It’s no secret that the Pacific Northwest is my favorite place to visit. I love long barefoot walks on cool beaches, the sounds of the waves and the smell of the salt air. When you walk along the water’s edge, the waves lap up erasing your footprints. No evidence remains of where you had just been, just the smoothness of the sand. Forgiveness is a bit like this. The footprints represent events in our lives that need to be forgiven and the water is like God’s love washing them away. Once God’s love has covered a transgression, there is no reminders of it left in His eyes. Unlike meandering…
Why is Prayer Important?
We began to answer this question of why prayer is important in the previous blog post while discussing what prayer is, pointing out that it is the foundation of our relationship with the Lord. Let’s take a minute to examine that point a bit more. The more we talk to others and listen to what they have to say, the better we get to know them. The same holds true for our converstions with God. The more we share with Him and the more we receive what He has to say, the better we know Him. Knowing Him is one of the primary purposes God has for our lives. He…
What Exactly is Prayer?
In our most recent previous posts, we provided you with some tips and truths about prayer. We’d like to take the conversation a little deeper and will be answering several questions about the practice of prayer in the next few articles. I think the best place to start is with the question: What exactly is prayer? When people are asked this question, a common response is “talking to God”. Even the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as: “an address (such as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought”. While these might be technically accurate answers, they are also incomplete ones. Prayer is so much more. Prayer…
A Name to Be Thankful For
I will thank the LORD for his righteousness. I will sing about the name of the LORD Most High. Psalms 7:17 Recently, as I was reading my Bible, my attention was drawn to the way God was introducing Himself to people by using various names. The names He chose to introduce Himself were characteristic of both His nature and His activity in their lives at that moment. The story of Hagar in Genesis 16 particularly stood out to me. She was a slave of Abram and Sarai and pregnant with Abram’s child because they got impatient concerning God’s promise to give them a child of their own. Sarai had been…
