One of Those Sustaining Prayers

This prayer by William Barclay is one that I pray almost everyday. His emphasis on God’s sustaining love and power often moves me to tears when I pray it aloud.
O God, you are our refuge.
When we are exhausted by life’s efforts:
When we are bewildered by life’s problems;
When we are wounded by life’s sorrows;
We come to [...]

What is Prayer?

Matthew 6:5 – 18

In the book, Steps Toward Spiritual Growth, the story is told of a man who was opening an adult bookstore in a small town despite the objections of many people in the community. A group of Christians from a neighboring church decided to gather for an all-night prayer meeting to ask [...]

Sermon Snippet for Sunday, October 25, 2009

Context: prayer as a motivator to get you out of the boat and on the water (think Peter and Jesus)
Do you ever pay attention to your prayer life? By this, I don’t mean, the amount of time you pray, or the length of your prayer list, or what time of day you pray. I mean [...]

One of My Daily Prayers

This past summer I took the month of July off from Facebook and Twitter and spent time reading several books including Gary Thomas’ Sacred Pathways. It is a book that identifies nine different paths of faith development. At the end there is a short “test” that allows you to have a snap shot of what [...]

Agreeing With God

John 15:5-15:7

Slide 1 We are concluding the fourth and final sermon in this series, ‘Prayer as a Second Language’ with a look at the vital prayer of supplication. Now, I ask you what does the word, ‘supplication’ mean? It means to request or plea for something and sometimes that is done on behalf of another person. [...]

Prayer: An Attitude of Gratitude

Psalms 100:1-100:5

This past week, our elementary, middle, and high school students joined with thousands of other Indiana students in taking the ISTEP test. I have not heard a great deal of thankfulness from my two for the test but I sense there has been a great deal of thankfulness for the conclusion of the test. Am [...]

Confess to God

1 John 1:9-1:9

Slide 1 The story is told of a prominent Washington DC area priest who was honored one evening for his ministry and service. One of his parishioners, a prominent politician was to serve as the emcee for the evening but was unavoidably detained.
So a fill-in was arranged and began to heap honor after honor [...]

Adore God

Psalms 145:1-145:7

Since school is now in full swing, I thought it would be fun to test our language knowledge but not English. Instead, I want us to see how well we doing with Spanish and French. I am going to put up five English words and you are to tell me which is the French word [...]

My Daily Prayers

Prayer is vital to faith. I grew up with a praying grandmother whose prayers stopped God from whatever He was doing and caused Him to listen. As a family, my mother, father and I closed our day with prayer and to hear your father pray, is something that should do something to you for the [...]