Posts tagged “Prayer”

Sermo Dei: The Vigil of Pentecost 2013

Posted on May 17th, 2013

Your birth from below says that you are a child of Adam, therefore a child of wrath, a child of hell. Your birth from above says that you you are a child of God. For “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Your conscience says that you have not lived as you should, and therefore your childhood is renounced. The Spirit, however, witnesses to you not about your works but Christ’s work. The Spirit is called the Helper because you are helpless. It’s okay to feel your helplessness, to acknowledge your helplessness, even to embrace your helplessness. For then the Helper can give His help. And that help is in teaching you that you can say Abba!…

Categories: Sermons

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Praying for women on Mothers Day

Posted on May 11th, 2013

Pastor Michael Schuermann has an excellent piece on pastoral considerations for Mothers Day. You can read it here. Since we are using as the Prayer of the Church the Great Litany of St. John Chrysostom during Eastertide at Immanuel, I will be inserting the following bids: For all mothers, let us pray to the Lord. For all women with child (especially ______), let us pray to the Lord. For all women who long to have children, but cannot, let us pray to the Lord. For all women who have lost a child, let us pray to the Lord.

Categories: Liturgy, Theology

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[Sermo Dei] Rogate: Praying with Jesus (John 16:23-33)

Posted on May 5th, 2013

“In the world you will have tribulation.” Hardly surprising information to anyone who has lived a little while in this broken, fallen world. Yet there is comfort in acknowledging it: “In the world you will have tribulation.” If Jesus says this to His holy Apostles, should we expect things for us to be smooth sailing, success and perfection? In the world you will have tribulation – and thus we find tribulation, trouble and turmoil, everywhere we turn. And wherever the Gospel of Jesus is preached, there especially will be tribulation. The longer we follow Jesus as a disciple, the closer we draw near to Him, the greater the tribulation in our own heart, in our own mind, in our own flesh, in our own…

Categories: Sermons

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[Sermo Dei] Reminiscere: Wrestling with God (Lent 2, Genesis 32:22-32)

Posted on February 24th, 2013

As a little boy, I was in a big hurry to get home from church on Sunday mornings, because All-Star Wrestling came on at noon, where I would watch the likes of Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who later body-slammed his way into the governor’s mansion in Minnesota. The low-brow theater of so-called professional wrestling casts a simple good-versus-evil motif. The wrestling match depicted in today’s Old Testament reading could not be more different, for Jacob encounters God, who is good, wearing the mask of evil. God makes Himself Jacob’s enemy, and in the time of Jacob’s greatest need comes on the scene to fight Jacob. Everything in Jacob’s life has been preparing him for this moment. He was named “Jacob,” meaning “deceiver” or “supplanter”…

Categories: Sermons

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Praying when faith totters

Posted on February 4th, 2013

More Luther on God’s reason for deferring an answer to prayer: This is how we, too, should learn to ask and hope for help whenever there is misfortune and faith totters. For we have the promise of the Gospel; we have Baptism, absolution, etc., by which we have been instructed and strengthened. We have the command by which we are ordered to pray; we have the spirit of grace and of prayer. But as soon as we have begun to pray, our heart is troubled and complains that it is accomplishing nothing. Therefore one must learn that if you accomplish nothing by asking, you should add searching, that is, you should seek; if that, too, seems to be useless, and God conceals and hides…

Categories: Theology

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Why God waits to answer prayer

Posted on February 2nd, 2013

He does not give what His saints seek on the surface of their hearts and with that foam of words, but He is an almighty and exceedingly rich Bestower who gives in accordance with the depth of that sighing. Therefore He lets prayer be directed, grow, and be increased; and He does not hear immediately. For if He were to answer at the first outcry or petition, prayer would not increase but would become cold. Therefore He defers help. As a result, prayer grows from day to day and becomes more efficacious. The sobbing of the heart also becomes deeper and more ardent until it comes to the point of despair, as it were. Then prayer becomes most ardent and passionate, when it seems…

Categories: Theology

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The tears of saintly women

Posted on February 1st, 2013

Luther compares Rachel to Hannah and Monica, saintly women whose vocations led them to tears: Thus Hannah, the mother of Samuel, also despaired of offspring and could not be conscious of her sobbing and of that desire for offspring in the inmost depths of her heart. But God, who searches the heart, understands the ineffable sobbing, which can neither be felt nor expressed with any words. Augustine also tells the story of his mother Monica, who lamented for nine years and deplored the downfall of her son because he had gone over to the sect of the Manichaeans. But her only request from God was that her son might be converted and become a Christian, and for this reason she wanted to betroth a…

Categories: Theology

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The hell of barrenness

Posted on January 31st, 2013

Luther comments on the deep sorrow of Rachel, barren many years, and how despair drives her to sobbing, sighing prayer: Therefore Moses has employed a significant word: “The Lord remembered.” It is as though he were saying: “She had almost despaired within herself, and she was convinced in her heart that God would never remember her, yes, that He had forgotten her forever.” “I shall not be a mother,” she thought, “but I am the most wretched of all women. I should have been the mother of the house, but God has forgotten me.” In this way she was led down into hell, where no hope of help seems to be left. In despair she takes hold of her maidservant and hands her over…

Categories: Theology

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Praying as the heart sobs

Posted on January 30th, 2013

What more can we do before God that is greater than these two services—the services of prayer and thanksgiving? In the first place, one must hear the Word, which is given to us by God. Here we do nothing, but we only take hold of what has been offered. In the second place, one must pray and implore God’s help after the Word has been heard and taken hold of, and after getting this help one must give thanks and offer sacrifice. But we pray not only with the mouth or the voice but also with sobbing of the heart, with all our strength and members. This is prayer without ceasing (cf. Acts 5:12; 1 Thess. 5:17). -Luther on Genesis 32:18 (AE 5)

Categories: Theology

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