Free Digital Bibles

An active prayer life involves continuous reading of the Bible. Pick one book in the Bible, and read it over the course of one or two weeks.

It's much easier to dedicate time to Bible reading if you always have a Bible with you. Thanks to the wide proliferation of smartphones, that is now possible. This post summarizes a few options, with emphasis on "free."

Online Bibles

If you are sitting at a computer, my two favorite sites are BibleGateway and BibleHub. Both sites have clean interfaces and allow comparison of verses across different translations.

Smartphone Apps

Lifechurch.tv offers the YouVersion Bible App, which provides access to many Bible translations, including some audio options. The App requires an internet connection, although some translations can be downloaded and used offline. BibleGateway offers a similar app.

Audio Bibles

Audio Bibles are an extremely useful method for "reading" the Bible. Listen on a phone or MP3 player while you walk, or burn to a CD for your car. The website Librivox.org offers free audiobooks for many public domain books, including Bibles. But my favorites audio Bibles come from Faith Comes by Hearing, which offers dramatized versions, complete with sounds effects! (Note: Faith Comes by Hearing has a smartphone app. Also, some files are available as free podcasts on the iTunes store.) Do yourself a favor and download an audio Bible. You won't regret it!

Ebooks

Public domain translations, such as the King James Version, can be found with a simple Google search. But for two easy-to-read free Bibles, check out the New English Translation and the English Standard Version, both of which are available for free on the Kindle store.

Pray Like Job

The book of Job enjoys exalted status as one of the great pieces of literature ever written. But it also tends to frustrate readers, because it doesn't appear to answer the very questions it poses.

But I think the book of Job leads to one of the most powerful conclusions in the entire Bible, and that conclusion has important implications for how we should pray.

Most people are familiar with the book's setup. Goaded by Satan, God afflicts Job, a wealthy and righteous man, with various financial, family, and health calamities. The purpose is to test whether, faced with such adversity, Job will blaspheme God.

That's just the setup. The majority of the book follows the philosophical thoughts of Job's friends, who insist that his suffering offers proof that he must have committed some sin. Job never blasphemes God, but he does strongly question God's motivation for allowing such suffering.

And then enters God. As readers, we're excited finally to learn the answer to the book's central question: Why is Job suffering? Instead, God issues Job a several-chapters-long tongue lashing, which begins with, Job 39: 2-4 (NIV)

Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? ... Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.

I see the book's major moment to be not God's tongue lashing, but rather Job's response, Job 42: 2-6 (NIV):

I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted... Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know... My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

Now that's a prayer! Basically, Job humbles himself before God and repents of his questioning God's will. God must have been pleased with this response, because He then removes Job's suffering and doubles his original state.

I believe the book's main point is that we cannot comprehend the magnitude of existence and the power of God's will. Instead, when we pray, we should humble ourselves before Him and submit to His will.

The Language of Prayer

Many of us pray standard prayers, such as the “Our Father.” Or often at the end of the day, we pray something like, “Heavenly Father, thank you for such-and-such, help me with such-and-such, give me such-and-such… .”

But rather than a mechanical listing of things, prayer serves as a way to align ourselves with God's will by having a conversation with Him. Unfortunately, to me, having that conversation introduces another problem: What do I say? My prayers don’t sound like those elegant, powerful prayers I hear from learned theologians. Rather, I sound like some guy mumbling random thoughts, often with bad grammar!

Evidently, I am not alone! As Paul writes in Romans 8:26-27 (NIV):

We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.

As Jesus says in Matthew 6:8 (NIV):

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Why worry about elegant phrasing and proper grammar? After all, what is perceived as “elegant” and “proper” is entirely earth-based and subject to change. But the “groans” of the Spirit, as Paul puts it, remain constant. Those spiritual concerns are deeply embedded inside us, because, as stated in Genesis 1:27, we are created in the image and likeness of God, probably not in a physical sense, but rather in a spiritual sense.

So I believe that the purpose of prayer is to align our spiritual selves with God. Whatever His will might be, we must align ourselves with that will, and we do so by conversing with Him through prayer. Don’t lose sleep over the actual wording of that conversation. Just have that conversation!

Hello and welcome!

Hello, and welcome to my blog entitled “Pray without Ceasing.” The title is taken from the King James Version translation of 1 Thessalonians 5:17. I strongly believe that active and continual prayer is the key not only to an active relationship with God, but also to a fulfilling personal life.

Of course, there is no shortage of religious blogs on the internet, but many of those seem to be maintained by “expert” Christians, or individuals with some kind of formal training in Christian theology. By contrast, I have no such formal theological training, and therefore I want this blog to represent the thoughts and experiences regarding prayer of a “layperson.”

I have no intention of ranking or comparing different theologies. Rather, as someone who has a fascination with the Bible, I will try to keep my discussions Bible-based. I will attempt to provide weekly posts, to the extent that my schedule allows.

This post is mostly a test to learn how to blog. Until next time, pray without ceasing.