I'm onto the penultimate leg of my epic reading of Prayer, which has so far spanned two & half years, two different flats, two festivals, a change in career ....    :)  I'm determined to draw it to a close tonight though but  I just got stopped in my tracks in reading Yancey's thoughts on intercession ('Prayer and Others'):

Thanks to the scientific ( Read more... )

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
     that the mountains would tremble before you!

Isaiah 64 - what an opening line!  The outpouring of desire to see God & interact with Him; the belief in His power...
...  and remembering the old ways;  the desire to overthrow the habitual:

For when you did awesome things that we did not ( Read more... )

I've just finished watching a programme on BBC2 - it's the first time I've noticed it - & it also happened to be the last in the series: damn! Extreme Pilgrim had Pete Owen-Jones travelling to different spiritual sites to try & 'get back' to the level of spirituality, which he feels modern-day Christianity in Britain has neglected. This episode ( Read more... )

I figured I made such a bad attempt at explaining what went on with Philip Yancey as discussed in the sermon, The Spirit Who Comforts that I’d revert to the source itself for more clarity.

Dave:  '… Somebody who’s written a lot about this whole subject of pain & the distance of God & the reality of God is Philip Yancey… And yes, he’s written about ( Read more... )

or, “ Where is God When...?”

With each new sermon series, there's always one particular sermon which really gets your mind working. During the Genesis series last summer, it was Fiona talking about Noah & God's promise. I didn't make it to church on Sunday (Guilds stitch-bitching intervened) so downloaded the sermon to listen to instead last night ( Read more... )

From Through the Dark Woods (Joanna Swinney), this beautiful passage was quoted from Lewis' The Silver Chair, making me think of 2 Cor. 5:7:
“In order to understand what followed, you must keep on remembering how little they could see. As they drew near the low hall, which separated them from the place where the lighted windows had appeared, they ( Read more... )

Ray Anderson:

Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown & unpredictable elements in life, but rather
a way of including the unknown & unpredictable
 in the outworkings of the grace of God in our lives.

One of the things I love about “God-Lit”(books, devotionals, sermons, study series) is how excerpts from the Word are highlighted & magnified ( Read more... )