Category: —Contemplative Practices

Remembering Ray Yungen and Richard Foster’s “School” of Contemplative Prayer

Nearly eight years ago researcher Ray Yungen passed away at the age of 64. As regular Lighthouse Trails readers know, it was through Ray’s work that Lighthouse Trails began 22 years ago. Since Ray’s passing, Richard Foster’s contemplative prayer has infiltrated countless numbers of…

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The Desert Fathers—Borrowing From the East

By Ray Yungen Catholic priest William Shannon, in his book Seeds of Peace, explained the human dilemma as being the following: This forgetfulness, of our oneness with God, is not just a personal experience, it is the corporate experience of humanity. Indeed,…

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From a Former Nazarene to the Church of the Nazarene: Why Now Do You Practice These Things?

LTRP Note: Lighthouse Trails has been posting articles by Manny Silva for many years. Manny became part of a group called Concerned Nazarenes over fifteen years ago to warn the Church of the Nazarene denomination about the emergent movement and…

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InterVarsity Press Claims Success of Their New-Age Promoting Enneagram Book, The Road Back to You

Last week, a news release from InterVarsity Press, arrived in our inbox (Lighthouse Trails is on their e-mail list in order to track their continual flow of contemplative/emergent/New-Age sympathizing books). The news release was announcing the seven-year anniversary of the…

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Meditation’s Role in the End of the Age

By Ray Yungen Throughout my Christian life I have periodically heard fellow Christians suggest we are in the last days. Often these comments were initiated from current cases of violent crimes, sexual perversions, war, or natural disasters. Since I knew…

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Letter to the Editor: A Time of Departing Transformed My Friend’s Life!

Dear Lighthouse Trails: Thanks again for all your effort and time that you put into this; it is greatly appreciated by many of us. There was a friend in our Bible study who was very much connected with contemplative spirituality and…

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Is Your Church Doing “Spiritual Formation”? (Important Reasons Why It Shouldn’t)

Editor’s Note: Lighthouse Trails wrote this report in 2014. Since then, we have watched “Spiritual Formation” explode within the church. After over twenty years of warnings, to our dismay, the issue has not been challenged or even questioned by most…

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The Bottom Line of A.W. Tozer: A Hybrid of Complex Proportions

By the Editors at Lighthouse Trails Over the past several years, a number of our readers have asked us why we have not written about the theologian A.W. Tozer and warned our readers about his often quoting and referencing medieval-period…

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Visio Divina: A Mystical Practice by Any Other Name Is Still a Mystical Practice

LTRP Note: The following letter to the editor is asking about a practice called visio divina. Below her letter are our comments, and below that is our article/booklet on Lectio Divina. Dear Lighthouse Trails: I’m attending a Bible study at…

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Will “Revival” in Christian Colleges Bring About a Generation of Mystics — With “Woke,” Not Biblical, Values?

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will be nothing.”—mystic Karl Rahner With the Asbury “revival” spreading into various other colleges and universities (and even churches), and with so much talk about revival today, one question…

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Lent and Contemplative – A Likely Match

According to one definition, Lent is: While the Bible does not give any instruction to practice or participate in Lent, many churches do. In fact, since the contemplative prayer movement has come into full swing, more and more churches are…

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What Christian Leaders and Pastors Need to Know – The Final Outcome of Practicing Contemplative Prayer

LTRP Note: With the majority of Christian colleges and seminaries now bringing in contemplative spirituality via Spiritual Formation programs, and with Christian leaders such as Rick Warren and Beth Moore endorsing the movement, and with countless pastors giving it a…

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