The Psalms can teach us how to pray.  I started re-reading Psalms this week and was blown away by King David, the author of many of the Psalms in the Bible’s Old Testament.

As an example, let’s look at Psalm 6:6-8. “I am exhausted as I grown; all night long I drench my bed in tears; my tears saturate the cushion beneath me. My eyes grow dim from suffering; they grow weak because of all my enemies. Turn back from me, all you who behave wickedly, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping!”

What struck me was how anguished David was and how he expressed that in prayer to God. David didn’t write polite, safe prayers. He poured out his heart, good and bad, to God.

David also expressed his desperate need for God and his total reliance on Him and his expectation that his prayers would be heard.

So, we can learn a lot from David through the Psalms on how to pray. It’s not a formula…it’s just authentic. Just talk with God. Share your thoughts, your pains, your frustrations, your excitement, and your hopes. And if that’s too formulaic, just cry out to God in whatever way makes sense to you. And know that God DOES hear you.

So, thanks King David for teaching us how to pray in a vulnerable, transparent way.

Josh Tollison wrote a song called “Always” that brings tears to my eyes everytime I hear it. My words here don’t do it justice… so definitely visit his site and listen to the song.

Because Josh’s song affects me so much, I thought I’d share some of the lyrics and WHY they are so meaningful to me.

“Can you hear me when I’m calling out your name? I guess sometimes I get the feeling, that I’m all alone, that I’m doing this whole thing on my own…but then,

…you were right there when I need you the most, in the darkness when my hope is lost. I know, I know, that you hear me when I call.”

…and you tell me everything is gonna be OK, you’re right there, you’re right there, you’re right here…always!”

I think this song is so profound because I think of all the years I ran away from God…but He was right there ALWAYS. I had spent so much time running and denying Him that I was in darkness and couldn’t see. When I finally decided to seek Him it’s like the light switch was turned on and there He was…waiting for me.

God is like a loving Father who must be patient as he sees his child rejecting his help and trying to do it “all on my own”. He waits for us to swallow our pride and humbly ask for help. And then, instead of criticizing our pride or stubbornness, he embraces us in unconditional love.

Just like in Josh’s song, when I finally called out to God…He heard me and He forgave me. And now I have Him to walk with and talk with ALWAYS.

Do you ever feel like you are all alone, struggling to get through life all by yourself? Remember, God IS always there. He wants you to love Him just as much as He loves you. But because of His gift of Free Will, it’s a choice you have to make.

Even if you are a life-long Christian, I encourage you to seek Him with ALL of your heart…daily. When you feel like all hope is lost because of growing debt, a job loss, marital problems, or just life’s pressures…turn to God and He will be there.

If you’ve never heard Josh’s music, visit his page on myspace.

Thanks Josh for using your God given talents to bring Joy to my heart. God Bless.

Have you ever met someone for the first time and felt like Mr. Cellophane from the musical Chicago? I have felt this way more often than I care to admit. In other cultures, it might be the norm, but in America, not looking someone in the eye sends a message: ”You aren’t very important to me”. Forget about trying to remember someone’s name; the eyes come first.

God commands us to love one another (1 John 3:23). Love can be communicated in many different ways… by listening, by helping, through words of encouragement and hope, and through acts of selfless service. But love always starts with ”hello”. When you first meet someone, do you give them undivided attention, or are you looking for the next person to meet?

I can count on one hand the times in my life when I have witnessed someone giving consistent focused attention to a group of new people; treating each person as uniquely important. How about you?

We meet new people at the grocery store, at the pharmacy, standing in line for tickets to a show, waiting for a table at a restaurant, at a power-lunch or networking event, and even at church. How do you make people feel when you first meet them? My suggestion is to first make them feel important to you with your eyes. There are other suggestions, but this is a good first step.

In my church, there is a small time set aside at the beginning of service to ”go shake some hands”. This is where I have most often felt invisible to those new people I’m meeting. For some visualization, imagine you are in a dense fog and all you see coming at you is a hand. So, you start to extend your hand to meet theirs. Now, if you are like me, the next thing you do is look up and see whose hand it is.

This is the moment of truth. Will the person be looking at you as they shake your hand, or will they be looking left, right, or past you for the next hand? The goal is not to ”shake as many hands in the next 30 seconds as possible” and the winner gets a prize. It’s about connecting briefly with another human being.

I’m calling you to be the type of person who looks the other person in the eye. When they look up, they should see you looking at them and only them. While you say hello, continue to look at them. In that brief moment, make them feel important with your eyes.

Jesus Christ was quoted as saying ”If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20) The practical application today is this: How can you love others if you aren’t even willing to give them your brief undivided attention? If it’s tough to do this in church with fellow believers, how are you possibly going to make non-believers feel important when you meet them?

When it comes to evangelism and connecting with non-believers, I won’t suggest I have it all figured out. But I do know this: true evangelism starts with a loving relationship where the other person feels as important to you as they are to our heavenly Father. The first and possibly only chance you will get to develop such a relationship depends on your eyes. Where are they focused?

My plea is that you let the whole world turn into a thick fog where the only thing you see is the other person’s eyes. In that moment, choose to love them as our Father has commanded, through focused attention. Who knows? The next time you meet them they might actually remember your name and you might remember theirs.

As a former Atheist, I can appreciate the attempt to logically explain everything. However, where Christians excel is in our ability to look at something very simple and come to the logical conclusion… “That’s GOD!”

Many people come to such an epiphany when camping out in nature… and experiencing God’s creation outside of the man-made cities we all live in. They look at the moon, and stars and heavens and just stare in awe of God’s majesty.

So, here is a simple argument for the existence of God…that even an Atheist would have difficulty explaining with a non-God answer:

1) Look around you for a moment. Can you identify anything that is man-made…something that obviously God didn’t make? Take that house for example. Did God build it? No…an architect and a construction crew did right? How about that car? The good folks at Ford or Chevy built it right? Ok…here’s a tough one…how about those sneakers you are wearing? Did God make them, or did Nike make them? OK…it’s pretty easy to identify things that are man made right? We just KNOW by looking at them, and from our experiences during our lives we just KNOW that man made them.

2) Now, look down at the ground. Did man make the dirt? No. Now look at the sky. Did man make the sun, the moon, and the stars? No. Why do we just KNOW that man didn’t make them? Why do we not need a scientific method to prove that man did NOT make those things? Maybe it’s the good old common sense and experience that helped us know that our car was made by man. It’s just plain as day…man did NOT make the heavens and the earth.

Now, if we didn’t know for a fact that man made the house, the car, and the sneakers…we would probably start looking for a creator and eventually find someone who could be caught in the act of creating them. But we don’t need to….we just know.

Well, the same is true for the heavens and the earth. Man is simply not big enough, powerful enough, or resourceful enough to create ANY of it. But if man didn’t create them…then who/what did? Where did it all come from?

Now, some might say that the Big Bang created it all. Let’s assume the Big Bang theory is true. Did man create the Big Bang? I know that’s a tough one…but again, NO. So who/what did? What caused the Big Bang? Just keep going back far enough in time, and guess what? Man still didn’t have a finger in creating it. It’s 100% God. God did it…all of it. And then God created us humans and absurdly some of us say… “there is no God.” How laughable.

“Joseph labored in obscurity for a season of his life…” before he finally arrived at his God given purpose of saving the Egyption and Israelite peoples from 7 years of famine (Read Genesis 37-41 for the full story). I read the first part of that quote recently in John Maxwell’s book “The 21 Most Powerful Minutes in a Leaders Day”.  My first thought was how many of us struggle through life feeling the same way…like we are toiling in obscruity, not sure of our God given purpose. Often, we’re not sure if we are making a difference.

Have you ever felt that way? I know I have. We can learn several lessons from the story of Joseph.  1) God expects us to live faithfully and obey His commands… even if we don’t know where and how He’s using us. 2) God’s timing is MUCH different than ours… God works in decades and lifetimes… not days and weeks like we want. 3) Our toiling in obscurity is preparation for the day when God will use us to accomplish His purpose for our lives.

When we live in God’s will, and God’s timing, using our God given talents… our eventual greatness will bring glory to the One who deserves it… God.

I recently read a blog article about Holy Ostracism. It was asking the question if we should isolate ourselves…or otherwise refuse fellowship with homosexuals. There are biblical references to not fellowshipping with “sinners” that people rely on to support this view. However, here is my response.

I think we Christians, to our discredit, place much too much importance on the issue of homesexual sin. Outsiders view us a haters, high and mighty, pompous, etc…  Is homosexuality a sin? yes. But remember that ANY sin is just as sinful as homosexuality to God. God teaches us to take the plank out of our own eye before we look to take the speck out of another person’s eye.

Should we practice holy ostracism because someone is homosexual? absolutely not. That only feeds the negative perception…that “we won’t associate with those sinners”..and that we are somehow better than them.

The fact is that we are NOT better than them. Even if we are Christian, and they are not…we are still NOT better than them. God is better…and it is Him who redeems us.

Would you ostracize someone who drank excessively? How about someone who was prideful. How about someone who lusts after someone who is not our spouse? How about someone who (insert any other sin you’ve ever heard of)?

Unless you are going to ostracise everyone (for all sins), I wouldn’t recommend ostracizing anyone for simply being homosexual.

Instead, associate with them. Share your love with them. Engage with them and let your life influence them positively. Let them know that even though God considers their behavior a sin…that we ALL sin, and God still loves us. Then encourage them to seek God and ask him into their life. Homosexuals don’t need to be “fixed”…they need to be loved. God will take it from there.

By the way, I’m very passionate about this negative perception of Christianity. I’ve started a movement to counter those negative perceptions…but it starts with YOU..and how you interface with the world. If you are interested, join our facebook group called “Chaning the Face of Christianity“:

My wife and I spent the weekend out of town and visited the church of our in-laws. It was interesting to note how different their church was. In fact, without close inspection it would be easy to ONLY see the differences. The music was different. Songs we sing…they sing differently. Their communion was different. The sermon style was different. The bulletin was different. In other words, it was a completely different experience. OK…then what was so profound that I should write about it?

It was the same! Christians devoted to Christ, praising and worshiping him. The people loved God although they expressed it differently than I was used to.

In this life, it’s so easy to look at how we are different than other people. It’s harder, but so much more meaningful, to focus on how we are the same. We are all in need of a savior. We are all imperfect. We all have hurts and doubts, but our God covers them all. We all have a God who loves us and makes us complete. We all have a God who deserves our worship and praise. How you and your church congregation expresses that is up to you.