bible and theology on Awakening

O Lord our God, who first made light to shine out of darkness and now awakens us again to praise your goodness and ask for your grace: accept now, in your boundless mercy, the offering of our worship ...

This prayer, written by the great British pastor and poet John Donne, anticipates the new heaven and new earth that we will one day experience with our Lord: Bring us, O Lord, at our last awakening ...

Bring us, O Lord, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise...

What happens when you wake up in the morning? For some people, waking up is a rude and shocking experience. Off goes the alarm, and they jump in fright, dragged out of a deep sleep to face the cold, ...

For those who recite The Lord's Prayer on a regular basis, it can easily become a rote exercise. In this excerpt, Edwin Muir is on a pilgrimage when the prayer took on new significance: Last nigh...

We greet the world with a cry and a scream, with clenched fists grasping after what we so desperately need. None of us remember the shock and drama of being born, but have you seen a baby’s birth? I r...

When Holy God draws near in true revival, people come under terrible conviction of sin. The outstanding feature of spiritual awakening has been the profound consciousness of the Presence and holiness ...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Historical Background We need to understand several things about Psalm 107 before we can put it all together. First, it is the beginning psalm of Book...

Introduction During my time in seminary (and the year after I graduated) I spent a lot of time at a church in southern New Jersey. It’s actually how I met Scott Bullock, TPW board member and creator...

A Rude Awakening Just as I began my seminary education, filled with a love of learning and a hunger to serve God, I attended a lecture. It was given at a nearby think tank, and the presenter was an a...

From the day of Pentecost, there has been not one great spiritual awakening in any land which has not begun in a union of prayer, though only among two or three. And no such outward, upward movement h...

The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of so...

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it ...

Contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch Him. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibl...

Since her first grief had brought her fully to birth and wakefulness in this world, an unstinting compassion had moved in her, like a live stream flowing deep underground, by which she knew herself an...

There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within.

The engaged mind, illuminated by truth, awakens awareness; the engaged heart, affected by love, awakens passion. May I say once more - this essential energy of the soul is not an ecstatic trance, high...

Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life instead of the...

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Arise, shine, for the Light of the World has come! Darkness covers the earth and its people, but the radiance of God's Light burns away its shadows, illuminates the smallest corner, and heral...

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with th...

It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy; I woke and saw that life was service; I acted, and behold, service was joy.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

Editor’s Note: The following was an imagination exercise used while preaching on Matthew 24:36-44, I began by inviting the congregation to close their eyes. Imagine you are a watchmen (or woman) stan...

The beginning of my sober years felt much like waking up to my mother’s song. It was a slow waking from some dreamy death spiral. And as I’ve talked to others who are in recovery from their own coping...

Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's...

Often what emerges out of destruction is life of a deeper and sweeter quality than before. But it takes pain and darkness to get there.