If I have a spontaneous date with my wife, that's spectacular. But you know, it's also really

spectacular. If I take time to think out exactly what I want to do, say, how I want the evening to go,

so whether it's written or whether it's extemporaneous is secondary only to the fact of, does it reflect a genuine

heart? Because you can write a beautiful prayer and it be completely dead. Or you could offer

an extemporaneous utterance, Paul says. But if it's not with love, it's meaningless as well.

Jonathan Arnold serves as associate professor of theological studies at Cedarville University.

Zach Carter serves as the senior pastor of Redeemer Church in Huntsville, Alabama.

Together, they're the editors of Cloud of Witnesses,

a treasury of prayers and petitions through the ages from Crossway.

Jonathan and Zach, thanks so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast.

Great to be here. Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

So in the introduction to this new book that you two have worked on together,

you write that this project was born from frustrations

that you both felt related to churches that you've been a part of, or at least the church

tradition that you both are from. And I wonder if you could just start off by explaining a little

bit more. What do you mean by that? What were those frustrations that you felt?

And how does that relate even more broadly to the way that evangelicals often view their churches,

view the past, view church history? Yeah, that's a great question. My own background,

which really poured into the beginning of this project, is from a broad Baptist background that was very unaware of its history, at least in the version that I received. And so as I was moving through

my own academic career and realizing that I really didn't have an understanding of why my

church tradition believed what it believed or how it came to be.

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