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2 months ago | 
crossway.org | Paul Miller |Daniel J. Brendsel
Just Start PrayingHow can pastors help their church become a praying church? I have a really brilliant suggestion that works every time. Pastors should start praying for that. It is sort of counterintuitive. We instinctively think—particularly in a Reformed world—that we have to have a plan. There is nothing wrong with having a plan, but I think it’s actually good to put planning in the backseat.
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Aug 3, 2024 | 
crossway.org | Ajith Fernando |Daniel J. Brendsel |John Owen
The Best WeaponPrayer is one of the best means to overcome insecurity. When we spend time with God, we are communing with the one who is greater than any other entity, the one who rules the universe. The experience of being in the presence of this God and realizing that he is our loving Father who delights in us is the most powerful weapon to attack our sense of insecurity. As Deuteronomy 33:27 puts it:The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
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Apr 14, 2024 | 
crossway.org | John Currie |Daniel J. Brendsel
Leading from Your KneesJeremiah Lanphier was a businessman who served as a missionary to New York’s Lower East Side. He was earnest in door-to-door evangelism and tract distribution, and as he made his evangelistic rounds each day, he would pray regularly, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”1 Lanphier decided to begin a noon-hour prayer meeting once a week for businessmen.
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Mar 30, 2024 | 
crossway.org | Daniel J. Brendsel
In the MeantimeWe will face disappointment in our life of prayer. But don’t lose heart. Don’t give up. God knows and sympathizes with our struggle. He hears and is acting even now upon our pleas, often in unexpected ways. And not a single prayer for his glory and the world’s good will fall to earth utterly fruitless. Such prayers always arise as sweet incense to him. He is storing them up for the day of unimaginable glory and goodness, which is our sure hope in Christ. So, in the meantime . . .
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Jan 31, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | Daniel J. Brendsel
Without confidence in one’s standing before God, the solitary silence can be downright terrifying. For there I am alone with my God and Lord and Judge. And how can the real me, which I try so hard to hide, feel anything but shame and terror before One who sees in secret? “The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides.” So wrote the French novelist, art critic, and statesman André Malraux in 1967, in a weighty diagnosis of the human predicament (Anti-Memoirs, 5).
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Jan 21, 2024 | 
desiringgod.org | Daniel J. Brendsel
“The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides.” So wrote the French novelist, art critic, and statesman André Malraux in 1967, in a weighty diagnosis of the human predicament (Anti-Memoirs, 5). Malraux was on to something. We may broadcast what we want to be known for, but we hide what we are. We might think first of the dark side of this insight.
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Nov 11, 2023 | 
crossway.org | Lois Krogh |Daniel J. Brendsel |John Owen
Distinct Prayers for PastorsA few years after we were married, my husband gave me the book Marriage to a Difficult Man: The Uncommon Union of Jonathan & Sarah Edwards by Elisabeth Dodds. Regarding Jonathan, we knew little more than what could be gathered from the requisite high school American Lit course assignment of Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God. It seemed obvious to me that marriage to a man who could imagine dangling a spider over an open flame would be difficult.
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Oct 4, 2023 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Daniel J. Brendsel |Aaron Shamp |Brett McCracken |J. D. Greear
The best things in life don’t come by grasping at them. They come as gifts. Restful sleep, a lifelong friendship, a good reputation, influence—when we aim directly at such things, they often elude our grasp, or we end up with parodies (or worse). You cannot make yourself fall asleep. It’s a gift (Ps. 127:2). That said, you can take up fitting postures and practices for sleep. Counting sheep doesn’t produce sleep, but it does redirect our energies away from trying to fall asleep.
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Aug 19, 2023 | 
crossway.org | Daniel J. Brendsel
This article is part of the Help! series. Unopened Doors“If any of you lacks wisdom,” James 1:5 says, “let him ask God, who gives generously without reproach, and it will be given him.” According to 1 John 5:14–15, “If we know that [God] hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” And our Lord Jesus asserts, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7).
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Aug 3, 2023 | 
crossway.org | Daniel J. Brendsel |John Owen
From Monologue to DialogueThough, sadly, he is not well known in many Christian circles today, Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) remains one of the giants in the Western theological and philosophical tradition. Anselm seems to have coined the highly influential shorthand definition of theology as “faith seeking understanding.” His satisfaction theory of the atonement was an important forerunner for later Reformed formulations of the penal substitutionary accomplishment of Christ’s cross.
