Blessed Lord, Who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; Who lives and reigns with [Read More…]
Encountering God in Prayer
Nov 13, 2014 @ 0:05 by Leave a Comment
One of the themes Tim Keller presses us to see in his new book on prayer (Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God) is that prayer is a conversation with God on the basis of the Bible’s words. We listen to God through reading and pondering and meditating over Scripture and then we pray to [Read More…]
On Taming Jesus
Nov 12, 2014 @ 0:08 by Leave a Comment
When do we tame Jesus? when is the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of our faith tamed? If spirituality is formation into Christlikeness then taming Jesus diminishes spiritual formation. Where has our formation been shortened by taming the Jesus toward whom we are to grow? Most of our taming of Jesus is invisible to [Read More…]
Reading the Bible vs. Being Read by the Bible
Nov 9, 2014 @ 13:05 by Leave a Comment
This set of images comes from a wonderful article by James Bryan Smith, at Friends University and with Apprentice Institute, and illustrates the differences of reading the Bible for information vs formation or reading the Bible vs being read by the Bible: [Read more…]
The Middle Ground in Prayer
Nov 7, 2014 @ 0:07 by Leave a Comment
The one and only prayer book of the Bible is the Book of Psalms but it does not begin with a prayer but with a meditation, what Tim Keller calls “a meditation on meditation” (Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, 146). That is, Psalm 1 is a “pre-prayer act” of recollection. We cannot jump [Read More…]
What is Spiritual Formation?
Nov 5, 2014 @ 0:09 by Leave a Comment
If the Christian life is defined as being spiritually formed, without suggesting for a moment this is all about spirit and not at all about body, what would it look like to be spiritual formed? Diane Chandler, at Regent University in Virginia Beach, offers this definition in her new book, Christian Spiritual Formation: An Integrated [Read More…]
When Worship becomes Formative
Oct 28, 2014 @ 0:04 by Leave a Comment
There is a lot of chatter today about the formative dimension of church worship. One can be forgiven for thinking that if we would just get our worship right we’d all be formed into model Christians. My observation is that if gathered worship is formative then the best liturgies should produce the best Christians, and [Read More…]
Tim Keller’s Rules for Prayer
Oct 27, 2014 @ 4:43 by Leave a Comment
Most of the great theologians of the church have addressed the topic of prayer, and it is one of the highlights of Tim Keller’s book on prayer (Prayer) to sketch what Augustine, Luther and Calvin said about prayer — each expressing a pastoral theology of prayer in a letter to someone. Luther, for instance, said [Read More…]
Unanswered Prayer (John Frye)
Oct 24, 2014 @ 5:03 by Leave a Comment
This post is by John Frye. What John is talking about in this first paragraph was a long-time coming and I’m grateful to pastor after pastor who has helped me “get it.” Thanks John. I have often felt in Scot McKnight’s writings that he has a genuine pastor’s heart. This is not to detract from [Read More…]
What does it mean to “Encounter” God?
Oct 20, 2014 @ 0:05 by Leave a Comment
Tim Keller, as we have noted in an earlier post, sees prayer as a conversation, but this conversation has a particular shape: God speaks in the Word (the Bible) and we respond in learning to communicate with God in light of that word-y revelation. Thus, Timothy Ward has shown that the words of God given [Read More…]
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