The Day Francis Schaeffer's Plane Almost Crashed in the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean

The title and link for this post come from Justin Taylor's blog. 

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/06/20/the-day-francis-schaeffers-plane-almost-crashed-in-the-middle-of-the-atlantic-ocean/

The Dignity of Praying

“First, when a person prays, he represents the whole created order, of which he is the conscious, self-reflective part. It is in the prayer of human beings that creation becomes conscious of its relationship to God. Man is the thinking part of the cosmos. In the entire material world, the only thing that even thinks to pray is man. Human thought is the only place where the cosmos is self-reflective.”

-Patrick Henry Reardon, The Jesus We Missed: The Surprising Truth about the Humanity of Christ

 

Digging Up Buried Treasure

“We have been instructed by faith to recognize that whatever we need and whatever we lack is in God, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father has willed all the fullness of his bounty to abide so that we may all draw from it as from an overflowing spring. It remains for us to seek in him, and in prayers to ask of him, what we have learned to be in him. Otherwise, to know God as the master and bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of him, and still not go to him and not ask of him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him...It is therefore, by the benefit of prayer that we reach those riches which are laid up for us with the Heavenly Father. For there is a communion of men with God by which, having entered the heavenly sanctuary, they appeal to him in person concerning his promises in order to experience, if necessity so demands, that what they believed was not vain, although he had promised it in word alone. Therefore we see that to us nothing is promised to be expected from the Lord which we are not also bidden to ask of him in prayers. We dig up by prayer the treasures that were pointed out by the Lord’s gospel, and which our faith has gazed upon.” 

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559 A.D.)

"God, Please Help it Not to be Our House"

This excerpt is from a great book on prayer by Paul Miller.

“The church’s tendency toward unnatural spirituality has been further influenced in recent years by our culture’s embrace of Buddhist spirituality. In Buddhism you become enlightened and reach nirvana when you stop desiring. Thus Buddhist monks repeat “om” mindlessly to themselves in an attempt to become one with the all. The goal is the suppression of desire.

Jesus could not be more different. Read the gospels and you’ll discover a passionate, feeling man. Thank God we have a Savior who is in touch with the real world, who prays that he will not drink the cup of his Father’s wrath, who cries out on a rough wooden cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus neither suppresses his feelings nor lets them master him. He is real.

It is perfectly natural to pray, ‘God, please help whomever’s house is on fire. Keep them safe, and help it not to be our house.’ You are honest with your desire and loving at the same time. If you are sinking on the Titanic, you pray ‘God, get me a place in a lifeboat,’ and then you put all your energy into helping other people get on. Desire and surrender are the perfect balance to praying.”
Paul Miller, A Praying Life

The Surest Sign of Hulility

Over the last three years, Kevin DeYoung has become on of my favorite contemporary authors. He pastors University Reformed Church in Lansing, Michigan, and blogs over at "DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed." GBC's college study and Wednesday night classes have utilized his book Just Do Something, and the college study plans to tackle his and Ted Kluck's book Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) after we finish our current study. This excerpt is from his meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism. 

"The simple act of getting on our knees (or faces or feet or whatever) for five or fifty minutes every day is the surest sign of our humility and dependence on God. There may be many reasons for our prayerlessness-time management, busyness, lack of concentration-but most fundamentally, we ask not because we think we need not. 

Kevin DeYoung,  (2010-03-17). The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism (p. 232). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.