On Prayer

"Samuel Chadwick writes, 'The one concern of the Devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayer-less studies, prayer-less work, and prayer-less religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.'
The best time for prayer isn't found. It's made. The average Christian spends very little time in prayer – then wonders why he or she has no faith and experience no power. If we are too busy to pray, we are too busy to experience the power of God in ministry. We can be very busy, but not necessarily productive because we lack faith. One of the main reasons we lack faith is because we don't pray. Consistent prayer builds consistent faith."

--Mary Southerland, from Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox

It Was Funny

Here's what made my evening so funny:

Elliptical Bike: 20 minutes, burning 185 calories
Treadmill: 10 minutes, running at a pace of 7.0, burning 190 calories
Abdomen Workout: 3 sets of 15

On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store:
2 Fat Free, Thick and Creamy Yoplait Yogurts (Lemon Meringue): $.65 each
1/2 pint of blueberries: $3.99
Kashi Go Lean Crunch: $3.79
Bananas: $1.39
1/2 Gallon Skim Milk: $2.05

Cashier: "Would you be interested in our special of the week - Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies?"

Priceless.

It just struck me as funny.

Hair Experiment

We've experimented with Jonah's hair. Oakley likes this one, I kinda like the spiked looked. Either way, he's a player!

All Dressed Up

These are some beautiful children!

The Other Kids

Savannah has learned to love Sky.

Zoey and Sky

Dick Foth-ism's

We had our Chi Alpha Winter Conference over the weekend - it was great as usual. This year's speaker was Dick Foth, minister at large in Washington, DC. Very rarely do I hear someone speak and wish they would keep going. Dick was that kind of speaker. He said many things that made me think. Here are just a few that I was able to write down:

When you are loved by people, you make better decisions.


The highest form of affirmation is prayer. You are recognizing someone's value when you pray for them.

When I play with the kids, I am loving my wife. (she spends all day with them)

It's not critical where you are going, it's whom you're traveling with.

Jesus is the slowest person on time.

Updates

Yes, I need to seriously update my blog. Family and Friends from around the world are asking for pictures, etc. So, in the next few days I'll be adding some pictures to my blog. I'll start with this one of the whole fam.

A Bible Reading Challenge

I challenged myself and our students be immersed in God's Word by taking a 90 day through the Bible challenge. Every book, every chapter, every verse of the Bible in 90 days. We started last week and are just finishing up Numbers. That's a lot of reading. But there is something to just reading God's Word, even if it is talking about every little detail of the Tent of Meeting. We've also talked about prayer the last several weeks in Chi Alpha. Now, that's a powerful combo - an increased consumption of God's Word and focused prayer. We're anticipating transformation!

It's Bone Chilling Outside

It's 1 degree in Morgantown right now. I walked down to the coffee shop for my large, with room, cup-o-joe and for some reason I kept wanting to sing the Beach Boys song, "California Dreaming." The high today is a balmy 9 degrees and it's not supposed to be above freezing all week. Sometimes I wonder why we moved to West Virginia from Tampa, Florida. But honestly, we love it - as long as summer comes.