One of my favorite bands as a teen was a group of musicians who formed while attending Rhode Island School of Design. Their album titled Speaking in Tongues came out in 1983. For about 6 years my entire concept of “speaking in tongues” was that it was the name of the popular album by the Talking Heads—featuring the hit song Burning Down the House!

Once I came to Christ in 1989, I started hearing Christians talk about this thing called “speaking in tongues.”

Through the years, I’ve explored all kinds of artistic mediums but in a very sporadic fashion. Take painting, for example. I enjoy making abstract paintings. In fact, as I write, there is a large 4 x 4 painting I did during a sabbatical about 7 years ago, when I had lots of time. I don’t love it. Maybe if I was better at painting I’d paint more often. It’s not that I’m so busy that I don’t have time to paint, but it just doesn’t happen unless the stars align in several ways.

One of the best ways to grow in prayer is to pray with others. The light of God shines through in a special way when Christians come together to seek the Lord. And something stunning is made, as each person contributes their humble piece.

Both of my girls started carrying little journals around with them when they were about four or five. They didn’t just write their thoughts, but they illustrated everything. They also carried glue sticks with them, so they could glue a gum wrapper, a leaf, a movie ticket, or some other found paper or object. After filling the journal, it would usually be twice as fat as it was originally.

Let me start off by telling you a story about myself to show you what great humility looks like. Just kidding. Humility is a huge topic, but I want to talk to you about one aspect of it.

As I’m writing this we are coming up on one year in America of the Covid-19 pandemic. A half-million people in this nation have died, more than any other nation. This is hard to process given the fact that there are more Christians in America than any other nation on earth. We aren’t a “Christian nation” but the majority of citizens (roughly 60-70%) identify as Christian.

My mom always made me write thank you notes when I was a kid for special gifts people gave me. To be quite honest, I loved receiving gifts from people but hated writing thank you notes. I mean, I still wrote them—I didn’t really have a choice. But I would procrastinate. When I finally got around to doing them, I just wanted to get them done as quickly as possible.

And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. — Luke 1:14-15

It’s good sometimes to take inventory of our blessings lest we forget all we have. I’m sure that many of us do this in our effort to practice gratitude. I like lists, so sometimes I list out everything I can think of to be thankful for. I made a short list this morning—

One of my professors in Bible College used to always say, “It’s the little foxes that spoil the vine.” Given the context, I always knew she meant that it was the little sneaky things in life that can ruin the things of great worth.

Day 50! Thanks for walking with me on this pursuit of God. I hope the Lord is doing wonderful things in each of you. I’m constantly praying for you all.

Ah! I’m really frustrated with myself this week. My body seems to be fighting some kind of head cold which is making me extra exhausted. My spiritual fervor is burning low—and I don’t like it! When I think of how worthy Christ is of my best devotion, it makes me ill to think that I’m giving Him a shoddy sacrifice. Oh wretched lazy soul, awaken! Christ is risen from the dead!

One of the most difficult things to sustain is a sense of urgency in our pursuit of God. To live urgently is to have a mind that feels compelled to do something of importance and to do it as soon as possible. It is an earnest persistent quality. And it is vital in our pursuit of God.

When I was in high school one of my many adversaries was a kid that was obsessed with the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, now WWE). He was also obsessed with my girlfriend. It just drove him mad that I was with this girl, and for months he told everyone in the school he was going to end me (you could do that in the 80’s).

It’s been heartbreaking to watch—especially in recent years—so many Christians fall away from the faith. I don’t mean just fall into sin but fall away from the foundational truths of the Christian faith. It’s become so bad that now there seems to be a steady flow of “deconversion stories.” How is this happening?

Today I want to talk about the single greatest gift to help our prayer lives: the Psalms. A psalm is essentially a song. There are 150 psalms in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, mostly written by King David. They aren’t just songs as we might think of songs on the radio. The psalms were prayers poured out to the Lord in a variety of different contexts. They show us the language of prayer. As a new Christian, I don’t think there was any book of the Bible I loved more than the Psalms.

Throughout our lives, we face a variety of situations when we will potentially suffer reproach for Christ. I want to show you today that these moments are opportunities in our pursuit of God.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” I heard this as a young child and always wondered about the Ghost part.

We’ve been talking a lot about the importance of practices like prayer, fasting, reading the Word, and so on. While these are foundational, they don’t magically bring us into the fullness of God. There is a very quiet essential ingredient that is so quiet, it is often overlooked. If we neglect this thing, we will be like the man who thought he could know the ocean just by sitting on the shore.

Someone once summed up our life with Christ like this: “To know God and make Him known.” It’s always stayed with me. Another good short life mission statement is “Love God, love people.” The Westminster Catechism begins, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” I love all these and remind myself of them frequently. Each of them brings out the truth that the supreme purpose of our existence is God Himself. It is to know, love, glorify, serve, enjoy and please God, in this life and for eternity.

When I came to Christ as a young adult, it was natural to be centered on myself (or self-centered). After all, I’d been cultivating that for a couple decades. As I started to practice praying, I’m pretty sure the biggest topic of my conversations with God was—you guessed it—myself! It reminds me of my friend Doug who used to say jokingly after talking about himself too long, “Well, enough talking about me, what do you think about me?” It’s funny, but there’s some truth to it. We humans love to talk about ourselves.