I’m back. I took a summer away resting up and trying to find some time to draw near to God. It was really refreshing, although it was also full of a lot of difficulty. Hopefully I’ll be posting more frequently again now that I’m back in town.

One of the most refreshing parts of my summer was a little book called “A Simple Way to Pray” by Martin Luther. He wrote it for his barber of many years when he asked Luther  how he ought to pray. I learned from this book the (obvious?) lesson that I can’t pray well from a cold start. I need to prepare my heart to pray well. Luther would begin by turning to the Gospels and reading a saying of our Lord or some other such passage to warm his heart to pray. When his heart was warmed to pray he would begin. I’ve found that preparing my heart before praying helps me pray much better.

Read Luther’s book. It’s only a letter actually, just a few pages long.

This one reads well online.

This one prints to a booklet if you print it doublesided.

This one is fullsize if the others are hard to read and you don’t mind waiting a moment for the download.

I have created this new Facebook group for all those people out there who support things. Unless John McCain is one of them.

This is a sermon prached by my good friend Smiles Welch last Sunday when he did pulpit supply for a small church in Oregon. (Click ‘Read the rest of this entry’ below to listen or download the sermon.) He preached on Psalm 42.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? (more…)

So here’s my latest. I was set the question, ‘Why should we worship Jesus?’

I think I learned more from preparing this sermon than I’ve learned from preparing any other of my sermons. I learned not just about my material, most of it I’ve already been learning, but I learned a lot about me and how I must lead and preach. It was the most worshipful and enjoyable time I’ve had preparing a sermon.

Here it is.

Or, you can download it here.