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You know you ought to pray. You know that God invites and even commands you to pray. He loves to hear from you, loves to know you. Yet there are times when your soul feels bone dry, when even opening your mouth to pray seems an impossibility. What do you do? Just Pray Perhaps the hardest thing to do in those times is to even make the effort to pray. Just pray. It is always the right thing to do. …
It’s one of those little quotes that is well worth pondering, well worth chewing on for a while: “The things you pray about are the things you trust God to handle. The things you neglect to pray about are the things you trust you can handle on your own.” Those words come from H.B. Charles Jr. and they’ve caused me to pause and to consider—exactly what a good quote ought to do. If this quote reflects reality, and I think …
Not too long ago I was speaking to a friend who was lamenting the way he had spent his time the day before. He had become convicted that his prayer life was languishing and that it would benefit from a measure of organization. A couple of hours later he had to move on to other activities and realized that he had put a lot of time into thinking about prayer and organizing prayer, but little time into the actual act …
Maybe we are growing too accustomed to these Reformed mega-conferences. If that’s the case, we should think back to the time—it was only a few years ago–when there appeared to be an inverse relationship between a conference’s attendance and its doctrinal soundness. For many years it was true that the conferences that held to Reformed theology were sparsely attended. But then something happened and today we can choose from any number of great conferences centered around proclaiming the deepest truth. …
It seems that every Christian author eventually tries his hand at a book on prayer. And when our favorite author takes his turn, we, the readers, tend to pick it up. After all, prayer is difficult and few of us are confident that we are praying right and praying well. John Eldredge qualifies as a favorite author to thousands of Christians and he has now tried his hand at a book on prayer in Moving Mountains: Praying with Passion, Confidence, …
I am especially excited about this blog post. Why? Because it is in response to a Patreon supporter. What does that mean? It means that I have committed to interact at varying levels with those who choose to support me (you can see more details towards the bottom of this page). So, here is a question from one supporter: It’s good to teach our children to pray, we all know that. But what about having them pray aloud in public …
If you are at all like me, you probably find it easy to pray those prayers of petition (“Please give me…”) but far more difficult to pray those prayers of gratitude (“Thank you for…”). Here is some valuable assistance from The Valley of Vision. O My God, You fairest, greatest, first of all objects, My heart admires, adores, loves You, For my little vessel is as full as it can be, And I would pour out all that fullness before …
Be kind to Your little children, Lord. Be a gentle teacher, patient with our weakness and stupidity. And give us the strength and discernment to do what You tell us, and so grow in Your likeness. May we all live in the peace that comes from You. May we journey towards Your city, sailing through the waters of sin untouched by the waves, borne serenely along by the Holy Spirit. Night and day may we give you praise and thanks, …
Prayer has always been a struggle for me, and I know I am not the only one. There’s a reason that books on prayer continue to flood our bookshelves. Very few of us pray as often and as earnestly as we would like. Very few of us are confident that we pray well. Fewer still feel like we really get prayer. I have read the books and sat in the seminars and heard the sermons and even preached a few …
As a Christian, as a pastor, and as a church member, I find myself at a lot of meetings. And more often than not, these meetings begin with prayer. I don’t often think about why we do this—we just do it. We pray before we do business, and we pray before we do ministry. As I drove home from a meeting yesterday, I thought about these little prayers and how much I enjoy them. I thought about their sheer significance. …