Learning Prayer and Holiness

Journaling 1-18-12

…Commitments are made, habits are formed, and battles are fought against a real enemy…

That quote from J.I. Packer has stuck with me ever since I read it five days ago. He was writing about how prayer and holiness are learned. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we do not automatically know how to pray, and our lives do not immediately appear to be holy. Instead, we must learn holiness and how to pray through experience. It’s difficult to know how to pray for something that you’ve never experienced. If you’ve never personally experienced healing, it can be difficult to pray for healing with the same faith and passion as someone who has experienced it first hand. In the same way, we do not learn how to live our lives differently until we start living our lives differently. Holiness is learned as we experience it. Continue Reading…

Still Working On It

So my plan has been to wake up early to spend 30 minutes in Scripture, devotions, journaling, and prayer. It has been two days and I still have not been able to get myself out of bed early. I’ve still accomplished my 30 minute goal later in the day on both occasions, but I am getting frustrated with my morning routine. I tried going to bed earlier, but I am such a snooze addict that it hasn’t helped. Maybe I should revisit the routine that I tried to start a while ago. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I would probably sleep all day if given the opportunity. Continue Reading…

Theme For The Year

I keep hearing people talking about their “word for the year”. It’s a lot like having a resolution, but more general. Some say they want to be more patient or productive. Some want to focus on worship while others want to be more obedient or disciplined. Although we’ve done this together as the staff of a church, I’ve never done it personally. Some of that probably has to do with my aversion to new years resolutions. I think my longest resolution lasted just over a month.

The more I thought about it this year, the more I felt like I could do a word for the coming year. A song that I haven’t heard in a while came on the radio yesterday morning and as I listened to it, I began to feel like it could be my theme song for the coming year. Continue Reading…

Zeitgeist 2011

Google Zeitgeist

Google's Global Fastest Rising Searches, 2011

It’s always interesting to me to see what the world has searched for over the past year. Google has done a great job in the past years of showing that information through their Zeitgeist, and this year is no different. From the fastest rising searches to the fastest falling, it’s interesting to see what people wanted to know about the most and what they stopped caring about this past year. Continue Reading…

Top 10 Posts of 2011

Top 10Everyone else seems to be doing it, so I guess I’ll jump on the bandwagon once again.

I’m sure there are different ways of measuring what posts have done the best over the course of a year. Even between WordPress stats and Google Analytics, I get different results as to how many views each of my posts has gotten. Continue Reading…

What Christmas is All About

If I hear another song about Santa Clause or chestnuts roasting over a fire, I might go insane. I really don’t mind Christmas music, but it’s the same songs over and over and over again. As we all get used to being back at work or school, let’s keep in mind what Christmas is really about. It’s not about presents or Santa, family time or giving to others. Christmas is about the birth of The Savior who would later take our sins to the cross and rise again. Christmas is about Jesus Christ.

A New Chapter

Afraid of the Dark

Over the past few years, the idea of becoming a consultant or at least doing some consulting work has come up in conversations I’ve had with friends, coworkers, and even some of my bosses. Every time it had been nothing more than a fleeting thought for me, and I continued on with what I do, sometimes complaining about my vocational status along the way. It’s not that I didn’t think I had the knowledge to do it, I just didn’t know where to start. Beyond that, I was afraid. Nothing is scarier than venturing out into the unknown. Why do you think most kids are afraid of the dark? Continue Reading…

Thank You

thank you

Sometimes it’s hard for me to say thank you. I encourage my children to say thank you at every appropriate time, but I myself fail at it often. I’ve been getting better at this recently, but sometimes the little things that people do for me happen without recognition. To all of you whom I’ve failed to thank, I’m sorry.

While I sometimes forget to say thank you for little things, I would like to think that I don’t miss the big things. I was recently given a check to get my kids the things that they really wanted for Christmas. I was sure to thank that person a few times, and was probably on the verge of becoming annoying. Then there are times when gifts are given anonymously. There was a season when my family would receive anonymous gifts in the form of gift cards to the local grocery store quite often. The timing was almost always perfect in that season, and we were always grateful to God because we had no one else to thank. Continue Reading…

Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno

I find it interesting how the status of a person can elevate them above consequences in the minds of their supporters. The news of Joe Paterno losing his job sparked riots in State College. To his supporters involved in the riots, Paterno is not culpable for anything in regards to the scandal that has flooded media outlets this past week. I don’t know if they feel that he fulfilled his duty in the matter, or that his actions (or lack there of) are not that big of a deal, but it seems that they are more worried about who’s going to coach Penn State football than the lives that have been affected by what has happened. Continue Reading…

Patience

Patience

I remain confident of this
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.
Psalm 27:13-14 NIV

Am I being patient? I have not learned to wait on the LORD. I have an idea of what my general calling is, but am still trying to discern my specific calling. Any time I’ve had an idea of what my specific calling might be, I’ve chased after it instead of being still and waiting on God. I have a burning desire inside of me to do certain things in ministry, but when I try to quench those desire I tend to get stuck and fall back to where I was before. Continue Reading…

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