Happy new year! Here is a prayer I found in Heart Cries to Heaven by David Campbell. It seemed very appropriate for the start of a new year. Our great and Gracious God, As we come to the close of another year, we would indeed make it the prayer of our hearts that you would…
This is an interesting prayer I came across this week–a prayer obviously timed for the Christmas season. It was prayed in a service at All Souls Church, Langham Place (which is in London, England). We come together humbly to the Lord of Glory and the Prince of Peace.Lord Jesus Christ, Creator, Author, and Redeemer, we…
I receive a lot of books in the mail. If I were to go through them and categorize them, I suspect I’d find that one topic stands apart from the rest–prayer. I’d be surprised if any topic receives as much attention as this one. I suppose this shows that we Christians struggle with prayer–that we…
Moms in Touch is a ministry I’m very, very excited about. And I want you to be excited about it too. In fact, I want to encourage you to read to the end of this post and then to take action. I first encountered Moms in Touch at the 2008 True Woman conference. I did…
Today I have two unrelated quotes for you. Each of these caught my eye this week. The first is a prayer from Augustine of Hippo (a.k.a. St. Augustine). O my God,let me, with thanksgiving,remember, and confess unto youyour mercies on me. Let my bones be soaked with your love,and let them say unto you,Who is…
A prayer to pray after you finish praying–it’s a bit odd, I admit, and yet it makes some sense. At least it makes sense when you read it and pray it on your own. Who hasn’t felt like this when they pray?: “O God of grace, I bewail my cold, listless, heartless prayers; their poverty…
Last week I shared a prayer by Matthew Henry–one that was drawn from A Method for Prayer. This week I want to share another, this time one that is a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. Do you find that you pray the Lord’s Prayer by rote, without thinking about the familiar words? Then try praying…
This week I came upon a prayer written by the Puritan Matthew Henry. This prayer comes from his book A Method for Prayer and is meant to be used “At the entrance upon the public worship on the Lord’s day, by the master of the assemblies.” What is most notable to me is how the…
Here is a prayer for the sick or for the spiritually-distressed. It is drawn from the Canadian and American Reformed Church web site. This is a prayer that comes from the perspective of the one so-afflicted and I don’t think it is necessarily meant as a pastoral prayer. It is worth changing the first person…
Last Sunday I posted a great Evening Prayer. This week I want to post an accompanying Morning Prayer. As with last week’s, this one comes from the Canadian and American Reformed Churches web site. I suppose at some point I should write about the value in praying written prayers. But for now, consider making this…
As you know, I enjoy looking for written prayers to pray as my own. I found this one at the web site for the Canadian and American Reformed Churches. It is a prayer meant to be prayed in the evening before retiring to bed. And it’s a good one, I think. It thanks God for…
It is the Lord’s delight to grant us what we ask of him in prayer. Like David, we all ought to pray, “O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 54:2). If Christians did not believe in the effectiveness of prayer, there would be no reason for us to…
My friend Tim Kerr, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Toronto has given me permission to post the manual for prayer he has titled Take Words With You. It is a small book that contains 1600+ scripture promises & prayers to help God’s people pray more effectively. The promises are arranged around the cross–it’s purposes…
Any time I write a review of a book dealing with prayer I feel the need to point out that bookstore shelves are already groaning under the weight of such books. There are hundreds, thousands probably, of books on prayer. A new one is going to need to be good–very good–to supplant the excellent resources…
At Grace Fellowship Church we’ve been praying for something big and we’ve been praying it for quite some time. We want a meeting place of our own. It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with the school we meet in now, but more that we can foresee how our own building would be beneficial…
It is the Lord’s delight to give us what we ask of Him in prayer. Like David, we should all pray, “O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 54:2). If Christians did not believe in the efficacy of prayer, there would be no reason for us to ask…
I went looking this morning for a prayer for Mother’s Day. I guess the Puritans didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day (wasn’t Hallmark around back then?) but I did find this prayer for the family in The Valley of Vision. It is called simply “Family.” O SOVEREIGN LORD,Thou art the Creator-Father of all men, for thou hast…
Last Saturday I shared a prayer for the Lord’s Day Eve. Like that one, today’s prayer is also drawn from that collection of Puritan prayers The Valley of Vision. This prayer is meant for the Lord’s Day and is a perfect way to begin Sunday looking to the Lord of that day. O Lord, My…
In the tradition I grew up in, Saturday was considered a prelude to Sunday. It was a day of preparation for the Lord’s Day to come. I recently read a biography of theologian John Murray and enjoyed reading about how he understood the day in the same way (which makes good sense since he was…
This book is deja vu times two (or three). It took some doing, but here is how I understand the history of this book. In 2000, Crossway published When You Pray: Making the Lord’s Prayer Your Own and then, in 2002 they published a hardcover abridgment of this book and titled it The Prayer of…