Prayer Lifts You Up

In Matthew 7:7-8 – Jesus said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

This is one of my favorite scriptures… for many reasons really. The number one reason is that I wholeheartedly believe that you will never receive what you want or need unless you take the necessary step of simply asking for it. Yet, how many of us never take that simple but crucial step? We may wish for change. We may hope we’ll get a new job, find a loving spouse, or that a wayward child will find his/her way back home, but unless we fall to our knees and ask, we’re simply wishing without the power of God to back it up.

What If…

What if everyone in the world prayed regularly? Have you ever wondered what that would be like? What kind of difference would that mean to the world at large? If each one of us took our praise and pain to the Lord, what would that do for our character? If we took others pains to the Lord, what would it do for theirs? How many Sauls would transform into Pauls?

Unplug

Everyone is plugged in. I took my wife to dinner the other night and as I placed my phone next to my plate, which I regret to say has become habitual, I looked around and saw face after face illuminated by the same small rectangular object that had I just put on the table. Like the nourishment I was about to partake, our phones…

Grace is a $100 Bill

It may seem strange for me to equate grace with money. You may find it a little bit blasphemous, but let me tell you a story of something that happened to me over 10 years ago…

The Great Recession had just swept through the United States and very few people were untouched by its insatiable and greedy presence. My own real estate and hard money businesses had been eaten alive and after letting go over 80 percent of my workforce, closing down the office, and moving everything to the basement of a house I could no longer afford, it was difficult to see God’s grace.

Jaclyn and I had three small children, all under the age of three, our accounts had been wiped out, all my properties, which had been leveraged to the hilt, were in foreclosure, and the loans I had made to other investors were in default. I had painted myself into a corner and felt the room closing in on me.

It was then that God urged…

Transformed

In my twenties, I was cocky salesman who traveled from port-to-port. I was good at what I did and believed the world owed me some pretty hefty favors. Then one day in walked a blond who somehow changed my life forever. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but the joke was on me. This blond was the beginning of my own transformation.

How?

It wasn’t her faith… but her lack of faith that suddenly brought God back to mind. I saw first hand what the belief in ‘graceless god’ can do to someone and subsequently how the uncovering of the true Grace of God can absolutely free someone.

The blond is now my wife, Jaclyn. Through her, I got to witness the journey from point A to point Z. I watched as a woman wracked by fear and distrust unraveled the mystery of God’s grace and her transformation eventually became mine. I watched as she finally accepted Christ and how that leap of trust and newfound courage of faith changed every aspect of her. How she talked, how she walked, even how she thought. Grace is truly a game-changer.

Last Call?

Have you experienced a reawakening? That moment when your whole world tilts and then shifts and you realize the who’s who is not you, but rather God? It usually takes place because one day we wake up in an existential crisis and think, “What’s the point?” or “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

When this happens, most of us feel a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. We’re lost in this great big world trying to scrape together some semblance of meaning.

At this point, we have really, two directions to go. Toward God or toward death. I believe that this second journey is precipitated by the call of Jesus. He is whispering our names, trying to herd us back onto the right path. However there are several, common obstacles that get in the way. They are often a crisis in faith, hope, and love.

Prayer is a Verb

Sometimes prayer becomes only a noun in life. It’s more of a checklist item instead of an exercise in faith. We say it at dinner time, at bedtime with our children, at the beginning and end of church, and sometimes we say it quickly before a hard test or an important meeting. However, the true […]

Is Your God a Lesser God?

We are all children of a lesser god at one time or another in our lives. What I mean to say is we have all formed God in our head to meet our needs and often this picture is much less than the God on high and a lot more like ourselves. We put God […]

Choose Joy

According to “Theopedia,” joy is “a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence, and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness. It appears 88 times in the Old Testament in 22 books; 57 times in the New Testament in 18 […]

Option A or Option B?

We’re anxious, stressed, worried and as our heavy burdens rise up and rear their ugly heads, we suddenly look to the bench and say, “Hey you, GOD, you can jump in any time now.” We want to do it our way until we can’t anymore. When the self-reliance is too unbearable to manage, we find ourselves on our knees ready to give it back to God again.