I started running cross-country the spring of my freshman year. By the time summer came around, I was running 50 miles a week! When school started back and our team began running together, I found I was in great shape! Because of the time and effort I had put into training, I was able to run varsity!

Yet, in all my training, I neglected one very important thing: good nutrition. My shins began hurting when I ran, and after many tests and doctor visits, I was told my shins had developed tiny holes throughout them. This was awful news; it meant I had to stop running.

Running 50 miles a week will get you skinny—for me, too skinny. After I was injured, I decided to gain weight. I read that to gain weight you needed to eat more, so I doubled my calorie intake, protein intake, as well as fat intake!

After about three weeks of no change, I started doing research. I came across a line that I’ve heard my entire life, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” This simple truth echoed in my head, and I realized what I had done wrong all along. Once I started eating breakfast, my body adjusted to the weight I was seeking!

The same thing happened in my relationship with Christ. I discovered that I can “train” by attending worship services, reading books, and listening to preaching, but until I get the nutrition my soul needs, I’m vulnerable to a weak spot breaking!

In Jeremiah 31:25, God says, “For I satisfy the thirsty person, and feed all those who are weak.” I get thirsty and weak! Everyone gets thirsty and weak! I just had to realize I was weak before I was strengthened. If I don’t realize I am weak, then I think I am strong.

Once I realized I was only “training” but not getting the nutrition my soul needed, I began eating breakfast with God. Just like the holes that developed in my bones healed, my relationship with Christ gained the nutrition it needed and became more and more solid.

There is no reason for me to not stuff my face with God’s Word! I made the choice to starve myself in the past, but no more! I have found a hunger for the Lord and plan on not letting it go.

“God, I thank you that you are the Bread of Life! Increase my hunger for you and your Word!”

Her eyes enflamed with steely determination, her left eye twitching slightly in anticipation. “This is no drill soldier,” she said through gritted teeth. “This is as real as it gets.” Without another word we tightly fastened our seatbelts. We both knew what was at stake. It was the calm before the storm; I took a deep breath…ZOOM! The mini-van screeched out from the garage, sparks flying from the spinning tires. Flinging around in a 180 degree pivot, she kicked it into fourth gear and we were off–just another day of errands with my mother.

She had been cruelly deceived into becoming a stay-at-home-mom by my brother. He had been so cute! However, two years later marked the end of an era; the age of down-time and freedom was over. As I charged out of the womb crying and needy, I ushered in the age of driving and stress. She was like the Energizer Bunny, her mammoth to-do lists requiring bookmarks, and on this particular trip, she had around thirty-eight stops to make, and approximately twelve minutes to make them.

We’d made good progress. Our tires were worn down to the rims. Our feet floated on a pool of accumulated sweat on the floor, and we weren’t on “speaking-terms,” but we had made it to page three of the list. Around 3:00 p.m. we finally decided on a pit-stop at McDonalds drive-thru for lunch.

I could see my mother’s face redden as the man in front of us apparently had never navigated through a drive-thru before. Impatiently tapping her fingers, she shot anxious glances at the clock, “Come ON! Is no one else EVER in a hurry!?” Finally we pulled up. Without a breath she blurted, “Two-burgers-no-onions-a-coke-and-a-sprite-make-it-quick-buddy!” Yes, ma’am. Pay at first window; pick up food at second window. Peeling around to the window my mother threw money at the worker, “Just-keep-the-change-I-don’t-have-time!” My mom then entered into light-speed towards the dry-cleaners, mumbling about the slowness of “fast” food these days. Nervously I interrupted her, “Um …mom…weren’t we going to get our food?” My mother realized that after paying she had blown right past the second window without picking up our order!

My family likes to give my mother a hard time about this story, but how many of us are guilty of this in our prayer life? Too rushed in the morning, too busy during the day, and too tired at night, we often come to God quickly with a list of wants or concerns but then quickly rush off to the next activity. Often I’ve become frustrated when I feel like God isn’t answering my prayers as quickly as I want or I can’t hear His guidance. However, the problem is not with God, He is more than willing to speak to us; we just don’t give Him the chance.

Psalms 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” I encourage you not to live a drive-through prayer life; God won’t answer if He isn’t given time.

I have now realized that my timing is not always the best. Usually if I’m thinking it, I say it. Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to portray that I am offensive. Sometimes I wish I just thought a little longer before I began talking.

The other night I came home late from a football game. Instead of waiting for my parents to regain consciousness from their deep sleep, I just started telling them about my night. They told me to “stop yelling,” and I told them to “talk louder.” Since they had been asleep, and I had been at a football game, we were on very different volume levels. So within a very short time, the conversation was no longer pleasant and the sweet family moment ruined. It was all because of my bad timing. If I had waited to tell them after they had woken up or even the next morning, everything would have been much more pleasant for everyone!

I did not take into account where my parents had been. They had been in a silent room asleep, and I still hadn’t calmed down from the exciting game. If I had tried to meet them where they were, then I would have been able to communicate with them much better. Instead, I tried to speak to them from where I was, which was way too strong for them. I should have spoken in a gentle, light voice, because they would have received my words better!

Timing is everything. The world often reacts to the gospel in the same way my parents reacted to my words that night. The world often shuts us down when we try to share the gospel, but it is usually because of how WE present it! If we can meet people where they are, and speak to them in a loving, personal way, our words will be received much better! I pray that from now on we can discern where people are and minister to them in the times they are most receptive.

I don’t have what you’d call a “driven” personality. My motto is: Why put off until tomorrow what you can put off indefinitely? Over the years I have tested my dad’s patience many times with my token phrase: “I’ll do it later….” I thought I was getting by just fine with this approach to life until last year, during my second semester of college. That was a time when my dad would say: Justice is sweet.

A gentle shake brought my Thursday morning to an unexpected early beginning. Whipping the sleep from my eyes I looked to see my mother standing over my bed, “Daniel, you need to print off your final exam schedule.” Giving an annoyed shrug I muttered, “Ya I know, I’ll do it later,” and I went back to sleep. The day went on, and late that night my dad approached me (for the fifth time!), “Dan, do you have your exam scheduled figured out yet?” Finally the nagging got to me, and I quickly printed off my schedule and went on to bed.

Friday morning came and I was feeling good. Glancing at my exam schedule I saw that my first exam was at 9 a.m.

8:30: “Ah-ha! Thirty minutes early and the FIRST student here. Might as well do a bit of last minute studying.”

8:45: “Wow, my professor sure is going to be impressed with me! STILL the only one here!”

8:50: “I’m starting to get lonely, honestly, is it too hard to show up to a test a little early? Come on guys, learn to be responsible like me!”

8:55: “Ok…soooo…am I in the right classroom?”

9:01: “I’m in huge trouble…”

In absolute horror I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper with my exam outline messily scribbled on it:

ROST 2203 Final:

Classroom-U117

Time: 9 a.m.

Day: THURSDAY

The biggest consequence I had to face was not getting a big solid ‘F’ in that class. Nor was it the wasted tuition money. Both those seemed like a weekend in Disneyland compared to what I had to do next…tell my dad.

I think sometimes the “I’ll do it later” attitude costs us much more than just good grades. Has God ever asked you to do something, but you didn’t feel ready? Many times in my life I’ve felt Him telling me to witness to people, or to read my Bible more, or attend mid-week prayer service, but I’ve put it off, until later. After all, I fully intended to do those things … eventually. When I felt like doing it. But of course, too often by the time the “feeling” comes around, the opportunity is past.

Jesus told a parable about two sons. The father asked each to work in his vineyard. The first son said he would be glad to do it but he never got around to it. The second son said he wouldn’t do it, but he did (Matt. 21:28-31). The moral of the story? Talk is cheap. Good intentions are no substitute for obedience. God takes pleasure in His children who do God’s will.

I love music. I started learning drums about eight years ago and have been privileged to play in numerous bands during this time. I also enjoy playing guitar and currently play in a rock band called Fading Rebel and love it! My interest in music led me to start reading a book I found in my school’s bookstore called The Gospel According to The Beatles by Steve Turner. It is a fascinating book about the spiritual journey of the Beatles and what part religion played in their lives. As I was reading the other day, I came across a controversial comment John Lennon made during the height of their success, where he claimed the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” Needless to say, that one statement blew up into something much bigger! Radio stations pulled Beatles’ songs out of their rotation, towns held record-burning assemblies, and many religious leaders started preaching against the blasphemous rock group. It was seen as an arrogant quote by someone whose ego had grown to such a degree that he now placed his band ahead of Jesus. In my opinion, however, Lennon never meant for his words to come across that way. It may have been poor judgment, but he was simply noting that people were far more excited about the Beatles than they were about Jesus. And you know what? He was right. Beatlemania was taking hold of Europe and North America in a powerful way and church attendance continued to drop. People were treating the Beatles as messiah figures; looking to them for guidance, praising them, and even hoping to be healed by them. During this craze, many people let Jesus take a back seat in their lives as The Beatles sat up front.

This made me think about my life today. Sure, the Beatles aren’t around, but what is more popular than Jesus today? The first of the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20, says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Am I living this? There are all kinds of gods out there: money, success, fun, sports. Anything that rules my life can be a god. I constantly have to look at my own life to see what gods I have chosen for myself. A good indication is how I spend my time. Some days I’m on the run all day, and then I come home and have time to only read one chapter in my Bible before I drift off to sleep. Is God really God in my life, or is He just one of many? There is a war waging every day for first place in my life, and I need to make sure I am fighting for the right side.

I have a love/hate relationship with malls. When I go to the mall, I’m on a mission: I like to know exactly what I’m looking for so I spend the least amount of time in the mall as possible. I do this because nothing bores me more than the hustle and bustle of a busy shopping center. The other day I was on a mission but could not find what I was searching for. I spent hours looking but to no avail, so I decided to check one last store. As the escalator slowly carried me to my destination my hopes were dashed as the top floor came into view but not my object of desire. By this time I was too tired to go on. I was so discouraged and exhausted I wanted to collapse right there; but as I turned around in disappointment, my heart was lifted. In front of me was the most amazing bed I had ever seen! Right there at the top of the escalator! I didn’t care that everyone was watching; I didn’t care that it was probably not allowed; I didn’t care about my dignity. All I could think about was how great it would be to catch a few minutes of much-needed rest. I stepped forward and fell to the bed below me. This will feel so nice…SMACK. Oh, the pain. Realization hit me like a wooden box spring. Actually, it was exactly like that. The bed I had just thrown myself on was not so much a “bed” as a display of pillows and sheets arrayed across a mattress-less exhibit. I should have chosen the floor…I closed my eyes to the sound of muffled laughter around me.

Sometimes life can tire us out. We get caught up in so much busy activity that we constantly find ourselves at the end of our rope. We wear ourselves down as our schedules fill up. Life starts to become a list of tasks to complete rather than a journey with our Creator. We completely forget about God until we collapse out of weariness. Only then do we remember the promise Jesus gives in Matthew 11:28-29: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Life doesn’t have to be crazy. We don’t have to wait until we have lost our cool with our friends, neglected our family, or worn ourselves to the ground. Jesus offers rest for us today. I constantly have to take a step back and re-evaluate how busy I have made my life. Is this stuff God really wants me to do or am I going full-speed ahead without even knowing where I’m headed? Jesus can bring peace to our lives, so we can actually enjoy the race instead of just reaching the finish line.

Rock climbing is my favorite thing to do. It’s technical; every problem is different and requires thought to solve. I also have to be strong enough. I have to rely on my strength to keep me from falling. The type of climbing I do doesn’t use a harness. If I lose my grip I fall. When I climb indoors the floor is covered with padding but outside the only padding I have is a small pad.

I climb once a week. It’s great! I get to climb with other climbers and see the progress we make as we climb from week to week. When I first started, everyone helped me…A LOT. Over time my grip got stronger, and I got better at solving each climb. Now that I’ve been climbing for a while I have to concentrate on maintaining my grip instead of getting it stronger. If I miss a week or more, my grip gets very weak; and as a consequence, it takes me a week or longer to get as strong as I was before I missed. Because I only climb once a week, I can only get so strong. In order to grow as a climber I need to climb more than once a week.

I am only a regular, not an actual, member of the climbing gym I go to. Though I am better than some members, because I climb more, the members who are serious are AMAZING! The growth of a climber is all about how much they put into it. Those who climb throughout the week are incredible! I climb once a week and I am just average; but if I put more into it, I could get better very quickly!

God has been teaching me a lot through climbing. I have learned that just as with climbing, I grow according to what I put into my relationship with Christ. If I just put one day into my relationship with Christ, I will only be working on maintaining my relationship. Though if I have time with Christ all through out the week, I will be growing without choice; it’ll just happen!

“Lord, I thank you for having a relationship with me, and I pray that I will pursue to grow in my relationship with You daily.”

“Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that your labor is not in vain” 1 Corinthians 15:58

We are constantly bombarded with new technology that can distract, calm, invigorate, nurture, and brainwash us. It is a constant temptation, always right at our fingertips, always beckoning our attention. We have learned to juggle and multi-task to keep various technologies functioning at once. If that is too much of a challenge for us, we can always press the pause button. Pause the iPod, pause the movie, pause the television show. The pause function represents control over our intake and output. While we occasionally pause the technological stimuli from overloading our minds, we sometimes forget to do the same thing in our every day lives.

Like the endless array of colorful technology, our lives spin in a constant whirlwind of activities, commitments, and opportunities. Recently I have found myself so wrapped up in activities that I forget why I enjoyed them to begin with. As a whole, the activities become mindless and meaningless, causing me to detest my involvement in any of them, though at one point I enjoyed all of them. Soon scripture comes to mind, transforming my perspective.

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. I Kings 19: 11-12

This passage reminds me of God’s character and constant nature. Instead of arriving in a flamboyant, noticeable fire or storm, God reveals Himself in a “gentle whisper” or a “still, small voice.” We must desire His will and put everything else on hold in order to hear what He has to say.

Psalms 46:10 also instills this thought in my mind, Be still and know that I am God. I am a very active person. The only time I am ever still is when I am sleeping, and even that amount of time is limited. I eat on the go, I pray on the go, I think on the go. I don’t have down-time. But is this really honoring God? If I blast my stereo, turn up the television, and constantly surf the net without cease, I am going to miss something tangible in life that cannot be captured within the confines of an LCD screen.

In the same way, by continuing to try and juggle all my activities, even though I may claim some of the for Christ, I am demonstrating my proclivity to miss God. If I live my life like a whirlwind, I am simply going to be disappointed when God is not in the whirlwind. In pursuing my busy activities, I may miss His “still, small voice” that shows me the answers to all of my questions. Therefore, as I reflect on this depiction of a mysterious God, I hope I may push aside my wish to see God in a fire and listen to Him instead when it is hardest to hear – when I am silent and the outer stimuli is paused to reveal a much more in-depth, relational encounter with my Maker.

Every day when I open my e-mail, I find it’s constantly flooded with infamous forwards from family and friends that have already haunted inboxes around the world for years.

You know the ones I’m talking about—the cheesy, ridiculous e-mail forwards that result in hardcore eye rolling and cause you to click “delete” as fast as possible. And most of them warn that if you don’t forward it on to at least 50 percent of the contacts in your address book, you’ll be cursed, resulting in bad luck or misfortune for a lengthy amount of time.

I think my all-time favorite forward is the one asking me not to support Pepsi anymore because they’ve taken the name of God out of the Pledge of Allegiance printed on their cans. I’ve received that warning more than 20 times since 1997 and have yet to see the pledge printed on ANY Pepsi can—ever.

However, I did receive a forward from a friend the other day that I hadn’t seen before. I thought I would give it a read through since it was new information. It said:

I wonder what would happen if you treated your Bible like you treat your cell phone.

What if you carried it around in your purse or pocket all day?

What if you flipped through it several times a day?

What if you turned back to go get it if you left it somewhere?

What if you used it to receive messages from the text?

What if you treated it like you couldn’t live without it?

What if you gave them to kids as gifts?

What if you used it when you traveled?

What if you used it in emergencies?

This may have come in the form of a dreaded e-mail forward, but it bears much truth. It actually made me think about where my priorities are regarding God’s Word.

The world seems to promote lives of busyness these days; so many of us have a hard time even opening our Bibles more than three times a week (sometimes less). And it doesn’t seem to be the ideal accessory for the average person to tote around on a daily basis—or is it?

No wonder a lot of Christians have a hard time defending our faith—myself included. I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken for granted my freedom to go to God’s Word and proclaim it openly. I’ve taken for granted the fact that I CAN carry and study my Bible in public without fear of persecution.

Second Timothy 3:16-17 (HCSB) says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

And Hebrews 4:12 (HCSB) says, “The word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as to divide soul, spirit, joints, and marrow; it is a judge of the ideas and thoughts of the heart.”

With such a powerful tool available for believers, why don’t we cherish it and use it more?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

It’s that time of year again.  The calendar is fresh and uncluttered.  The blank pages are as crisp as the winter temperatures, and the possibilities that lie ahead are endless.  It is also the time when many of us decide to make some changes in our lives, and some even take the time to write lists of New Year’s resolutions.  That’s great.  After all, as Socrates is reported to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  But, may I suggest that as you are looking at the latest self-help manuals and seeking the perfect exercise regimen to “tighten your abs in just 8 weeks” that you also take the time to begin the New Year with God and His Word?  

As the Gospel of John notes, the Word is more than just a text message from heaven.  The Word was there in the beginning as “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light’” (Gen. 1:3).  The Word was there when “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” (Gen 12:1).  The Word was there when God called to Moses from the burning bush (Ex. 3), and it was there when Josiah read the Book of the Covenant to “all the people from great to small … and made a covenant in the Lord’s presence” (2 Chron. 34). 

The Word was there when the angel of the Lord said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). John writes, “The Word became flesh and took up residence among us” (John 1:14).  The Word is still among us as Jesus beckons us to follow Him into the year which lies ahead. The best thing we can do as we prepare for the journey of 2008 is to answer that call with a “Yes, Lord” and a resolution to spend time with Him and His Word.  He will lead, convict, inspire, restrain, enlighten, and transform our lives in ways unimaginable in this New Year.   So how about it?  Are you up to the challenge?  Make time to spend time with God and His Word this year. I promise it will make all the difference in 2008.  

Lord Jesus, you are the Living Word and the lamp which guides my steps.  Lead me in your ways and reveal your truths to me as I seek them in your Word.  Strengthen my resolve to learn more of you in 2008 and cause me to crave the pure spiritual milk of your Word so that I may grow up in my salvation (1 Peter 2:2).  In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.