Prayer

“We need a bigger vision in prayer. We need God’s vision! Let’s keep praying and daring to ask for more—for God’s glory, that the gospel may go into all the world, into all nations, that Jesus may come!”

The imbalance between the requests and the thanksgiving we bring into our worship is a topic any Christian can talk about, and not just based on other people’s experience. As long as we approach praise and thanksgiving as duties to be fulfilled, we will miss the greatest blessings that can rest upon a heart full of gratitude.

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

The words God is not listening! He is not answering! are the essence of one of our most troubling complaints. Is there an answer to it powerful enough to pull us from doubt’s darkness?

This coronavirus crisis has, for me, some perplexing parallels with a well-known incident narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (14:22-33). The disciples are confined in a little boat in the middle of a terrible storm, almost as we are confined at home today by the emergency laws of our countries.

No one has ever seen God, but the One who knew Him before He was born on this earth taught us all to address Him in prayer.

“I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite" (Isaiah 57:15).

Sartre may have been right when he said Hell is other people. Yet, for some, their first step toward Heaven is meeting the God who shelters in someone else's soul.

As a book editor who works in a Christian publishing house, I know prayer works from a sales perspective. Books on the topic of prayer are consistently among our best sellers. It seems that many of our customers and readers—mostly people of faith, but including people who are interested but uncertain about faith—are keen to be reassured that prayer works and to find...

Centuries ago, the German theologian and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used the term “theodicy”1 for the first time—“God’s justification”. By theodicy, Leibniz meant the ultimate reality of justification, once and for all, of God and all of His ways before the whole universe.

When we think of gratitude and a lack of gratitude, the biblical scene that comes to mind is the healing of the ten lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan, returned to thank the Saviour, worshiping and praising God in a loud voice (Luke 17:15-16).

One day, Jesus’s disciples—who followed Him about, observing His every word and action—asked Him to teach them how to pray.

God reveals Himself through the Bible, the person of Jesus Christ, nature, and our conscience. Prayer is not revelatory. If it is neither revelatory for humans nor for God, what is prayer then?

The way we pray in public reveals what our secret prayers are truly like. Beyond mere words, it is our attitude and motivation that give meaning and substance to prayer.

The following interview was conducted by Hope Channel Romania almost ten years ago when the guest, Pastor Don Schneider, was the president of the Adventist Church in North America. Last year, on May 23, he passed away at the age of 76. Those who follow Hope Channel remember that, for a few seasons, they were able to watch his show, Really Living. Every...