Walking the 21-item prayer list: praise, thanks, and the two boxes of rocks
The hosts walk through the article's list. On 'praise God for who he is,' they wrestle with repeating the same thankfulness without pandering: the generous-grandpa firetruck analogy, whether you need fresh daily evidence of God to be in awe (his mercies are new every morning), and the 'plain Jane doofus' problem of not being a poet — Nathaniel describes praying with his wife as 'I like donuts,' she prays the garden while he prays the back of the cereal box. A riff on Mike's video angle looking like a centaur interrupts. On repeating words, a host points to Revelation's elders crying 'holy, holy, holy' day and night and coins the word 'rewowed' — 'Lord, help me to be rewowed by you today.' On 'thank God for what he has done,' a host contrasts liturgy-as-reading with engaged prayer ('let's not read Psalm 23, let's pray Psalm 23'). On 'remember God's love and grace,' a host tells the two-boxes-of-rocks story: a woman brought two boxes of rocks to a youth group, each rock carrying a phrase retelling what God had done, and his family now writes rocks of their own so that on low days the physical pile proves God showed up. They then rattle through items 4–21 rapid-fire: love neighbors, someone in need, someone who doesn't know Jesus, love enemies, give time/money/energy, pray for church, city and nation, civic and national leaders, kindness, humility, teachability, forgiveness, obedience, a renewed mind, purity, responsibility, courage, hope.
More on Prayer
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'When God is silent': what counts as hearing from the Lord?
- What does it mean to 'hear from the Lord,' and how often should we expect it?
Mike brings a question from his Bible study, whose paragraph heading was 'when God is silent': the author wrote that he experienced God's silence for a couple of weeks and freaked out, and Ben expected a relatable years-long drought story — 'Oh, two weeks.
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'What would I fight God on?': buildings, pews, and the zero-fruit youth group
- What would I fight God on — and would my heart go along with following him?
Ben shares what he ran into in the last couple weeks: 'what would I fight God on even if I knew it was him?'
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Is modern Christianity biased toward a personality type?
- Is modern Christianity (its sermons and worship music) biased toward a certain personality type?
A host asks whether what churches teach, focus on, and sing is biased toward a certain personality type — prompted by emotive worship lyrics (the 'sloppy wet kiss' line in a…
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Should following Jesus feel more comfortable as time goes on?
- Should following Jesus feel more comfortable as time goes on?
A host asks whether following Jesus should feel more comfortable as time goes on — noting the low-level tension many feel around am-I-doing-enough and the stigma that contentment equals laziness.