Posts tagged ‘Prayer’

Apr 2

John Stott’s daily prayer

Good morning Heavenly Father
Good morning Lord Jesus
Good morning Holy Spirit

Father, I worship you, Creator and Sustainer of the Universe
Jesus, I worship you, Saviour and Lord of the world
Spirit, I worship you, Sanctifier of the people of God

Glory to the Father, and the Son, and to the Spirit
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever
Amen

Father, would I live this day in your presence and please you more and more
Jesus, would I take up my cross this day and follow you
Spirit, would you fill me and cause your fruit to ripen in my life:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control

Holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity
Have mercy upon me
Amen

John Stott’s evangelical expression of faith wasn’t a flighty, novel sort of thing. A prayer like this takes us back before the Reformation, back even before the split between East and West, echoing the ancient mass and the ‘Great Tradition’ of Trinitarian reflection. This is the sort of stuff that Christian communities have always brought before God together.

This is also a liturgy, words to be enacted and then grown into and lived out, words that do not merely name our requests before God, but name the meaning behind everything we experience: words with which we can understand, This is what we have been part of all along, this is where we find ourselves, this is where we will belong.

Read John Stott’s biography

(The rendition above contains my own minor style edits.)

Sep 16

Creation_of_the_Sun_and_Moon_face_detail

Knowing God (Trinity series)

I’ve made two introductory posts to this Trinity series (1, 2). Now we get to the guts of it. The first reason why the Trinity makes such a difference is because only if God is Trinity can we truly know God. And because God is Trinity, he also knows us. Stick with me, because this isn’t just a ‘head knowledge’ deal. Read more

May 6

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Saying grace in public

How do you feel about saying grace in public? I’m generally pretty cautious about it: our society is not Christian and I don’t see it as a particularly effective witness. When Arthur and I go out, if we say grace, we tend to be pretty subtle about it, or make it look like a natural part of our conversation. Read more

Apr 2

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Un-excluding the ‘excluded middle’

A term that gets discussed quite a bit in missiology is the ‘excluded middle’. This short article explains it better than me but it’s basically the idea that our western categories of ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ are too binary for the reality of the world. There’s more overlap between the spirit world and the natural world than we normally believe. Read more

Mar 31

Revisiting weakness

A few years ago, I wrote a series for this blog on weakness. I was coming at it from feeling reasonably competent in the tasks given to me and trying to work out if that was OK. My question wasn’t about whether I was competent enough to do what God had asked but about whether I was weak enough to bring God glory.

Now, nine months away from heading to another country and whole other culture, my issues are completely different. Because pretty much all my competencies are called into question by this new context. Read more

Mar 25

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A praying life: book review

In A Praying Life Paul Miller uses two images to talk about prayer: holding hands and scrubbing floors. The first highlights the relational aspect of prayer, what it means to come to God like a little child. The second asks how we pray when it doesn’t feel easy. However, the first time he mentions the latter, or its complementarity to the former, is over 3/4 of the way through. Read more