Why do Christians sing when they are together? The reason is, quite simply, because in singing together it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word. There should be singing, not only...
Ever present God, you called us to be in relationship with one another and promised to dwell wherever two or three are gathered. In our community, we are many different people; we come from many different places, have many different cultures. Open our hearts that we...
This is how you pray continually, not offering prayer in words, but by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life, so your life becomes a continuous and uninterrupted prayer.
Lord, the air smells good today, straight from the mysteries within the inner courts of God. A grace like new clothes thrown across the garden, free medicine for everybody. The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise, the first blue violets kneeling. Whatever came...
The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. God is big enough to...
It is easier to preach and to write about prayer than it is to pray. It is easier to talk about Jesus than to talk to Him. from The Table of Inwardness
To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God, the more we see our need and the more we desire...
But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicing--all of which the heart can do by itself--with prayer. And we confuse heaven and earth, human...
How does the thief on the cross fit into your theology? No baptism, no communion, no confirmation, no speaking in tongues, no mission trip, no volunteerism, and no church clothes. He couldn't even bend his knees to pray. He didn't say the sinner's prayer and among...
People who know God well—mystics, hermits, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found as an abusive father or a tyrannical mother; God is always a lover greater than we dared hope for. How different from the “account...