I Won’t Give Up On The Church

I won’t give up on the Church.

I’ve been thinking about the poor tonight. I’ve been thinking about the arts as well, and I’ve been thinking about being a father to my children. I’ve been thinking about the broken minds in the western world, and the broken health in Africa. I’ve been thinking about the clean drinking water I just enjoyed, and the way I love my friends (especially Mac owners – okay, that’s a joke).

I believe the Church was built to work. I believe the Church, as a community, was designed to overtake all other communal bonds in holistic effectiveness, remedial love, and sustaining action.

Our theology has elevated some dumb ideas at times, that have stifled innovation, corrupted our power to change the world, and caused us to deviate from the central themes of Jesus’ Gospel. Welcome to humanity; we should not be surprised. Yet, I tire of the crankiness I hear in the conversation – hope fills my heart tonight that we could be what we were made to be.

I won’t give up on the Church.

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Sheltering Mercy: Prayers Inspired by the Psalms

Sheltering Mercy, along with its companion volume, Endless Grace, helps us rediscover the rich treasures of the Psalms—through free-verse prayer renderings of their poems and hymns—as a guide to personal devotion and meditation.

The church has always used the Psalms as part of its prayer life, and they have inspired countless other prayers. This book contains 75 prayers drawn from Psalms 1-75, providing lyrical sketches of what authors Ryan Smith and Dan Wilt have seen, heard, and felt while sojourning in the Psalms. Each prayer is a response to the Psalms written in harmony with Scripture. These prayers help us quiet our hearts before God and welcome us into a safe place amid the storms of life.

This artful, poetic, and classic devotional book features compelling custom illustrations and foil-stamped hardcover binding, offering a fresh way to reflect on and pray the Psalms.