Hanging with Jesus in the Dungeon

Matthew chapter 6 contains some of the most well known words of Jesus. Well known to both Christians and non Christians alike. This prayer is widely known as the Lords prayer, but better described as the disciples prayer. It is through this pray where Jesus teaches his disciple how and where to pray. He warns them that they should not be like the hypocrites who pray in places where they are sure to be seen and wowed at for their high level of "spirituality". Noting that, because of the praise they receive from men, they have already received their reward.
Instead Jesus tells his disciples that when they pray they should "go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret"
I think the point that Jesus is making is that when you pray get away from all distractions. Make your alone time with God a time of quality not quantity. While God does want to spend a lot of time with you he would rather have an intimate conversation with you, receiving your praise and knowing whats on your heart than just getting a quick "hey God, how are ya? This is what I need, gimme gimme gimme."
So what does this room where you talk to God look like? For me it's two places. The first is my lawn. I love working out in the lawn, planting flowers and playing in the dirt. For living in a neighborhood my lawn is huge. It takes me a minimum of two hours to mow it (I need a bigger mower). It is in these two hours of no distractions where I can talk to God and share with him whats on my heart and praise him for all he has done for me and my family.
The second place where I get alone with God is my dungeon. Tucked away in the dark corner of my basement is where I have my gym set up. My kids are to little to use it, and my wife does not like to push metal around. So it's just me, a lot of cold steel and God. Just like when I'm in the lawn my head gets clear of distractions and I'm able to talk to God and allow him to also speak to me.Sure sometimes I'm asking God why he has given me a passion for physical exercise, I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.
So how about it what does your alone "room" with God look like? Click the comment button below and let me know. Maybe we can pass some ideas around.

Be aware of the what in the road!?

If your saying, "Is that an elephant lying dead in the road" then you you be correct. I found this story on the Fox News web site, and thought it was just amazing. You can read the whole story here. Then it got me thinking, this elephant in the road is sometimes like how we find the sin in our lives. We're going along in life, things seems to be going just fine, then WHAM! We run head on into a sin that we know shouldn't be there, and actually we wouldn't even expect it to be there but it's there and it has to be dealt with! I'll be honest, I've had this problem and for me it was pride. I never really thought of myself as being prideful, but then WHAM! It hit like a ton of bricks, and I didn't realize I was dealing with this sin until it showed up rather unexpectedly.
As a youth leader at my church, and this would apply to any leader, pride is something that has to always be kept in check. We can never have an attitude that we have arrived or know it all because of the size church we lead, number of people we've lead to Christ, conferences we're asked to speak at etc.
What we should have and need is confidence. In the book of Acts when the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit they began preaching and teaching the gospel with boldness. Of course this is the same Holy Spirit we're filled with today when we give our life to Christ, or Christ saves us (if your a Calvinist). Either way where filled with the Holy Spirit and given the boldness to preach the gospel.
The only leader that's ever come along and can think he has arrived is Jesus. Yet pride nor any other sin never entered his life. He preached and taught with boldness and confidence but it was always wrapped with with humility.
What about you, is there a sin in your life that you need to take care of? It's good examine yourself from time to time.If we are at least aware of the fact we have certain sin problem, we can take the necessary steps to avoid hitting it. A sin problem can quickly turn into a huge sin problem, then WHAM! On a positive note however, with Jesus' help all sin can eventually become roadkill.

Scripture, keepin it real!

The last six weeks have been great for me as far as my Bible study is concerned. As you may or may not know from a previous post, I use the Inductive Bible Study Method when studying scripture. Over the last six weeks I've been studying through the book of Galatians, and if your familiar with Galatians you'll know that there is six chapters in it. Every week I started a new chapter and spent the whole week studying that chapter, man it was awesome.
What was also very interesting as well as humbling, was how much my own life as well as many other Christians lives resembled the churches of Galatia. We have heard the gospel, yet we allow stupid things to creep in and after a while we see these stupid things as part of the gospel. This was the case with the churches of Galatia. Paul took these churches to task for this and he also spends much of the book reminding them of what Christ has done for them and how that only through faith in Jesus can our sin and our lives be justified before God.
Like the church it's not until someone lovingly corrects us that we repent of our sin and begin seeing the gospel for what it really is and for what it really says.
What about you? Have you ever ever found yourselves adding something to the gospel that was never there? I know I have, although stupid, I'll give you an example. I thought for a long time that because the Bible calls our bodies the temple of God in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 , I figured that smoking was a huge sin. While smoking is stupid, unattractive and very unhealthy, it's not a sin. It wasn't until I actually read it in context and saw it for what it was truly saying that I realize my error. Those verses in 1 Corinthians in context are talking about sexual immorality.
Many of the reasons, as was mine, that people have a wrong perspective of the Bible is because they were incorrectly taught what the Bible says and were never taught how to correctly study the Bible for themselves. I'm sure my parents were well intentioned in telling me that smoking was a sin, but they should have just said it was stupid and left it at that.
Let me encourage you to take time and study the Bible, don't rush through it but absorb all that it has to say in it's right context.