James discussed not just listening to the Word, but doing what it says. It also discussed prayer and how we should approach it. Wright mainly discussed worship and the different ways as Christians we are able to worship. He also discusses prayer in chapter twelve and discusses how we are able to pray in many different ways. Foster discussed Spiritual Disciplines as a whole and how they are useful and what they are able to accomplish for us. I will first write about worship. Wright discusses that we all worship in different ways. Singing is not the only way to worship. We can worship and thank the Lord by reading scripture, dancing, preaching, and in our everyday activities. James also discusses how we should give thanks to God. This is a form …show more content…
The next discipline is prayer. James discusses “The Prayer of Faith”. He writes that one must pray and have faith. The Church is there for us and we can pray in fellowship. God will hear our prayers and we must have faith. Wright discusses prayer in chapter twelve. He writes that prayer is a way of bridging the gap between Heaven and Earth. Through prayer, Heaven and Earth are able to overlap. He also says that there is nothing wrong with using prayers from Christian tradition. We do not necessarily have to pray from the heart all the time. The Bible has many prayers that we can pray and still mean what we are saying. Wright ends the chapter by writing that there are many ways to pray. We can pray meditatively, out loud, and even in tongues. Prayer is not a rigid concept with an overwhelming amount of rules, it’s personal. Foster does not directly discuss prayer, but he does discuss the benefits of Spiritual Disciplines. He claims that we doubt our abilities to reach beyond the physical world and through Spiritual Disciplines, we are able to achieve this. We also do not know about exploring our inward
In “God in the Doorway,” Annie Dillard conveys a shift in her perception of God by associating fearful childhood experiences with her current interpersonal relationship with God. Santa Claus appears in Dillard’s doorway on Christmas Eve and as a young girl Dillard reacts in fear of a powerful, omniscient god-like figure and runs away. (M.S. 1) Dillard later realizes Miss White, her elderly neighbor, dressed-up as Santa Claus intending to shape a loving relationship with Dillard. Miss White attempts to form a bond with Dillard again and focuses a ray of sunlight on her hand with a magnifying glass and burns her causing Dillard to run from her again. Dillard associates the actions of Miss White to her perception of God as wrathful
Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is a novel in which religion is of great importance. One of the main themes in this novel is faith in God and oneself, and even more, the conflict between belief and doubt. Irving writes in such a way, that this is very evident throughout the book. John Wheelwright, at the start of the novel, is a young boy who does not seem to know much about how strong his faith really is. Part of the reason for this, is that the choice between believing in and doubting God is that there isn’t any complete evidence that He even exists.
In the first chapter of God Behaving Badly, David Lamb argues that God is unfairly given a bad reputation. He claims these negative perceptions are fueled by pop culture and lead many to believe the lie that the God of the Old Testament is angry, sexist, racist, violent, legalistic, rigid, and distant. These negative perceptions, in turn, affect our faith. Ultimately, Lamb seeks to demonstrate that historical context disproves the presumptuous aforementioned. In addition, he defends his position by citing patterns of descriptions that characterize God throughout the Old Testament. “Our image of God will directly affect how we either pursue or avoid God. If we believe that the God of the Old Testament is really harsh, unfair and cruel, we won’t want anything to do with him” (Lamb 22). Clearly, they way Christians choose to see God will shape their relationship with Him.
...r a confession from Proctor, if only to save the life of a godly man. The world desperately seeks wise men who can see through deception. John however, even with his wife pleading, refused to name any others as a servant of Satan and damage the name of Proctor. His pride led to his death. He could not stand being a coward, and I respect him deeply for that. If John Proctor did not ascend to Heaven, then I and all others should burn in hell.
In A short and Easy Method of Prayer, Madame Guyon touches on how one can accept all things God through prayer. Through the simple steps of meditation and reading accompanied by meditation, Madame Guyon teaches the reader how to use those steps to have a relationship with God through the simple steps of meditation and reading accompanied by meditation. Madame Guyon was one of the few female religious leaders in the 17th century France as she was a voice of Quietism and to have a relationship through prayer. The two key biases in this book is reviewing it from a 21st century mind set and this is just one of the many different sources of the religious text from this time period.
In the book A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, Madame Guyon touches on how one can accept all things God through prayer. Through the simple steps of meditation and reading accompanied by meditation, Madame Guyon teaches the reader how to use those steps to have a relationship with God. As a person of the Quietism faith in the seventeenth century, Madam Guyon was going against the norm of the church structure. Not only was she advocating people did not need to go to weekly services, but she was also going against the male’s leaders of the church. One of the questions this book can help historians to answer is how religion shaped everyday life. However, the readers need to keep in mind the biases surrounding this book. This is just one of the many religious books of the seventeenth century and viewing the book from a 21nd mindset. Madame Guyon was one of the few female religious leaders in the seventeenth century France.
The theme of James is gaining an understanding that the way we communicate is a reflection of our heart. The Book of James is parallel to the Book of Proverbs, full of wisdom and how to tame the tongue (Hawkins, 2006). James 1:19 sets the tone of how we should communicate, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”
In Andrew Hudgins’ poem, Praying Drunk, the speaker portrays the act of writing as something important, mysterious, and difficult when sober, and compares it to the act of praying, which, for him, is equally complicated. The entire poem is in the form of a prayer, which provides an insightful look at the motivations for faith, the pursuit of truth, and the struggle to come to terms with both. When these ideas are applied to the act of writing, they reveal the complex struggle that a writer faces in developing confidence in his own ideas, while maintaining a degree of credibility that will encourage an audience to care about what he has written.
correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (NIV
“The Pursuit of Holiness” by Jerry Bridges focuses primarily on God’s holiness and how all of God’s children should live their lives always making an effort to be holy. Bridges states that everyone is called to be holy. It is important for Christians to pursue holiness. Similarly, God does not force anyone to be holy. It is up to each individual to decide for themselves to follow God and be holy.
When we look throughout the Bible we can see a consistent theme when there are things to be done: Man needs motivation. Various men rose to the occasion to motivate their brethren and in each case we see great love come forth. Love can do many things. This paper will address three things that love has done and can do. Love can build a temple, love can build a wall, and love can spread the Gospel.
In order to answer this question in a balanced way, we need to look at
Prayer mattered to Daniel. We’re going to take a look at some reasons why this morning and allow Daniel to show us why prayer was such an important part of his life. I’m guessing that if I were to ask folks here this morning if prayer mattered to you I would find it hard to believe that someone would say it doesn’t. No one wants to be the guy who admits in church that prayer isn’t important. But I would like to ask you to think for a moment how important prayer is to you really. If the government made prayer illegal or even worse made it a law that you could only pray to the government would you break that law? In this hypothetical would prayer be important to you? Obviously it’s a hypothetical, maybe you don’t even know for sure, but this scenario actually happened to Daniel. The king made prayer to any god other than to him illegal. But Daniel 6 shares with us that, “he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God.” Daniel 6:10
Prayer is one of the most wonderful privileges afforded the Christian, for it is the Christian’s means of a direct connection with God.
In this book, he talked about “liberation through discipline.” In this concept he shared “The movement of self-discipline leads out of bondage to the self into an experience of newness and freedom, then back again to a liberated use and appreciation and enjoyment of material goods, in moderation without becoming entangled again by thousand little threads.” Being intertwined with so many other things, one can lose focus on self-disciplines. I now view the terms spiritual practices and spiritual disciplines both working together and not separate from each other. I attend to use these two concepts as a reminder concerning my individual prayer