even decreased from 4.5 centimeters to 3.2 centimeters. The favor of Jesus rests upon my sweet bride.

But that divine favor does not eliminate all sorrow and hardships. Much like the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, April and I find ourselves living in the past, present and future. We look back at the pain and uncertainty that hovered over our last Christmas and give thanks for the radical improvements that have occurred in April’s body. She just made a Yule Log Cake (Hello Christmas!). We seek to stay in the present reveling in the good news of the day as we watch our three kiddos open Christmas presents, embrace Christmas cookie decorating, and sing “Joy to the World” at the top of their lungs. Lastly, the future also hangs about us like a damp, ill-defined midst. We know April will have to endure more scans, back pain, and days away from our children. April wishes she could reshape her future like Scrooge. Sadly, it remains both fixed and elusive.

Though we do not know what the content of the next report will be, we do know something of the sender’s character. He is our savior, the Christmas child, Christ the Lord! Psalm 100:5 declares, “For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever.” We know this is true because the baby in the manger, lived, died, and rose again to save sinners like April and me. He humbled himself to the point of death on the cross so that we might be exalted to live with God. And he guides us through life with more love and power than even one of Scrooge’s spirits. The famed pastor and theologian, John Calvin, rightly noted that when God’s people descend into hardship, “[God] will not desert them, but will powerfully help them should they need his aid.” In short, the light of Christmas morning reminds us that our future will be snuggly wrapped in the love of God. Though the results of April’s scan will invariably contain variation, we know the love of God will remain fixed. Because of that first Christmas long past, we too can sing with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased (Lk 2:14)!”

Thank you for rejoicing with us this cold December day. We covet your prayers and support. They warm our hearts, manifesting the love of God. We hope our good news infuses a little gospel cheer into your Christmas celebration.

More importantly, we pray that you too will discover the joy of the Shepherds, and of Mary and Joseph who knew that Jesus, “the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people the sheep of his pasture.” God is good all the time!

Merry Christmas!