Tag: Prayer

Influencing the Course of Events: A Lewis “Scrap”

  

Combing through C. S. Lewis’s essays to find pertinent quotes for the paper I will be presenting at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s summer conference, I came upon what might be called a little scribbling that I don’t remember ever reading before. It’s in the collected essays entitled God in the Dock and is called simply “Scraps.” These seem to be just odds-and-ends comments that Lewis saw fit to put on paper, perhaps just for fun, or for future reference… Read more »

Jesus & Anxiety: A Lewis Primer

  

Another C. S. Lewis book that I read recently—for the first time—is Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. One section speaks directly to me with respect to a hard time I’m going through at the moment. We would like the world to be predictable, something we can manage according to our expectations. Lewis says we have to lay that expectation aside: But is it not plain that this predictable world . . . is not the world we live in?… Read more »

National Day of Prayer

  

Today is the National Day of Prayer, not government-sponsored, but called by Christian leaders throughout our nation. Only in calling out to God will anything going wrong in this country be reversed. In the spirit of this day, I offer the following prayer. Lord, we are in trouble as a nation, as You well know, even better than we do. The problems aren’t all at the top politically; there is a culture that has not only accepted sin but has… Read more »

Obama’s Moral Equivalence Ploy

  

The tradition of the National Prayer Breakfast started during the Eisenhower administration with the encouragement of Billy Graham, who spoke at most of them at that time. President Eisenhower sought, in those crucial years when atheistic communism seemed to be in the ascendancy, to call the nation back to its Christian roots. Those were also the years when “In God We Trust” was added to our coins and “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. The Breakfast was… Read more »

Finney: The Spirit of Prayer

  

Charles Finney, in his autobiography, provides excellent details on the many revivals that followed him as he ministered in New York in his early years as an evangelist. Yet while he does credit the message itself, he never falls into the trap of thinking the results came purely through man’s efforts. Prayer, he asserts, is the key to success: If anything occurred that threatened to mar the work, if there was any appearance of any root of bitterness springing up,… Read more »

Finney: The Spirit of Prayer

  

Prayer meetings are supposed to be times when believers can join together to pray for God’s will to be done in the many areas of life—national, local, family, personal—with the promise that where two or three are gathered in His name, Jesus will be present via the Holy Spirit. In his Revival Lectures, Charles Finney cautions believers in his day to be sure they enter into these meeting in the right spirit, and that they not turn them into self-centered… Read more »

Insights from Tozer

  

Normally, on weekends, I draw from C. S. Lewis and Charles Finney for some thoughtful quotes. I’m not home this weekend, and therefore don’t have my usual sources to use. However, I have a habit of collecting quotes from all sorts of people who have offered wise and sound insights. One of those is A. W. Tozer, a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor whose books have encouraged many and have guided them into a closer relationship with the Lord. Let… Read more »