dependence Archives

I have recently finished listening to Tyler Staton’s book on prayer – Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer. I listened to Tyler Staton preach on the topic of the Lord’s Prayer at a leadership retreat a few months ago. Both his passion for and his experience in prayer impressed me.1 You can listen to these same sermons on the Bridgetown Church’s website. I did not expect this in such a young pastor. In his book, I was further intrigued by his emphasis on the importance of daily set times of prayer. He pointed out that both Jesus and the early church practiced regular times of prayer each day. Jesus and his prayer life Over the years, I have noticed that the Gospels (and particularly Luke) often note that Jesus gave himself to prayer. At this baptism, before he begins a busy… Read the whole post

In the preparation of his servants, God uses crucible experiences that test and purify us. This is no less true of missionaries than of any other servants of God. In a previous post in this blog, I looked at Scripture verses that speak of crucibles and noted some different types of crucible experiences. I emphasized that our response to these crucible experiences is critical. If they are to be transformative, we need to identify and extract from these difficult and often painful experiences that which God has intended that we learn from it. How do we do that? How do we mine crucibles? I think we need to begin by learning from Jesus. He not only went through the crucible in order to purchase our redemption, but he shows us how to persevere and learn from these experiences.… Read the whole post

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Tag: dependence

Set times of prayer – a discipline of preparation and love

Christ Went Through the Crucible Before Us