A Stranger in the House of God

A Stranger in the House of God

Podcast of award winning author John Koessler.

Episodes

May 1, 2024 12 mins

The church is a caravan. It travels in company. In one of his sermons on the nature of Christ, Saint Augustine pictures the church as being a community of faith that stretches across the globe but across time. Or as he put it, “from Abel the just to the end of the world.” This is not what I usually see when the congregation assembles. I can’t help but notice how drab my view of the same spiritual landscape is by comparison. I wonde...

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 Faith and hope are essential in prayer. But how much faith is enough before God will answer? 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books. His latest book , When God is Silent, is published by Lexham Press. You can learn more about John...

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February 27, 2024 12 mins

Some years ago, a friend admitted to me that she couldn’t pray. She is not alone. Some of the godliest people have found themselves at a loss for words in the presence of God. How do we pray when we have no words?

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is th...

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January 25, 2024 13 mins

Everyone learns to talk by imitation. Most people learn to pray the same way. They hear the prayers of others and copy them. Jesus’s disciples learned how to pray from Jesus. His model prayer, usually referred to as the Lord’s Prayer, is a prayer that we can pray for ourselves, but it is also a kind of template. 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Pract...

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December 10, 2023 10 mins

It is not a hyperbole to describe the Christmas story as fantastic. That is to say, it has all the characteristics of a fantasy. C. S. Lewis observed, ""The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact." 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Li...

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Many things can get in the way of praying. But one of the most common obstacles is boredom. Prayer can sometimes seem tedious.  How do we stay focused when praying? 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books. His latest book , When God...

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Which kind of praying is better, memorized prayers, written prayers, or extemporaneous prayers that we make up in the moment? 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books. His latest book , When God is Silent, is published by Lexham Pres...

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Sometimes when we pray, we are angry with other people. On other occasions, we pray because we are angry with God. How do we manage our angry prayers? 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books. His latest book , When God is Silent, is...

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Do a search on books about intercessory prayer on the Internet, and the overall impression you get is that our concerns in this area are primarily concerns of focus and method. Intercession isn't exactly rocket science but that doesn't mean that it is easy. 

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and...

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Prayer is an act of communion with God. But for most of us, it’s also about getting something from God. Most prayers include an “ask” of some kind. We aren’t praying just to hear ourselves talk. We do not struggle with prayer because it is hard. Our problem is that we are not sure it is worthwhile. We suspect that God is not interested in our case or fear that he will not decide matters in our favor. Delay and denial are the major ...

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Whatever prayer may be, it is not an ordinary conversation. Believers in every generation have understood prayer as one of the means by which God communicates to his people. Yet it is a conversation where we do the majority of the talking. In prayer, we approach God but do not see either face or form and do not hear his voice. Therefore it is a conversation that lacks all the normal cues we rely upon for meaning. When we talk to Go...

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Most books about prayer either assume that I don’t want to pray or that I don’t know how. Neither is really the case. My problem lies elsewhere. I don’t like the way God treats me when I pray.

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books....

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Jesus' last words were those of a victor, not a victim. They are the words of one who knows he is death's master.

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books. His latest book , When God is Silent, is published by Lexham Press. ...

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March 13, 2023 12 mins
Some have called Jesus' seven statements from the cross his last words. Among these seven sayings are three prayers. Jesus' three prayers from the cross help us to place the suffering of Christ in a larger context.

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Livin...

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February 27, 2023 14 mins
Several years ago, at the Bible college where I taught, news reached the campus that a revival had broken out among the students of another school. It was much like the recent event at Asbury University, though on a smaller scale. The stories we heard were similar. Students knelt and wept at the front of the chapel as they asked God to forgive their sins. There was singing and confessing.Some of the students on our campus were unse...

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In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the first spirit to visit Ebenezer Scrooge is the ghost of Christmas past. Scrooge notes the spirit’s small stature and asks, “Long Past?” “No. Your past,” the ghost replies. Dickens is on to something here because this spirit often visits us at this time of year. The season of Advent, by its nature, implies a forward trajectory. It celebrates humanity’s long wait for the arrival of the promis...

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December 9, 2022 11 mins
December is the season when tinsel-haloed angels draped in bedsheets announce the birth of Christ to bathrobe-clad shepherds on the church stage. There is a kind of charm in the way we tell the nativity story that might fool people into thinking it is merely a rustic folktale. But the Bible's account of the birth of Christ is not a children's story.

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus ...

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November 23, 2022 9 mins
Christmas was important to me even before I called myself a Christian, though admittedly, this was mainly for non-religious reasons. I’ve long suspected that I have always loved Christmas more than any other holiday, not because of its spirituality but because it purchased my affections.

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for T...

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August 10, 2022 14 mins
Heaven has fallen on hard times. In Christian thinking, looking forward to heaven is no longer fashionable. Jeffrey Burton Russell observes in his book Paradise Mislaid, "Heaven has been shut away in a closet by the dominant intellectual trends of the past few centuries."[1] There are a number of reasons for this. To some, the idea of looking forward to going to heaven seems frivolous. They feel that it is an exercise in ...

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April 14, 2022 10 mins
It's getting to look a lot like Easter. Which, frankly, isn't saying that much. Between Christmas and Easter, it's plain to see which holiday is the favored child of the church calendar. If Christmas is warm, Easter is cold. As it approaches, we don't seem to know whether to be happy or sad.

Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practic...

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