A little more than three years ago I was leading the college group at Church and I made one of the best decisions I’ve ever made: to do a 9-week study on prayer. It revitalized my faith like crazy! I hope it did the same for some of the students, but I’m sure I got more out of it than anyone else; as they say, the best way to learn something is to teach it.

I spent more time in prayer during those nine weeks than any other period of time in my life. And I’m kicking myself right now for letting some of those habits fall to the way side. I know I could use a review of my studies on prayer, so I’m going to revisit it here in my blog. Don’t worry, I won’t go through all nine weeks of the curriculum here in my blog, but I’ll try to touch on a few of the main points. And I’ll start with an overview of what I covered:

The Problem With Prayer.
The biggest problem with prayer is Continue reading →

Ok, I’ll admit it publicly: I used to be a big Bon Jovi fan.  That can guy sing!  And he sure knows how to write a ballad!

One of his famous lines, from the song In These Arms (which he wrote for his wife), goes like this:

“Baby, I want you like the roses want the rain
You know I need you like the poet needs the pain”

First time I heard that I thought, “man he’s onto something…I’m so glad I’m not a poet!!”
But isn’t it true, even for those of us who aren’t true poets, that our deepest and most significant thoughts (or works of art) are brought about by pain? Another way of saying it (much less poetically) is that we learn the most from our mistakes.

I think David, the psalmist, would agree.

Let’s take a look at Psalm 51. My NIV study Bible notes this as “A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” Now that’s some serious poetry-inspiring pain! Continue reading →