Category: Engaging the Culture

“We know, our great Father, we cannot prevent
Money from doing what money will do,
But we can, in the meantime, be faithful stewards
With what You have given us, what You’ve bestowed.”

21 Prayers, p. 44

“If I knew how to do it, I would ask You for more,
I would ask for far more of Your grace overflowing.”

21 Prayers, p. 42

“Father, I prayer that You might now give the answer
Or take from us now the requesting You gave us.”

21 Prayers, p. 41

“We need to believe up to the promises rather than lowering the promises down to our levels of quasi-unbelief.”

American Milk and Honey, p. 128

“My first argument against the preterist view of Romans 11 is that it is necessarily pretty bleak. The words of the promise are glorious, and fill us with hope. ‘Life from the dead.’ ‘Fullness of the Gentiles.’ ‘All Israel shall be saved.’ ‘God will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.’ To be told that this has already been fulfilled in history, and in such a way that nobody noticed it, or remarked on it, or wrote it down, and that it made no kind of a dent at all, is kind of small beer fulfillment. It really is thin soup. It is profoundly anticlimactic. It is as though a preacher read out this glorious text from Isaiah—‘And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well-refined’ (Is. 25:6)—in order to present his argument that this was to be fulfilled at the first introduction of the chocolate fountain for the Sunday brunch at the Golden Corral. It makes me think of that old Gahan Wilson cartoon, with a group of men standing around in nondescript robes, with halos stuck on the backs of their heads, a whiskey bottle on the ground, plaster falling off the wall, the E of HEAVEN over the gate fallen over—and the caption was, ‘Somehow I thought the whole thing would be a lot classier.’”

American Milk and Honey, pp. 127-128

“It is Your declaration, and these are Your purposes,
To bring the whole world to Your gracious salvation.
Why would You give such good promises to us
And chafe when Your servants ask You to fulfill them?
All of this now is already in motion—
Why not more rapidly? Why not more quickly?”

21 Prayers, p. 40

“If the Jews, after the destruction of Jerusalem, had simply disappeared from the face of the earth, as many other people groups have done, we wouldn’t be faced with this problem. Nobody thinks much today about the Sumerians or Hittites. But the fact that Jews are still here means that we must incorporate them into Paul’s illustration somehow.”

American Milk and Honey, p. 125

“I am asking, I know, for a black swan revival.
I pray for revival, sweet, inexplicable
In every respect but the clear retrospect.”

21 Prayers, p. 38