The Good News Prayer Challenge

Lenny Anderson

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781098081263
• eBook ISBN: 9781098081270

Wonder what exactly is so great about God, faith, the Church? Are you new to faith or want to brush up on the basics? Do you simply want to jump-start your prayer life?

The Good News Prayer Challenge is an accessible introduction to the indispensable teachings of Christianity for seekers, skeptics, and Jesus' followers alike. It's also a hands-on introduction to daily prayer, with each day focusing on a teaching that the reader can pray about while learning. It covers four weeks (twenty-eight days) of topics in the context of a daily devotional and prayer guide. Are you ready to take on The Good News Prayer Challenge?

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Day 1

There Is Only One God

Opening Question

What do you think about God right now?

Reading from Scripture

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19–20)

Reading from Christian Tradition

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. (Article I, Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion)

Reflection on Today’s Topic

There was a time in which you could take belief in a Supreme Being for granted in the Western world. That has become less the case since secularism has become the de facto way of functioning in society. Between the advances of scientific knowledge convincing many that no other types of knowledge are needed, the poor way in which many in the Church have responded to the ethical hot buttons of the day, and the realities of living in a pluralistic world, there is no longer an assumed agreement that God exists from which you can launch a conversation about matters of the spirit.

There are many fine philosophical arguments and talking points that I could refer to in order to “prove” God exists, but I believe there’s a deeper question that must be answered first. Do you want God to exist? If you accept the existence of God, there will be demands placed upon you, demands which may shake up the autopilot of practical atheism by which the bulk of people operate in daily life, even Christians. If you believe God exists, that means you’ll be responsible to find out what you can about him. You’ll incur moral accountability for your thoughts, feelings, and actions. You’ll have to consider new demands on your time. You will certainly have to wrestle with any limits to your perceived autonomy and choice. You will also have to approach how you relate to others and this world differently. The costs are of ultimate value if God exists. That means your responses will have eternal repercussions.

Yet if God exists, especially God as Christians define him, new opportunities open up. You will no longer need to feel alone. You can be welcomed into a new family spanning ethnicity, geography, and time. You will have the opportunity to experience forgiveness, love, and blessing that you never could conceive of before. You will have access to the very source of all things good, beautiful, and true. You can experience a “foretaste of glory divine,” as an old hymn says. And you’ll be able to look forward to that day when heaven will come to earth because God has shown himself willing and able to keep his promises.

If you want to wrangle with Christian responses to the questions atheists, agnostics, and other non-Christian believers pose, I can point you to twentieth-century writers like C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, or more recent apologists and preachers like Tim Keller, or Norman Geisler. But if you are more interested in encountering God firsthand, I’d like you to consider the thought process of the indispensable Anglican cleric Thomas Cranmer. He was the guiding light that put together the Book of Common Prayer, which assembled a complete compendium of faith and practice (prayers, services, and teaching) for the English-speaking people. The intent was it would be used alongside the Bible to cultivate the spiritual life of English Christians.

He believed that praying shapes what people believe in their hearts and that what a person loves in their hearts is what they commit to follow with their wills and justify rationally with their minds. So by honing in on helping people pray, Cranmer hoped they would come to love God and thus choose to follow him and use their minds to learn all they could about him. Similarly, my aim is to have you experience what Christian prayer is like and in the process, get to know God for yourself. If you find you can love this God, then you will long to obey him and discover that belief in him is indeed rational.

Time to Meditate

Take a few moments to think about what you’ve read. Ask God to answer the questions you have about it.

Personal Prayers

• Thank God for one good thing you’ve noticed today.
• Ask God to help someone you know with a struggle they have.
• Ask God to help you with a struggle you have.

Closing Prayer

God, even though I may not fully believe, I begin these next few weeks hoping to meet you. Show me you’re real, and help me to understand where Christians are coming from.

Day 2

God Is Three Persons in One Being

Opening Question

What paradox stuns you most?

Reading from Scripture

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:9–11)

Reading from Christian Tradition

And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. (Athanasian Creed)

Reflection on Today’s Topic

It must be said that the Christian belief in the Trinity—that there is one God in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)—is perhaps the hardest teaching for many people to wrap their minds around. However, this isn’t some Alice in Wonderland exercise, like when the Queen of Hearts declares to Alice, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” It is the careful conclusion drawn after considering the biblical narrative as a whole and reflecting on it in the whole community of Christians.

Perhaps it’s important to say what the Trinity isn’t. Christians don’t believe that the Father, Son, and Spirit are each one third of the founding partners of the “God Corporation.” Each “person” of the Trinity is completely God. Yet God isn’t a collective term for a group of divine beings, like all the citizens the United States are “American.” There is a kind of unity and plurality that simultaneously exists in God that is observed in the biblical account. One such example is at Christ’s own baptism (which you just read about), where the Father speaks from heaven, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, and the Holy Spirit appears as a dove. Each one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is distinct. Yet God’s unity, at least in terms of purpose, is visible in that passage too.

But why is it important to us to know this about God? Well, the most obvious answer is if you love someone, you want to know everything you can about them. But loving God might be a bridge too far for you to cross right now. Then think of it this way: the Trinity displays the radical implications of what true community means within God himself. The persons of the Trinity are one, to the point of sharing the same essence. You can call the Trinity “God,” thus addressing a singular being. Yet the persons are distinguishable from one another. They don’t cease being the Father or the Son or the Spirit.

So when this divine be...

Table of contents

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Day 6
• Day 7
• Day 8
• Day 9
• Day 10
• Day 11
• Day 12
• Day 13
• Day 14
• Day 15
• Day 16
• Day 17
• Day 18
• Day 19
• Day 20
• Day 21
• Day 22
• Day 23
• Day 24
• Day 25
• Day 26
• Day 27
• Day 28