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Pray
Talking with God is called prayer. Those that pray to God are prayers. So, prayers talk to God through prayer. The best way to pray is to gives thanks for all things and ask only for God's will to be done.
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House of Refuge—Lesson 2 (of 2) God Addict
We need an EGG, Enemy—Identify who this is. You can make an enemy of God or you can make an enemy of the devil. Whoever your enemy is, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles.” Proverbs 24:17 Glorify—You can glorify yourself or you can glorify God. It’s your decision. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1 God— We need a god in our life. We can be gods over our own lives, or we can have…
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House of Refuge—Lesson 1 (of 2) Identity
I use the word NEST to illustrate that the nest that we build for ourselves in our lives will always be built around our identity. NEST means: Nature—Live with a sin nature or saved nature? Eternity—Are we eternally saved or damned? Servant—Do we serve God or Satan? Trust—Do we trust in the world or do we trust in the Creator?
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Jonesing for Jesus [VIDEO]
God is the only addiction that we should have. That's right. ... He is faithful. He gives back to us better than anything that we've surrendered to him. He ... he multiplies the blessings that he gives to us because he's got a good plan for our lives. His will for our lives is better. His will and his plan is better than our own. He's a good God. Just surrender to him, trust in him and life will be good. The thing that I run into in Celebrate Recovery is that's a huge leap of faith. People don't understand that they're already worshiping little "g" gods. They're already worshiping…
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What does recovery look like? And why do we celebrate it?
A gentleman by the name of Geoff Brown interviewed me for his podcast Kingdom Culture Conversations and the topic of discussion for Part One & Part Two was about Celebrate Recovery. I listened to both of the 2-part episodes after it was released and thought to myself, “How many people are wondering why I gave a testimony—a deeply personal testimony—for all to hear? I mean, really, I was supposed to be promoting a Christ-focused recovery group, but instead I shared more about myself.” If you haven’t heard it, or have no clue what I’m talking about, give it a listen below. I wrote a post called You Don’t Know Me.…
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God’s good pleasure
“for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”Philippians 2:13, YouVersion Bible Link ESV Paul is talking about the Church in Philippi, but I should be able to read it more personally. As I was trying to wrap my head around this verse, I began to reorder the words in another way and swapped the pronouns from “you” to “me”, so the verse looked like this: God works in me for his good pleasure—both to will and to work. So God works in me to will? What does that mean? Also, God works in me to work? Isn’t that repetitive? Since…
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Fellowship can take a hike
I went hiking with a friend and it came up while we talked that God wasn’t answering his prayers. I felt that was a bad time to tell my friend that “no” was an answer. Instead, I told him that God always has a better plan than us because he can see everything that we can’t. He knows things that we’ll never know. My friend didn’t look satisfied with that response. As we continued to hike, the terrain became so rocky and jagged that the trail we were on became very hard to see. We stopped and took our bearings. We had no idea where to go next. We could…
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Prayer is fellowship with God
What if God’s plan unfolds and we don’t have the strength to endure? What if, instead of praying for someone to be delivered from their hardships, we instead pray for them to have the strength to endure? For example, can you imagine someone saying they will not pray for you to be delivered from your hardships? Stick with me on this. I know it sounds harsh, but much of the growth I’ve had in my life directly resulted from endurance of hardships. It needs to be communicated with tactfulness and gentleness, or not said at all. The point being made from the pray-“er” to the pray-“ee” is that the prayer…
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The Funny Thing About Prayers….
In the past I have prayed this prayer: God, please help me to be a better father. Also, please help my child to be more obedient and kind and loving. Give me patience and gentleness and compassion and understanding and self-control—especially over my anger—and help me to be a better reflection of Christ in my life so my kids can look at me and see the virtues of my Savior throughout my deeds and behavior. At the time, I thought it was an awesome prayer. Somehow, God was going to imbue me with a self-control I have never before experienced. I will soon—with God’s grace—have my prayers answered and be…
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What is an answer? Reflection on prayer…
God answers our prayers. What is an answer? It’s a response. An answer CAN BE that God would give me what I asked for if it is according to God’s will. Who is man to know the will of God? The closest we can get to knowing the will of God is to align our prayers with what Scripture speaks to us about who God is. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, Jesus models for them the Lord’s prayer. Within the Lord’s prayer it says “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do,…
