Prayer
How to be Wrong when Right
One of my work colleagues – let’s call her Kristie – is on a self-confessed journey of converting from Judaism to selected aspects of Buddhism. Last month, while we were waiting for a flight in the Qantas Club, Kristie described to me how she is creating her new designer spirituality based on what she likes. [...]
Grace-Based Confession
Bobby Emberley is in his last year of his bachelor’s degree programme at Bible college in the US. As a “pastor’s kid” brought up in a fundamental church and Christian school, he is well acquainted with fundamentalism as an insider. When he shared this story with me a few weeks ago, I asked him to [...]
Feeling Guilty, Feeling Good: The Twisted Self-Tortures of Spiritual Addictions
Her stricken face is etched in my memory. An out-of-town visitor to our church, the troubled woman approached us in anguish after the service. Her problem? Our church’s failure to have an invitation at the end of the service so she could “get things right” with God. Spiritual addiction. It’s the idea that I can’t [...]
When a Backyard Barbecue Becomes a Heavenly Rendezvous
Do you ever come away from spending time with another Christian feeling unsatisfied with the quality of fellowship? That you talked about sports and politics or cooking and kids but never really touched on deeper topics of the heart? Do you long for conversations to stray past the safety zone of general topics and delve [...]
Moving Men
Hudson Taylor Part 2 ‘To me it was a very grave matter,’ he (Hudson Taylor) wrote that winter, ‘to contemplate going out to China, far from all human aid, there to depend upon the living God alone for protection, supplies and help of every kind. I felt that one’s spiritual muscles required strengthening for such [...]
Talking with God
I enjoy personal and corporate prayer. I enjoy reading prayers in the Scriptures and the prayers of men and women who love God. I pray before meals and when I’m in the car. I try to follow the Biblical pattern of adoration, confession, and intercession. Something most unusual happened today. I was worried about a [...]
Think Fasting’s Not for You?
From Prayer Essentials for Living in His Presence, Vol. 1 by Sylvia Gunter Fast Of Words: A Different Kind Of Fast Time and again God brings me to my knees over my heart attitude expressed out of my mouth. More than once, God has led me to fast of negative, critical, judgmental, and complaining [...]
Prayer
For the last few weeks , our pastor has been taking us through prayer in the Old testament during our mid week meetings. These are some of the things that I learned: 1-Moses’ tireless intercessory prayers were a dialogue not a monologue. 2-Willful prayer is getting our own way in prayer as a judgement from [...]
The Prayer of a Seventeen Year Old Quaker Girl
I stumbled across this prayer one morning during my devotional time. It caused me to think about the way I pray. I found myself asking questions like, “Do I see myself as God sees me?”, “Do I appreciate what God has done for me?”, and “Do I want to let God remove these proud tendencies [...]
