Posts Tagged ‘prayer’

I’ll leave it to others to judge the historical accuracy of Hatfield & McCoys, the History Channel’s three-part miniseries portrayal of the infamous feud.  It includes many of the known facts.  Also, its scenery and costuming along with rough language and graphic violence are realistic.  As drama, it is well worth watching because it depicts the evils of family idolatry–something by which we conservative Christians can be tempted. Read the rest of this entry »

            Psalm 126 helps us to deal with the disappointment of partially answered prayer, a challenge that we rarely discuss but regularly confront.  It does so by combining the seemingly contradictory actions of thanksgiving, lamentation and hope.  Read the rest of this entry »

             I ministered for over a decade in a Christian subculture which emphasized that the greatest faith was the one that could work miracles here and now. Although I do not want to deny the kind of faith like Elijah’s whose fervent prayer stopped the rain for over three years (James 5:17-18), I saw a more powerful faith in church last Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

      Skeptics rightly complain that Christians point to answered prayer as proof for the existence of God while ignoring the fact that many events happen contrary to those very prayers. 

      On the other hand, popular Christian slogans proclaim that faith works and prayer changes things.  Followers of the so-called “Health and Wealth Gospel” take these slogans to an extreme and contend that true faith ensures against suffering.  Hebrews 11 corrects both skeptical and Christian false ideas about faith. Read the rest of this entry »