Topic: Prayer

The COVID-19 scare can reinforce our Lenten call to prepare our hearts by facing up to our mortality and the real limits of our control over the world.

The gift of tongues can be a valuable part of our private spirituality, but the needs of public worship require something more than the private intimacies of our spirituality.

God may not always give us what we want in answer to our prayers, but will always be with us through the Spirit to help us face whatever it is that life puts before us.

Every coin you are holding already belongs to God: every bitterness, every hurt, every disappointment. Do not hold a single one back.

We are to witness to this incredible, unbelievable, but very real truth: that in God’s reality, love crosses every divide, even the chasm of death.

The Bible can be used to justify anything, but when it is approached humbly as a place of prayerful encounter with the risen Christ, it is alive with the breath of God and leads us to life.

We can take our salvation and just return to normal life, but God calls us beyond normal into a wholeness that grows from praise, prayer and service.

Answers to prayer are not a controllable formula, but we are called to pray as part of our participation in God’s quest to bring healing, wholeness and life to a world of chaos.

Faithful witness to the Coming Christ is not expressed by trying to force the world into our concepts of righteousness, but by joyously, prayerfully, and thankfully cooperating with the liberating work of the Spirit, even in the face of violent opposition.

The Lord’s Prayer is given to us, the Church, as a model to shape all our praying.

Pray for all people and let God do the judging. The world may be an evil place but you are God’s children and evil has been overcome.

In Christ, God acts for the salvation of all, and in Christ, we are called to pray for all (even politicians!).