"I Hear Your Prayer"

The following is a Mind Change Moment Encore

A few days ago an old friend shared with me what he had been reading from Psalm 143.  Two days later as I was encouraging another friend, I turned to the words that had been shared with me and again the power of Scripture was seen. Moved by this result, I decided to spend time every morning for a week focusing on this passage.

SBNR

SBNR--”Spiritual but not religious”--is a new category being used by pollsters as they survey religious attitudes and commitment. An article in the New York Times this week describing some of the attention this group is getting, caught my eye.

When Weakness Isn't Weak

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express (Romans 8:26).

We do not like to feel weak. We especially don’t like to feel spiritually weak, but that is exactly what we experience when we struggle to pray or do not know what to pray. As we find ourselves in spiritual weakness it not uncommon to hear from somewhere: “You just don’t measure up.” If we believe that, then we may find ourselves feeling distance from God.

7 Ways to Improve Your Prayer Life

These days the way to get eyeballs seems to be to write headlines like these real ones I just pulled off the Web:

• 15 Ways to Stay Productive over the Summer
• 20 of the Worst Marriage Proposals Ever
• 10 Ways to Find More Space at Home
• 4 Perfect Yoga Poses for the 4th of July (what?)
• 6 Snacking Habits that Could Help You Lose Weight
• 11 Tips for Writing Killer Headline Titles

It Should Not, but It Does

“The universe shouldn't exist — at least according to a new theory. Modeling of conditions soon after the Big Bang suggests the universe should have collapsed just microseconds after its explosive birth, the new study suggests.” So begins a story reported on NBC News.  Those conducting experiments and doing the study found the newborn universe "should have experienced an intense jittering" that made its collapse inevitable.

The Forgiveness Project

Earlier this week as I taught a class on the title of my book The Baptized Life, we looked at the topic of baptism and forgiveness. I pointed out that living the baptized life means living a life of joy that comes from God’s forgiveness of us and a life of showing forgiveness to others. It is forgiving others as God in Christ has forgiven us (Ephesians 4:32).

Darkness and Light

I follow a rather famous person on Twitter because he, like me, has MS. Let me share three of his recent tweets:

Number 1: Time off. On Cape Cod. Needed sun.Warmth.Got rain. Freezing. Shivering. Great way to relax. Are you kidding me? This is why I am an atheist.

Number 2: The search for peace is heartbreaking.  No road maps. Little reason for hope.  We cannot go home again.  Who can?  Life can be so sad.