Caring in a Violent Neighborhood

Charles Lyons, pastor of Armitage Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, writes:

People still get killed in my neighborhood. A 13-year-old kid gets gunned ...

A Pastor's Honest Prayer

In her book Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard writes of attending a small church with some 20 people:

The minister is a Congregationalist and wears a white ...

Self-Centered Life Is Prison

Those people who pray know what most around them either don't know or choose to ignore: centering life in the insatiable demands of the ego is the ...

Son Prompted to Pray for Father

David Moore writes in Everything was OK:

"I couldn't get to sleep, Dad. I had this terrible feeling that you were in some kind of trouble, and ...

Prisoner Gets Freedom by Asking

In 1998, 40-year-old Reynaldo Tovar-Valdivia was arrested for possessing methamphetamines with intent to distribute. Upon pleading guilty, he was sentenced ...

Discouraged Preacher Hears from God

I had been preaching for more than two decades, and I should have been at the top of my game. The church I served ran up to 1,500 on Sunday mornings, ...

Persevering Prayer for a Drug-Addicted Son

In Pray! magazine, Jennifer Kennedy Dean tells this story:

Several years ago, Mary (not her real name) came to me for prayer. She was desperate and afraid. ...

Praying for Persecutors at Gunpoint

J. E. Modupe Taylor-Pearce writes in, "I Feel Like Executing You Now!"

On January 6, 1999, rebels terrorized Freetown, Sierra Leone, —murdering ...

What Prayer Means to President Bush

"Prayer is central to the lives of countless Americans, including Laura's and mine. We have been blessed by the prayers of millions of Americans. ...

Comforting Others Who Struggle

On January 17, 1994, ten thousand freight trains seemed to be thundering through our house as the Northridge earthquake hit Los Angeles. When it was over, ...