Matthew TwoSix:ThreeNine

Often when I pray I close my eyes and begin to share my heart with God. I seek to find quiet and peace. I seek to calm the raging seas around me and focus on speaking with and hearing from God.  As I speak to God another voice sneaks in and fills my head with the thoughts of the many items on my to do list or of the mistakes I've made in the past or the many ways I fall short as a father, son, husband, and follower of Christ.  Sometimes I lose focus and open my eyes to attend to the to do list item or consider my past mistake or to dwell on how I fall short in my many roles. Other times I respond by opening my eyes for a brief moment, then I push the reset button on my prayer, close my eyes, and enter in to prayer again. Finally sometimes, I keep my eyes closed and call the name of Jesus. I ask God to clear my head of the distractions. I ask for Him to be present and fight for me. My mind is certainly a battleground between good and evil. The enemy's weapons are ...

It is amazing how much writing helps me to understand. My brain is like a classroom of hyperactive kids after having pixie sticks and mountain dew. There is a lot of activity going on and before you realize what's happened, something else bounces in to take over your thoughts as the next best thing.  Pslam 46:10 says,"Be still and know that I am God..." When I am writing I am certainly active, but hyper-focused. To everything outside of the message, my heart becomes silent. All of the energetic, hyperactive kids in my brain settle down and focus on the same thing. My brain becomes still and focused on God. Many times I have equated stillness to silence. When I write I become silent. What I am writing becomes the focus and the only sound is that of my fingers tapping the keyboard. As we seek stillness, silence falls over us. Being still focuses on God and what He has called us to do. Being still silences the busyness of the world we live in. When we are st...

We have a pop up camper and enjoy traveling around staying at different campsites. A few weeks ago we were camping and saw a family of racoons in the distance. The mother was walking through the woods with her kids following closely. Cute is probably the best term to describe how they looked. Of course, we know that those mischievous cute critters have a way of finding food at your campsite. To prevent this we have a really good cooler that we use to stow our food away in. As a precaution, we even put a padlock on it at night. We have another cooler that we put drinks in. It is flimsy, to be frank. It's only job is keep drinks cool for the hot Florida days. One night on this trip, we errantly placed the grapes in the drink cooler. I woke up that night to the sight of my wife standing at the camper door saying, "Shoo buddy, you got to go buddy" in the softest most gentlest voice. Would you believe they listened? I would be the one who thought you'd ...