Let's see them, fellas! We need to come together and pray for each other. No man is an island, and we are here to support each other in life's struggles, triumphs, challenges, etc. This community has been quiet, and that it on me by not pushing to get our guys back in here. I challenge you to step in and help me grow this space as a refuge and support for guys looking to become better in all aspects of life. My prayer request: I have an opportunity to lead a small home church. That would require stepping away from our large church in town and following the template that Jesus set in the Gospels: start with a small group, raise up leaders, and multiply. There would be no income from this, so it's a tough decision. I would have to really ramp up coaching and drop the notion of seeking a paid opportunity within the church that I have applied for. My family is blessed with finances that, if we stewarded well, we could live off of, but it would be a heavy adjustment. Your prayers would be greatly appreciated. Now comment your requests below and let's get after it!

I wanted to capture some answered prayers I've had lately. Specifically the past few years, a continued prayer of "Lord, help me land in a career that provides for my family, fulfills my heart, and glorifies you." I can see that coming to fruition, not only in my coaching business, but also in the local church where I have an opportunity to serve as a Discipleship Director. I ask for prayers for that position, as I want to get into vocational ministry while still coaching. Another prayer has been connection and intimacy with my wife. Not just physical intimacy, but true connection and not just passing each other throughout the day and sitting at night on our phones, or doing our own thing. I've seen the Lord do amazing things through both of us, including a shifting of, honestly, lusting after my wife to truly cherishing her for the woman she is and finding attraction in more than just her body. Our connection has grown tremendously, and we've had incredible conversations that only God could make possible. I encourage you guys to choose something to pray for unrelentingly. Be stubborn in your asking. Keep knocking. The Lord wants you to press in, to seek after him, to truly need him to move. Comment your prayer requests and let's lift each other up!

*The blogs will live in the Classroom, so you can access them whenever you'd like. I will still post them to the main page, as well. This seems like an odd way to begin, but I was eating lunch earlier and I had a thought emerge, “I forgot to pray.” And honestly, in the recent past, I hadn’t really prayed before eating by myself. I would always pray before family meals, and eventually meals with just my wife and I, and there have been a few occasions where I would pray before. And to pause here, you may be a more mature Christian and say, “You should be praying before every meal, regardless of if you are alone or not.” I agree, but understand I didn’t think of it, but now I do. It sparks the interest to investigate further and see what has changed. It is also not lost on me from a higher viewpoint, this is sanctification. The cool thing, though, is that this is sanctification before my own eyes, and that is neat. I’ll get to the investigating in about two minutes, but I want to go back to lunch (because it was delicious). I am there, eating my heated up, pre-prepped (by another person, thank you Clean Eatz) grass-fed burger with red potatoes and a fantastic dipping sauce, and the Holy Spirit clearly reminds me to pray. Less of my thought popping up in my head, and more of a wind of illumination cross my mind by osmosis. And my immediate reaction was to say, “Oh! Yes Lord, forgive me.” And what’s weird, dude, is as I’m writing that it sounds rather pious. I mean, I say “dude” a lot, and am very much a person of the modern times (not in the ways of the world, per se, but cultural), so speaking to my Lord so saintly would seem out of character, maybe, but it was what my heart blurted out. And here is where the gratitude enters. As I prayed, I remembered something my seminary table mate said last night. In discussing the ways we deny our limitations, as limited creatures, of course, he mentioned that the Lord gives us daily bread and we don’t bat an eye to truly thank him. Because of the accessibility of food, it just seems like getting whatever we want to eat is just what we do. We don’t stop to think about how it got to us. Outside of the Lord’s Prayer, and blessing our food, I don’t believe we often sit there and think deeply that this food showed up to nourish us, like a momma bird flying in and feeding its baby, seemingly out of nowhere. We didn’t cultivate the land, plant the seeds, nurture the plant, and pick the food. We exchange money for it, and here it comes.

Guys, I was pondering this last night as I was reading one of my books for my seminary course. This is what I wrote down, and I thought I'd share it with y'all: We long for a return to the garden. We can even experience it through a seemingly fogged glass, but we cannot see fully through it just yet. Our sin, and our emotions tied to a false belief of how we are experience life, keeps us far from it. Our longings, though, turn to action, and that action we take can bring us success in whatever it is the Lord has blessed us with, letting us almost smell the air of Eden; this creates in us a joy and epace we can barely grasp, like a floundering fish caught during starvation. It's at this point we swell with pride, and say, "it is I who did this magnificent thing!" and forget to thank God for what we've experienced, those longings finally satiated, that we are thrust from our temporary encounter with the garden, and are brought back to the glass, our faces pressed tightly as if only we could just taste and see again, perhaps our loneliness, anger, depression, anxiety, pain, sorry, etc. will finally go away. Oh, how we needed saving from this. Initial thoughts?

I just finished reading Words of Life by Timothy Ward. It's an academic theological book I had to read to for seminary, and it prompted some incredible thoughts and understandings I wanted to share. One being: The human authors of the Bible and God's "speech act" through them. The first thing we must grasp is that the Bible is indeed God's Word. When he speaks, he acts. When we are reading the Bible, we are experiencing his presence by way of his action through the written word. Just as if I wrote you a letter, as you read it, you aren't just reading words on a paper, you are reading what I have written, therefore part of me is in the letter itself. We can struggle with the idea of humans being the ones who were the physical authors of the Bible and the Bible also being the infallible and the inerrant Word of God, but when we understand that the Holy Spirit has not only spoken through these men as they penned the Word, the Spirit has also been shaping them for that moment their entire lives. We are no different. We were meant for each moment. Our entire lives have been shaped by the Spirit as believers in Christ, for God knew before the foundation of the Earth that we would be his. Therefore, our lives have been orchestrated through our own actions by way of the Spirit to form us into who we are. We are continuously being shaped by the Spirit when we are in Christ, so know that every millimeter of life lived is orchestrated by God for you to become more and more like is his Son, Jesus, through sanctification. What are y'all's thoughts on this? I'd love to hear!