At the Intersection of Theology, Nature, and the Arts
Over the course of my days, my life has intersected again and again with the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham and ministries to which he was connected and/or had founded. In 1982, my marriage was falling apart and I was falling apart. Friends, who'd been praying for me for some time, invited me to attend the …
Oh, how I enjoy being gently wakened by a soft breeze and a sound river of birdsong just as the sun is rising! Our Creator knit us together in our mothers' wombs and He knows us better than we know ourselves. He delights in bringing this treat of peace and pleasure for our senses before …
“The greatest problems of our time are not technological, for these we handle fairly well. They are not even political or economic, because the difficulties in these areas, glaring as they may be, are largely derivative. The greatest problems are moral and spiritual, and unless we can make some progress in these realms, we may …
Continue reading "Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth"
Christ is building His kingdom with earth’s broken things. Human beings want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. Heaven is filling with earth’s broken lives, and there is no bruised reed that Christ cannot take …
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Father in Heaven! Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins so that the thought of You when it wakens in our soul, and each time it wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what You did forgive, not of how we went astray …
From Douglas Steere’s book, Prayer and Worship, comes this excerpt on intercessory prayer: When we hold up the life of another before God, when we expose it to God’s love, when we pray for its release from drowsiness, for the quickening of its inner health, for the power to throw off a destructive habit, for …
Continue reading "Holding Up the Life of Another Before God"
Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) is cherished for his prayers that have been preserved for us from his own private devotions. Here is a selection that we might use this week as a call from our own hearts. I believe in you, O God, Father, Word, Spirit—one God. I believe that by your Fatherly love all things …
Continue reading "Lancelot Andrewes: Prayers that Lift the Mind Up to God"
We must learn to take God at His Word, and go straight on in duty, although we see no way in which we can go forward. The reason we are so often balked by difficulties is that we expect to see them removed before we try to pass through them. If we would move straight …
Every hard duty that lies in your path, that you would rather not do, that it will cost you pain and struggle or sore effort to do, has a blessing in it. Not to do it, at whatever cost, is to miss the blessing. Every hard piece of road on which you see the Master’s …
Continue reading "Every Hard Duty, Every Hard Piece of Road, Every Point of Battle"
DFG Hailson 