Of all the spiritual activities in which a believer is expected to embrace, prayer, at least in my own experience, is perhaps the most neglected and perplexing.  I don’t want it to be.  I want, as I am sure you want, to be a prayer warrior.  I want to be a champion of intercession and supplication, but to my chagrin, I fall short of such a title. Instead of a warrior, I often feel like a water-boy: a weak, unlearned novice that half-heartedly mumbles a few sophomoric words of random religiosity.  You know what I mean: vague, common, memorized statements …

Casual Christianity is the curse of the culture.  The church seems to be producing more fans these days than actual players.  We fill our “stadiums” from week to week; we cheer, shout, and hold up our spiritual banners; but the truth is, once the “game” is over we leave with little or no intention of living out what we have heard.

     God never intended for us to carry our crosses, pray, read Scripture, and share our testimonies only on Sundays.

A life committed to Christ requires a daily dose of the divine.  You may not go to church every day, …

You do not have to look very far to discover them.  They are all around us, and they come in many different shapes and sizes.  If given the chance, they can actually control our lives and dictate to us what we can and cannot do.  I am talking about excuses.  Everyone has them and everyone uses them.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines excuse as “an attempt to free oneself from obligation or responsibility- an unjustified ploy to limit liability.”  I believe Benjamin Franklin said it best, “He that is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”  …

Moses ascended Mount Sinai to experience the presence of God.  For forty days and forty nights he deprived himself from the basic necessities of this world in order to find the nourishment and nutrition he so desperately needed from another world.  In short, that is the essence of fasting- starving our flesh, while God feeds our faith.

We hear very little of the subject these days; and that’s not really a shock.  We are so enamored with self-promotion, self-fulfillment, and self-advancement that we give very little thought to self-denial.  We have traded the cross-centered life for the consumer-centered cross.  The …

I recently told my wife that we needed to improve our lawn care.  It had been several years since we had a company who maintained our weed and feed, and my plan was to intentionally look for someone to give me a price.  Within a few hours of that conversation a local company actually called me to see if we needed service or maintenance.

After a few minutes of explaining our needs, I gave the salesman all of our information; he seemed genuinely surprised that I was so eager to talk with him and give him my business.  I then …