Bible and Theology on Quiet Time

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Prayer of Adoration God, Almighty –

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Prayer of Adoration God, Almighty – holy, gracious, truthful and loving, we’re drawn by Your invitation to enjoy Your love, an invitation to feel Your touch and hear Your voice, to taste and see tha...

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Our Bodies Need Silence

Author

Rick Hamlin

Keywords

Your body knows about schedules. It gets used to those times of day when it says, Feed me right now. I’m hungry, and those times of night when it says, Get me to bed. I’m exhausted. Your body will spe...

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Holy Week Meditations Series

Author

Scott B. Bullock

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, John 12:12-19

Joining the Pilgrims on the Way to Jerusalem For most Christians observing Lent, Holy Week marks the height of the drama of the Christian year. The pilgrims who have made the long journey through Len...

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A Hungry/Thirsty Soul

Author

Beth Moore

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Scripture

John 4:null

The soul can also manifest physical symptoms of need. I like to think of it this way: Just like my stomach growls when I’m hungry for physical food, my spirit tends to growl when I’m in need of spirit...

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Conforming vs. Transforming

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Transformation

Conforming to boundary markers too often substitutes for authentic transformation. The church I grew up in had its boundary markers. A prideful or resentful pastor could have kept his job, but if eve...

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A Life Re-Defined by The Spirit of God

Author

Mark Labberton

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 8:36-38, Acts 8:29-31, Acts 10:44-46, Acts 10:3-6, Acts 10:1-48, Acts 9:17-18, Acts 9:3-6

In his excellent book on worship, The Dangerous Act of Worship , pastor and president of Fuller Seminary Mark Labberton shares a story of the transformation of one of his former congregants: Ben ...

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Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.

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Baptized into Death

Author

Andy Cook

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Scripture

Romans 6:4

Some time back, a retired missionary dropped by our church. She had served faithfully in Africa, and one day, she happened upon a small baptismal service. A fellow missionary took three new converts t...

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Into the Darkest Hour

Author

Madeleine L'Engle

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Scripture

Isaiah 9:6-7, Micah 5:2, Luke 2:1-20, John 1:5, Philippians 2:6-7, Luke 2:7, Revelation 3:20

It was a time like this, war and tumult of war, a horror in the air. Hungry yawned the abyss— and yet there came the star and the child most wonderfully there. It was a time like this ...

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Author

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

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Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength... It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.

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Listen for the Flutes

Author

Stephen Macchia

Keywords

Scripture

John 10:3-5, Romans 10:17, Hebrews 5:14, 1 Kings 19:11-13, Isaiah 30:21

We must tune our ears to hear God’s voice. It’s like the child who was told by his father during a symphony orchestra concert, “Listen for the flutes in this song. Don’t they sound beautiful?” The chi...

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Sabbath-Keeping and Legalism

Author

Walter Brueggemann

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:1-3, Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:27-28, Matthew 12:8, Luke 6:5

For the most part, contemporary Christians pay little attention to the Sabbath. We more or less know that the day came to reflect, in U.S. culture, the most stringent disciplinary faith of the Puritan...

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You Are the Tree

Author

Jake Meador

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 1:null

In the film Of Gods and Men , director Xavier Beauvois tells the story of a small group of mostly French monks living in Algeria during a time of civil unrest. These monks live a life of quiet fideli...

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Book Review: Spiritual Practices in Community

Author

Kayla Zowada

Keywords

Many of us have been involved in small group ministry, and if we are honest with ourselves, there are seasons when the groups can lack the dynamism of a fully-flourishing Christian ministry. This is w...

liturgy

Help us in this time of worship to be

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Help us in this time of worship to be still and know that you are God. In quietness we would hear your voice calling us away from the discordant noises of the everyday world, that our spirits might be...

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How God Speaks

Author

Dan Gilliam

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 46:10

While there is a common assumption in church circles that God speaks most frequently and the clearest through singing worship and heart-enlivened sermons, I find the context of speechless tranquility ...

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Thanking God for Places of Peace

Author

Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw

Keywords

Think back over your life and try to remember a place where you felt safe and at peace, a time when you felt relaxed and okay. It could be an outdoor place—like on a beach or sitting in a tree. Maybe ...

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The Pressures of Modern Life (Written Almost a Century Ago)

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

The problem we face today needs very little time for its statement. Our lives in a modern city grow too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnigh...

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God of the Impossible – Father, Son and

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 32:17, Luke 1:37, Isaiah 43:25, Romans 8:38-39, Psalm 139:7-10

God of the Impossible – Father, Son and Holy Spirit: There’s nothing too hard for you to do, Nothing too complex for You to understand, No place we go that You’re not there, No sin too heinous tha...

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Into the Wilderness: Sermon Illustration Tuesday

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Wilderness

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasi...

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S.I.T. For the week of 6/3

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

God's Voice Speaking through the Frustration My first conscious experience of hearing the voice of Jesus occurred when I was a college student. It grew out of a period of genuine frustration. Bec...

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Author

Ernest R. Palen

Keywords

Sabbath

Our madly rushing, neurotic society needs the therapy of the silence and quietness that flows from a day kept holy, really holy. A day when our thoughts are of God, our actions are tempered by a desir...

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Father God: It is sometimes hard for us

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Father God: It is sometimes hard for us to understand what You do. We are in trouble. We want You to come rescue us right now, like the cavalry riding over a hill or the Lone Ranger appearing out of n...

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The Power of Silence & the Pregnant Pause

Author

Richard John Neuhaus

Keywords

For many of us, silence is something we try to avoid, both in conversations and in preaching. But as Richard John Neuhaus aptly describes in his time watching Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his sermo...

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Psalm 107 | Gratitude for God's Steadfast Love

Author

C. Hassell Bullock

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 107:, Psalm 106:, Philippians 4:6-7

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...

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Psalm 91 | God as Dwelling Place Against

Author

Scott B. Bullock

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 91:, Genesis 3:, Deuteronomy 6:16

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

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Hanging Out in the Dark

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 1:13-14, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 13:12, Isaiah 9:2, 1 John 1:5-7, Ephesians 5:11

A few years ago, a journalist named Joseph Blackman wrote an Op Ed on an interesting subject, “Why Clubs are Dark.” That is, why is it when you walk into a nightclub or a bar, the lights are off, or a...

liturgy

Father, Son, Holy Spirit–our God,

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Romans 8:28, Psalm 34:18, James 5:14-15, Jeremiah 29:11, Isaiah 26:3, Philippians 4:6-7

Father, Son, Holy Spirit–our God, Mysterious, Awe-Inspiring, Wonderful, One-in-Three/Three-in-One: You surprise us not with flashing lights, loud crashing noises, and constant activity. You surprise u...

liturgy

God—We’d like to have had a Hallmark

God—We’d like to have had a Hallmark card kind of week: gentle, quiet and serene, but it’s been anything but that. People died this week—and families and friends grieve. A man got bad news about cance...

liturgy

Triune and Loving God: on this

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 3:16-19, Matthew 3:16-17, Acts 4:32-35, Galatians 5:22-23, John 14:26-27, Romans 15:13, Acts 2:1-4

Triune and Loving God: on this Pentecost Sunday, we ask for the gift of Your Holy Spirit to help us pray as we ought today and always. Come, Holy Spirit: Help Us. We ask for Your Spirit’s energy an...

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