Simply Good News by N.T. Wright is a book I recommend to anyone who wants to understand the Gospel, the Good News. The last chapter ("Praying the Good News") gets my recommendation for all intercessors. Here I have collected a few of my favorite quotations from that chapter.
* * * posted by Gary Fick
Our calling is ... to become good news people. ... We can only do it through prayer.
The great truths he [Jesus] was teaching were precisely about the creator God coming to renew and restore creation! [That is what we pray for!]
[We are inclined] to the mistake of reducing God's kingdom to God doing what we want him to do.
The good news is that the living God is indeed establishing his kingdom on earth as in heaven, through the finished work of Jesus, and is inviting people of all sorts to share not only in the benefits of this kingdom but also in the work through which it will come to its ultimate completion.
The good news is primarily that God---the generous God, the loving God---is being honored, will be honored, has been utterly and supremely honored, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
[We hallow God's name because] God is the father, the stunningly generous creator, the supremely wise ruler and guide of the nations. He is the father of Jesus. He is the God who makes promises and keeps them. He is the lord of the angels. He is utterly faithful, utterly loving, utterly determined to bring heaven and earth together in a glorious and fruitful marriage. ... He is the sovereign one, ... the source of all delight, all daylight, all that is lovely, lively, and liberating. This is the ultimate good news. This God has come to be with us, to celebrate his name and his nature, to make all things new.
The starting point for all fully Christian prayer is worship. ... Worship ... means "celebrating the worth" - [it] is learning to be a Christian.
...prayer means standing between the one true God and his world, becoming a place where the love of this God and the life of this world (and especially the pain of this world) are somehow held together.
God wants to run his world, to bring his love and wisdom and purposes to bear on the world, through human beings.
All prayer stands with arms outstretched, one to embrace the loving God, the other to embrace the needy world.
Prayer is part of the larger vocation in which we humans are supposed to be bringing God's love to bear on his world.
Only with prayer at the center will the work of the kingdom go forward.
In prayer, we learn to become good news.
* * * posted by Gary Fick
Our calling is ... to become good news people. ... We can only do it through prayer.
The great truths he [Jesus] was teaching were precisely about the creator God coming to renew and restore creation! [That is what we pray for!]
[We are inclined] to the mistake of reducing God's kingdom to God doing what we want him to do.
The good news is that the living God is indeed establishing his kingdom on earth as in heaven, through the finished work of Jesus, and is inviting people of all sorts to share not only in the benefits of this kingdom but also in the work through which it will come to its ultimate completion.
The good news is primarily that God---the generous God, the loving God---is being honored, will be honored, has been utterly and supremely honored, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
[We hallow God's name because] God is the father, the stunningly generous creator, the supremely wise ruler and guide of the nations. He is the father of Jesus. He is the God who makes promises and keeps them. He is the lord of the angels. He is utterly faithful, utterly loving, utterly determined to bring heaven and earth together in a glorious and fruitful marriage. ... He is the sovereign one, ... the source of all delight, all daylight, all that is lovely, lively, and liberating. This is the ultimate good news. This God has come to be with us, to celebrate his name and his nature, to make all things new.
The starting point for all fully Christian prayer is worship. ... Worship ... means "celebrating the worth" - [it] is learning to be a Christian.
...prayer means standing between the one true God and his world, becoming a place where the love of this God and the life of this world (and especially the pain of this world) are somehow held together.
God wants to run his world, to bring his love and wisdom and purposes to bear on the world, through human beings.
All prayer stands with arms outstretched, one to embrace the loving God, the other to embrace the needy world.
Prayer is part of the larger vocation in which we humans are supposed to be bringing God's love to bear on his world.
Only with prayer at the center will the work of the kingdom go forward.
In prayer, we learn to become good news.
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