Secret Sins

If you lift a stone in the garden you find all sorts of creepy crawlies underneath. Sin is a little like that.

What are secret sins?

Psalm 19:12 Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. It is not entirely clear what these hidden faults or secret sins are. Secret sins are the subject of the first part of a book by Obadiah Sedgwick (c 1600-1658), an exposition of verses in Psalm 19, first published in 1660. He says that such sins are

1. Not hidden from God

There is no such thing as a sin hidden from God. It is impossible to hide anything from him. Remember Adam and Eve vainly trying to hide from God and Cain failing to realise that the blood of Abel was crying from the ground. Many verses show this

Isaiah 29:15 Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the LORD, who do their work in darkness and think, Who sees us? Who will know?

Proverbs 5:21 … your ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all your paths.

Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

A children's catechism asks: Can you see God? Answer: I cannot see God but he always sees me.

2. But may be hidden from you

David may have in mind sins in his life he is not even aware of. It is possible to sin and not realise. In some situations you hear people use God's name thoughtlessly. You point it out but they often do not realise they have spoken God's name. An extreme example was Saul of Tarsus persecuting Christians thinking it pleased God. There are professing Christians who think they are serving God by pursuing a certain policy or lifestyle yet there is reason to think it is the opposite of what God wants. We need to recognise in all humility that we may sin at some point and not even realise. These sins also need to be forgiven.

3. Hidden from others

• Some are hidden because of how they are described. One way people try to hide sins is by disguises. People are pro-choice if they favour abortion on demand. They speak not of abortion but termination of a pregnancy. It is adult entertainment not pornography, having an affair not committing adultery, sexual liberation not unfettered lust. The word fornication has almost disappeared exist being covered by myriad euphemisms. Even for your prayers can in fact be gossip.
• Some are secret in the sense of being private. They are kept to a small circle of friends. You read of some politicians after the event and gain quite a different impression of their character. Sometimes people are outed when their private life becomes public knowledge. Gordon Brown was famously caught out when he commented adversely on a woman without realising his microphone was still active. Are you one person in public and another in private?
• Others are kept from all other human knowledge. Some sins are pretty much hidden from human view. The person who sins knows in his conscience he is sinning but pretends at least for that moment that they are not sinning or are unseen. Some sins are outward but occur when no-one else is around, others occur only in the mind and remain undetected for that reason. All sin, of course, begins there. Left to itself it will erupt like a boil and become visible. A child can be conceived but not born. So many sins die in the womb, as it were. Some deny that a foetus under 14 days is not human but it is. Sins that remain only in the heart are still sins. Sins that I hide, as best I can, from every other person, sins that remain only in my heart, are still sins.

Why should I want to be forgiven for secret sins?

We do not know what sins David may have been guilty of but he wanted to be forgiven them all. We should also want to be forgiven our secret sins. Sedgwick suggests why.

1. They may become public sins otherwise

When you weed the garden you know the rule that you need to pull them up by their roots. Sometimes a serious fire starts with only a small spark. Unless the spark is extinguished there will be a great fire. James 1:15 describes how after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. The instinct of a baby in the womb is to be born; sin too wants to break out and act. If you indulge sin in your heart, do not be surprised if the next thing that happens is that it breaks out in your life. If you have thought about a sin, when an opportunity to commit it arises you are more ready to act. Spurgeon makes the same observation. One sin easily leads to another. When we sin a sin the first time it may be hard but the second time is easier and so on until we are used to it. Secret sin is especially dangerous in that way. We need to be done with secret sin before it becomes open sin. Sincerely seek forgiveness for that and you will not fall into the other.

2. They are the most likely to deceive us

All sin deceives us to some extent but secret sin the most! They are most likely to prevail because

• We do not judge secret sins as strictly and spiritually as open sins. We are often tempted to think of them as not being sins at all or small sins at most. We tend to think something like this. To stab someone dead or cause a wound is a great sin. It is not so bad but still a sin to speak in a nasty and unpleasant way so that someone is upset. As for thinking horrible thoughts about someone and raging against them in our minds, that is not really sin – or is it? Adultery is obviously sin as is looking at pornography. It is also a sin to fantasise in your mind about someone. Sin is always trying to excuse itself. Secret sin is the most likely to succeed. It should not.
• Many people are at least outwardly reputable. The truth is that most people learn by a certain age not to commit too many outward sins. We commit few in public, and perhaps not many in private. However, on our own and in our hearts we may commit many sins. Now we need in one sense to be most careful over the sins that deceive us most easily. We ought to be very concerned therefore not just to be forgiven our known sins but our secret ones too. Are we?

3. Sin's strength is inward

You are familiar with the fact that when you are ill the problem is often within ad so you need to get a drug into your system to be well again. In many cases simply rubbing on ointment will solve nothing. In a similar way, we need forgiveness for secret sins first and foremost.

4. God looks mainly on what is within

Psalm 66:18, 19s If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and has heard my prayer.

Psalm 51:6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

In other religions you will find outward conformity is all that is required. The concept of hypocrisy is particularly Christian. This is because God looks at the heart. We sing a song about this with the children at our church. It begins

Girl so pretty, boy so smart, Man looks on the outside but God looks on the heart

Charming manners, friendly grin. Man looks on the outside but God can see within

Sedgwick: “The man is to God what his inside is. If you work wickedness in your heart, God will destroy you. Plaster your visible part with all sorts of pious expressions: if yet you can set up a form of sinning within, you are notable hypocrites. The Lord sees you to be false and rotten, and He will discharge Himself of you …”

Three horrible sins wrapped up in one

• The sin itself. Often the worst sins are committed in secret. Murderers usually murder when they think no-one will see. Adultery is usually secret. Some say the only sin that matters is getting found out. That is heresy. Spurgeon says “A sin is a sin, whether done in private or before the wide world … Do not measure sin by what other people say of it. Measure sin by what God says of it and [by] what your own conscience says of it …”
• Hypocrisy. The hypocrite can get little pleasure from secret sins. Spurgeon says “Hypocrisy is a hard game to play at: it is one deceiver against many observers; [certainly] it is a miserable trade that will earn at last, as its certain climax, a tremendous bankruptcy. Ah! Ye who have sinned without discovery, Be sure your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:23); and bethink you, it may find you out ere long.”
• Atheism. We seldom think of it like this but secret sin is a form of atheism. It is pretending God cannot see or that he is not there. Psalm 94:7-9 They say, The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob takes no notice. Take notice, you senseless ones among the people; you fools, when will you become wise? Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? Spurgeon warns “There is no hiding it from God! Thy sin is photographed in high heaven. The deed, when it was done, was photographed upon the sky; and there it shall remain. … thy vices are all known, written in God’s book. He keepeth a diary of all thine acts.”

We closed with words from Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs

“Take heed of secret sins. They will undo thee if loved and maintained: one moth may spoil the garment; one leak drown the ship; a penknife stab can kill a man as well as a sword. So one sin may damn the soul”.
This article originally appeared in Grace Magazine

In changing times, trust in the unchanging Christ

Hebrews 13:8 says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. A modern writer says “More sermons have been preached on this text than any other verse in Hebrews, so that this verse has attained confessional status in the church.” We even sing it in a chorus “Yesterday, today, forever, Jesus is the same”.

It is a verse many know, even if unsure where to find it. Whether original to the writer or a saying of the time, it has a proverbial quality that makes it easy to remember. ‘It has been’ says another “a source of strength and encouragement to Christian believers in every generation.’ It ought to be for us.

It may have been intended to stand alone as a good thing the Hebrews would do well to remember. “Whatever you do, keep looking to the unchanging Christ. Go to him in all your needs and troubles. Look to him for strength and encouragement.” Verse 5 is similar, Never will I leave you or forsake you.

Most commentators link it back to verse 7. Your leaders have now died but remember their example and keep looking to the unchanging Christ. When Christian leaders die there is a sense of foreboding. How will we manage without them? But such deaths serve to remind us where our true focus should be – on Jesus himself. That seems to be what happened to Isaiah in Isaiah 6. One ancient writer (Herveus of Tours) says “The same Christ who was with them is with you and will be with those who come after us, even to the end of the age. Yesterday he was with the fathers, today he is with you, and he will be with your posterity evermore.”

It may be that the writer intended to introduce verse 9. Certainly, if we keep looking to Jesus we will not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. There were all sorts of strange teachings around in those days and down through the ages there have been such things. These days there are perhaps more than ever. What is the antidote? In many cases they have to be carefully answered, of course, but the fundamental need is that we look away from men, who constantly follow this or that fad, and instead focus on Jesus, who is constant and unchanging.

We want to highlight three things in the verse worth noting at any time but especially at the start of a new year.

The world constantly changes

We live in a world where time is always going forward. The very change of the year reminds us of the relentless march of time. It is a familiar thought – you can take a clock and turn the hands back very easily but you cannot turn back time. “If I had my time over again … ” people say, or “I wish I could turn the clock back” but we know it is impossible.

People do not live forever. I do not have to argue this point. It is, as we often say, conscious of the irony, a fact of life. Death is everywhere.

Leadership changes. Because of death and other factors leadership changes. Prime ministers come and go. In churches there are changes too. If it is not death then something else will call a man away – retirement, ill health, a need elsewhere. Sadly sometimes there are moral falls or doctrinal failings that force removal.

Jesus Christ never changes

Although as far as leadership and many other things are concerned there is constant flux, nevertheless Christ never changes. He is constant.

Change

Of course, Jesus does change in a sense. His grace is dispensed in different ways. There are obvious differences between Old and Testament times. Looking forward to Messiah gives way to Messiah's actual coming. There are other differences - before and after the flood, before and after the Law is given, before and after the resurrection, before and after the pouring out of the Spirit, the time when the Scriptures were being written and the apostolic gifts were in evidence and the days that have followed. It is no good simply finding something in the Bible and saying “That’s what they did then so it must be right now.” That simply will not work. No, there have been changes over the years, different dispensations of God's grace and the verse is not contradicting that. Christ has existed in different states. Think of his pre-incarnate state in glory, his humiliation (conception, birth, life, death, burial), his exaltation (resurrection, ascension, session at God's right hand), his coming return in glory too, to judge the world and reign.

No change

Having said all this, as for his attitude of grace towards his people, Jesus Christ never changes.

He never needs replacing. If a player in a football team cannot play, he is replaced. Sometimes the replacement is worse, sometimes better. Now with Jesus not only can he never be replaced – no-one is good enough – but he never needs to be replaced. Why? Because he is the same yesterday, today and forever! Even though he died, he lives forever. He is always there. People die. Great leaders go and are missed. We try to replace them. Children lose their mothers and fathers sometimes and someone has to attempt the impossible task of standing in for them. But Jesus will never need replacing. Once you put your faith in him he can never be lost. He will be yours forever – through all the changing scenes of life. What a comfort! Don’t forget it.

Nothing can be added to his perfect work. Nothing more needs to be done. He has completed the work. Hebrews 10:11-14 makes that clear. Do you realise that he has done it all? There is no need for anything more from us. What a glorious thing is the finished work of Christ.

So we must trust only in him today and forever

The conclusion is obvious. Negatively, do not look to men. On John Wesley's memorial in Westminster Abbey, it says “God buries his workmen but he carries on his work”. We must keep looking to the unchanging Christ and not to men – obviously not to bad men but, in one way, not to good ones either. The best way to think of Christian leaders you admire is to imagine them saying, as any decent one would, “Look to the one who cannot fail, who never needs to be replaced and who is permanently available to his people.” Positively, do look to Christ. That is the obvious lesson. Whatever the situation personally, nationally or in the churches, we must look to Christ. He is the same divine person with the same divine purposes in all generations.

Look to him

• For help and support in your inadequacy. He will uphold you. He will always be true to himself. He remains the same and his years never end.
• For power and protection in your weakness. He is always there to defend and protect his people. He will not let them come to harm for sure. What an encouragement in every difficulty this is.
• For grace and deliverance in your failure. We fall and fail but he is always there to forgive us and raise us again. He will not fail. He is Alpha and Omega, faith's beginning and end.
• For guidance and consolation in your ignorance. If you go to him you can be sure of finding all the help you need.

From the world's beginning it was God’s purpose that sinners should only ever trust in one person - Jesus Christ. His will on this has never changed and can never change. Keep looking to the eternal one who never changes. He is worthy of all faith.

Faint not nor fear his arm is near

He changeth not and thou art dear

Only believe and thou shalt see

That Christ is all in all to thee.

Originally published in Grace Magazine

Refreshing Brooks

In 1860 James Nichol published the six volume works of the Puritan Thomas Brooks. Of all the Puritan divines Nichol reprinted, Brooks proved to be the most popular.

Brooks was probably born 400 years ago this year, some time in 1608 and though much good writing has appeared in those 400 years since, these chunky volumes were republished in 1980 and continue to be in print. They are also now accessible online too. They hold a treasure trove of what Richard Baxter once called affectionate practical writing and what a more modern writer has dubbed treatises for the heart.

Brooks' reputation as a writer of this sort of material has never been clouded. Some Puritans are difficult to read but this is not really true of Brooks. Spurgeon was a great admirer of Brooks. For Spurgeon he was “of all the Puritans ... the most readable, if we except John Bunyan; and if he cannot display the depth of Owen or the raciness of Adams, he leaves them far behind in excessive sweetness and sparkling beauty of metaphor.” He says Brooks was “of the race of the giants ... head and shoulders above all the people, not in his stature (like Saul), but in mind, and soul, and grace ... [a] marvellously rich author ... whose wealth of imagery surpasses all others of his age.”

As another writer put it, his sentences are as memorable as melodies. Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson have written of “spiritual insights ... presented directly and fervently ... replete with Scripture ....” “He communicates” they say “profound truths in a simple manner and is appropriate reading for young people and adults. His writings exude spiritual life and power and are particularly comforting for true believers.”

 

Smooth stones

Spurgeon says Brooks scatters “stars with both his hands: he hath dust of gold; in his storehouse are all manner of precious stones.” When she was still his fiancée he encouraged Sarah to comb Brooks' writings for choice quotations. Now easily accessed on line, the original book this led to was published in 1860, with the witty title, Smooth stones taken from ancient brooks. It contains around a thousand precious sayings.

There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace than for a man to live up to that little grace he has.

Zeal is like fire: in the chimney it is one of the best servants; but out of the chimney it is one of the worst masters. Zeal, kept by knowledge and wisdom in its proper place, is a choice servant to Christ and the saints; but zeal not bounded by wisdom and knowledge is the highway to undo all, and to make a hell for many at once.

As a body without a soul, much wood without fire, or a bullet in a gun without powder, so are words in prayer without the spirit of prayer.

 

The works

Useful as the quotations are, most benefit will be had from the works themselves. Brooks was a prolific writer. Between 1652 and 1670 he produced some 16 books of Christian devotion and edification. These became very popular. Apples of Gold (1657) reached 17 editions by 1693. Many works were later translated into other languages.

Volume 1 of his Works begins with his famous Precious remedies against Satan's devices. This ends with 10 helps that we can list here to give the book's flavour: walk by the rule of God’s Word, don’t grieve the Spirit, strive for heavenly wisdom, resist Satan’s first motions, labour to be filled with the Spirit, remain humble, pursue watchfulness, retain communion with God, fight Satan by drawing strength from the Lord Jesus and be much in prayer.

Also in Volume 1 is The mute Christian under the smarting rod on coping with suffering and the cryptically entitled works Apples of gold and A string of pearls. These look, respectively, at youth and old age and at heaven.

The other volumes contain other excellent things such as Heaven on earth, on assurance, and The privy key of heaven, on prayer. In a feat of typically Puritan concentration Volume 4 contains no less than 58 sermons all on one text – Hebrews 12:14 (The Crown and Glory of Christianity, or, Holiness the Only Way to Happiness).

 

Mystery man

But what about the man? What do we know of him? In short, the answer is very little. When the Nichol edition of the Puritans appeared it was the custom to preface each set with a memoir. Alexander Grosart, Brooks' editor, dutifully does this but spends quite a while musing on the lack of information and why it has been lost. He “spins it out to 16 pages”, as someone put it, but “the basic facts which he brings to light are few indeed”. There is no known portrait of Brooks and we know nothing of his ancestry, parentage or even where he was born. The current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests Sussex, possibly Lewes, as this is where Brooks' cousin Henry Godman was born. The year of his birth can only be ascertained by working backwards from his death, aged 72, in 1680.

The first solid date we have is a Cambridge University record stating “Thomas Brooks: matriculated as pensioner of Emanuel, July 7th 1625”, the year Charles I became King. Pensioner, suggests Grosart, shows that Brooks was well born, a gentleman. We know that Emmanuel was very much a Puritan college and he would have come under good influences there. He probably rubbed shoulders with men such as Milton, also born in 1608, and the prospective New Englanders Shepard, Cotton and Hooker. Brooks love for and skill in Hebrew, Greek and Latin began, even if it did not come to full bloom, in his College days.

When or how he was converted we do not know. After 1625 the meagre trail again disappears. It is now thought that he left university before graduation and was not ordained until around 1640. In 1652 he speaks of having been preaching 13 years, mostly in London, but his ministry had been an unsettled one. In the early 1640s he was east of London but preached occasionally at the parish of St Martin Ongar in the City.

 

An Independent

A strong Puritan, Brooks always stressed that true religious knowledge must be inward, experimental, even mystical, not merely external, notional and formal. The ODNB suggests that in the spectrum of Puritan thinkers he can be placed “on the radical side of Independency”. He unmistakably denounced antinomians and the radical ideas of Levellers and Fifth Monarchy Men but like Owen, Goodwin and others he strongly believed in the autonomy of the local church.

As an Independent in the Civil War period (1642-1648) he was undoubtedly a strong supporter of the army. There is reason to think that he was on intimate terms with Thomas Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief of Parliamentary forces and it is virtually certain that he acted as a chaplain to Parliamentary commanders on land and sea. His ministry at sea is mentioned in some of his “sea-devotions”. He also speaks of being in other countries, of “some terrible storms I have been in” and says somewhere “I have been some years at sea and through grace I can say that I would not exchange my sea experiences for England’s riches.”

In 1647, and again in 1651, he signed declarations issued by Independent and Baptist churches that, among other things, openly espoused the principle of rule by the godly. On November 14, 1648, he preached the funeral sermon for Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, urging army leaders “to appear for the Saints, to side with the Saints, let the issue be what it will”. A month later, after the purge of the Long Parliament, he preached a fast sermon to the Rump in which he not only justified the action but exhorted the MPs to execute “justice and judgement”, a sermon on Psalm 44:18 later published as God's Delight in the Progress of the Upright. In 1650 he appeared before Parliament again to preach a thanksgiving sermon from Isaiah 10:6, following Cromwell's victory at Dunbar.

Brooks was one of the Independent ministers Cromwell called to his residence in July 1652 to discuss providing godly men to preach the gospel in Ireland. In early 1655 Cromwell again asked him to be present at an interview with the Fifth Monarchy Men. In October 1659 Brooks sent, with other Independent leaders, a letter to General Monck in Scotland urging mediation for peace between the two armies. The ODNB says that in April 1660, when General John Desborough contacted Congregationalist churches about an uprising in London, he found “Mr Brookes is very willing”. In January 1661, however, Brooks joined other Congregationalist ministers in denouncing the Fifth-Monarchist insurrection led by Thomas Venner.

 

Final years and death

In 1648 Brooks was chosen by the vestry of St Margaret's, New Fish Street Hill, as its minister. He laid down some uncompromising terms for his acceptance of the charge. He requested that the parish elders chosen under the presbyterian system should resign, that the godly people of the parish should gather together and own one another's grace in a conference and that they should receive godly strangers, though differing in opinion, into their church. Furthermore, he declared that he would offer communion only to members of this newly constituted church and baptise only their children. He in effect wanted to transform this parish church into an Independent congregation. This was more than the people were willing to accept and so negotiations broke down.

From 1648 to 1651, Brooks identified himself as “preacher of the gospel at St Thomas the Apostle, Queen Street” and it was not until March 1652 that, with an order from the committee for plundered ministers, he was finally settled at St Margaret's. Though there was still some opposition, he was able to continue his ministry there, and in later years combined it, until early 1660, with a gathered congregation meeting in the parish church.

After the Restoration, Brooks continued to preach, first in London, then at Tower Wharf and in Moorfields, near St Margaret's. In 1662, he fell victim to the notorious Act of Uniformity and was ejected from his living. He continued to preach in London, however, apparently suffering little persecution. Unlike many ministers, he stayed in London during the Great Plague of 1665, faithfully tending his flock and was at his post to comfort the afflicted during and after the Great Fire of 1666. The lengthy treatise London's Lamentations (Works Volume 6) is based on Isaiah 42:24, 25 and is “a serious discourse concerning that late fiery dispensation that turned our (once renowned) city into a ruinous heap: also the several lessons that are incumbent upon those whose houses have escaped the consuming flames”. It is “perhaps the most remarkable contemporary memorial” of the event.

In 1669 he was one of the lecturers in Hackney and in 1672 was licensed to preach as a Congregationalist in Lime Street according to the terms of the Declaration of Indulgence, but that licence was revoked in 1676. In that same year his first wife, Martha Burgess, a godly woman who he greatly treasured, died. He wrote of her that “she was always best when she was most with God in a corner. She has many a whole day been pouring out her soul before God for the nation, for Zion, and the great concerns of her own soul.” He later married a godly young woman named Patience Cartwright; she, as Grosart puts it, “spring-young” and he “winter-old”. She proved an excellent companion in his closing years.

Brooks died on September 27, 1680. He was buried on October 1 at Bunhill Fields. In his funeral sermon John Reeve spoke of Brooks' “sweet nature, great gravity, large charity, wonderful patience and strong faith.” Grosart discovered and printed his Last Will and Testament, composed six months before. Even here, before we get to the detail, Brooks' skill is seen. He begins

 

Death is a fall that came in by a Fall: that statute Law of Heaven 'Dust thou art and to dust thou shall returne' will first or last take hold of all mortalls; the core of that apple that Adam eat in Paradise will choke us all round one by one; there is not one man living that shall not see death; though all men shall not meete in Heaven, nor in Hell, yet all men shall meete in the grave whether wee and all a[re] going.

 

In truth, Brooks most important legacy is found in his published writings and it may be that in this anniversary year we will want to take time to peruse one or other of his works, giving thanks to God for what remains. As we do so we should, in Brooks' own words,

 

Remember that it is not hasty reading - but serious meditation on holy and heavenly truths, which makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the mere touching of the flower by the bee which gathers honey - but her abiding for a time on the flower which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most, but he who meditates most who will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian.
First published in Evangelical Times

Twenty reasons to pray for London

Pray for London because it is …

1 A populous place and few inhabitants are believers. Like our Lord it should move us to think of so many sheep without a shepherd. Most of London is virtually untouched by gospel witness.

2 The national capital. Like it or not, what happens in London affects the whole country sooner or later. If the gospel triumphs here the ripples will extend far and wide.

3 The seat of national government. God commands prayer for all in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness (1 Tim 2:2). Pray for the government; pray for London.

4 Where the Queen resides and where state occasions take place. Pray for the Royal Family; for their conversion and good influence.

5 Still a strategic centre for the English speaking world. America is today’s superpower so English is still the lingua franca and despite the Empire’s demise London’s impact is still great. Imagine the influence for good if the gospel again made a real impact here.

6 A place that many visit for business or pleasure. More than half the country must visit or live here at some time. Every year people come to London and are converted. What an impact it would have if more were saved.

7 Very cosmopolitan. Revival here would have an effect worldwide. Congregations regularly see people from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas. Who knows what the result might be if London became a real centre for the gospel.

8 A strategic commercial centre. It is home to major banks and other economic institutions. It was part of Paul’s strategy to plant a church in the commercial centre of Corinth. He recognised the impact it would have. Pray for ‘the city’. Who knows what transforming influence conversions among such people might have.

9 An academic centre. It has influential colleges, medical schools, museums and other institutions. As for Paul in Athens it is not an easy atmosphere in which to evangelise but think of the repercussions when even one sceptic believes.

10 Teeming with students and young people. What opportunities! Yet how few labourers. When academic institutions have come under gospel sway in the past what an impact. Imagine a revival among students in even one of London’s many colleges.

11 Where many involved in the arts and media live. People still come here to ‘be famous’. Those in the media have a big influence on all sorts. Conversions among such could have an impact. We ought to be praying that such people will come under the sound of the gospel.

12 A wicked place. Satan has his throne here. It draws the worst sorts from many places. A centre for prostitution and the sex industry, for militant homosexuality and other perversions, for gambling and greed, for organised and disorganised crime, for licentiousness and violence. All sorts of iniquity lurks in its back streets and alleys. It corrupts vast numbers in many places. Pray for Satan’s downfall.

13 Not easy to be a Christian here Because it is a wicked place being a Christian here is not easy. Pray for believers assailed by many temptations, not least of which is to move to a possibly less demanding situation. Alternatively, dropping out of corporate church life is an easy option in this vast city. Every year professing Christians come to London and fall away never having connected with an evangelical church.

14 Dangerous to live here. Every woman in my congregation has had her bag or purse stolen at least once. I'm not aware of anyone in the congregation who has not suffered some crime or other over the years. Pray for protection from physical harm for believers here.

15 A stressful place to live in other ways. Pray for believers especially that they will be able to stand up under the strains of urban and suburban life.

16 A city full of needy people. Quite apart from the problems of its native born population it continues to act as a sink for all sorts of troubled souls. Poor and needy, physically or sexually abused, drug addicts and alcoholics, refugees and outcasts, destitute or dangerous, many such still find their way to London. The gospel is the answer for such people. Pray many will hear the glorious good news.

17 Potentially very lonely. Because it is so large and busy, so cosmopolitan and anonymous, with great social, cultural and economic variation there's a tendency for Londoners to shut out much of what goes on. It's not that they are unfriendly. In many ways they're more friendly than elsewhere. However, the nature of London life is such that it easy to be forgotten. We don't live in one another’s pockets. The potential for loneliness and depression is great. Ralph McTell’s ‘Streets of London’ is sentimental but makes a fair point. Pray for the lonely people of London’s mansions, bedsits, hostels, shelters and streets. Pray they'll know the Friend who sticks closer than a brother.

18 A real centre for false teaching. Professedly evangelical churches attract large crowds, confusing and misleading the gullible and unwary with a deadly mixture of truth and error. Nominalism and liberalism hang on and even thrive. Large Catholic and Orthodox congregations, synagogues and mosques exist and Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist temples thrive. Here they have propaganda centres too. Here is the national HQ of the Watchtower Society and similar cults. The School of Economic Science has posters on the tube and the hare krishnas on Oxford Street are famous. All sorts of false teachers visit London. Pray for the downfall of cults and false religions; pray for London.

19 Still where several Christian organisations are based or hold important meetings. There are large but faithful churches in the centre and suburbs with much influence. Pray for these.

20 A place where Reformed churches are generally in a weak state Apart from the suburbs most are small; many are struggling; several have no pastor. The city is vast and even were we doing 10 times as much and even if we were making 20 times the impact we would still only be scratching the surface. Brothers, pray for us.

Originally published Grace magazine and later Evangelical Times