Your Posture Can Impact Your Relationship with God

I mean the posture the you take before God can make a difference.

Prayer in the Bible is a very physical thing. A lot of the time when the Bible describes someone praying, it includes a description of their posture.

Do you know what posture is mentioned most often? It surprised me.

Kneeling is one of those postures, but it comes in third in the Bible.

But kneeling, unlike many of the others, can express a whole range of heart attitudes, responses to God, and emotions. We’ll explore five of those this weekend as we look at Luke 2:1-14 (which doesn’t mention kneeling but does have angel voices and does drives home all five).

One pastor, commenting on the act of kneeling in prayer, said, “It sends a signal to my entire being.”

Do you have trouble engaging your mind in prayer? Try sending it a signal.

That’s just a bit of a preview of the weekend sermon as we continue our Advent series: “O Holy Night.”

Bring a friend. Advent is a great time for inviting.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

This is Us (30th Anniversary Edition)

Here’s the last of our 30th Anniversary Edition posts celebrating the Five Oaks 30th anniversary.

For years my office away from the “office” was the Caribou at the corner of Valley Creek and Radio in Woodbury. I wrote countless sermons there, and it was our go-to spot for staff meetings and worship planning meetings. I don’t know how many people told me they were leaving Five Oaks over coffee there, but it was a lot. It has also been a place to meet with folks considering Five Oaks, many of whom when on to lead ministries that impacted our church and my life and family. When Lois’ parents or other relatives visited, it’s where we went to hang out in the evening and play games. But the memory that most stands out to me is when Lois and I went there to talk about whether or not I should accept a call to pastor Five Oaks if it was offered. We loved Minnesota. We had met at Northwestern and married in the chapel. I use to spend summers in MN as a kid with family that lived on Lake Minnetonka. We loved MN, but we didn’t particularly want to move north. We wanted mountains or ocean and anything warmer than MN. And we certainly didn’t want to come to a church that met in a school. And so we kind of lamented the fact that everyone we met on the search team had impressed us, the foundation laid by the founding pastor was strong, and the prospects for reaching people in a fast-growing city were exciting. It was in that Caribou that we looked at each other, sighed, and concluded we had to come, in spite of the cold. Here we are almost 23 years later. And we both love winter! But mostly we love being where God called us to, and we’re so happy it’s here with the people of Five Oaks. And thankful beyond words!

We don’t have any pictures from meeting in Caribou in those early days so I thought I’d include this one from one of our lake baptism and picnics in N. St. Paul. They were one of my favorite days of the year. Unfortunately we outgrew the location, but I know all of us who were around then have very fond memories.