The Institutes of the Christian Religion - Lessons from the Reformation: Calvin (Warning this is hardcore stuff that may need you to think deeply but it will change your life)

Jean (John) Calvin

HOW COOL IS THAT BEARD! It belongs to a guy named Jean (John) Calvin. No he didn't invent Calvin Klein underpants. John Calvin was one of the greatest Christian minds of all history. He wrote a book (well really four books in one) called the Institutes of the Christian religion (over 1000 pages in the English copy I have). But don't let its size scare you, this book is fantastic.



The Institutes are what is called a systematic theology. What is that? Systematic Theology is when Christians chose a topic and try and find everything the Bible says about that topic and then put it together to work out a summary of what the Bible says on that topic (basically it is what we do when we try and do a topical talk at Ignite). Working out what the whole Bible says about something is often called a doctrine (which just means teaching).

But this is not all there is to Systematic Theology. In reality there are almost an unlimited number of topics we could look at. Essentially we need to ask what topics are more important than others. We even need to work out how to arrange the topics because thinking about some topics first will colour and change the way we view other topics.

Calvin's institutes today are still probably one of the best (if not the best) systematic theologies out there. At the moment I am studying much of Calvin's work for my Bible college exams. Last night I sat up and read a lot of what Calvin wrote about prayer. It was brilliant! Whilst I haven't read it all, I thought I would give you some of the gems that I found in Calvin's doctrine of prayer. So here are 10 things I learnt from Calvin about prayer:

• When we pray we can't pull the wool over God's eyes. God sees all of our sin and evil. Yet God still loves us and wants to provide for us
• God gave us prayer not for his sake but for ours. When we pray we get to enjoy giving God glory and when we pray we also learn to trust God, prayer reminds us that all good gifts come from God
• When we pray we should remember we are coming into the presence of God. We are talking with God. Our heart and mind need to be ready to do this, we are not just talking with another person, we are talking with the God of the universe even though we are small, sinful creatures
• We should not get distracted by other thoughts when we pray. If we do have we really realised who we are praying too?
• We must truly desire the things we are praying for. There is no matter too big or too small for God but when we pray we need to actually want to do what we are asking. We don't just pray because this is something that Christians do.
• When we pray we must do it humbly, realising who God is. We should not come with any self-confidence or pride to God
• Confessing our sin to God both prepares us to pray and is the start of sincere prayer because we can only come to God because of his mercy
• We should pray knowing that we have a sure hope that God will answer our prayers
• We can only pray if we have faith/trust/confidence in God. Prayer is a verbal expression of our faith
• When we pray we should think about what the Bible says we should pray for