Tag Archives: prayer

Aug 28 2022

The Lord’s Prayer – #4 – The Life and Love of Father: 'Monday Morning Musing - August 29, 2022'

Familiarity dilutes meaning. When something is so familiar, so common, so presumed upon its significance and depth of meaning is often over-looked. Jesus’s instruction to directly address God as Father/Abba and to include/invite the disciples to also do so, would have been a cosmically altering, paradigm-shattering instruction for any first-century Jew.

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

 

Aug 15 2022

The Lord’s Prayer – Part 1 – Introduction: 'Monday Morning Musings - August 7, 2022'

 

The profound and provocative essence of this prayer is lost by the insipid familiarity in which it is so often encrusted. Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some cultural background and translational nuggets regarding this familiar prayer. I hope to make it “pop” in ways that perhaps you may have never heard before. The essence of Jesus’s message and mission are contained in this brief but potent prayer.

 

Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

Aug 15 2022

The Lord’s Prayer – Part 2 – Jesus Our Rabbi: 'Monday Morning Musing - August 15, 2022'

 

The disciples asked Jesus: “Teach us to pray.” Every Rabbi had his own prayer convention. The point of the prayer was to differentiate that Rabbi’s “disciples” (followers) from other Rabbis and their followers. The prayer was a summation, in prayer form, of the essence of the Rabbi’s distinctive teaching. This is exactly what was occurring when Jesus gave the “Lord’s prayer” to his disciples. It was a summation of the essence of His message to differentiate His followers, from others. That is why the disciples asked Him for one. A rabbi’s prayer “labelled” the one praying it. In that sense, it is indeed the Lord’s (their Rabbi’s prayer). On the other hand, it was the disciple’s prayer as it was expected that they would pray it.

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

 

 

Jul 29 2019

The Enigma of Prayer

Restful Prayer

The Enigma of Prayer

Prayer is one of those topics where there is no limit to the number of ways people can be made to feel guilty about not measuring up to “what they ought to be doing.” As I enter the final quarter of the race of my mortality (starting to push fifty years a follower of Jesus) my life-long puzzlement over the matter of prayer just gets deeper. These days my prayers are less frequent, shorter in duration (A couple of orders of magnitude less from the days of my youth!) and I don’t say much (I use to think it was my job to inform God about all the things He should be doing). Yet my prayer life is richer and  deeper than ever. I think I may be on to something. 

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Prayer and Intercession Part three
Oct 17 2016

Prayer and Intercession – Part Three – Pitfalls to Avoid: 'Thirteen Pitfalls to Avoid in Prayer and Intercession'

Prayer and intercession ministry can have some common pitfalls to avoid. I understand  that not everyone involved in prayer and  intercession has issues in the areas I am about to mention. However, many do. After having had exposure for over forty years to prayer and intercession movements across the world, I believe (and have seen) that those given to intercession can be uniquely vulnerable to the following harmful beliefs and practices:

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Christ the Intercession
Sep 24 2016

Prayer and Intercession – 2: 'Jesus is the Intercession'

What are some New Covenant “updates” that need to be considered when we approach the topic of prayer and intercession? I suggest at least four. If the significance of what Christ has wrought at the cross and in His resurrection and ascension do not form the foundation of all that we do in prayer, we will end up in with some very unsound beliefs about, and bizarre practices of — prayer and intercession.

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Prayer and Intercession
Sep 13 2016

Prayer and Intercession: 'New Creation Perspectives - Part One'

Prayer and intercession (along with praise and worship) have become a cottage industry within large segments of Evangelical and Charismatic brands of Christianity. Prayer and intercession can so easily be leveraged to create guilt in believers. On the other hand prayer and intercession can also be a platform to create an elitist class of alleged intercessory specialists. People take their sense of identity and personhood from a reputation as an alleged prophetic prayer warrior, just like many take their sense of identity from being a pastor (or any other traditional ministry expression for that matter). In this three-installment blog series, I take a look at intercession from a new creation, New Covenant perspective. What does the resurrection and ascension of Jesus do to our understanding and expression of intercessory prayer? It changes everything.

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Jun 23 2014

Healing Hope or Hype? – Part 5 – Scripture, Science, and the “Whole” Person

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Proverbs says a broken spirit dries the bones. For those of us from even a nominally Christian background, this is hardly earth shaking news. However it is more than a quaint archaic metaphor. The implication in this verse, and others like it, is that the inner man affects the outer. Sometimes, even our physical health can be affected by the state of our soul. Those of us who have trusted Christ for our salvation don’t realize how deeply imprinted we’ve been with a scientific materialist worldview regarding everything except our salvation. This unconscious frequency in our thinking affects the issue of faith for healing and our approach to sickness, disease, health, and medicine. It is one reason among many why we do not see legitimate physical healings as we might.

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Jun 16 2014

Healing Hope or Hype? – Part 4 – The Semitic Worldview

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chaplainOne of the most significant reasons we do not see healings in our midst as we might, is because of the worldview assumptions and the cultural values of western individualism and personal privacy. The scriptures were not written to, or by, people with a western worldview. They understood sickness, disease, and healing differently than we do. We cannot come to the scriptures with our western presuppositions, and expect kingdom results. This profoundly affects our theology and practice of praying for the sick.

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Jun 9 2014

Healing Hope or Hype? – Part 3 – Faith is not a Spiritual Commodity

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Biblical faith has three important objective elements: His Word, His Person, and His Cross. These three are in fact, one. The Word is the revelation of His Person. The Cross is the instrument of revelation. The Person of the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of the Lord) actively administers both the Word and the Cross to us. We get into trouble when we try to separate these three from one another.

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