{"id":5667,"date":"2015-09-03T12:16:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T17:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=5667"},"modified":"2015-09-03T12:16:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T17:16:52","slug":"the-spirit-and-our-prayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=5667","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit and our Prayers"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite devotional authors is Joe Thorn. Both of his books, Experiencing the Trinity<\/em> and Note to Self<\/em>, have been impacting. I would highly recommend them as they are Christ centered, short meditations for daily consumption.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

This chapter from \u201cExperiencing the Trinity\u201d by Thorn was particularly impacting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe longer you follow Jesus, the better you understand yourself. And one thing continues to become clearer\u2014you are weak. You now know that you do not have the strength you once thought you had. Weakness has become painfully evident in your loving, learning, and living. You aren\u2019t incompetent or without gifts. But on your own you cannot be or do what God calls you to be or do. So, you pray. You pray because you know you need God\u2019s grace to live, work, love, resist, overcome, and remain faithful. But even in the midst of praying you often sense your weakness. You do not know what to pray for, and you are tempted to quit. If you can\u2019t even pray, then how can you find hope and help? One of the gospel blessings of the Holy Spirit is that you never pray alone\u2026The Holy Spirit prays with and for you. His intercession is your assurance that God hears your heart whether you pray in words or groanings too deep for vocabulary\u201d (Thorn, Trinity, kindle 897).<\/p>\n

His comments reminded me of one of Tim Keller\u2019s statement, \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid that you will ask for the wrong thing. Of course you will! God \u2018tempers the outcome\u2019 with his incomprehensible wisdom\u201d (Keller, Prayer, kindle 1406).<\/p>\n

What a relief! What a joy! What an opportunity!<\/p>\n

Thorn’s books:<\/p>\n

Thorn, Joe. Experiencing the Trinity<\/a>: The Grace of God for the People of God<\/i>. Crossway, 2015.<\/div>\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014. Note to Self<\/a><\/i>. Crossway, 2011.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite devotional authors is Joe Thorn. Both of his books, Experiencing the Trinity and Note to Self, have been impacting. I would highly recommend them as they are Christ centered, short meditations for daily consumption. This chapter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-1tp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5668,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667\/revisions\/5668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}