The Suburbs of Heaven

Most of us are busy—too busy. We regularly feel as though we are trying to fit 20 pounds into a 10-pound bag. There is never enough time to do everything that we want. In this context, it is relatively easy to squeeze prayer out of our schedules. One way to…

EM Bounds has said: “Praying is spiritual work; and human nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail to heaven under a favoring breeze, a full, smooth sea. Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these…

Most Christians—myself included—feel inadequate about their prayer life. We know that we don’t pray as often as we should, as fervently as we should, or as eloquently as we should. We know how frequently our minds wander when we pray and how many times we have actually fallen asleep in…

In the second part of this series on struggling well, I mentioned five things that we can do to in the midst of our struggles to approach them Christianly: we can reflect, rehearse, resist, repent, and remember. While I certainly believe that these five things can be tremendously helpful, I…

In part 1 of this series, I argued that Genesis 32:22-32 teaches us that God’s people will struggle for as long as they live. They will struggle with the sin that remains within them and with difficult circumstances and events. But the Old Testament isn’t the only place we see…

The very first article I ever wrote for Tabletalk Magazine was entitled “Our Blessed Struggle.” It was published in 2009 (you can read the entire article here) and focused on the story of Jacob wrestling all night with the Lord, which is found in Genesis 32:22-32. In the article, I…