Resting in the Trinity

Thanks for your helpful comments after my last post. I said that I would share one thing in particular that I sense is critical for tapping into the rest that Jesus offers.
It’s experiencing the Trinity.

Rest

How’s your Sabbath going?
No, I didn’t get my days mixed up during vacation. But I did read something while I was away that got me thinking: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). I know: nothing new here. I’m guessing most of you have [...]

Abba — Ways We Can Love Him

Our Father. Our Abba. Most of you already know this, but it bears repeating: the word “Abba” is Aramaic for Father, or better, Dad or Papa. It’s how Jews in first century Palestine, both children and adults, addressed their father. They would have never thought to address God as Abba. In fact they would have considered it [...]

The Lord’s Prayers

This past Sunday I talked about the Lord’s prayer — not the usual one, but the shorter version: “Abba!” The apostle Paul refers to this prayer in both Romans 8 and Galatians 4: “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’” So it [...]

Learning the Plays

The Lord’s Prayer has been a magnet for my spiritual life for many years. There was a time when I was “into” all sorts of fringe spiritual stuff — Jungian psychology, New Age healing practices, exploring other religions, the daily use of runes — you name it. Fortunately, I retained enough of a connection to [...]

Natural Prayer

“Pray continually.” Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? Even with all we’ve experienced and learned during our 24/7 and 24/45 prayer journeys, praying all the time still sounds not only challenging but unrealistic. It’s one thing to pray all the time one person at a time, like we did in the prayer tent. But each person praying [...]

Holy Desires

The flipside of “holy dissatisfaction” (see yesterday’s post) is holy desire. Holy dissatisfaction arises out of holy desires. It is this holy desiring that Jesus encourages us to bring to our praying: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will [...]

Holy Dissatisfaction

Death has passed us by.
The Egyptians were not so fortunate. After their pharoah repeatedly refused to let the Israelite slaves go, and after repeated plagues were sent to convince him that the Egyptian gods and Pharoah’s own supposed divinity were no match for the God of Israel, the final plague struck the firstborn in each of [...]

The Desire of God’s Heart

What’s next? We’ve been praying for what we want; now we’re going to start praying for what God wants. We’ve been praying our own prayers; now we’re going to start praying the Lord’s Prayer.

The Mystery of the Many

In a post a few weeks ago I talked about how prayer is still a mystery to me. One of the mysteries of prayer is the “mystery of the many.” The apostle Paul refers to this mystery in his second letter to the Corinthians, writing after a time of terrible danger: