Paul’s admonition toward the end of his letter to the church in Ephesus has always been striking to me: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). It runs against my…
All posts tagged prayer
Fuel for The Way
This is the final post in a series walking through Ronald Rolheiser’s book Sacred Fire, which profiles what he calls the 2nd or mature stage of discipleship with Jesus. The first two posts look at two separate pitfalls common during this stage (pride and the temptation of a 2nd honeymoon), and the previous post looked…
Bypassing Prayer for Action (God Isn’t Fixing This)
God Isn’t Fixing This. That’s the headline from the Daily News in response to the shooting in San Bernadino 2 years ago. The cover includes a few tweets from Republicans leaders at the time, with emphasis added on the prayers they declared to offer. In the wake of tragedy everyone wants to offer thoughts and…
A Prayer for the Work of God and Humanity
Today’s post from Paul Pastor is the finale of Hinneh: a blog series on vocation and calling. If you’d rather read all the posts from the series in a short ebook, the writers have generously made it available for free. You can download a PDF copy here, or downloads in Epub (most tablets/e-readers) and Mobi (Kindle)…
Please Pray For Me
My Facebook feed is full of people asking for prayer. I know plenty of people who ask for prayer regarding every life event. I know others who share a few new prayer requests every time they come to their small group. “My brother is looking for a job. Please pray for him.” Or, “Our dog…
The Problem with Praying For Your Enemy
Whether it be with people who disagree with me online, or people who disagree with decisions I make in helping lead a church, I can easily create fake enemies. I say fake because nearly all who come to mind are actually my brothers and sisters in Christ, so to call them an enemy of mine…