Christmas is our annual reminder to look uppondering celestial stars to look outserving those in need and to look downglorifying our Lord in humble prayer.

Is anything truly impossible Or is it that the path to our goals appears too unclear to follow It seems to me that if you seek hard enough pray hard enough you usually stumble across a scattering of breadcrumbs that marks the trail leading to the goal you once considered beyond your reach.

Prayer is not overcoming Gods reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother God is holy and sinless He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God But if we do we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died the face of a forgiven sinner.

I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment to love my Lord my God with all my heart. I dont want the reputation that I love God I dont want to write songs about loving God I dont want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and its real.

Here are the two best prayers I know Help me help me help me and Thank you thank you thank you.

Dear GodI hurt. Please hold me.Amen

One reason why the Enemy found this so easy was that without knowing it I was already desperately anxious to get rid of my religion and that for a reason worth recording. By a sheer mistake - and I still believe it to have been an honest mistake - in spiritual technique I had rendered my private practice of that religion a quiet intolerable burden. It came about in this way. Like everyone else I had been told as a child that one must not only say ones prayers but think about what one was saying. Accordingly when I came to a serious belief I tried to put this into practice. At first it seemed plain sailing. But soon the false conscience St. Pauls Law Herberts prattler came into play. One had no sooner reached Amen than it whispered Yes. But are you sure you were really thinking about what you said then more subtly Were you for example thinking about it as well as you did last night The answer for reasons I did not then understand was nearly always No. Very well said the voice hadnt you then better try it over again And one obeyed but of course with no assurance that the second attempt would be any better...I set myself a standard. No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a realization by which I meant a certain vivedness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will power a phenomenon which will power could never produce which was so ill-defined that I could never say with absolute confidence whether it had occurred and which even when it did occur was of very mediocre spiritual value.

Its not that we start with beliefs and doctrine and then come up with worship practices that properly express these cognitive beliefs rather we begin with worship and articulated beliefs bubble up from there. Doctrines are the cognitive theoretical articulation of what we understand when we pray.