No guaranteed answers to prayer

Prayer is not a manipulative tool by which we receive our wishes and desires. Our wants may be godly or they may be ungodly. In either case, prayer is not a wishing-well tool to access those wants. The example of Christ demonstrates that God sometimes answers our petitions with, “No:” There are, no doubt, passages […]

Grab bag

Found around the internet in the past week — C. J. Mahaney blogs about “The Pastor and Personal Criticism.” But it’s not just pastors who need to understand the role of criticism in their lives (to produce wisdom and maturity). We can all benefit from the criticism we receive: If we could mature in wisdom […]

The Powerful Life of the Praying Pastor

The audio, video, and notes from each plenary session of the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, “The Powerful Life of the Praying Pastor” is now available at Desiring God’s Resource Library page. The conference may be designed for pastors, but the theme is prayer, something that would benefit every believer in Christ to do with greater […]

Grab bag

A few things spotted recently around the web: John Piper’s 8-month leave of absence ended at the end of December. Last Sunday he resumed preaching with the sermon, “Our Deepest Prayer: Hallowed Be Your Name.” He also wrote an article entitled, “Why I Am Full of Hope About Bethlehem’s Future,” and while it is written […]

Resolved to read and pray

Today many people will make resolutions for the coming year. Even believers will make resolutions concerning their spiritual lives. Setting spiritual goals is a worthy enterprise. But the task of spiritual growth is often overwhelming: where shall we start and what shall we do? We know we need more biblical reading and study and memorization […]

The way to God is open

Jonathan Edwards contemplated the reality that Christ has made a way available for us to have access to the Father: [God] sits on a throne of grace, and there is no veil to hide this throne and keep us from it. The veil is rent from the top to the bottom. The way is open […]

Grab bag

Russell Moore answers the question, “Is My Music Warping My Child?” Two points he makes, and one reaction of my own — Lyrics are influential — they shape the way we think about the issues of life, so liberty cannot be applied indiscriminately to music choices. Music becomes a parent’s opportunity to be intentional about […]

When God says “No”

We pray. But that is no guarantee that God will answer what we ask, the way we ask it, or in the time frame that we ask it. He is no genie in a bottle for us. So when God seems slow to answer, or answers prayers contrary to our asking, we might ask ourselves […]

Spiritual gifts and unanswered prayer

In studying our way through Ephesians 4, we’ve seen the importance of spiritual gifts and how God uses them to accomplish His purposes in His people. We seem to understand that, at least cognitively, if not also experientially. But the use of our gifts and our receiving the practice of the gifts of other believers […]

The glory of God and prayer

In anticipation of tomorrow morning’s sermon (on Paul’s doxology in Eph. 3), I was reading again in A. W. Pink’s work, Gleanings from Paul: the Prayers of the Apostle. He makes several helpful statements about the glory of God and its implications for prayer: …we should be deeply concerned with the glory of God, that […]

The true spirit of prayer

What kind of spirit is most conducive to God-exalting prayer? In his sermon, “Hypocrites Deficient in the Duty of Prayer,” Jonathan Edwards provides insight into an attitude that will stimulate believers into greater dependence on the powerful sufficiency of God: The true spirit of prayer is no other than God’s own spirit dwelling in the […]

Prayer and the power of God

We have something to say to God every day. Many are not sensible of this, and it is their sin and misery; they live without God in the world, they think they can without him, are not sensible to their dependence upon him, and their obligations to him, and therefore for their parts they have […]

Sunday Leftovers (12/13/09)

As a child, I was taught what you might call “formula prayers” for bedtime and meals — a prayer that was repeated at each meal and another at each nightfall. The same words were given with the same intonation at the same time each day. It was many years before I felt liberated to pray […]

Sunday Leftovers (11/15/09)

Do we know the strength and power of God in our lives? Do we know the strength and power of God in our praying? Much of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is concerned with the matter of strength for living for the Ephesians (e.g., 1:19-20; 3:16, 20; 6:10ff). Among the truths exposed by Paul are: […]

Today’s Quote – Prayer (Ryle)

J. C. Ryle: “A Call to Prayer:” Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too. (HT: […]