Sermon 05-29-11 "Big and Little"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, and laments . . . with prayer.” Lest we confuse prayer and emotion, God gives us words to pray. The Psalms are essentially a collection of prayers. Poetic and lyrical, all 150 Psalms thread divine words throughout the rugged terrain of the human heart. When God gives us words to pray, our prayer becomes sacred speech that aligns us with our God. So we devote ourselves to the Psalms, and we learn how to pray.

“The child learns to speak because his father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

New sermon posted at reliantchurch.org