The following is from Bernard of Clairvaux’s 18th Sermon on the Song of Songs.
The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself. [...]
If you like music to meditate, pray or simply rest to, this is the best one I’ve found. It is simple and serene, a masterpiece by one of the twentieth century’s greatest (IMHO) classical composers, Arvo Pärt. He is an Eastern Orthodox believer from Estonia and spent a long season of his life in contemplative [...]
Among Evangelical and Charismatic Christians, reactions to liturgical aspects of worship and prayer vary greatly from intrigue, to delight, to bewilderment, to straight up scoffing. This series will attempt to explain some of the reasons behind liturgical prayer aimed at people with little or no (positive) experience with it, though ideally it will also be [...]
My apologies – I meant to say, “how to develop an easy, consistent, diverse, deep, rich in content, broadly-biblical, non-idiosyncratic, Christ-centered, historically-rooted, well-rounded, manageable and profoundly moving prayer life,” but thought that title was at the same time unwieldy and immediately open to the charge of being outside the realm of possibility for the majority of [...]
The often heard saying, “prayer doesn’t change God…it changes us” is an addage notoriously absent from the Bible.
As many of you may know, by occupation I am a full-time intercessor. This means my full-time job is primarily to pray as a staff member of the International House of Prayer of Kansas City (IHOP-KC). When I [...]
After having gone through the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) order for Evening Prayer in some detail, I will now show some of the unique aspects of Morning Prayer. Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are very similar. They both have the same four part general structure I outlined previously:
1) The Opening
2) The Psalms
3) The Readings
4) [...]
If you’ve been following along this series (or learned to pray the BCP Office by other means), after an attempt or two (or perhaps just upon hearing), it may seem daunting with all the flipping of pages and navigating through the book to find the appropriate material for each section. It may seem far from [...]
How often have you sat down to pray and have not known what to say? You may even care deeply about a specific topic, but after sixty to ninety seconds your creativity has run its course and you find yourself spending more energy and thought on determining what to say than actually relating to God. [...]
The Word of God does not simply give us information about religious truths. Rather the Word of God is the central medium through which we come to know and experience God (cf. Lk. 24:32). It is furthermore the central agency through which God accomplishes justice on earth in and through his people (cf. Isa. 55:7-13). [...]
The Book of Psalms is an incredible gift of God to the Church. Regularly singing the entire book of Psalms is the spiritual practice I commend to people most frequently. Their uniqueness lies in while most of Scripture portrays the history of Israel from either a God’s-eye or birds-eye view, the Psalm give us the inside [...]
