Chosenrebel

Three Excerpts from My Forthcoming Book: Praying the Scripture: Learning to Pray the Psalms from Chapter 15: Psalm 88: The Prayer God Kept I want to stay with Psalm 88 a little longer, because I think it is one of the most important psalms in the book for anyone who has ever felt that prayer was beyond them. Try to imagine this with me. The most loving, most powerful, most wise being in the…

INTRODUCTIONWhen Prayer Becomes Breath I was driving home from helping my daughter move sheep when the thought hit me. It wasn’t profound at first. Just a whisper. A nudge. One of those quiet moments when the Spirit seems to lean in and say, “Pay attention.” Missouri has given us many gifts, but being close enough to help our daughter and son-in-law with the sheep might be one of my favorites.…

Sunday Afternoon Musing Grief is always hard, but it can also be a protection for the soul. May all your grief draw you closer to Him who bore all your sins as a part of his grief out of love and for your eternal joy.

Do You See the Birds? I put a birdfeeder outside the kitchen window because my wife asked me to. A flower hangs on the back. On the left hangs a cylinder feeder. On the right hangs a hummingbird feeder, and out in front is a feeder that looks like a child’s doll house is filled with seed that is squirrel-proof (for the moment!). Birds feed and look at their reflection in the window. Sparrows,…

The Athenian Oath was a pledge that all Athenian citizens swore to uphold. I had never heard of it until my brother and his wife visited last week, and we went to visit the Laura Engals Wilder homestead, two hours Southeast of our present home in Pleasant Hope, MO. We saw it in the museum, and I have since found out that there are a few cities and towns that have adopted it as their own motto and…

Chapter 2The Psalms as the Prayer Book of Jesus The longer I walk with Christ, the more convinced I become that the Psalms are not optional for the Christian life. They are essential. They are like oxygen. They are the Spirit-inspired vocabulary of the people of God in every generation. And they were the prayer book of Jesus Himself. If you want to learn how to pray, you must learn from the One…

Sunday Afternoon Musing Last night, my wife and I watched Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston in the 1958 Western movie, Big Country. We haven’t finished it. It got to be late. We’ll try to do it this afternoon as we relax, and also remember those who gave their lives to protect the freedoms we all enjoy. While we were watching, my bride checked Wikipedia on the life of Gregory Peck. This is a…

An un-mortared stone wall in Chester County. PA CHAPTER 1 — Why We Don’t Pray (and Why We Must) Most Christians feel guilty about prayer. But guilt has never produced a praying people. If guilt could make us pray, the American church would be a powerhouse of intercession. Instead, we are distracted, hurried, anxious, and exhausted. We live with phones in our hands and noise in our ears, and our…

INTRODUCTION — When Prayer Becomes Breath I was driving home from helping my daughter move sheep when the thought hit me. It wasn’t profound at first. Just a whisper. A nudge. One of those quiet moments when the Spirit seems to lean in and say, “Pay attention.” Woman Praying with and Open Bible Missouri has given us many gifts, but being close enough to help our daughter and son‑in‑law with…

Read Psalm 67 Three prayers for the day before you A Morning Call to Worship May you rise to the shining face of God.May you rise with an awareness of the grace      that kept you through the night.May you walk in a newness of joy      knowing the purpose of God to use you     to bring the joy of the gospel to your neighbors.And may you join with the nations      in giving praise to His name. A…

Sunday Evening Musings I have seen this pattern before in the Psalms. Next week, I will trace down some of the other examples.  For now, I just want to focus on a simple observation. There is a repeated chorus with an interesting pattern. With each repetition of the chorus, the description of God expands. From the Elohim (God) of verse 3, it expands the Elohim of hosts (God of hosts) in verse 7,…

1 Oh, give ear, Shepherd of Israel,You who lead Joseph like a flock;You who are enthroned above the cherubim, shine forth!2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Your powerAnd come to save us! Psalm 80:1-2 Sleep has been difficult the past week. The burdens being borne by the pastors I am caring for have taken their toll on me. When I think of some of these men, especially the one who…

Sometimes you have to try, even if talent is in short supply. Poetry has an ability to be densely packed with information and sometimes, even wisdom. Readers can explore the echoes in this rant about the current state of our culture. Echoes Alexander told us “the West has lost its soul,” and the Left has buried its own. Only shouting and violence remain. The future is in ashes awaiting a…

An Offering for the Poetry Project He doesn’t start with a request. That’s where a lot of my prayers start. I need something, or I want something, and after a word of address, “Lord,” I run quickly to my request. Perhaps you do too, more often than we should. But David starts with a declaration, “My heart is steadfast, O God.”  Having a “steadfast” heart, a heart fixed on trusting a God worth…

It’s taken four weeks. The last two of those weeks, I have been largely one-handed. That’s what happens when the smiling surgeon cuts a cancer out of the back of your hand and closes up the wound with 21 stitches. Simple things you never thought of as difficult suddenly are. The healing process makes you lazy. “It’s too hard to do it one-handed, so why bother at all?” Trouble is, life doesn’t…

I saw a wonderful video this week about a High School football player by the name of Malachi Coleman. As Steve Hartman tells the story, Malachi and his sister were abandoned by their mother but eventually adopted by a couple in Nebraska after a troubled number of years in the child welfare institutions. He arrived in the Coleman family deeply troubled and totally self-absorbed. Eventually, his…