Posting that new Obama ad reminded me to post part three of that three-part interview with Dr. R.C. Sproul. You’ll see why in a moment. We’re talking about his most recent book, Five Things Every Christian Needs To Grow. You might want to read Part 1 and Part 2 first.
CHEDIAK: In the course of your ministry, do you think Christians in general have gotten better or worse in regards to their preparation for corporate worship?
SPROUL: Throughout church history there was always a strong sense in the church that worship is not something that you do just on the fly, but it’s important to prepare yourself for it, to prepare yourself for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, to prepare yourself for coming into the presence of God, and that sense of preparation has all but disappeared. You know, they tell us that the number one reason why people come to church today is for fellowship. Now, fellowship is important, and I could add that as a means of grace. I believe that fellowship is very important for the Christian to grow. You don’t grow in isolation from the body of Christ. We need each other, and it’s a wonderful thing to have choice fellowship on Sunday morning or during the rest of the week at our church, but that’s not the primary reason why we come to church or should come to church. The primary reason we come is not to be involved with each other but to be involved with Him, to enter into His presence.
I believe a church building involves a threshold. It’s a symbol. You leave the secular. You enter the sacred. You leave the profane. You enter the holy. You leave the commonplace, and you step into the uncommon. But we’ve lost that sense of sanctity, and I think it’s important that we recover it.
CHEDIAK: Now let me ask you a couple light-hearted questions. Some people wonder why you are resistant to the use of computers, but yet you seem so deeply immersed in the understanding of TiVo?
SPROUL: I get razzed a lot about my lack of computer ability. I am computer illiterate, although I’ve written several books on the computer, using them strictly as word processors, and so I’ve been assisted from that perspective. I’m not against computers. I just don’t know how to use them. Fortunately I have wonderful people at Ligonier who help me if I need some information from the Internet on research, they’ll look it up for me and give me the hard copy. I use, of course, computerized technology recording football games on TV, but as far as an actual computer, I don’t have one. That’s not because I think they’re evil things. It’s just because I’m so challenged electronically.
CHEDIAK: Do you think your love of football just forced you to work through the discomfort of learning how to program TiVo, because that looks to me more intimidating than computers.
SPROUL: Well, you know, it took me a while to get into TiVo. But I think TiVo’s the greatest invention of the modern age. I had never in my life recorded a TV program until a friend of mine showed me how TiVo operates. I got TiVo so that I could look at the list of upcoming movies and athletic events, record them while I sleep at night, and then watch them at my leisure. It’s an amazing thing, that this thing is recording programs while my TV’s off. I don’t understand how they do it. It amazes me, but I’m glad that they do.
Related: Interview with R.C. Sproul – Part One; Part Two; Short Videos

This is part two of a three-part interview with Dr. R.C. Sproul over his most recent book, Five Things Every Christian Needs To Grow. You might want to read Part 1 first. Part three will be posted sometime next week. [Update: Part 3 has been posted.]

CHEDIAK: You write that the third thing every Christian needs to grow is worship. Is there a relationship between worship and evangelism? Because I noticed you did not specifically mention evangelism as one of the five things every Christian needs to grow.
DR. SPROUL: I consider the third step for growth in the Christian life to be that of worship. I think we’re living in a time of incredible crisis even of our understanding of what worship is. David Wells shook the Christian world several years ago with the publication of his book, No Place for Truth, in which he chronicled the superficial style of so much that passes for worship in our day. Much of Christian worship today has degenerated into entertainment or pop psychology, involving anything but offering a sacrifice of praise and reverence to a holy God. I know that there are all different kinds of styles and shapes and forms of worship, but however our worship is framed, it must focus on God, on His holiness, on His transcendent majesty. Our spirits must be moved to a sense of awe and reverence for Him. God is seeking people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Spirit worship — spiritual worship — is not worship that is done by rote. Spiritual worship comes from the heart. It’s not empty. It’s not formalistic or ritualistic. That doesn’t mean we despise the forms or we despise the rituals. Those are important. But they have to be filled with the affection of the heart. Also, our worship is to be true. It is to be according to truth, according to the directives that God Himself gives to us in Scripture. I explore that to some degree in the book. Now, I also believe that we distinguish among these different steps, but can’t really separate them. Prayer is a necessary element of worship and when we worship we are there to hear the Word of God. We think for example of witnessing, our outreach to the community. Our evangelism, for example, is an expression of our belief in the truth, of our prayer life, and of our worship.
CHEDIAK: The fourth is service.
DR. SPROUL: The fourth category that I explore in this book is the category that I call service. In Biblical terms, all of the ministries in the Bible, including that of the apostle, that of the prophet, that of the missionary, that of the preacher, the teacher, the steward, the administrator—all of these were considered offices of service, of diakonia. Even the deacons, who were distinguished by that word, manifested this whole operation of being engaged with the community, in being involved in what we call mercy ministry making sure that the naked are clothed, that the prisoners are visited, and that we care for the people who are lonely and wounded in our community, particularly the widows and the orphans. Jesus came to serve us and the servant is not above his Master. We, if we are to grow in our Christian life, have to be engaged in the Christian life and that means to serve–to serve Him and to serve His people.
CHEDIAK: The fifth category is stewardship, which I’m assuming includes tithing and using our gifts?
DR. SPROUL: The last category that I explore briefly in this little book is one of stewardship. A steward is by definition someone who does not own what he governs. A steward in the biblical framework was one who would be hired to manage the affairs of the household. He didn’t own the house. He worked in the house. He managed the house.
All that we possess belongs to God. And the Bible calls us to be stewards of the gifts, the talents, and the things that He has provided for us. Our very lives are on loan from God. I have to be a good steward of my life, what I do with my life. I have to make a careful examination of the gifts and talents that God has given to me, and understand that these abilities are not something that I can take credit for ultimately. They are gifts. And I am called to use them in His service. The more I exercise the gifts that God gives to me in ministry, the more I grow. We often think of stewardship almost exclusively in terms of finances and of tithing, and there’s a crisis there. In the Old Testament, God required that His people give a tenth of their earnings of a given year, a tenth of their gain back to Him. That was right off the top. This wasn’t any clever “mathemagics” to trim that one-tenth or the tithe that they were giving. And yet I hear all the time from people now who say, “that was an Old Testament responsibility; that we live in the New Testament and we’re not bound by that responsibility of tithing.” There is some truth in that but on the other hand, the New Testament makes it clear that the new covenant is a better covenant. It gives us more than the people of old received in Israel. And if anything, the responsibilities for financial support of the work of the kingdom are greater in the New Testament than they were in the Old Testament.
I read an article that said of all of the Christians who called themselves “born again”, only 4% practiced tithing. If that’s true, and if what Malachi says at the end of the Old Testament is true, that means 96% of us as professing Christians are routinely, continuously, systematically, impenitently robbing God. I have to say that to learn to be a tither is to experience a whole new joy of being a Christian. I have yet in my lifetime to meet somebody who tithes his or her income, and regrets it or is upset about it. I hear from people all the time. I wish that people would understand that you cannot out give God. The reason why we are called to stewardship is for the work of the kingdom. Somebody has to finance it and it’s our responsibility to do that.
Related: Interview with R.C. Sproul – Part One; Part Three; Short Videos

I previously mentioned that I had the honor of proof-reading this outstanding book. As I’ve done with a few other authors, I thought I’d try to interview Dr. Sproul. It turns out that Dr. Sproul is averse not only to e-mail but to computers in general. Consequently, someone on his staff printed out the questions, conducted an audio interview with Dr. Sproul, then transcribed the conversation and sent me an MS Word file. Wow, I’m very grateful that Dr. Sproul and his staff were willing to give so much time and effort for this interview. Given the length of some of Dr. Sproul’s replies, I will post this interview as a three-part series. I’m told that a few You Tube videos will also be forthcoming; I’ll be sure to post those as well.
CHEDIAK: So I heard you’ve got a new book out?
DR. SPROUL: Yes, I’m happy about one of the newest projects that we’ve been able to complete. My book called Five Things Every Christian Needs To Grow has been re-released through Reformation Trust Publishing. I want to tell you a couple of things about that before we look at the five things in particular.
In the original draft of that book, I used the number five because of the episode in the Old Testament of the battle between David and Goliath, which David saw as a battle between the people of God and an infidel. You know the story that when David went into battle against this giant, he went to a nearby brook, and he selected five smooth stones. He took those five stones as ammunition for his sling. When the story unfolded, it only required one stone for David to slay the giant. I was trying to draw the analogy there between David’s combat with the giant and our fight and struggle as Christians with the world, the flesh, and the devil. That introduction of the five stones was eliminated by the editor because they thought it had too much of a militaristic overtone. I was thinking: Well, the New Testament uses the metaphor of war and battle all the time for the Christian life. I wrote this book in the first place not as an academic study for theologians, but rather as a simple guide for the beginning Christian to help him or her understand what the means of grace are and the tools that God provides for each one of us to grow spiritually and to grow into conformity with Christ.

CHEDIAK: The first thing that you’ve identified is Bible study. Why is that one of the most crucial five things?
DR. SPROUL: I believe that a Christian is only as strong in his faith and in his spiritual life as his mastery of the Word of God. Jesus Himself said that we don’t live by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God. When I was first converted, I joined a little prayer group in our college community. Maybe two or three weeks after I’d been converted they had a visitor on campus who was dating one of the girls in our group, and he was a seminary student. He pulled me aside in one of these prayer meetings, and he said to me, “R.C., get in the Book.” I never forgot that because I was nurtured in the Bible, not only in Bible classes in college, but every night I spent 45 minutes to an hour going through the Bible, book by book, and verse by verse, and I believe that the first virgin reading I had of the Bible from cover to cover had the greatest impact of my Christian life, then and on to this day.
I’m also convinced that when we’re studying the Bible, we are studying not the collected insights of ancient thinkers or prophets, but I believe that the Bible is nothing less than the unvarnished Word of God. Remember when Jesus encountered Peter after the resurrection, and he asked him three times, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter, who had denied Him three times, now affirmed three times his profound affection for his master. But you could see that he was getting increasingly agitated as Jesus repeated the question. The answer each time when Peter said, “Yes, you know that I love you,” was “Feed my sheep.” His sheep are believers. And believers, in order to grow, need to be nurtured and they need to be fed. We get that feeding from our pastors and from our mentors and family circumstances, but at the same time, each person has to get deeply involved in the Word for himself or for herself.
CHEDIAK: The second category is prayer. You specifically discuss Kingdom-focused prayer. Can you please tell us what that is, and how you go about praying not so much for yourself, but for the Kingdom?
DR. SPROUL: I believe the second most important step for Christians to grow is to cultivate a deep and profound prayer life. I meet Christians all the time, who have been Christians for many years, but still sense a frustration about their lack of a powerful prayer life. One of my favorite little books on this subject is a book written by Archie Parrish called A Simple Way To Pray. What Archie does is he goes through the Scriptures and through church history and shows that the most powerful prayer that you can find anywhere are those prayers that focus not on our own private needs or desires, but prayers that focus on the Kingdom. We look, for example, at how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He said, “When you pray, pray like this: Our Father, who art in heaven.” And that’s the address. The first petition that Jesus told us to pray about was that the name of God would be regarded as holy. “Hallowed be Thy name.” And then “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We know that the Kingdom has come in its fullness already in heaven, and God’s will is done with perfect obedience in heaven. Our petition is that Kingdom would be made manifest here. That people would reflect obedience to that Kingdom here on earth as it exists right now in heaven. One of the things that I found fascinating when I preached recently through the Lord’s Prayer is when I got to the end of it. “Thy kingdom come. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” I consulted ten commentaries, and nobody gave more than one paragraph’s attention to that. Yet I believe that the end of the Lord’s prayer, whether it was in the original or not, is one of the most important teaching guides on how to pray because we understand and acknowledge that the kingdom does not belong to us, that the kingdom belongs to Him. God’s work is not accomplished in this world by our power, by our programs, or by our ingenuity, because the power is His power, and obviously He will share His glory with no man. We have to be reminded when we pray that it is His glory that we are praying for. I believe that as we grow to a deeper understanding of prayer by studying what the Bible teaches about prayer, by studying the Psalms, for example, more and more of our time in prayer will be in adoration, and less and less in basic petitions for our own benefit.
Can I say one more thing about that? I think the most important thing about prayer, however, is that when we enter into prayer, that we remember two things. We have to remember Who it is we are speaking to in prayer, and we have to remember who we are. If we remember those two things, then there will be a natural sense of reverence and adoration and humility that will cover our prayer.
Related: Interview with R.C. Sproul – Part Two; Part Three; Short Videos