John 12:27-28a

²⁷ "Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify your name." John 12:27-28a ESV

The Valley of Vision

From time to time I will post a prayer from "The Valley of Vision:A Collection of Puritan Prayers& Devotions". This is another one of my favorite books dealing with prayer. I used this one year in my private devotional time each morning. There are about 200 of these prayers in the book and one a day makes a good addition to your regular Bible Study.

A Disciple's Renewal

A Disciple's Renewal

O my Saviour,
help me.
I am so slow to learn, so prone to forget, so weak to climb;
I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights;
I am pained by my graceless heart,
my prayerless days,
my poverty of love,
my sloth in the heavenly race,
my sullied conscience,
my wasted hours,
my unspent opportunities.
I am blind while light shines around me:
take the scales from my eyes,
grind to dust the evil heart of unbelief.
Make it my chiefest joy to study thee,
meditate on thee,
gaze on thee,
sit like Mary at thy feet,
lean like John upon thy breast,
appeal like Peter to thy love,
count like Paul all things dung.
Give me increase and progress in grace so that there may be
more decision in my character,
more vigour in my purposes,
more elevation in my life,
more fervour in my devotion,
more constancy in my zeal.
As I have a position in the world,
keep me from making the world my position;
May I never seek in the creature
what can be found only in the creator;
Let not faith cease from seeking thee until it vanishes into sight.
Ride forth in me, thou king of kings and lord of lords,

that I may live victoriously, and in victory attain my end.

From The Valley of Vision
A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions

James 5:16b

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16b ESV


Because of what Jesus has done, righteous people (people who trust in Jesus) have great power at their disposal!

Praying Backwards

I have to admit I have not read a ton of books on prayer. I have read some and I have read many books with chapters devoted to prayer but not that many dedicated solely to prayer.
So far, the best book I have ever read on prayer is Bryan Chapell's book "Praying Backwards".

Bryan is the president of Covenant Theological Seminary but this book is a great book for anyone to read. It was definitely not written for seminary students as the primary audience.

There are a lot of quotes I love from the book but one of my favorites is, "God always answers (prayer) in one of four ways; yes, no, not yet, or immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine."

Here is a review from a website I use a lot for book reviews.

Acts 2:42

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Acts 2:42

I would like to post a different prayer verse each day but I know how these blogs are. You start out really enthusiastic but as the days go on you tend to lose some steam. So, I will attempt to keep the verse of the day up to date but don't get upset if it does not get updated every day. I may have to change it to the verse of the week. We shall see.

I chose today's verse and actually named this blog based on this verse because it is the verse that our Community Groups at 1.21 Church plan our month of small group meetings around. The first week of the month we concentrate on the apostle's teaching, the second week on fellowship, the third week on the breaking of bread and the fourth week's emphasis is prayer. Of course we do some of all of these things each week but we put special emphasis on one of these four areas each week.

New Blog

I had a blog for about 2 years and really got tired of updating it on a consistent basis so I decided to take a break for a while. I think I am ready to start back now with two blogs. One of them will be similar to my former blog and this one will concentrate on prayer.
I hope to have posts and links that will be an encouragement to people like me that struggle with a weak prayer life.
I hope as the weeks go on you will find something here that will be helpful.