Articles

Murray describes Jesus as the only teacher of prayer and invites the reader to enrol in his school as a humble learner.

Murray reflects on Jesus' words to the woman at the well and what it means to worship the Father in spirit and truth.

Murray explains why Jesus sends us into the inner room to meet the Father alone, and what waits for us there.

Murray walks through the Lord's Prayer as Jesus' own pattern, beginning with the simple words Our Father.

Murray looks at Jesus' promise that everyone who asks receives, and why we can confidently expect God to answer prayer.

Bounds argues that God works through people more than plans, and that the life and prayer of the person matter more than any method.

Bounds explains why unhurried time alone with God, as Jesus and the saints of the Bible practised it, lies behind all real praying.

Bounds warns against hurried devotions and urges the reader to give prayer the unhurried time that deep communion with God needs.

Madame Guyon insists that prayer is simply the heart turning to God in love, open to everyone, and shows how to begin by reading slowly and resting on the words.

Augustine opens his confessions by praising God, who made us for himself, so that our heart is restless until it rests in him.

Ryle gives the first of his plain reasons why private prayer matters more than anything else in a Christian's life.

Ryle shows that diligence in prayer lies behind every holy life, and that prayer is one of the best comforts in sorrow.

Ryle closes with warm words to those who do not pray, to those who want to begin, and to those who already pray.

Murray reflects on the Father's love, which gives good gifts to his children far more freely than any earthly parent.

Drummond reads Paul's hymn to love and breaks love into its parts, from patience and kindness to generosity, humility and good temper.

Drummond explains how love is learned through daily practice and why, unlike everything else, it lasts for ever.

MacDonald argues that God loves his enemies into loving him, and that his children are called to love in the same way.

Thomas describes the friendship of Jesus, who alone will not forsake us, and how to keep him close.

Thomas praises love as a great thing that makes every heavy thing light, and describes how a true lover keeps faith.

Julian writes of the motherhood of God, and of Jesus as the kind and loving Mother who feeds and keeps us.

Christian passes the chained lions and is welcomed for the night into the House Beautiful, where Discretion, Prudence, Piety and Charity care for him.

Moody tells story after story to show that God is love and that his love reaches the worst of us.

Havergal hears the question 'Lovest thou Me' as new each day and offers her small love to be kept and used.

Murray asks why God's children so often feel their circumstances come between them and God, and answers that we must learn to wait on him.

Brother Lawrence tells of his conversion at eighteen on seeing a bare winter tree and of how he came to do everything, even his kitchen work, for the love of God.

In two letters Brother Lawrence describes how he gave himself wholly to God and came to a simple habit of living in his presence.

Fénelon explains how to walk before God through the day, turning to him simply and often in the middle of ordinary business.

Smith argues that even the trials which come through other people reach us only by God's permission and can be received from his hand.

Walking through Psalm 139, Smith describes the comfort of a God who is always near and knows us completely.

MacDonald reads Jesus setting a child among his disciples as a window onto the childlike heart of God the Father.

Chesterton considers the stable at Bethlehem, where the Maker of the world was born in a cave among the animals and the shepherds came home.

Augustine searches his memory for God and confesses that the Beauty ever ancient and ever new was within him all along.

A prayer to rest in God above every other good, followed by a grateful remembrance of His many gifts.

Julian sees the whole world as small as a hazelnut, held in being by God's love.

Francis de Sales shows how short prayers breathed through the day can keep the heart near God in the middle of ordinary business.

Pascal keeps watch with Jesus in the garden and hears him say that the one who seeks him has already found him.

Edwards recalls how a new sense of God's sweetness came to him in the fields, the Scriptures and the thunderstorm.

Murray describes the rest of faith that God offers his people, where the soul stops striving and lets God work.

Murray tells the story of the nobleman who believed Jesus' word about his dying son and draws out what simple trust in that word looks like.

Madame Guyon explains why God sometimes seems to hide, and how to give ourselves and our troubles quietly into his hands.

Fénelon gently advises someone troubled by a wandering mind and low spirits to stop fretting and simply keep turning back to God.

Fénelon describes the quiet peace that comes from giving our will to God rather than resisting what he allows.

Smith says real trust sings like a bird in winter, when everything outward says there is nothing to be glad about.

Spurgeon gives plain, practical counsel for anyone who wants to believe but finds faith hard to come by.

Spurgeon comforts those afraid they will not last to the end by resting their hope on God who keeps them rather than on their own strength.

Spurgeon speaks to the discouraged and weak, assuring them that God himself has promised to help the one who feels like a worm.

On Jesus' last words from the cross, and why we too may commend our spirits into the Father's hands in life and in death.

Thomas advises leaving to God who is for or against us, keeping ourselves first in peace, and seeking Him with a simple heart.

Julian wonders why sin was not prevented and is answered that sin is behovable, but all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Meyer explains the peace Jesus left his friends and how to keep trouble from coming inside the heart.

Murray answers the question of how to live a life of perfect trust by pointing to Christ himself as our life, moment by moment.

Murray shows how humility before God is proved in ordinary patience, kindness and service toward the people around us.

Brother Lawrence describes how he gave himself to God, stopped worrying about his sins, and found God as near in the busy kitchen as in church.

Fénelon writes about using each moment as God gives it, doing the duty in front of us calmly and returning to him in our leisure.

Spurgeon encourages new believers to trust God for everything, from the great things of the soul to the daily work of kitchens and workshops.

Spurgeon counts the benefits God loads on his people every single day and calls them to daily praise.

Chesterton recalls how fairy tales taught him that the ordinary world is a wonder, and that the proper response to it is surprise and thanks.

Chesterton finds in the repetition of daisies and sunrises the delight of a Maker who never tires, and in all good things a gift to be kept with gratitude.

Thomas counsels against rash judgment and asks us to bear patiently with the faults of others, since others must bear with ours.

Ryle asks what real happiness needs and why rank, riches, learning and pleasure cannot supply it.

Ryle points to Christ as the one source of lasting happiness and gives practical counsel for a glad Christian life.

Moody walks through the many names Scripture gives to Christ and what each one means for daily life.

Havergal asks Jesus to keep not our years in general but each single moment, one at a time.

Murray reflects on righteousness, peace and joy as the marks of God's kingdom and on joy as the natural fruit of abiding in Christ.

Spurgeon explains that believers keep going not by their own grip on God but because God has promised never to let them go.

Spurgeon takes Zechariah's promise that at evening time it shall be light and applies it to old age, dark seasons and the end of life.

For readers to whom the word Father brings no cheer, MacDonald describes the perfect Father who is making us his true sons and daughters.

On Jesus' promise of abundant life, and how the life of God flows into those who will receive it.

Chesterton explains why he trusts the Church as a living teacher, and ends with joy as the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Chesterton follows the wise men to the manger and finds there a home at the heart of the universe for the wise and the simple alike.

In her closing chapters Julian learns, fifteen years after her visions, that love was our Lord's meaning in all of it.

Christian and Hopeful wade the deep river at the end of their journey, and Hopeful holds his friend up until they reach the gate of the Celestial City.

Baxter imagines the love and joy of heaven, where God and his people delight in one another for ever.

Murray argues that humility is simply a creature's glad acknowledgement that everything it has comes from God.

Fénelon explains how to bear our own faults with patience instead of anxious self-reproach, trusting God to heal us.

Smith shows how to bring a failure straight to God, confess it at once and go on trusting rather than sinking into discouragement.

Spurgeon tells the reader who feels too bad to be saved that God's promise is made precisely to the ungodly.

Spurgeon answers the person who feels helpless to do any good, pointing them to the strength God gives to the weak.

Spurgeon shows why God's promise of help is signed with the name Redeemer, and what that name means to the fearful.

MacDonald writes that the hardest, gladdest thing in the world is to cry Father from a full heart, and that we are God's children by birth, not strangers taken in.

Weeping under a fig tree in a Milan garden, Augustine hears a child's voice singing take up and read, and opens the Scriptures.

Bunyan's pilgrim reaches the cross, and the burden he has carried rolls away into an empty tomb.

Brooks traces how pride creeps into a life and finds its cure in a life given wholly to Christ, who died for us.

Murray reflects on Paul's thorn in the flesh and how glad acceptance of our weakness makes room for the strength of Christ.

In his last letters to a sick friend Brother Lawrence offers comfort, urging her to find God in her pain and trust his love.

Smith pictures every trial as one of God's chariots, sent not to crush us but to carry us somewhere good if we will get in.

Spurgeon says the darkest nights are when God gives his people songs, and that a cheerful Christian in trouble is the best proof of the gospel.

Spurgeon explains how a Christian can be weighed down with sorrow for a season and still greatly rejoice at the same time.

Starting from Jonah in the deep, Spurgeon shows that the moment the soul faints is often the moment it remembers the Lord.

Augustine remembers talking with his mother at a window in Ostia about the life to come, and tells of her death soon after and of his grief.

Thomas writes that in the cross is life and consolation, and that bearing it willingly with Christ is the way to peace.

Francis de Sales counsels a quiet, uncomplaining patience that accepts not only trouble itself but the particular form it takes.

Lilias Trotter watches plants bud, flower and seed, and finds in them the pattern of dying into fuller life.

A dandelion giving away its seeds becomes Lilias Trotter's picture of a life poured out for others, ending in a prayer to follow the Crucified.

Three early letters from Rutherford to a mother who has lost her daughter and to Lady Kenmure in illness and after the death of her baby.

Watson gives ten ways in which God turns affliction to the good of those who love him.

Smith treats habitual doubting as a habit that can be given up, and asks what a loving Father would think of a child who doubted him.

Spurgeon gently exposes the fear of trusting God that looks like humility, and urges the hesitant simply to take him at his word.

Chesterton answers the question of why he believes, weighing common objections to Christianity against the whole weight of experience.

Pascal's thoughts on the limits of reason and the heart that knows God, gathered in a run of short consecutive notes.