Life is filled with unanswerable questions.  Most of the “why” questions will remain a mystery to us.  But the important point is where we locate the mystery:  Is it a mystery about God, or about the world we live in?

As we move deeper into the raw emotion that the Psalms express, we encounter the prayer that rages; prayer that refuses to accept simple answers or shallow platitudes in the face of great suffering, or injustice, or evil.

Sometimes in life we enter what the saints called “the dark night of the soul,” when God seems absent or at least distant.  It happens to everyone; it happened to Jesus.

What our Heavenly Father desires for his children is that we grow beyond a self-focused faith into true altruism by placing the need of others above our own. As we grow in Christlikeness, our prayer life will include the prayer of intercession.

Today we're looking at the prayer of Petition - prayer that says, “Help!” The little word “help “ is amazing because it opens you up to receive resources beyond your own. And when you say “help” to God, those resources are considerable indeed.

Psalm 51 records the confession of David after he is confronted about his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba by the prophet Nathan.  This honest prayer is one of the reasons David is considered a man after God's own heart.

So far in the series we've looked at the prayer of Invocation (Psalm 139); then the prayer of Thanks (Psalm 136).  Today, we look at the prayer of Worship, or Praise (Psalm 8).  This is prayer that says, “O!” or “Wow!”

Today we begin a series from the Psalms on prayer.  Psalms has been called “The great school of prayer.”  What you notice when you read the Psalms is the wide range of emotions expressed there. Each week we'll focus on one word that expresses a different kind of prayer. 

Today, “Here”—prayer that acknowledges and awakens.

Why do we do what we do during corporate worship? Today we will look at Communal Practices: disciplines we participate in together with others in a community of faith.

Spiritual Practices are disciplines, or exercises, that help us become more like Christ—more purely human as God intended.  God wants to heal the world, and he invites us to join him in that great enterprise by becoming like Jesus in his selfless, sacrificial love for others.