2023 Evangel Gathering - Friendship and Flourishing for Missions

W orkshops • 45

2) Augustine’s teaching on the Psalms can be explored in SRSC 1

a) Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends (SRSC 1) helps leaders in our generation rediscover how to pray the Psalms daily. 1. Like all church leaders of his generation, Augustine set his heart to memorize the book of Psalms so that he could pray them daily. 2. All twenty-seven “friends” of Augustine whose voices we hear in the Psalms would have memorized the book of Psalms as they prayed them daily for decades. b) Leaders who pray the Psalms daily have access to resources greater than any other prayer resource on the planet. 1. Like children who learn to speak by repeating the words of their parents, so Christians learn how to pray by speaking the words our Father has given us to learn how to speak to him. 2. I tell my students they will only reach 1 percent of their potential in the Kingdom of God if they do not learn to pray the Psalms daily. 1) Las Casas was listening to a spiritual classic being read (the Apocrypha) when he realized that he needed to participate in God’s mission of justice. 2) Las Casas labored for many decades to ensure that native peoples in the Americas would be recognized as bearing the image of God.

b. Example of Las Casas