Jimmy Draper Interview

https://vimeo.com/56047191

It was recently my privilege to interview Jimmy Draper regarding many key issues in church life.

Beware of a Prayerless Life

It is way too easy to get caught up in the events of life and neglect prayer.  A busy day awaits most of us and we rush off to meet the day.  Even in vocational ministry it is easy to be surrounded by all of the right books, sermon resources, and reminders of the need for prayer, but to neglect the time in prayer needed to accomplish the work.  Prayerlessness is our great sin.  The life without prayer will find no power to quench the fiery darts of the evil one.  After writing with skillful instruction about equipping ourselves with the whole armor of God, Paul says we must be, "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit...with all supplication" (Eph. 6:18).  In other words, PRAY! PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!  There is no ability to discern the events of life without prayer and there is no power to stand victoriously without prayer.  We must pray long and we must pray hard.  We must pray without ceasing.  

E.M. Bounds, in his immortal book, "Power Through Prayer" shares these piercing words:
"A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God's truth and for God's Church.  He may have the most costly casket and the most beautiful flowers, but it is a funeral, notwithstanding the charmful array.  A prayerless Christian will never learn God's truth; a prayerless ministry will never be able to teach God's truth.  Hell has enlarged herself and filled her dire caves in the presence of the dead service of a prayerless Church."

So many of our sins are wretchedly flowing out of prayerless lives.  Pray, and please don't think you can be or do anything truly good without it.  Communion with Christ is our greatest need, and our only hope.

The Cure Begins With A Proper Diagnosis

In these days of people hurting without knowing their source of pain.  People avoiding responsibility with terminology such as "sickness" and "mental illness".  Society blaming inanimate objects for destruction of life that requires a wicked person to pull the trigger or to set the switch.  I found these words from one of the great preachers to be very fitting:

Now the problem with the world today is we’ve never really seen where the problem is. And the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart, which is desperately wicked. But I wouldn’t expect anyone to stand up in Congress and say, “Gentlemen, the problem is sin.” Would you expect that? Or would you expect someone to stand up in one of our great universities—a PhD—and say, “Sirs, I have finally found the problem with mankind. It’s sin”? Of course not! Would you expect anybody to come running out of the laboratory with a test tube and saying, “Eureka! I’ve found it! The problem is sin”? Do you think the Security Council of the U.N. is going to stand up and say, “The problem in the world and the problem between nations is sin”? No, they’re not going to say that, and that’s the reason they’re never going to solve the problem. You see, they never do get a proper diagnosis; so how on earth are they ever going to get a proper remedy? They can’t do it. And so all of these agencies and all of these people they’re spending time sweeping down cobwebs rather than killing the spider, which is sin.

And we’re just dealing with the effects. For example, we have a war on poverty. Well, we don’t need a war on poverty nearly as badly as we need a war on sin. Now I’m not saying poverty is a good thing, but dear friend, poverty is even rooted in sin: the greed, and the grasping, and the carelessness, and the hatefulness, and the waste, and the strife, and the wantonness, that has turned this world into a garden of weeds and a swamp where the mosquitoes of hate are breeding by the millions. The costliest thing around is sin. Don’t you forget it. And I tell you, if we’d just have a war on sin, we’d do something about the poverty problem and every other problem. But you see, nobody wants to admit what the problem is, so no wonder we are never coming to the solution.

From the sermon, “The Victory of Faith,” by Adrian Rogers

Considering the Sinner's Prayer

Considering the Sinner’s Prayer

The debates can be intense and the misrepresentations superfluous regarding the role and use of a sinner’s prayer.  Certainly we have seen many improper uses of a sinner’s prayer that have led many to a false sense of security regarding salvation.  These excesses must be avoided.  Yet we also must confess that Scripture provides precedent for one convicted about their sin crying out for God to be merciful.  Jesus speaks of a humbled tax collector who felt the convicting power of God in Matthew 18:13.  The man, “standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’”  Peter certainly offered a prayer of acceptance and humility, when after Jesus showed him divine power over the fish of the sea, Peter “fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8)  The prodigal son came to the realization of his sinful condition and expressed a prayer of repentance in Luke 15:18, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.”  The clear repentance reflected in this great parable manifests the heart’s cry of one turning away from sin and turning to God.  The thief on the cross offers a type of sinner’s prayer when he spoke up for righteousness by correcting the other thief, and expressed repentance with, “do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the condemnation?  And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds.”  And then He turned to Jesus and said, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” (Luke 23:29-40)  At Pentecost, Peter even instructs his responsive audience after preaching a convicting sermon.  In response to their question, “What shall we do?” Peter tells them they must “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” (Acts 2:37-38)  Paul and Silas instruct the Philippian jailer in the same manner as he asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  They guide him to a proper response in salvation, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:30-31)  The biblical record is clear that a proper response to the hearing of the gospel is for a sinner to pray to the merciful God.  The mistake against which we must guard is the false promise that seems to accompany some type of mechanized prayer.  We must not give a sense of assurance to someone just because they have repeated the words of a prayer recited before them.  It is right and biblical to instruct someone honestly responding to God’s grace, but we must never cheapen the call to discipleship.  There are too many today who, “went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” (1 John 2:19)  It is my fear, and the fear of others, that many have contributed to this error by offering people a half-true gospel.  And in the end a half-true gospel makes half-true disciples, who are no disciples at all.