“When you say grace you can say it to grown-up Jesus or teenage Jesus or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.”—Will Ferrell, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby No one watches a Will Ferrell movie for an accurate theology of prayer, but if they wanted a general idea of how many North Americans approach […]
In honor of Queen Elizabeth II’s ninety-second birthday, a concert featuring various notable performers was held at the Royal Albert Hall in May of this year. One of the performers, Shawn Mendes, went on to describe his brief meeting with the queen as terribly awkward: “I was just standing there—you’re not meant to talk to […]
She had a temper—molto fantastico!—complained the Catholic ambassador from Florence; and in 1528 when she was born, her parents (King Henry and Queen Marguerite d’Albret of Navarre in southwestern France) likely wished for a son after neighboring royal rivals from Spain scoffed at their newborn female heir: “The cow has brought forth a sheep.”1 Little […]
It’s no secret the church in America is struggling. We’ve lost the cultural wars, and our kids are being seduced by the siren call of secularism. It’s rare to find a family where I live in the Northeast where all the grown children of Christian parents are believers. Having lost the cultural high ground, we […]
It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night. Guard yourself carefully against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, “Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.” Such thoughts get you away from […]
A phenomenon that continues throughout evangelicalism is the juxtaposing of unaided, private, individual prayer with liturgical prayer, as if the two related like oil and water. The former is seen as lively, earnest, and Holy Spirit-prompted, whereas the latter is frequently depicted as dead, perfunctory, and contrived. Wherever this contrasts exists, “free, from the heart” […]
Prayers of confession or repentance in the corporate setting teach us that we are called to repentance daily, even in our private settings. The Agnus Dei, the “Lamb of God” anthem, is a highly memorable prayer of praise perfectly suited to those devoted to Holy Communion. The Kyrie Eleison (“Lord, have mercy”) is an ancient […]
Prayer is not some battering ram by which we gain entrance to God’s treasury,” wrote Herschel Hobbs in his commentary on Matthew. “It is a receptacle by which we receive that which He already longs to give us.” So far, our Lord, in such simple profundity, has given us a systematic theology of prayer. We […]
Prayer (I)1 Prayer the Churches banquet, Angel’s age, God’s breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth; Engine against th’ Almightie, sinners towre, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-daies world transposing in an houre, A kinde of tune, which all things heare […]
Although I’m not a very good joke-telling preacher, one of my favorites is about the news reporter newly assigned to Jerusalem. His editor asked him to write a story to give the readers back home a sense of what life was like in that ancient city. So, one day the reporter wandered down to the […]
Peter Marshall has written a massive account of how the Reformation took place in England, and it is bound to become a standard introduction to the topic. Containing sweeping vistas, this book is not for the faint of heart, for it certainly does not gloss over the details of how Reformation thinking spread into and […]
As a teaching and performing musician seeking to carry out a secular vocation in a Christ-honoring manner, I have read multiple books whose authors have sought to expound and apply the teachings of Scripture in the areas of music, the arts more broadly, and aesthetics. To write such a volume is surely a difficult task, […]
Producing a printed worship book, including a full psalter, in an era of screens and me-centered “praise” songs could seem like a fool’s errand. Yet, in a bold effort to reclaim and even reintroduce God-centered, Bible-filled, musically excellent, and theologically robust songs to the modern church, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the United Reformed […]
Martin Luther used the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer as a form to instruct his friend, Peter, on how to pray. The following comes from Luther’s “An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer for Simple Laymen” (1519). “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name” “Yes, Lord God, dear Father, hallowed be thy name, […]
Christians are used to a certain loneliness that comes with godliness. After all, Jesus told his disciples that they were to be not of the world (John 17:14). That means we must refuse to participate in sinful thinking and acting, and we should not be surprised when a culture at odds with God shuns us. […]
