Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that many people treat prayer superficially, seeking attention without a genuine desire for connection.
D. A. Carson's quote reflects on the nature of prayer and its lack of sincerity among many individuals. It draws an analogy between the careless act of ringing a doorbell and fleeing, and the way some people approach prayerβoften engaging in it for show or out of obligation rather than seeking a true relationship with the divine. This critique challenges the reader to consider the authenticity of their own spiritual practice.
In practice
During a sermon about the importance of genuine prayer, this quote can emphasize a more authentic relationship with God.
Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.
Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised.
Nothing could be more dangerous than following the popular maxim whereby it is the spirit of the law that must be consulted. This is an embankment that, once broken, gives way to a torrent of opinions.
The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.
There is a growing movement called effective altruism. It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.
Yes, always avoid violence. In this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.
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