As a church staff, we read through and discussed Paul David Tripp’s Lead this fall. Chapter 9 on identity prompted me to pray this prayer based on Philippians 2.

In The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Andrew Walls comments on the origin and nature of the evangelical movement in the eighteenth century: “Historic evangelicalism is a religion of protest against a Christian society that is not Christian enough. . . . The evangelical bugbears were less professed infidelity than professed Christianity without the ‘distinguishing doctrines of the gospel’” (81).

Basil the Great argued, “For he who does not believe the Spirit does not believe the Son, and he who does not believe the Son, does not believe the Father. .  .  . Such a person is bereft of true worship, for he cannot worship the Son except in the Holy Spirit, and he cannot call upon the Father, except in the Spirit of adopted sonship.”

“How long, O Lord?” This repeated cry from Scripture seems so appropriate for this spring in our country as we mourn the senseless murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. As if a pandemic were not enough to remind us that this world is not as it should be, murders piled on top of murders cause us to join with creation, groaning to “be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). How long, O Lord?