A Prayer for the Church (Galatians 5:16-26)
Our Father in heaven, we rejoice to remember that hidden in the holiness of your Son, you count us holy in your sight. Not only as we pray, but as we live each day, you see us as saints, set…
Tag Prayer
Praying Through the Scriptures: Judges 2; Acts 6
Over the years it has been my practice, learned from others, to offer up praises and petitions framed by a passage of Scripture. Some of these passages were read in preparation for preaching, others offered material for meditation in daily…
The Powerlessness of Prayer-Shaming
“What if you and your family were starving, and someone with an abundance of food responded by letting you know that they were ‘offering thoughts and prayers’?” You’re immediate inner thought would be, “Stop praying. Do something!” A preponderance of…
Continual Prayer for Revival
In the last post on the revitalization of the eighteenth-century Baptists, we considered the way in which prayer was a central cause. The passing years did not diminish John Sutcliff’s (1752-1814) and Andrew Fuller’s (1754-1815) zeal in praying for revival…
Feeling Forsaken, But Not Forgotten: An Infertility Story
I met my husband, Pete, in April of 2004. We were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend who knew both of us well, and our friend thought we would be the perfect match. The only glitch,…
Praying Through the Scriptures: Joshua 24; Acts 4
Over the years it has been my practice, learned from others, to offer up praises and petitions framed by a passage of Scripture. Some of these passages were read in preparation for preaching, others offered material for meditation in daily…
Praying Through the Scriptures: Joshua 23
Over the years it has been my practice, learned from others, to offer up praises and petitions framed by a passage of Scripture. Some of these passages were read in preparation for preaching, others offered material for meditation in daily…
Praying the Psalms in Christ
In this short series, I have explored some of the special challenges that come in interpreting the Psalms of lament as Christian scripture. We have seen how this is not an easy task, particularly if we insist upon praying the…
Praying for Our New President-Elect
What has been termed the most contentious and discouraging Presidential election in my lifetime has finally come to an end. America has spoken. For many Christians, a Trump presidency marks the end of a now fractured Republican Party’s fall from…
The Hermeneutics of Lament (Part 3)
In this post in this short series, I offer a typology of interpretive approaches to biblical lament. The typology is rough, not comprehensive; my examples come from the “left,” “right,” and “middle,” from theological conservatives and liberals. But they have…