Prayer
Outside the Catholic vicar-general’s house in Geneva, a large mob of priests congealed in the thin sunlight one autumn morning in 1532. Inside, Guillaume Farel, the French Protestant missionary who had stopped in Geneva, was summoned to answer the accusations of ten canons of the cathedral chapter. […]
Some want a god who whispers,
or maybe roars.
You give us a God who groans. […]
(PART FIVE OF A FIVE-PART SERIES) How do you solve a problem like Maria?How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Oscar Hammerstein wrote these words to introduce the character of Maria in The Sound of Music. It’s actually a song of frustration, sung by three nuns in the abbey where Maria is […]
(PART FIVE OF A SIX-PART SERIES) We are delighted that Dr. Jones has agreed to expand this current study of 1 John from four parts to six, helping us to dig even deeper into this Epistle for the remainder of 2020. In his First Epistle, the apostle John drew an identikit portrait of the […]
God often uses hard providences to bring forth spiritual growth in the hearts and lives of his children. As the apostle Paul famously promised to followers of Jesus, “All things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28)—and by “all things,” Paul meant all things, including hard providences. Sometimes that “all” is quite turbulent and God’s children […]
Although John 17 has been known as the “High Priestly Prayer” of the Lord Jesus Christ for many years, some reservations have of late been expressed about the suitability of that designation. It has been pointed out that Jesus was praying on earth and not in heaven, that he made no mention of “sacrifice” but […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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” […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
