Human nature wants to glorify man and even after we are saved we have this tendency to glorify and worship man, to glorify things on earth, even when it comes to the church. The old nature buried within us would really rather glorify people. We would rather glorify the things that we do, the preachers, the musicians – there is a lot of them these days in the churches – and to applaud them. We would rather admire the architecture, if it is to be admired. We would rather be taken in by the bigness, the largeness, the size and scale of something. We would rather admire the wealth and the giftedness of people, and there are some Christian magazines that talk endlessly about the giftedness of this or that person. That is human nature at work, overtaking the divine work in us. But our calling as believers is to constitute a church, which shows forth the glory of God and praises him.
At our best, what do we ask for? Well, we ask for gospel grace. He is able to give far beyond that. He saves souls, he humbles people, he causes people who had nothing but contempt for the things of God to suddenly hunger and thirst after them and to long to understand them and have them explained. People who would run a mile from anything spiritual, longing to be saved and anxious that they are repenting and asking and do not yet seem to have found. He has the power just at a word, just at a glance, to change people and their whole outlook. And he has power far beyond that. He has power to sanctify, to take away the bad temper and the lying and the violence and the problems and the selfishness and the tendency to hostility. He can take it away and he can refine us and change us. What a responsibility lies upon us as a church to be true and genuine, humble, and repentant, and to hunger and thirst after righteousness, always advancing in relationships, in conduct, in purity of language and behaviour. What a responsibility is ours because through us the glory of God is made known according to his will in the world. This is the chief feature of God’s glory.
Why are our prayers limited? Why do we have such small faith and hesitate to ask for big things? Or, when we do, we ask for them in a half-hearted manner? Why are we sometimes insincere in our praying? Why do we have foolish self-reliance and we don’t ask for the blessing of God and quickly get out of the practice and the habit of earnest prayer? Then we make wrong requests. ‘Lord, give me a better this, give me a bigger that, give me this opportunity, give me that opportunity’ – earthly things for ourselves. Yes we may ask for earthly things, friends, but make sure that you are asking far more for spiritual things, that they are your priorities. Pray much more for lost relations. Pray much more for lost neighbours and colleagues and for witness than you do for creature comforts or personal things.