Prayer among evangelical Christians is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. Almost every book on prayer deals with the “get” element mainly. How to get things we want from God occupies most of the space. Now, we gladly admit that we may ask for and receive specific gifts and benefits in answer to prayer, but we must never forget that the highest kind of prayer is never the making of requests. Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful by comparison.
Worship
Dan Wilt
When people sense that the ‘worship show’ is all about the leader and the musicians, and is less about the congregation meeting with God, they sense a hollowness in the corporate worship experience over time.
James Caughey
I understand the design of such names as ‘fanatics, enthusiasts, madmen, etc.’ These names are fastened upon some of the zealous servants of God for the same purpose that the skins of wild beasts were put upon the primitive Christians by their persecutors, that they might more readily be torn in pieces by the hungry lions in the arena of the amphitheatre. Yet they were Christians still, notwithstanding these deforming skins, and so are we, though some cover us from head to foot with the hideous imputations of fanaticism.
Michael Dalton
Fear will stop talking when praise becomes your response.
Steven Furtick
The truth is, many of us are stuck at the gate, waiting for God to give us something that’s already ours. We’re waiting for joy when God has given us the power to rejoice. We’re waiting for encouragement to come to us when, in fact, the encouragement we need is locked in an opportunity God has given us to encourage someone else.
Katherine Walden
If you place more hope in any leader to make things ‘right’ again than you place hope in Jesus, you are heading for a major crash. God does not tolerate idols in our lives, be they wealth, prestige, government leaders, or influencers of any type. He will tear them down before they destroy us.
C. S. Lewis
I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to rejoice as much as by anything else.
Steven Furtick
When it comes to our relationship with God, nothing is of higher importance and greater significance than gratitude. There is no more game-changing resolution than this: I will not let the discouragement of what I’m going through make me forget the benefits of belonging to the God who has been so good to me. He has saved me, blessed me, forgiven me, restored me, satisfied me, healed me, crowned me, and renewed me.
A. W. Tozer
Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.
Robert Webber
April 16, 2020
Christ-centred worship – which is event-oriented worship – can never be static and merely intellectual because what happens is an actual and real communication of the power and benefit of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Worshipping churches recognize that every gathering of worship is ultimately praise and thanksgiving for the overthrow of evil by God in Christ. This victory not only happened two thousand years ago, but it happens today in the lives of people who bring to worship their own struggles against that evil which shatters relationships, oppresses the poor, and brings constant dislocation into life.