When it comes to working out and losing weight, my wife wants me to succeed more than anyone, so I tell her my intentions of working out 3 times a week. She’ll hold me accountable and keep me to it. Even when I rolled my ankle in basketball, which was barely a good of enough excuse for her to let up on me.

Find someone in your life that will hold you to spending time with God, almost to the point that it’s annoying. Make sure it’s someone that you can be honest with, even when you didn’t spend time with God; otherwise it’s kind of pointless. Find those people that you can be accountable to and at the same time you can hold accountable.

So there it is. Three helpful hints to spending time with God:
1. Make it Realistic and Measurable.
2. Put It In Your Schedule.
3. Be Accountable.

Hope this helps.

When it comes to spending time with God, put it in your schedule. If you’re a morning person, spend time with God in the morning. If when you get to work, you can’t remember if you brushed your teeth before you left, you’re not a morning person and maybe you should spend time with God later in the day; like on your lunch break, or after work, or before or after dinner, or before you go to bed. I don’t care when it is, just put it in your schedule so you know when it is, and so you’ll know if you missed it or not.

A good friend and mentor of mine, Josh Clark, once said (or stole from someone), “You can’t MAKE time, you have to TAKE time.” The point being, we all have 24 hours in a day, we can’t create time, we can only take it from somewhere else. So if you want to get serious about spending time with God, you’re going to have to take it from somewhere/one/thing else.

I’ll also credit him for saying, “If you change the way you speak, you’ll change the way you think.” So, stop saying you’ll make time for God (as far as I know, science is not that advanced… yet) and start taking time.

So, instead I resolved to work out 3 times a week for at least 30 minutes. That’s realistic and measurable. I can take time out of my week on 3 separate occasions (not a huge sacrifice) to work out. Then at the end of the week, I can look back and measure how well I did. Maybe I only worked out twice that week. I can see that, correct it and do better the next time.

When it comes to your walk with God, resolve to spend at least 5 minutes a day reading your Bible and in prayer. To some of you, that may seem insulting. Well, we’re not as spiritual as you. And that doesn’t mean that’s all the time you spend with God. You can spend more, but resolve to spend at least 5 minutes. Is that too much to ask for the Creator of the Universe?

At the end of your day, you can look back and see if you spent at least 5 minutes with God. If you haven’t, do it before you go to bed. C’mon it’s only 5 minutes.

Come back tomorrow for more steps in a steady walk with God.

I love the New Year. The New Year is an excuse to start over, to change things, to do some things better and to stop doing some things. One thing I’ve realized about New Year’s Resolutions is the more realistic and measurable they are, the more attainable they are.

For example: Instead of me resolving to lose 50lbs, I will resolve to work out 3 times a week for at least 30 minutes. That’s realistic and measurable.

To add another layer of security, not only did I make my resolution realistic and measurable, but I put it in my schedule. The plan was to play basketball for a couple hours on Monday nights, and then do Wii Fit (don’t laugh, you can seriously get a decent work out from it) after work on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Rolling my ankle at basketball kind of threw a wrench into that plan. But it will be reinstated soon enough.

And finally, to insure that I was following through on my resolution, I told my wife. It was her job to keep me accountable. And if there’s anyone that wants me to lose weight more than I do, it’s her.

So now, let’s all apply what we learned. Check back over the next few days to see how we can apply these 3 steps to our walk with God.

In my last post I wrote about how it was the end of a decade, but it’s also the beginning of a new one. So, here’s to ten years of a closer walk with God.

Now, I know that “thankstaking” isn’t a real word, so let me define it for you:

thanks·tak·ing [thangks-tey-king]:
1. the act of taking benefits or favors for granted that one would verbally admit they were grateful for.

I know that the definition is a little rough, but work with me. There are a number of things that I would say I am thankful for if someone were to ask me, “What are some things that you are thankful for”? I would respond, “Oh, my health, my job, my wife, my friends, my family, etc.” But you would be hard pressed to find much evidence for my case by the way I live my life.

For instance, let’s take a look at my health. I exercise maybe once a week and only eat healthy when my wife is watching. I’d say I’m thankful for my health, but if I really valued it I would make a better effort to maintain it.

Now, we all have the gift of life given to us by God, and I would say that we can all be very thankful for that. But do our lives express it? Is there evidence that we are grateful to God for the life he’s blessed us with? Or do we take the benefit of life and and get all that we can out of it for ourselves instead of giving it back to God?

I know for me, I’m going to try to change my lifestyle from one of thankstaking to one of thanksgiving… Now, where did I put those leftovers.

Today Barack Obama will be taking the title of President of the United States of America. And because of that, he deserves our support. Regardless of who you voted for, or what your views are, a certain amount of support should be given to President Obama, if in nothing else, prayer.

If you are a Christian, the moment you surrendered your life to Christ and became a citizen of the kingdom of God, you signed on to abide by a higher set of standards. And because of that you have become a supporter of whichever president is in office. You don’t have to agree with everything he does, you don’t have like each decision he makes, but we do have to support him.

My prayers and support are with the Obama family.

Charles told a story about how his wife told his daughter not to ride this little pony thing near the stairs, and so of course she did.

That got me thinking about this part of our nature that makes us want to do the things that people tell us not to do. And usually people play that off as part of our fallen nature. But what if it wasn’t given to us as a result of sin, but what if God gave it to us as a gift to use for him? Or, say that it does come from our sinful nature, but what if we reversed it?

What if the same thing that drives us to touch something when someone tells us not to touch it was used to accomplish something that someone says can’t be accomplished? Like you can’t do church that way, or you’ll never be able to reach those people, or you can’t change the world from where you’re at.

What if we took that part of our nature and harnessed it to attempt and accomplish the seemingly impossible? What would that look like?

I’m sure it ticked-off a lot of “Christians”. And that’s fine. They would say that the way Christianity is portrayed in the movie isn’t accurate. That they edited it to make Christians look ignorant and arrogant. And my complaint would be that they didn’t interview any Christians that were actually doing something positive.

But here’s the thing, to people who are not Christians, this is exactly how Christianity looks. And they would be justified in thinking that.

But there is hope. There was a scene in the movie that really caught my attention. Bill Maher said, to a group of truckers in a Trucker Chapel, “Thank you for being more Christ-like than Christian.” This is a guy who is an agnostic, that believes religion in general is ridiculous, but is able to point out the difference between being Christian and Christ-like.

Over time the word Christian has become a term that is no longer synonymous with being a Christ-follower. It is like the word gentlemen. A gentlemen was once a very specific term. It was a man that came from a noble family and owned a certain amount of land. It now refers to a guy that opens the door for a lady.

How have we let this word, Christian, slip out from under us and allow it to be slapped onto all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with following Christ? Because I know that when I see these acts that call themselves “Christian” I don’t want to be associated with them.

I believe it is time we reclaim what it means to be Christian.