Hurricane Erin forces thousands to evacuate

At this writing, waves of up to twenty feet are pounding the central Outer Banks of North Carolina. Tens of thousands have been evacuated from the area. Beaches remain off limits to swimming up and down the East Coast as dangerous waves and potentially deadly rip currents threaten the shorelines.

All this from a hurricane that is some two hundred miles from the US coast.

Hurricane Erin is so fierce that it provoked a state of emergency in North Carolina yesterday. While it is predicted to pull farther away from the mid-Atlantic coast today as it heads toward the open waters of the North Atlantic, its fury is expected to bring dangerous beach conditions and strong winds even into Friday.

In other news, a recent study reports that the next mega-earthquake on California’s San Andreas fault could produce the largest simultaneous disaster in modern California history, with huge regions of the state wracked by powerful seismic shaking all at once.

Despite efforts to use scientific and medical advancements to defy death, natural disasters remind us daily that humans are frail and finite. As President Kennedy famously observed, “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

However, this sobering fact has a very positive side as well, one that can redeem not only our suffering and challenges on this “small planet” but position us to experience God’s best in this world and the next.

Robots and a decline in religiosity

Studies show that countries where workers had more exposure to robots tended to experience a decline in religiosity. Researchers explain by pointing to the “instrumental” value of religion:

Historically, people have deferred to supernatural agents and religious professionals to solve instrumental problems beyond the scope of human ability. These problems may seem more solvable for people working and living in highly automated spaces.

All of this illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of religion as a means to our ends, an activity intended to benefit those who choose it.

If Satan cannot keep us from faith, he’ll tempt us to use faith for selfish rather than godly purposes. This is why the first petition of the Model Prayer says, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9, my emphasis). Our prayer must be for him to be “hallowed” and glorified by what we pray, not ourselves.

The second petition amplifies the first: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (v. 10). Only when we pray for God to be king of our lives and our world are we then to ask for our personal needs for “daily bread,” forgiveness, and leadership (vv. 11–13).

If we reverse this order, we seek God’s help for our purposes rather than his. We make his provision and protection a means to advancing our kingdom rather than his own.

I’m convinced that much of the suffering we experience in our fallen world is not because we do not pray or because God is not willing to answer, but because we do not pray for his glory rather than our own. Whether this is a temptation for you or not, I must confess that it is certainly one for me.

My temptation as I write this article

Consider an example.

David prayed, “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I” (Psalm 61:2). His plea illustrates the fact that faith in God is like a bike on a hill—we are either making progress or regressing. To go where we have never been, we need a guide who has been where we need to go and offers us the power to get there.

David can ask God for such help in the present because he has received such help in the past: “For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy” (v. 3). All God has ever done, he can still do.

But notice how David closes his prayer: “So will I ever sing praises to your name, as I perform my vows day after day” (v. 8, my emphasis). He asks for God’s help for God’s glory. This is one reason God could describe him as “a man after my heart, who will do all my will” (Acts 13:22). 

When God meets our need and leads us to the “rock that is higher than I,” we must give him the credit for our success. Transactional religion that does what God wants so he will do what I want is tempting in many ways, including its inherent promise to benefit us in ways the world will credit to us rather than to God.

When I prayed for the Lord to lead me in writing this article, for example, my unstated desire must not be to then impress you with myself as I share the insights he gives me. When I prayed for God’s help for my Sunday sermons, I was tempted to seek his assistance so I could then impress the congregation with myself as I preached my message.

But when we seek God’s help for God’s glory, we can never be the same. Nor can those we influence.

The message on Spurgeon’s tomb

Charles Spurgeon is often called the “Prince of Preachers.” His church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, was the largest evangelical church in the world. He founded the Pastor’s College and dozens of ministries; his published sermons fill sixty-three volumes, making him one of the most prolific Christian authors of all time.

But Spurgeon knew the secret to his success was not in seeking his glory but that of his Master, warning: “The moment we glorify ourselves, since there is room for one glory only in the universe, we set ourselves up as rivals to the Most High.”

However, he also encouraged us: “O child of God, be more careful to keep the way of the Lord, more concentrated in heart in seeking his glory, and you will see the lovingkindness and the tender mercy of the Lord in your life.”

Even after his death, Spurgeon continues to point this world to the next, seeking to lead us to glorify the King of kings and Lord of lords. His tomb in London’s West Norwood Cemetery has a stone Bible cemented open to Isaiah 45:22: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.”

To whom will your life point today?