YOUNG PREACHERS

'He was young enough to be a little proud of his first sermon, to which he had given considerable thought.' 

Margaret Craven, I Heard The Owl Call My Name, p.35.

WHAT TO ASK GOD FOR?

'One question, then, we should bring to our petitions is "Can they be accommodated under the Lord's Prayer?"'

Lauren F Winner, The Dangers of Christian Practice, p.88.

THE INTIMACY OF PETITION

'Petition is arguably the most powerful means for us to gain intimacy with God. This is precisely the knot of petition and its friendship. One might say: Our prayers would be safe, protected from at least one sort of deformation, it we would refrain from asking God to give us the specific object of our desire. We could pray only the last clause of Gethsemane and the third clause of the Lord's Prayer; we could pray only "they will be done," and never hazard the presumption that our own desires are things the Lord might grant or endorse. But we cannot have the friendship that petition makes possible if we do not name our desires.'

Lauren F Winner, The Dangers of Christian Practice, p.83. 

THE IMTIMACY OF PETITIONING GOD

'...petition offers the possibility of intimacy: Something close to my real self (or at least, what I perceive my real self to be) is now revealed before God. Of course, God already knows my real self, better than I will ever know it. The intimacy that follows my petitions is made possible not by God's new knowledge of me but by my new availability to God.' 

Lauren F Winner, The Dangers of Christian Practice, p.81.