Last week I was blogging about the guidelines for prayer offered by the Heidelberg Catechism and I whizzed right by one that some may find troubling. When we pray, says the Catechism, we are supposed to ask “for everything God has commanded us to ask for.” It sounds like we are playing the spiritual version […]
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Putting The Pieces Together About Prayer
Some Christians can make prayer seem like bit of a puzzle. Not that they portray prayer as confusing — far from it. They make it more like a jigsaw puzzle: once you get each piece in the right place (and they only fit one way) the picture emerges automatically. In the puzzle theory of prayer […]
Taking Things Personally
“Hey, don’t take it personally!” they say, when they do something that causes us pain. “Hey, it’s not about you!” they say, when we take it personally anyway. For the Heidelberg Catechism, the Christian faith is all personal. In a sense, Heidelberg says “Yes, it really is all about you.” Not in a self-centered way. […]
New Every Morning — And That’s a Good Thing
A new Facebook friend recently posted a question on my wall. She said she was enjoying praying the Jesus Prayer, but found an objection creeping up in the back of her mind: Isn’t this the kind of thing Jesus told us not to do? One of the really fun things about writing a book is […]
Be Named and Be Claimed!
Last Tuesday I was on Pittsburgh’s WORD FM, a guest of John Hall and Kathy Emmons on their show “The Ride Home.” Actually it was my second time on the show, which was hugely flattering. Anyway, the day before I was on, a guest had raised a good bit of controversy when she talked about […]