Blog, page 24

— @joeladamsh

If we can’t say “thy will be done” from the bottom of our hearts, we will never know any peace. We will feel compelled to try to control people and control our environment and make things the way we believe they ought to be. Yet to control life like this is beyond our abilities, and we will just dash ourselves upon the rocks. This is why Calvin adds that to pray “thy will be done” is to submit not only our wills to God but even our feelings, so that we do not become despondent, bitter, and hardened by the things that befall us.

— Tim Keller (in Prayer)

— @djwreckelect

1 Thessalonians 5:24

— Os Guiness (h/t @gdventurella)

Luther counsels the cultivation of prayer as a habit through regular discipline. He proposes praying twice daily. “It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night. Guard yourselves against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, ‘Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.’”164 Luther is no romantic. He concludes, “We are as strictly and solemnly commanded to pray as in the others . . . not to kill, not to steal, etc.” We must pray whether we feel like it or not.

— Tim Keller in Prayer

— David Platt on Job 41:11

— @mike_ackerman

— @Mike_Hickerson

This is the fundamental prayer for happiness from a mind that the Spirit has cleared of illusions. Augustine writes: “We love God, therefore, for what He is in Himself, and we love ourselves and our neighbors for His sake.” That doesn’t mean, he quickly adds, that we shouldn’t pray for anything else but to know, love, and please God. Not at all. The Lord’s Prayer shows us that we need many things. However, if we have made God our greatest love, and if knowing and pleasing him is our highest pleasure, it transforms both what and how we pray for a happy life.

Tim Keller in Prayer

If we give priority to the outer life, our inner life will be dark and scary. We will not know what to do with solitude. We will be deeply uncomfortable with self-examination, and we will have an increasingly short attention span for any kind of reflection. Even more seriously, our lives will lack integrity. Outwardly, we will need to project confidence, spiritual and emotional health and wholeness, while inwardly we may be filled with self-doubts, anxieties, self-pity, and old grudges.

Tim Keller in Prayer

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Makes me think of “self-control” being a fruit of his Spirit.

Chicago is the only city I’m aware of like this, with no overwhelming racial majority.