Postmodern Renaissance Culture Revolutionary

As I have been dealing with the current sermon series on prayer, I have had to learn some things that I hadn't known before. I have had to evaluate some things that I have held close over time. And I have found some comfortable assurance regarding what I believe about prayer. I felt that putting some of those thoughts down (the ones that I have made the effort to make note of) would help me move into the deeper understanding I have of prayer. So, in no particular order, here are some of my thoughts on prayer. Speak from the heart When I enter prayer, it is with a very clear assumption that God knows everything about me. The seeds of my thoughts, long before they become the fruit of my action, are known to God. God has already watched me hatch thoughts and conceive plans and execute deeds. So when I come to prayer, there is no reason to hide behind anything. Justification is hollow. Reason is noise. Speaking from the honest places in my life is the only authentic prayer to bring....

My current sermon series is focused on offering realistic guides to improving the prayer life of people who feel that it is important. The last sermon was on models of prayer. It was grounded in the model of prayer Jesus taught the crowds on the side of mountain and taught the disciples when they asked. We have come to call this The Lord's Prayer. And it is repeated throughout churches and homes on a regular basis. I drew the implication out of what Jesus says in those passages relevant to the prayer (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-4) that this was not THE prayer that followers were to pray, but a model to prayer. That is my take on that passage. It can be read in the sense that this was the prayer that they were supposed to pray. The disciples seemed to take it that way and commend early Christians to pray that same prayer (plus the line "for yours is the power and glory forever) three times a day. The point I wanted to make is that models of prayer are useful guides in enteri...

I am sitting here working through the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6. It is the foundation for my sermon Sunday. I am cruising along doing some work in Greek (yes, I still have a little functionality in the language). I am working down through some alternate translations to squeak out subtle meaning that is lost in the rote recitation we sometimes fall into. There is some interesting things for study and preaching. The one thing that is stopping me to write this is one little word: epiousios. The familiar phrase is "give us this day our daily bread". Every word in that phrase is common and easily understood except for epiousios - daily. All my life I have visualized and understood this phrase to mean that God is providential to the level of taking care of our daily needs. And it is a refreshing thought to know that our creating God is also compassionate toward our insignificant needs of daily providing. That is the kind of God we have. The word, though, is strange. It app...

I have spoken of my respect for E . Stanley Jones . I return to his sermons and writings often times when I am in need of wisdom or learning. He is my favorite theologian of the 20th Century. In 1943, ESJ published a little booklet or large pamphlet, How To Pray . It is not long. It only takes about 15 or 20 minutes to read through attentively. It is very practical and down to earth, as was Jones' style. It is worth reading if you would like to transform your understanding of prayer. Because I am preaching a series of sermons on Improving Our Praying Lives. I wanted to offer some practical guidance on how to pray more often or longer. Essentially, I wanted to offer something to people so they could get more out of their time of prayer. ESJ's booklet has been one of my resources of study for this series. I didn't want to take his guidance and turn it around in my sermons. Instead, I have really distilled the information into my own offer of guidance. What he offers to...

In preparation for the upcoming sermon series I was reading Basil Pennington's Centering Prayer . At the end of chapter one, Pennington quotes Revelation 3: 14-21. For those who aren't familiar, that is the letter to the church of Laodicea. It is also home to two enduring images of scripture: being vomited out of God's mouth and Jesus standing at the door knocking. Pennington uses the expression of this passage to discuss the intimacy of prayer. I am not going to quote the entirety of the passage from this book. But I do want to hit upon its most powerful messages and apply them for myself. Maybe you, dear one reading this, will gain something also. The letter begins with ascription of Christ's preeminence. The Amen (the truth of all that is), the Faithful and True Witness, and the ruler of God's creation. That verse puts Christ as the substance of it all, the medium of understanding it all, and the ruler of it all. Creation and life, hope and joy, grace and mer...

Some community members gathered at the front door to the high school in Turpin one Wednesday evening. It was hot. The sun was beating down out of the still bright, western sky. Shade was not in abundance as we stood in the parking lot. But the discomfort we all experienced was with purpose. We gathered to pray for the school and community. The prayer walk was to take us through the entire community in teams. But it began with a walk around the school property. Prayer would be lifted over the boundaries of the property to make this new school year something new in the name of the Lord. We were instructed on the practicals of how to go about the prayer walk, but left to our own method of prayer as we journeyed. My method was to allow God to inspire the prayers. To drop from my mind the things I wanted, and allow God to feedback into my spirit what God wanted prayed. As I began the journey, one thing after another popped into my imagination. It took an entire trip around the ...