Dr Paul Allen

Prayer is not simply a soliloquy, a mere exercise in therapeutic self-analysis, or a religious recitation.   Prayer is discourse with the personal God Himself. There, in the act and dynamic of praying, I bring my whole life under His gaze. Yes, He knows what is in my mind, but I still have the privilege of articulating to Him what is there. He says: “Come. Speak to me. Make your requests known to me.” So we come in order to know Him and to be known by Him. There is something erroneous in the question, “If God knows everything, why pray?” The question assumes that prayer is one-dimensional and is defined simply as supplication or intercession.  On the contrary, prayer is multidimensional. God’s sovereignty casts no shadow over the prayer of adoration. God’s foreknowledge or determinate counsel does not negate the prayer of praise. The only thing it should do is give us greater reason for expressing our adoration for who God is.  If God knows what I’m going to say before I ...

The devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” - Luke 4:2 MEV. You form your identity in one of two ways: you achieve it by yourself or you receive it from God. When you achieve your identity by yourself, there are numerous problems. If you wrap up your identity in your role (mother, wife, husband, father, winner, beauty queen, etc.), when your role changes, you fall into an identity crisis. When the kids move out, the marriage crumbles, you lose your job, or age comes to diminish your beauty, you become devastated. You no longer know who you are. When you receive your identity from God, you are able to remain healthy no matter what happens in your life . When you know that you are a loved child of God, you are free to stop living for your identity—something that is never secure—and start living from your identity, which is eternally secure. Who you think you are - determines what you do. Because of this, when Satan attacks, he starts by un...