As I was saying (over a month ago) in my post titled The Fertile Soil of Prayer (March 29, 2014), when people think of prayer they often get this feeling deep down in their stomach… a sense of guilt: “I’m not praying enough” “I must not be a good Christian” “If people only knew how little I actually pray”.

We all know that every “good Christian” spends at least 30 minutes a day doing their “devotions”, right? And anything less than that is unacceptable. Especially when you consider that our goal is to “pray without ceasing”!

I’m sure I’m not the only one who often feels like this goal is so unachievable that I might as well not even try to spend time with God. But as I was saying in The Fertile Soil of Prayer my goal has been for us all to shed the guilty feeling or burdensome weight we often associate with prayer and come to see prayer as a gift we get to open. Continue reading →

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 →

I grew up listening to John Denver. In fact the very first concert I ever attended was a John Denver concert with my parents at the age of 5. His sweet, smooth voice seemed to comfort me and infuse me with a sense of peace. You can literally hear him smiling as he sings. I really wish he had come to know Jesus – I think they would have been best friends.

Just a few years ago I stumbled upon his website and found a quote from John Denver that stirred my soul.

“My purpose in performing is to communicate the joy I experience in living.”

I love that! The quote breaks down a little when we apply it to worship because singing worship songs is not a performance (really). Although an argument could be made that corporate/congregational worship is a joint performance, with the audience being God. So that we are together performing for an audience of One. Continue reading →

10 WAYS TO WORSHIP WITHOUT MUSIC

From an article at Saddleback.com (which is no longer available online)
 
 

Worship isn’t just a part of your life — it’s everything you do!
If you’ve been following this blog you know that I just finished a three-part series based on the notes to my first sermon: Worship 101: The Who, What, When, Where, Why and What. Especially towards the end of that series you heard me say (you read) that worship through music is only a small portion of what true, biblical worship is all about. Another great reference is Rick Warren’s section in The Purpose Driven Life on “You Were Made for God’s Pleasure.” Worship is the process of surrendering our entire life into God’s hands. Everything we do can – and should — be an act of worship.

How do we apply that to our life? God designed us to worship Him with our whole lives. Are there actually spiritual habits that we can build into our lives that help us to worship God more deeply? YES! Here are ten habits than can help build worship into your life on a daily basis. Continue reading →