Tag Archives: prayer
Ask and Receive
Ask like a child. It was the sort of thing that, if I heard a preacher saying it fifteen years ago would have annoyed me no end. I want what I want, but I want to be good, to be right in my own mind to ask for it, to be convincing to God and myself. I want to trust my words, my intentions, my plans and projects, my goals. But Jesus says to simply ask God for your daily bread.
Amateur Hour: On Prayer
But the sheer accumulation of vastness joined to the repeated elements of praise and the ever-evolving list of intercessions gave me a humble, grateful perspective on my faith and life that I could not have otherwise known I was missing. As I reached those last few chapters of City, where Augustine talks about the play of light on the sea and the consolations of this life of punishment that merely prefigure the glories to be revealed, I felt something like grief at being parted, at my prayer and hearing going on to a new companion.
In and Among Us
Now for Luther, the big problem was that people didn’t pray boldly enough. They didn’t expect good things from God, because they were afraid of God. He compares the person who asks for too little from God to a beggar. A rich and mighty emperor invites the beggar to ask for whatever he might desire, prepared to give him “great and princely gifts.” And if the beggar asks only for a dish of beggar’s broth, he would be “considered a rogue and a scoundrel who had made a mockery of his imperial majesty’s command and was unworthy to come into his presence.”
Brutally Ordinary Things 