Here’s a thought: Weekly We have weekly religious duties. Every week, God wants us to work six days and rest on the Sabbath (Gen 2:3; Exodus 20:8). The idea is to set the day aside for him and his people. Many of you know that I make quite a big deal of this, and think it’s a …
I probably said it at church today about 15 times. You might have said it slightly less. It’s a “religious” word. You find it translated in English Bibles 50 times, always in connection with worship. What am I talking about? It’s the little word: “Amen”. It’s a Hebrew word that’s been carried straight over into …
This is the prayer we used on Sunday morning, taken from the Book of Common Prayer. It sounds quite different to many of the prayers that we might be praying. Knowing the right things to pray is often hard. I don’t think we need to change what we’ve been praying, but these might be some …
What’s the aim? To spend the day fasting and giving some deliberate time to private prayer, to household prayer, and to corporate prayer. Why are we fasting? It’s a clear biblical practice carried out by God’s people at times of crisis. The pandemic is clearly a crisis for our world and a crisis for the …
“Mindfulness”. It’s been embraced by Google, Transport for London, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Parliament. It’s encouraged by the NHS. And now our children are coming home from school, telling us it’s part of their lessons. What is it? and should we, as parents, be concerned? What is it? Here’s Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition, who set up the Stress …
Here is something that puzzles me and I expect puzzles you too. Ever since we’ve started prayer meetings in Ilford, we’ve prayed for people we know to come to Jesus. I’ve not counted how many such prayers we’ve offered, but there have been many. And yet we’ve seen very few clear answers. The puzzle is …
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Yesterday at prayer meeting, James recommended the book: Matthew Henry’s A Way to Pray (also called A Method for Prayer) It’s a great book, so I asked Andrew to write a review of it. Here it is: It’s your quiet time. You sit down. You shut your eyes. And… you begin to pray. Now what? …
At men’s breakfast recently, we were thinking about men leading in prayer. One of the ideas I talked about was the importance of praying a “full diet” of prayer, when we’re leading in prayer. But this idea is also very relevant for our own private prayer lives. When we’re finding prayer hard, one thing Christians …
Acts 2:42 tells us: “They devoted themselves to… the prayers”. What could that kind of devoted commitment to the prayers of the church look like for you? Here’s a lovely example of a Christian’s commitment to the prayer meeting, reported by Charles Spurgeon’s little brother, James Spurgeon: There never was a prayer-meeting held without Mrs. …
A striking feature of the church in Acts is the disciples’ commitment to praying together: Acts 1:12-14, “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer”. Acts 2:42, “they devote themselves to … the prayers”. Acts 4:23-31, “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken”. Acts 6:4, the apostles …
