Lifting Up Our Hearts

John Calvin understood the importance of prayer to the Christian life and wrote extensively on the subject in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Now modern readers can come to a firmer grasp of how the Reformer viewed prayer by reading his actual prayers. One of the greatest depositories for Calvin's prayers is within his lectures on the Old Testament books of Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets.

Each lecture would end with a prayer that seemed extemporaneous and reflected, in retrospect, upon the text he had just taught. Compiled in this volume are 150 of these prayers, arranged by subject and accompanied by the Scripture passage Calvin was expounding. These rich prayers of the great Reformer provide a valuable devotional tool to assist us as we lift up our hearts to God.