Resources For Prayer

Sunday we looked at God’s word and my goal was that you would make it your resolution to pray more in 2015. We had lots of great questions and the sermon will be uploaded soon. We are planning to deal with this topic again this coming Sunday because it seems there is more to say, and you have lots of lingering concerns.

I had a handout to encourage you in some practical areas of prayer. You can download the handout here. 

I referenced a few resources and wanted to share them with you:

The Handbook for Prayer by Kenneth Boa is available on Amazon Kindle for around $10, if you want a hardcopy you can buy it at his website here for more money. I bought a used one for cheap on Ebay. But there aren't a lot of those floating around.

I mentioned the ACTS prayer method. If you want to explore this more, RC Sproul has this to say 

Pastor Matt

Photo by Dopiaza used by permission, some rights reserved

Douglas Moo On Misunderstanding James 4 in Planning and Profit

We are going through the book of James on Sunday mornings and this is a good place to share some extra meat and scraps from the table:

"However, we need to guard against a misinterpretation at this point. It would be terribly tempting (and some interpreters have succumbed to the temptation) to find here a rebuke of those who are out to make a profit at all. The economic system we call capitalism, in other words, might be the real target of James’s polemic. But, whatever we might think about the compatibility of Christianity and the profit motive of capitalism, it would be wrong to find any critique here. As the following verses make clear, James is not rebuking these merchants for their plans or even for their desire to make a profit. He rebukes them rather for the this-worldly self-confidence that they exhibit in pursuing these goals—a danger, it must be said, to which businesspeople are particularly susceptible. And we should guard here against another kind of misinterpretation: the idea that James is forbidding Christians from all forms of planning or of concern for the future. Taking out life insurance and saving for retirement, for instance, are not condemned by James; these may very well be a form of wise stewardship. What James rebukes here, as v. 16 will make clear, is any kind of planning for the future that stems from human arrogance in our ability to determine the course of future events."

Moo, Douglas J. The Letter of James. Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2000. Print. The Pillar New Testament Commentary.