PHall | February 6, 2015
My relative was schizophrenic. Those who suffer, endure mentally twisted hallucinations and delusions forming false realities. Making this practical, pain can make us experience what I’ll call “sane schizophrenia,” producing unearthly realities. Pain can produce an irrationality of hope superseding human experience. This pained induced thinking then enables us to expand beyond man’s reality, to […]
Category: Job |
Comments Off on Job 13-15 – Praying through the Bible #162 – A Prayer About Resurrection
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PHall | February 4, 2015
Sitting in a court room, the accused is dressed to look respectable; looking respectable looks innocent. The defendant tries to look calm. Each is faking serenity while someone else is deciding their future. Sitting there, they appear to be in total control, while the reality is control is totally out of the grasp. Job feels […]
Category: Job |
Comments Off on Job 9-10 – Praying through the Bible #161 – A Prayer Putting God on Trial
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PHall | January 27, 2015
Pain brings rash words. That is the explanation – or rationalization – of Job to Eliphaz (Job 6.3). He does what is so easily and commonly done; He blames God: “Surely the arrows of the Almighty have pierced me; my spirit drinks of their poison. God’s terrors are arrayed against me” (Job 6.4). Job’s physical […]
Category: Job |
Comments Off on Job 6-7 – Praying through the Bible #160 – A Prayer About Rash Words
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PHall | January 22, 2015
Waking up with something physically wrong with my right eye, I thought it was a stye. Hourly, my face’s right side deteriorated. Only 20 years old, I called home panicking and frightened. The entire right side of my face was becoming paralyzed. While traumatic, it was compounded by the fact I was considering becoming a […]
Category: Job |
Comments Off on Job 2-3 – Praying through the Bible #159 – A Prayer Asking Why
Tags: Prayer, Praying through the Bible, Suffering
PHall | January 6, 2015
Shooting basketball, my mother walked onto our deck to tell me “Grandmother” died. She was my great-grandmother. I stopped for a few seconds, and then started shooting again. She was the first person related to me who died. I was young, and only met her a few times. One day at college I got a […]
Category: Job |
Comments Off on Job 1 – Praying through the Bible #158 – A Prayer I Am Unqualified to Write About
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PHall | December 17, 2014
If you knew death was quickly approaching, how would you spend your last days? Nehemiah has served as governor for 12 years (Nehemiah 1.1; 5.14; 13.6). The last chapter of this topical biography is saying good bye to its readers; and sounds like what a good last few days should be: filled with corrections, reflections […]
Category: Nehemiah |
Comments Off on Nehemiah 13 – Praying through the Bible #157 – A Prayer of Last Things
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PHall | December 15, 2014
Have you prayed the Bible? Have you taken entire books or significant sections as an outline for your prayer? This is amazingly what we see the Levites doing in Nehemiah 9. They had just “read from the book of the law of the LORD their God for a fourth of the day and spent another […]
Category: Nehemiah |
Comments Off on Nehemiah 9 – Praying through the Bible #156 – A Prayer that is Praying the Bible
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PHall | December 2, 2014
Opening our Bibles to Nehemiah 8 shows us that the Jews were opening their “Bibles” (8.1). The result is a revival. “Revival” is used today to describe an event instead of a result. Churches have “revivals” with no revivals. One curmudgeon suggested we shouldn’t call these special meetings “revivals” because a church can’t be revived […]
Category: Nehemiah |
Comments Off on Nehemiah 8 – Praying through the Bible #155 – A Prayer that is Revival
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PHall | November 19, 2014
My friend, an ex-Satanist to whom I had taught Jesus, returned to his former master and threatened to cut off my head. For some of God’s servants, such threats are carried out. For Nehemiah, such terrorization comes through a death threat delivered by a “friend.” This threat comes under the veil of holiness and pomposity […]
Category: Nehemiah |
Comments Off on Nehemiah 6:10-14 – Praying through the Bible #154 – A Prayer Against God’s “Friends”
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PHall | November 13, 2014
Great leaders attract great enemies and are attacked by great means. One of America’s great leaders was Martin Luther King, leading a great cause of equality among the races. Studying history we learn he attracted great enemies such as J. Edgar Hoover, who stooped to blackmail to discredit and stop him. That was not the […]
Category: Nehemiah |
Comments Off on Nehemiah 6:1-9 – Praying through the Bible #153 – A Prayer About Blackmail
Tags: Prayer, Praying through the Bible