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…
You can tell a lot about a person by learning what brings him pleasure. Pleasure is good. God has wired us to pursue pleasure. The question is: Will we seek the truest and highest pleasures, or will we settle for lesser ones? Will we, in the oft-quoted words of C.S. Lewis, accept the holiday by…
I have read all of Donald Whitney’s books because they invariably cause me to grow in my appreciation for the simplest but most important spiritual disciplines. As with so many other Christians, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life proved foundational in my understanding and practice of the spiritual disciplines. Simplify Your Spiritual Life was an…
Fasting is a subject for which I have a lot of curiosity but little practice. It is the subject of an excellent and helpful little booklet by Daniel Hyde, part of the “Cultivating Biblical Godliness” series. He defines Christian fasting as “a religious abstaining from food or any other legitimate provision of God for a…
When it comes to prayer, there are few people I would rather learn from than Joel Beeke. He has spent most of his life as a student of the Puritans and has often written about their commitment to prayer and their practice of it. In a new little booklet titled Piety: The Heartbeat of Reformed…
Sometimes you stop reading just a little bit too soon. That may be your temptation as you read this quote from Charles Spurgeon. But you’ll be missing out if you don’t read right to the end… Heaven will be full of the ceaseless praises of Jesus. Eternity! thine unnumbered years shall speed their everlasting course,…
“Pray without ceasing,” Paul says. Simple words, but a seemingly impossible challenge. How can you be expected to pray all the time? In chapter 54 of their work A Puritan Theology, Joel Beeke and Mark Jones dive deep into Matthew Henry’s great book A Method for Prayer to distil what he says about the importance…
I am sure you are familiar with the powerful words of Philippians 4:6-7: “[D]o not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” In his book Mindscape, Timothy Witmer explains that there are 4 ways in which these words call us to…
It is almost cliché to praise Charles Spurgeon for his ability to say in a few words when takes others so many. Yet he was a remarkably gifted man and one who used his gifts to serve the Lord. I loved reading these words which call on each of us to grow, and to grow…
We have come to the final day of 2014 and are at the cusp of a new year. I find it only appropriate to close the year with prayer–prayer that thanks God for the year that was, and prayer that looks with joy and expectation to the year that will be. Here is my prayer:…
I am looking forward to Christmas this year. Though I have no great affection for the Christmas season and all its commercialization, I do love the day, and I love to celebrate it with my family. I have also been able to preach for the past couple of Sundays which has helped me focus on…
It’s the easiest thing in the world to say: “Yes, I’ll pray about that.” And it’s the easiest thing to neglect. The list of all the things I’ve said I’d pray for but then forgotten about would stretch from here to next year. So I’ve started to say, “No, I won’t pray for you.” I…
Hold on! Is it a book about prayer? Another book about prayer? Is there any possible way we can benefit from yet another book on the subject of prayer? Tim Keller’s Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God answers with a decisive yes. Now here’s the interesting thing. There is not much new in this…
I have been enjoying Tim Keller’s new book on prayer (Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God). There are many of prayer’s mysteries he handles with exellence and perhaps none more so than what Paul means when, in Romans 8, he writes these words: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do…
I recently came across this powerful prayer–I can’t even remember where I found it. I wanted to share it with you as a great example of a prayer of true and deep repentance. My God, I feel it is heaven to please Thee, and to be what Thou wouldst have me be. O that I…
A couple of times now I have shared prayers from a new book I am really enjoying. Prone to Wander is a wonderful new collection of prayers inspired by The Valley of Vision. I probably can’t share too many more of them lest I fun afoul of copyright laws, but I did want to share…
Sometimes it is good to have a bit of assistance in praying. Prone to Wander is a wonderful new collection of prayers inspired by The Valley of Vision. One of those prayers is about praying–seeking God’s forgiveness for praying poorly, and seeking God’s help to pray more powerfully and skillfully. Here it is: Heavenly Father,…
Praying, and especially praying in public, represents a challenge to most Christians. It represents a challenge to the one praying–a challenge to pray humbly and clearly before others. Too often it represents an even greater challenge to the ones who hear that prayer–a challenge to follow a too-long and too-rambling prayer interspersed with filler words…
I didn’t know what The Circle Maker was about until I began to read it. Neither did I know anything about Mark Batterson, its author. I knew the book only as a Christian bestseller and its author only as a name that often appears in my inbox as people ask if I know anything about…
I have said it often and said it recently, that prayer has always been a struggle for me. It’s not that I don’t pray—I do!—but that I find it a battle to put my theology into action day-by-day and to live out my deepest convictions about prayer by actually praying. I experience little of the…