I recently found out that Spirituality of the Cross, a book that has been profoundly helpful to my spiritual walk, is going to be revised. I commented about how the book has impacted me and the author of the book, Gene Veith, reprinted my comment here. I’m deeply thankful for this book and highly recommend it to all prayeramedic.com readers:

You’ll probably hear more about this book in posts to come, I’ve written about it before.

Daily prayer is and always has been a struggle for me. I don’t prioritize it like I should. I often neglect His Word and prayer. Lately I’ve taken somewhat of a hiatus from blogging to get in the Word more and to pray (plus many other areas of my life have been busy). If I don’t feed on God’s Word, the content on this blog can get pretty bad. I got a Christmas present that is helping me though, a book called the Treasury of Daily Prayer.

Essentially it’s a book that has daily readings from the bible and orders of prayer, and the entire Psalter (all the Psalms). Every day has an Old and New Testament reading, a psalm (or portion of one), and some general guides for prayer. I like it because everything is contained in one book, I don’t have to switch between my bible, a format, and a devotional (although I do enjoy using Eckardt’s Meditations for the Daily Office in conjunction with it sometimes). It’s all in one place. I’ve never been one to really get into any kind of formal prayer material, preferring spontaneous prayer and scripture over any prescribed format. But the bottom line is that when left to my own devices, I simply don’t pray or read the bible that often. If I do, I’ll most likely read a couple of bible verses then pray a 4-5 minute half-hearted prayer, during which I’ll succumb to my short attention span and begin thinking of something entirely non-related.

Understand that I’m not saying there is anything wrong with short prayers or scripture readings. I’m simply saying that I often resort to this approach out of laziness and a failure to prioritize God and His Word in my life. Perhaps you can relate. I’m not trying to push the Treasury of Daily Prayer or anything, I am just stating that it is really helping me get into the Word and prayer more (plus it was a fun project making my own ribbon bookmark for it).

What helps you pray? How do you make His Word a priority in your daily life?

I posted this in tandem with Daily Prayer in order to give instructions for how I created my ribbon bookmark. I recently received the Treasury of Daily Prayer as a Christmas present and discovered that it was supposed to come with a ribbon bookmark to help me navigate the various sections and psalms. It didn’t. So what was I to do? Purchase one? Nahh….

I googled “make a ribbon bookmark” and ran across a well-illustrated set of instructions. But I decided to make a slight modification to the design and customize it. I also came across a blog post that mentioned a design flaw in the ribbon bookmark that comes with the Treasury of Daily Prayer, so I decided to correct it in mine by reversing the order of two of the ribbons. I decided to take some pictures of the process and give some instructions how I did it so that you can do the same if you’d like – for any book.

I went out and bought some ribbon first, using the colors specified in my book (with one change to fix the glitch mentioned earlier). The correct color sequence for the Treasury of Daily Prayer is:

1. Dark Green = marks the Church Year calendar section.
2. Gold = marks the current day in the Church Year
3. Red = marks the order of prayer currently in use
4. Purple = marks the additional prayers you may choose to use daily
5. Blue = marks “Prayers for the Baptized Life”
6. Light Green = marks your place in the Psalms

All you need is the ribbons, an index card, a glue stick, tape, and scissors.

First measure the ribbons to ensure proper length. Do this by placing them about an inch above the book and extending them diagonally across the page (so it’s long enough for you to flip the page with the ribbon). Longer is better, you can always cut them shorter later.

Next fold the index card in half lengthwise as shown to the right. I forgot to take an image after gluing the ribbons to the card, but you’ll get the idea once you see the finished product. I had to overlap the ribbons somewhat to fit them all, but I glued them onto the inside edge of my index card (in the proper order). I then glued the entire folded index card together, thus the ribbons are adhered to the card on both sides. I stuck it under some heavy books to make sure it stuck together well. I then reinforced the index card with tape to ensure it did not open. Here’s the final product:

All that remains is to insert it into the spine of the book, in the space between the binding and the cover. Be sure to place it in the right direction so that the colors are in the right order!

Once you’ve inserted it into the binding and made it flush with the cover, voila! You’re all done. I cut the ribbons again to make them more even (I had a lot of excess).

Enjoy!

P.S. For those who are keenly observant, the gold ribbon comes after the red only because we are currently in the 12 days of Christmas, so they are crossed for this part of the year because today’s date in the Church year falls after the orders of prayer. Most of the year will be in the proper order, during the time of Easter, thus the gold will come before the red.

Some of you may have noticed the “Resources” link on the top menu of this blog. I just added a whole bunch of reading recommendations and direct links to the books on Amazon.com. I’d appreciate it if you purchase the books through the links provided on this site, as I am an Amazon affiliate and the proceeds help pay for my hosting plan each year. You may not have noticed, but I made the Google AdSense ads take a backseat on this new site design, and I’ve noticed the financial difference. But I wanted the message to remain the pre-eminent feature, not some advertisement for Christian dating or something else silly. So please check out the Resources page, and buy some books!

Tony Reinke over at Miscellanies shared a series of Charles Spurgeon quotes today about Christless preaching. I recommend you go read all six quotes, but here’s two to whet your whistle:

The motto of all true servants of God must be, “We preach Christ; and him crucified.” A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching. [Exposition of Acts 13:13-49 published in 1904]

Leave Christ out of the preaching and you shall do nothing. Only advertize it all over London, Mr. Baker, that you are making bread without flour; put it in every paper, “Bread without flour” and you may soon shut up your shop, for your customers will hurry off to other tradesmen. … A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language it will be merely much-ado-about-nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of “believe and live.” [sermon: “Christ the Glory of His People” (3/22/1868)]

There’s been a lot of good posts floating around lately, and I wanted to spread a little link love to those posts that deserve your attention. All four of these links will conveniently open in a new window or tab.

• If Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians Was Published in Christianity Today. From Sacred Sandwich. This satirical piece gives mock replies to Paul’s letter to the Galatian church as though it were published in a contemporary edition of Christianity Today. I laughed out loud a few times, sad but true. We often forget how serious heresy is, and how harshly we ought to deal with it.
• Four Unbiblical Models For Church. From subversive1. Blog author Keith Giles describes four of the most common church models used today: the Harvard Model, Hollywood Model, IBM Model (corporate/CEO church), and the Wal-Mart Model. He makes the point that we should follow the New Testament model.
• Gospel-Centered Discipleship. From Resurgence. Winfield Bevins writes, “Many churches in North America have given in to the sin of pragmatism. They have a pragmatic approach to ecclesiology that focuses on church growth more than on church health, and on cultural accommodation rather than biblical faithfulness. Some churches have either adopted a hierarchical structure that resembles a corporate business, or they simply have no church structure at all. The result is that many churches produce consumers and not radical disciples of Jesus Christ.” Be sure to read the rest.
• Seeker Driven Sermon Topics are a Hindrance to the Gospel. From Extreme Theology. Chris Rosebrough writes: “It never ceases to amaze me (in a bad way) how seeker driven / purpose driven sermons can provide such a trivial cadre of practical advice and NEVER get to the primary and important subjects of scripture, namely “repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name” and sound Christ Centered doctrine. Yet, when one examines the doctrinal statements of these churches self-help centers its not as if they out right deny Christian orthodoxy, in fact most affirm orthodox Christian doctrine. The problem is that they don’t preach, teach and proclaim sound Christian doctrine from their pulpits. . . .” Be sure to read the rest of this one as well (it’s short).

Enjoy!

This is an amazing reminder that all life is precious and valuable to God. Charles Lehmann reminds us that God does not desire the death of a sinner:

It is tempting for many of us to look at the death of Michael Jackson with just a little bit of quiet happiness. Though he was never convicted of the crime, many think he may have been a child molester. It’s quite possible that he was.

But it’s worth remembering that Jesus loves rapists, child molesters, wife beaters, politicians, and even you and me.

Jesus was so grieved by the eternal death that Michael Jackson, you, and I deserve that He was willing to be arrested for a crime He didn’t commit, undergo the worst torture that humans had conceived of to that day, and suffer the most ignominious death imaginable. He even underwent being utterly forsaken by God the Father. He died completely alone, with all the sins of the entire history of the world on His shoulders.

If it would have only been for Michael Jackson, He would have still done it. He loved him that much even if he was a child molester.

So, here is my request.

Do not begrudge the grief of those who mourn for Michael Jackson. Since it would appear that Jackson ended his life in fellowship with the Watchtower Society, there is probably no one more grieved at his death than God. It was God’s hatred of death, even the death of Michael Jackson, that moved him to destroy it once and for all on the cross.

Jesus’ grave is empty, and so shall all graves be.

Do not rejoice over the death of a sinner even if you are not mourning.

Besides, what makes you better than a rapist or a child molester? Your sin has earned the same reward theirs has.

But your sin has also been forgiven by the same Savior! What a wonderful God He is!

As the above ad shows, seeker-sensitivity can get out of hand. But sometimes in our efforts to denounce it we end up shredding up the good guys in the process, who are merely using cultural illustrations to teach the Gospel.

Today I read a great post by Charlie Lehmann dealing with the strengths and limits of media analogies. After writing a bible study using the recent Star Trek movie as a starting point for sharing the Gospel, he was accused of being “seeker-sensitive.” I loved his response:

I really don’t know anything about being seeker sensitive. I don’t know what that means because the whole approach to theology makes absolutely no sense to me. Further, I don’t care even a little bit about being seeker sensitive. The seeker is Jesus. I and the rest of humanity are the lost lambs that He is seeking out. . . . “Being relevant isn’t a sin.” More than that, being relevant isn’t even the point. . . . I’m not trying to be hip or cool. I’m neither (just ask my wife). What I’m doing is saying, “Hey, did you see that cool movie. It got me to thinking about Jesus and what He did for you on the cross.” I know that’s kinda redundant, but hey, just about everything makes me think about Jesus, so deal with it.

I think sometimes we get so bent out of shape trying to denounce all that is “seeker-sensitive” that it starts getting ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should make church a big entertainment show that is focused on the comfort of the people in the pews, but I also think we absolutely need to remember that God is seeker-sensitive, and He is the seeker! We are not the seekers! We do not need huge church buildings and fancy light shows to draw in crowds, we simply need to introduce people to the real Seeker, Jesus Christ Himself.

If there is one thing that drives me absolutely up the wall, it’s people who quote Bible verses out of context to support whatever they’d like to say that particular day. Jay Winters has written a great post about keeping verses in context that I wanted to share with everyone.

The post also explains how chapter and verse subdivisions were a later addition to the Bible, and are not inspired by God. This is one of the leading contributors to people citing verses divorced from their context. Enjoy!

Welcome to the new and improved prayeramedic.com! prayeramedic.blogspot.com and 390days.com have been consolidated into this site, so you can expect all of the great content you enjoyed at those sites (and more) to be posted here! It was getting to be far too much work to maintain separate blogs for the same niche.

My school work is keeping me SOOO busy right now (see Where Have I Been? for more info on that) so it is hard to post quality content. Between writing papers and discussion boards on Blackboard (for an online class), my creative energies are typically exhausted by the time I log in to my blogs. Here is the stack of books I am currently reading (mind you I am a dual undergrad/grad student right now):

I show you this not to show off or feel smart, but to demonstrate that I’M BUSY RIGHT NOW! But I will make it a point to post this week, I’ll treat it like a homework assignment. Thanks for your patience!