Against Nothingness

Thielicke, speaking about the petition for daily bread: "A father who would not listen to everything his child says would not be a father. He may smile because the child so often has so little sense of proportion, because the child grieves more over a lost screw in his toy train than the destruction of his parental home, because the child has so little understanding of the difference between great and small things, but he listens nevertheless. God does not want only to be 'praised'; nor does he want us to simply go on saying, 'Thy will be done' and all the while, deep down under our own words, be tormenting ourselves because we have our own will and our own cares and troubles and are only suppressing them out of a kind of religious politeness which we associate with piety. Let us not fool ourselves: the Father knows what we are thinking. And so we can let out even our most secret desires. In other words, we should not only praise God; in this petition and in...

Rios, Jeremy . Ordinary Prayer: Encountering God through our Everyday Needs . Jeremy Michael Rios, 2012.  Rios begins with two important truths:  1. The center of prayer is petition.  2.Petition is difficult.  From there he offers a  guide to, you guessed it, ordinary prayer. Petitionary prayer practiced daily over all of our needs, small to large, common and repeated or unique. His goal, his prayer, is that "as you read you will be led to put the book down and begin praying." What follows is a guide to understanding prayer, how to pray, how to understand God's answers, how to pray in groups, and more. And by guide I do not mean exhaustive step-by-step instruction manual. "Ordinary Prayer" and Rios, as the author, is more like a wilderness guide. He won't carry you up the mountain, but he will tell you which paths are fruitful, which rocks are firm, and point you to the views along the way. In other words Rios is not out to be prescriptive...

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you;  For your steadfast love endures forever. My soul thirsts for you,  my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Where there is, still, your steadfast love O Lord. I have seen you in the sanctuary  and beheld your power and your glory. Beholding your steadfast love. Because your love is better than life,  my lips will glorify you. For your steadfast love endures forever. I will praise you as long as I live,  and in your name I will lift up my hands. In your name, you who are Love. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;   Satisfied with your steadfast love. With singing lips my mouth will praise you. Praise you for your steadfast love. On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. For your steadfast love endures forever. Because you are my help,  I sing in the shadow of your wings. I sing of your steadfast love, which never leav...

Psalm 119 By Andrew Demoline Always you are with me God But sometimes it is hard, Coming from the world I do, to ever get Down in your word, to trust or live at all. Even when I know it’s good, For your word always is, Going forth on your path Has ever been a pain. I want to have within me, even Just for one brief moment, Kindled in my heart, Love for you and your word. To have in Me an undivided soul, focused Now and onwards solely On your promise. To have the Psalmists trust in you, in Quiet and in song. Rarely am I persecuted, Seldom must I run, But in The face of difficulty, Under even hottest sun, Verily I ask thee, O lord of all my heart, When times like this do come, X-out all my fear and doubt, as You alone can do, and fill me with a Zest for all things that are true.

When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,  the moon and the stars which thou hast established Man that is born of a woman is of few days,  and full of trouble.   What is man that thou art mindful of him,  and the son of man that thou dost care for him? He comes forth like a flower, and withers;  he flees like a shadow, and continues not. Yet thou hast made him little less than God,  and dost crown him with glory and honor. And dost thou open thy eyes upon such a one and bring him into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?  There is not one.   Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;  thou hast put all things under his feet, Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with thee,  and thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,   the birds o...

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. You are my God; be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you I cry all day long. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, You, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love, Have mercy on me, a sinner. In the day of my trouble I call on you, for you will answer me . Lord Jesus Christ There is none like you among the gods, O Lord Son of God Nor are there any works like yours Have mercy on me Teach me your way, O Lord a sinner Give me an undivided heart Lord I give thanks to you, O Lord Jesus I will glorify your name forever Christ Great is your steadfast love Mercy Turn to me, be gracious to me Me Show me a sign of your favor Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, you have helped me and comforted me. 

Chapter 5 of "Prayer in Practice," which is entitled 'Feelings in Prayer,' is perhaps the best piece of writing on the subject of emotions in the Christian life that I have read. Tugwell begins by noting just how unreliable feelings are: "I may feel inspired without being inspired; I may feel marvelous... but that may be caused simply by a good dinner and an insensitive conscience. Conversely, I may feel awful, but 'if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart." He points out that in our era of "romantic fundamentalism of experience, which will believe only what I can feel on my pulse" that we must realize that we can be seriously deceived about our own experience. Yet, we cannot fall into unending doubt and so we begin by realizing feelings are not infallible and then getting to know ourselves, our feelings, and the ways in which our feelings may 'misfire', well enough that we can discern when to trust. Tugwell lists...

Speaking on meditative, repetitive, prayer: "Of course, it is unlikely that we shall actually find ourselves totally devoid of thoughts! But in this kind of prayer the thoughts simply do not matter. Ignore them, and just get on with saying the prayer. Let them chatter away, accept them in the same way that you can accept any other kind of disturbance, without anxiety, without trying to suppress it, without even latching on to the desire to suppress it or even to the thought 'I am being disturbed'. Just let it be. As likely as not, without any deliberate intention on your part, you will actually find yourself chasing the first thought with a second one, such as 'I must stop this - I'm not supposed to be thinking.' That easily leads to an infinite regression, one thought trying to catch another. there is no need to take any notice of any of them! Thoughts are a bit like spoilt children trying to attract attention to themselves. If you ignore them, refusing to b...

"I try to remember that words do not matter to God as much as many of us suppose. They carry less weight than we think.  Our culture seems infatuated by words. By the millions they stream from our radios, televisions, newspapers, internet sites, and yes, books. Drive through any metropolitan area, with its billboards, neon ads, and bannered signs, and you get the strange sensation of driving through a phone book or huge dictionary. Words seem essential. But much that is profound can happen in their absence.  ... Rather than defining prayer as something solely expressed in words, I see it more fundamentally as being present to God. Sometimes words are eminently appropriate. Sometimes they get in the way. Often they simply don't matter. The important thing is to stand before God without our constant chatter, ready to be in heartfelt relationship with him. Where our whole selves are engaged in relationship with God, there prayer will be, even if words are not used." ...

"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?   Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?..." And which of you, if his son asks for a pocketknife, will give it to him without first showing him how to use it safely? If you know me in person your probably know that I usually have a pocketknife with me. In fact, if I have my jacket I will have a small multi-tool as well. I use them all the time and am often glad I have them. Thus, I fully intend for my children to have them as well (when they reach the appropriate age, of course). But I would be remiss, as a father, if I were to one day just hand my child a knife with nary a word of instruction or caution. Knives are tools. They are incredibly useful. Though they seem less and less necessary in our technological age I do think that the ability to properly use a knife is still an important skill to have. However, knives are also dangerous. They are dangerous if approached wrongly (as a weapon) or...

As I have shared before , we are a family that prays together. While we do pray randomly with our children, we also pray regularly: every meal time, every nap time, and every bed time.  The other day, while I was putting Hannah to bed, she followed my prayer with a prayer of her own (blah blah represents nonsense sounds she was making; other than that, what follows is a fairly word for word transcript of Hannah's prayer): Dear Jesus, Blah blah, Daddy, blah blah Hannah, blah blah Mommy, blah blah blah blah, Baby, blah, Uncle, Auntie, blah blah,  Jesus, Amen.  First, I recognized the form. I thought to myself, my daughter is so observant. She has picked up on all the parts of our praying that are common to most of our prayers. We always start out with "Dear Jesus" or "Dear Lord", pray for Hannah and the rest of our family, and end by saying "In the name of Jesus, Amen." (which Hannah has, naturally, shortened).   Then, I noticed that she had made th...

In our family we pray at every meal.  I grew up doing this and Kristina and I have continued this tradition.  However, I grew up holding hands  to pray, and for whatever reason, we did not continue that part of the tradition... or at least, we didn't used to.  On thanksgiving this year, our family went to visit my parents in Salmon Arm.  We had a great time.  One of the things we did, led by my parents, was to hold hands while we prayed.  Hannah thought this was great.  It took all of a week for her to start watching us at the start of meals, and holding her hands out to us so we could pray, before we had even got to that point yet.  She gets this big smile on her face and just sits there, quietly.   A week after that, Hannah had not only learned a new word, but she knew when to say it: Amen.  With no prompting from us at all, she picked up this word from our prayers and started saying it with us at the right time .  A...