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Defined By the Culture "Taking It to Our Knees - Declaring Who I Am “When they ridicule me and tell me that my need to do the ‘right thing’ is embedded in an overweening insecurity about doing the ‘wrong thing,’ I quickly inform them of three things. First, I inform them that it is nothing of a need born of fear, but everything of a choice born of conviction. Second, that it is nothing of insecurity, but it is everything of a strength that is sturdy and amply sufficient to field the most caustic of criticisms cast against it. And third, that this strength is far more potent than the pathetic weakness out of which their criticisms arise.” Craig D. Lounsbrough   Rubrics and More Rubrics The culture is full of rubrics. Really cheaply crafted rubrics. These rubrics are defined by what’s loosely determined to be vogue, trendy, politically correct, in lock-step with progressive thought, and anointed by whoever’s doing the anointing at any particular time. These rubrics are always shifting, ill-defined, and possess a shelf-life that’s about as short as the attention span of those who dreamt them up. These rubrics are typically granted a sense of rightness and correctness without any evaluation as to either. They’re viewed as defining the current state of societal evolution as it supposedly trends toward a more enlightened society. These rubrics become the template by which groups and individuals are evaluated as to whether they are cooperating with this progressive evolution or whether they are not. If it’s determined that they are not, they are assigned any number of derogatory labels. These are typically categorized into a variety of negative stereotypes that are held as defining the persons that they’re labeling.   The Cost of Not Fitting In Therefore, the cost of not ‘fitting in’ becomes incrementally greater the more that we deviate from the vogue, trendy, politically correct, progressive thought that’s forced upon us. The greater our divergence the greater the cost. This creates a dilemma of identity. Do we borrow the ever-shifting identity of the culture, or do we press the culture aside sufficiently enough to determine who we are as a unique individual existing within the larger culture? Do we allow any of the elements within our culture tell us who we are, such as our families, our communities, our jobs, the accepted cultural mantras, or the organizations to which we belong? The demand for adherence is incessant, pressing, and coercive. The culture struggles knowing what to do with people who refuse to embrace the cultural narrative. It doesn’t mesh well, or it’s considered blatantly adversarial. It’s messy and irritating to those who are incessantly beating the drums of lesser cultural agendas. Therefore, the pressure to conform is intense. The more that we reject what our culture demands that we be, the more alienation we experience. We are subjected to punitive measures and pressed further and further outside the mainstream culture.   Who Will We Choose to Be? The culture can’t define you. It doesn’t have that kind of power and it certainly doesn’t possess any such privilege. People and organizations and the larger culture can say any number of things about you. They can criticize you, make declarations about you, label you in any number of ways, or stereotype you in order to force-fit you into their agendas or force-fit you right out of the culture. Yet, you are none of these things. Criticisms, declarations, labels, and stereotypes are far too small to express the fullness of your humanity. These are weak definitions of something far too big to define. Yet if we bend to them, they leave us living out a pasty-thin identity that is a horrific exploitation of who we actually are.   Who We Are No element of our culture can define you. No culture possesses the capacity to do that. No part of the culture has the depth to define the depth within us. The culture doesn’t define us because it can’t. The fact is, it can’t even define itself. We are defined by something far greater than the culture. Something that outlasts and outlives any culture. We are defined by the God Who created us. Nothing can define us except that which determined what our definition was to be. Nothing else understands the whole of us except that which created the whole of us. Nothing else understands the intricacies, the nuances, and the ingenuity of a design that lays leagues beyond the intellect of any man or collection of men.   Breaking Away The culture has made many demands of us. Many messages have been sent to us. Many characterizations have been made. Labels have been assigned. Definitions have been plastered all over us. Traits ascribed and values determined. And all of this will continue. Yet, none of these define you. None of them can. None of them ever had. Therefore, don’t grant them power to do what they cannot. Yet, over time we have carried these definitions. And as we have carried them we begin to act on them. When we act on some belief we are likely to get results that mirror the belief upon which we acted. Therefore, if we act on the things that the culture has defined us as being, the results are likely to confirm that we are those things.   Thirty-One Things God Says You Are Yet, you are none of these. You can’t be. You won’t be. And you can’t be because you are far too vast to be fully defined by any one of them or any assorted collection of them. Only God can define who you are. He’s got the blueprint. The only thing that the culture’s got is a few errant scribbles on an illegible scrap of paper that they can’t find half the time. Only God knows you from the best of yourself to the worst of yourself. And this God is calling you to your authentic self.   Taking It to Our Knees You will find thirty-one of God’s “I Am” statements outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am.” This book is a fresh, entirely thought-provoking, and richly insightful thirty-one day devotional that will assist you in both discovering and living out your real self. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

LifeTalk Script I Am Only ‘One’ Understanding Our Impact   “I am only one but still I am one.  I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.” Edward Everett I am only one. That’s all I am. I am only one and I will always be only one. I was born as one, I will live as one, and on the day of my death I will die as one.    Living as Being Only One And so, because I am only one, I relegate myself to being only one. I surrender to this weak singularity.  I am obscure, so much so that I can hardly define myself or my purpose as held against the billions of others within which my existence becomes swallowed up and lost.  As held against history, time and creation, I will enter with barely a sound and I will exit in the same manner. And in relegating myself to being one and only one, I unwittingly embrace the limitations that I perceive are part and parcel of being one and only one. I become convinced of what I think being one means and subsequently what it does not mean.   The Fears of Being “One”             The Fear of Not Being Enough I think that we fear that being one is not being enough.  Being one is too often seen as being inadequate.  The world out there is not some massive mass of people.  It is a collection of individuals.  It’s a bunch of ‘ones.’  By and large, those individuals experience life pretty much the same way that we do.  It’s all just a collection of ‘ones.’  It’s a collection of people that are each one individual just like we are one person.  While being one makes us perfectly suited to impact all the other ones around us, we still fear that being one is not enough.               The Fear that We Can’t be Loud Enough I also think that we fear that our single voice is not loud enough.  We don’t have the volume to be heard over the raucous, roar and interminable noise in our world.  We can’t possibly scream loud enough or long enough to be heard in the ruckus and racket that defines the world around us.  So our voices are drowned out.  Yet, we need to remember that we’re not speaking to the world around us.  We’re speaking to the ones around us.  And because that’s the case, there’s plenty of them and we’re plenty loud enough.               The Fear of Being Rejected I think that maybe our greatest fear is that we will be heard, and that in being heard we’ll be rejected or discounted or blown-off.  It seems that our single biggest fear is rejection.  What if we’re heard and in the hearing we’re labeled as stupid, naïve or ignorant?  What if we’re heard and then we’re slapped with accusations of being politically incorrect, culturally ill-informed, biased, mistaken at some fundamental level, or being something of a faith-based moron? What if we take a stand? What if we refuse to compromise? What if what we’re saying isn’t popular or trendy or it’s absent in the talking points of a screaming media?  What if?  I think that we need to understand that there are ‘ones’ out there who share our convictions and who understand the oppressive burdens that birthed those convictions. Indeed, we are ‘one’ but we are not alone in being ‘one.’                The Fear of Failure What if I step out as one in the midst of the chaos and the darkness and the malaise, and what if I fail? What if nothing is different? What if I am shamed into submission as my failures bring me face-to-face with the limitations of being only ‘one’ that I hoped were not true?  What if I try and nothing changes? What if I step up and get knocked down?  Then through some misplaced hope and fanciful zeal I have done nothing other than convince myself that being only ‘one’ is truly limited to being only ‘one.’ And I hardly think that I could live with that.               The Fear of Responsibility But what if this one that I am is not a one in isolation?  What if I can change things?  What if I can impact the world?  What if?  Maybe we don’t want to be responsible for that much power.  Maybe we don’t want to shoulder some sort of bold mantel, draw our resources around us, and press out against so much of what is destroying so many. Maybe under the right circumstances we’d be willing to following someone who would be willing to do that, but we don’t want to be the one doing that. We prefer to leave such exploits to others and follow them at a comfortable distance, or track them from an even greater distance. But, what if we actually pull it off and are left with the responsibility of having done that? The responsibility might be a bit too much for us.       The Opportunity of Being “One” I am only one in a mammoth sea of humanity within which my main and often single goal is simply to survive. But I am one, and my oneness is sufficient to forgo surviving and embrace living. I am only one and despite the rather lackluster view of myself, being one is enough. I am only one, and because I am, the reality of my existence can change the reality of everyone around me. In the span of this minute, or this hour, or this day, or in the span of history itself my existence ‘can’ be noted, and because I am one it can register enough to acknowledge that I was here. The briefest notations that I have made or will make on the pages of history can add moving lines of inspiration in the seemingly infinite volumes of tightly written copy that stretch from mankind’s earliest moments to his eventual demise because I am one. I am in union with the Infinite ‘One’ Who renders me capable of being everything that I am not. I have yet to understand that my oneness is never held solely to itself. That my oneness is the seed of a greater greatness that when joined with God, with those others He brings alongside of me, with the dreams He has implanted within me, with the purpose He has bestowed upon me; this ‘one’ will remain one, but it will be a one that has moved leagues beyond its own oneness. Yes, I am only one, but I am one in league with a God Who makes my oneness infinite.  You have one chance at being ‘one.’ You have been granted one life to touch the other ‘ones’ around you. Being one is being enough. Life’s about being intentional about being the best ‘one’ that you can be, and intentionally touching all the other ones around you in a manner that transforms them ‘one’ at a time. Be the one that you were designed to be and change the world by being that one, for despite your poor assessment of yourself you will always remain this beautiful one.    Closing Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In – The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.  

LifeTalk's "Thought for Life" is a weekly one-minute thought that touches on one of today's pressing issues.  Each of these brief presentations is centered on one of Craig's personal quotes.  All of his quotes are specifically written to challenge, inform, and inspire.  Today's thought is: “Disabling your conscience is like disabling your smoke detector.  It doesn’t stop a fire.  It just leaves you ignorant of the fact that there is one.” Follow all of Craig's daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

"Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control." Proverbs 25:28 Life is filled with pain.  Or maybe more accurately, our lives are engulfed in pain.  We’ve all run into it, or have had it run into us, or have had it run over us.  That pain can be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual.  It can be a product of the people around us, or the person within us.  It can come to us in the form of circumstances beyond our control, or circumstances that we should have controlled.  We might have had nothing to do with it, or everything to do with it.  In whatever way it comes, pain comes to all of us. The perpetually debilitating nature of our pain gradually weakens our resolve to fight it.  Our belief that we can somehow beat it dissolves into some sort of mythical fantasy that becomes dimmer with each passing day.  Desperate to have even a moment of relief from the pain that dogs our steps, we turn to self-medication.  Self-medication can take on any number of forms, but the desire to seek relief is what drives them all.  If these methods of self-medication deliver the desired relief, our decision to use them is reinforced.  In time, we can begin to develop a gradually increasing dependency upon them that is far beyond their intended use or actual benefit.  These means of self-medication soothe our emotional state, grant us a sense of control over our pain, and become so thoroughly integrated into our daily lifestyle that to remove them would cause a disruption in our lives that we perceive as far greater than the disruption of the dependency that we have now created.  We soon discover that the means of self-medication has created its own pain.  And in time that pain replaces the pain that we were originally self-medicating against, leaving us in the perpetually debilitating state that is certain to be our fate if we decide to swap one kind of pain for another in order to somehow remedy our pain. The longer the dependency, the tighter its grip.  We fear the seemingly insurmountable challenge of breaking the addiction.  This fear is compounded by our concern that what we medicated ourselves against will return in force if we forsake our addiction.  In essence, we are held hostage to a something that numbs but never cures. You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" in paperback or hardcover at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

I Heard a Robin - Hope in the Dark We all create expectations.  But how often are our expectations a wholesale surrendering of ‘what could be’ to ‘what is?’  How often are they borne of a discouraged soul and a frightened heart that cannot see beyond the realities of the moment so as to envision a brighter reality standing at-the-ready in the next moment?  How many times have we taken the darkness of today and handily projected it onto the landscape of a tomorrow that is in fact full of light?  How many times have we expected that failure will be our lot, disappointment our bedfellow, and that this curse is somehow our due?  We create expectations because that’s what we do, so we’d better be very careful as to how we create them.   What Shapes Our Expectations There are an innumerable array of elements that mold and craft our expectations.  However, there are several that seem to directly impact most, if not all of the rest.  In and of themselves, these three are certain to kill our vision and utterly convince us that tomorrow will surely embody the darkness of today.  Left unchecked to bleed into the other areas of our lives, they can leave us destitute.  First, we have a tendency to focus on the negative experiences that we have had for fear that the positive ones weren’t authentic, or if perchance they were, they’re unlikely to come our way again.  Second, we build a faith that’s safe, which means that it’s ‘faith’ in name only and therefore it holds no power.  Third, our vision is limited by the walls that we’ve meticulously constructed all around ourselves in order to protect us against imaginary enemies, or at least enemies that are not nearly as gigantic as we’ve given them permission to become.  And while it’s obvious that far more goes into the creation of our expectations than these three ingredients alone, these would appear to be inordinately impacting.   Making ‘What Is,’ ‘What Will Be’ Because these appear to be an inherent part of us, we gather up the sum total of our negative experiences, we fall victim to them because the lackluster nature of our purported faith can do no other, and we hold them hostage to these incessantly compressing walls of ours.  And in this ever-weary concoction of negativity, faithless faith and massive walls, everything coalesces to shape a distorted observation of ‘what is,’ which then goes on to shape these rather dark expectations of ‘what will be.’ Therefore, our expectations are constricted to what will ‘not’ happen verses being exuberantly expanded to embrace what actually might.  We project the misery of the present onto the landscape of the future and render it such before we even get there to better ascertain what it might actually be.  We live with this morbid expectation that nothing will get better, that the future is eternally doomed to be nothing more than the past in redress, and that any hope of something better would be yet another expectation disappointed when we feel far too fragile to bear yet another disappointment of any sort at all.   Hope Deferred The morning was yet dark as if the darkness was purposefully lingering in spite of a morning that should have long been well on its way.  The cold of a winter in retreat somehow remained fiercely undiminished, casting a biting edge across what was supposed to be a warming spring.  The snow had secretly begun falling under the cover of a night now lifting, leaving a world elated by spring’s flowers laying helplessly encased in winter’s white.  It was as if the coming of spring was a promise disappointed; a hope fallen prey to a winter that spring was supposed to be advancing against.  That days tenderly warmed at the edges with hints of green breathing new life into winter’s impossible cold were a hope ripped away. Sometimes we let circumstances of the moment create our expectations of the future.  We altogether lose the vision of being able to see beyond what besets us at the moment.  What we see is the ‘what is’ that our minds have interpreted as ‘what will be.’  And we throw the ‘what could be’ of a future yet unwritten into the straitjacket of a ‘what is’ that has all but consumed us.  The ‘now’ is projected forward and the future is subsequently cast in its unforgiving mold.   We create the shackles that bind us to the present and we fashion the blindfold that keeps us from seeing the future as anything but the present.  Our expectations of ‘what will be’ are crafted entirely by ‘what is,’ and yet it is highly likely that neither are correct.   I Heard a Robin Suddenly and without warning, out of snow and darkness I heard a robin.  I heard the harbinger of spring call out into the dead of winter.  I heard a single song that raised itself up against the dark and the cold and the anger of a winter being forced into retreat.  It sat entirely at odds with everything that made that morning that morning, this bold song of this single bird off in the distant distance.  As held against the power of the frigid morning, it seemed to be voice mocked by the morning itself.  It seemed a lone prophet of spring that was ridiculed for bringing a such a song into such a morning.  But it sang anyway.  It sang until the sun rose.  It sang the promise of something better that I could not see because I had errantly projected the ‘what is’ of a dark moment onto the ‘what could be’ of a spring already surging in my direction.  This single robin was not deterred by the darkness and foreboding cold of my expectations.  It sang.  And that evening, it bid the cold day farewell by singing into the night of spring well on the way.   Expectations It took a robin, this single harbinger of spring to remind me that the moment is just that…the moment.  On the heels of any day or any event there is a robin singing in the distance.  There is the hope of something coming, of the end of the darkness and the cold, of all things always moving on to new things.  I cannot allow my expectations of ‘what is’ to create some sort of construed view of a future that in and of itself will not bow to my ‘what is’.  It might be dark.  It might be cold.  I might not see the horizon.  But out on the horizon’s edge there stands a robin.  There is something that is raising its song into the darkness and the cold, heralding the truth that something new has long been running in our direction.  Such is the story of spring, and better yet, such is the promise of God’s redemptive plan.  Something new is coming and the darkness of our expectations cannot stop it.  It’s existence is undeniable and its arrival is inevitable.  So you might take a moment, step into a darkness that is cowering before the light of a new day, pull your coat tight against a cold that is bowing in sure retreat, raise an ear and listen for a robin.

“I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13 We are bound by all kinds of limits. And we wonder why certain limits have to be limits. Why are our dreams stunted by limits that put them just outside of our reach? Why do we have relationships that become suffocated by limits, leaving them only a shadow of what they could be? Why do our job aspirations, our hopes for our children, our desires for a better world…why do all of these fall victim to limits that should not be limits? We are a people of hope and vision. We can imagine great things. Incredible things. We have the ability to visualize a greater good and a richer existence. We can craft fantastic dreams that are enriching beyond imagination. Yet, many of these fall prey to limitations that we did not create and cannot overcome. The best of ourselves and our dreams are often left languishing in the face of limits that thwart the best of us. There seems to be cruelty about it all. Something that borders on savagery. If our limits are going to cut the feet out from under our greatest dreams, why are we allowed to dream these things in the first place? Why a vision if limits render it impotent? Limitations are not the issue. There’s a vulnerability to every one of our limitations. A limit to them. They are suspectable. They are not as ironclad and invincible as they would appear. And that’s the reason that they exist. They exist to be broken. Not by us, but by the God Who breaks them daily. In the midst of the impossibilities that he faced, Paul said, “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” That is the promise of limits broken. The promise of dreams safe to dream and visions worth having. You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" in paperback or hardcover at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Backwards - The Grand Reversal of Easter By Craig D. Lounsbrough   I am backwards.  I don’t think I’m backwards, I wouldn’t necessarily see myself as backwards, nor would I tell you that I’m backwards; but I’m backwards.  And the oddity of it all is that I actually see backwards as forwards.  From where I’m sitting it doesn’t look backwards at all.  However, in terms of how I conceptualize the realities of life as held against the limitations that I perceive myself as having, I’m backwards.  I’m backwards because I have tediously assessed the realities of the existence within which I am forced to operate, and I have concurrently determined the permanently fixed limitations that define my humanity as I live within that existence.  And based on the conclusions I have drawn in these two areas, I have done a rather splendid job of setting the parameters for my existence by configuring (to the best of my ability) what’s possible and what’s not. In the end, this determination that I have made regarding that which is ‘possible’ verses that which is ’impossible’ is markedly canted toward the ‘impossible’, leaving me facing a life bereft of everything except a handful of the most limited ‘possibilities’.  Worse yet, this determination has come to comprehensively define all of life as I know it, leaving me nothing bigger than myself.  I have categorized the whole of life as falling within the limits that limit me, assuming these are limits for everything that exists, or ever will exist, or ever could exist.  And in that sense, I have dramatically drawn down life into some minute rubric that is but the slightest fraction of what life really is.  Indeed, I am backwards.   God’s Reversal We reject God because He is not backwards.  He comes to us asking us to move forward, which we, by virtue of our shallow determinations about how life works, see as backwards.  And we stand there wondering why we would be asked to do something so utterly preposterous as moving backwards.  In fact, what God calls forward we call impossible, or improbable, or ridiculous, or naïve, or fanciful, or ignorant, or any number of other explanations that really do more to explain how backwards we really are.   Reversals History is littered with God’s reversals.  Leprosy was healed when the person should have been consumed by it and died.  Bodies of water were split in two when they should have been completely impassible.  Food to feed literal thousands was secured from nothing more than a few small fish and a handful of leftover loaves of bread.  Massive armies were evaporated without so much as a shot being fired.  Dead teenagers were raised to life instead of being dropped in a hole.  Paralytic limbs were straightened and people walked away when they should have crawled away.  That stuff is all backwards.   The Grand Reversal of Easter Then there is the grand reversal of Easter.  It began with an execution reversed, whereby He who was innocent was brutally executed by those who were guilty.  It was an inhumane execution turned into ingenious sacrifice, whereby an end for one man turned into a beginning for all men.  It was a devout religious leader who should have cast his vote against this man, who instead carried this man’s body into his own tomb.  Three days later it was an empty tomb when it should have not have been, leaving a dead man walking which is a reversal of the most astounding sort.  It was a group of terrified disciples keeping their heads down while crawling back to their old lives, now standing directly in front of the man they watched lose His.  It was all backwards.  These were all uncategorically opposite of what should have been.  If we apply the realities of the existence within which each of us are forced to live, these things and so many more were and are completely backwards.  They were completely opposite of how it all should work.  They simply did not and do not fit into how we have conceptualized the realities of the existence within which we are forced to operate, and how we have concurrently determined the permanently fixed limitations that define our humanity.  They are backwards.   Going Forward To fix this conundrum, might we say that to go forward we must indeed be willing to go backwards.  And I suppose the best way to do that is to switch the two of these in our minds by reversing our perception of how this existence actually operates.  And we cannot do that unless we include God, for God is the single and sole thing that reverses the limits of our humanity by quite literally obliterating those limits with His limitlessness.  Therefore, we must comprehensively trade who we are for what He is, and in the trading trade off everything of us in the exchange.  We must understand that it is not our limits that define our existence at all, although we have foolishly surrendered to that terribly myopic idea.  Rather, it is God’s power and nature that define it.  We must understand or at least accept the immense, radical and in many cases incomprehensible difference between who we are and who God is.  And out of that understanding we must willingly trade our limitations for God’s limitlessness.  Indeed, that alone will abruptly turn things around.  When we do that, backward becomes forward.  And when that happens we will have cut the chains that we’ve slapped on life, we will have blown out the boundaries that we thought defined us, the ‘possible’ verses that which is ’impossible’ now becomes wholly canted toward the ‘possible’, and the horizons that we had tightly fixed on our lives suddenly blow out to horizons that are horizon-less.  Standing in the gaping space now created, we suddenly start to understand that dreams are more than hopeful fantasies that our minds toy with, rather they become realities that life is changed with.  That a vision for something better can move from ‘nice idea’ to ‘transforming ideal’.  That hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate, but it is crafted hard by the hands of God.  That the end of ourselves is where God begins.  That the fear of failure is slain cold by success already hot on the way.  That a looming mountain is nothing more than a road in disguise, and that the impossible is not an obstacle but an invitation.    Message Delivered All of this and more happens when we refuse to continue to go backwards.  All of this and more is the true forward.  This is the incessant and unrelenting message of God throughout history.  And it is a message hand delivered by God’s Son Jesus with potent impact at Easter.  It is a message for anyone who will hear it.  It is the single and sole message that can turn us from backward to forward.  Therefore, be assured that the direction of our lives and the outcome of our existence will hinge on what we do with this single message.  Oh yes, I am backwards, but no longer.  How about you?   Find additional Easter resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com. Enjoy all of our daily posts on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.  

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body. I Corinthians 6:19-20 Life is precious.  Therefore, the loss of it goes deep.  There are losses that are a natural part of our existence.  They hurt, but at least they make sense.  But then there are the losses that don’t make sense.  The losses that didn’t need to happen.  The losses that were premature, unnecessary, avoidable, and entirely out of step with life as we know it (or would like to know it). Suicide is one of these.  This loss was a choice.  In all likelihood it involved the convergence of many things dark and weighty; hopelessness, despair, life gone wrong, self-hatred, incessant failures, the inability to find a niche, dreams smashed, relationships lost, faith gone.  And the pressing compilation of such things tips the scales and renders death preferable to life.  At some point of darkest desperation, a decision is made and an action is taken.  And suddenly we are left with a loss that doesn’t make sense.  A loss that didn’t need to happen.  A loss that was premature and unnecessary.  A loss that doesn’t fit because it shouldn’t.  And despite our best effort to understand it all, resolution eludes us and people continue to die. And all of those who live out their lives in those places are eventually left asking the question of “why?”  But maybe we need to replace the question of “why” with the question of “how” because that question holds the answers to what we need to change in our lives, our families, our communities, and our nation to save the next life. You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" in paperback or hardcover at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

“…for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’” Romans 3:23 Failure.  It’s having set out to do something, or not do something, and having failed to achieve the goal either way.  It’s falling short.  It’s having missed the mark, or having pulled out of the race long before we came anywhere close to the mark.  It’s the dream that we couldn’t breathe life into, or the fear that we couldn’t breathe the life out of.  It’s the relationship that we couldn’t hold because we were not worth being held.  It’s the thing that puts us in our place because we foolishly thought that we might be better than that place.  It’s falling down and finding no reason to get back up. Failure is a stark message regarding our ability or lack thereof.  It is the undeniable evidence of what we feared might be true, that we are in fact inadequate or incompetent or whatever we feared that we might be.  It reminds us of our misdirected efforts to elevate our place in life, and it assigns us the very station that we worked so hard to avoid.  It tells us that our dreams are bigger than our ability to achieve them.  That mediocrity is our lot in life, so we’d be wise to settle there and at least do that well. But we forget that failure is the refusal to try.  Trying and not succeeding is the very place where God has placed the richest cache of learning opportunities available to us.  It’s a chance to try again, but to try differently.  It’s an opportunity to become everything that failure says we cannot become because it is failure itself that has taught us how to outflank it.  Falling short, missing the mark, or pulling out of the race are nothing more than events packed rich with learning opportunities that set the stage for greater things…possibly great things.  It is not the fact that these things happened.  It is what we do with the fact that they happened.  And if we seize the opportunities for growth that God has graciously planted within each of these, failure will fall to a life rich with success. You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" in paperback or hardcover at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’” Psalm 139:14 One of the worst things is not knowing who you are.  And probably a close second to that is to hate what you do know.  And right behind that there’s the effort to create something that you think you’ll like in order to solve both of those problems. But all of this misses the only battle that’s worth fighting, and the only effort that will insure success.  Life is not about creating ourselves.  Rather, it’s about discovering ourselves.  It’s not about assuming some presumed right to make ourselves what we’re not.  Rather, it’s about the privilege of discovering who we already are.  And that journey is one of the most profound journeys that we are each privileged to take. Yet we live in a world bent on creating what cannot be created.  Certainly, we can mimic many things, but the mimicking will never make us those things.  We stand by and watch those committed to becoming what they are not, realizing that the greatest pain experienced by these persons is not the struggle of loving themselves.  Rather, it’s the heartbreaking failure that they will experience in the persistent effort to make themselves what they are not.  And the self-hatred that is certain to follow that failure will handily surpass that which drove them to this decision in the first place. The rampant declaration to pursue such agendas and to force them on larger society illustrates the failed nature of the endeavor.  It would be wise to remember that if something is based in truth it will not need us to sell it simply because the priceless nature of truth always places it beyond the reach of any such market.  And one of the greatest truths that we are in desperate need of embracing is the truth of who we are, along with the equally great truth of who we are not.    You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" in paperback or hardcover at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

"Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part Four Did you ever have one of those surreal moments when it seems like something snaps in your head and suddenly you see everything like you never saw it before?  Have you experienced those times when things unexplainably shift and they don’t look at all the same as they did only a moment ago?  When what was entirely familiar is no longer familiar in quite the way that it was before? A lot of things can trigger these moments . . . an argument, a child leaving the home, a death, a job loss, a divorce, a birthday, unexpected contact from a long-lost friend or any number of similar events.  In the middle of whatever this is, you’re suddenly able to see the reality of your life with a stunning, nearly razor-sharp clarity that you’ve never had before.  It’s kind of like you were blind and you didn’t know it and in the briefest nanosecond, for the briefest nanosecond you were granted stunningly perfect vision.  And with that perfect vision, everything looks perfectly different.  Suddenly, what we now see is familiar but strangely unfamiliar at the same time.  We intimately know everything that we see around us but it’s entirely alien just the same.  It looks different or not quite right.  It’s my life but it’s not my life, or at least what I wanted my life to be.  It’s what I’ve been living all along, but at the same time it’s not what I’ve been living, or what I thought I was living. And we stand there rubbing our eyes because what we see is not stuff we saw before, or at least what we saw with the clarity that we see it now.  In the emotional turmoil these rare moments create we’re often left asking “who am I and where am I?”  And in the briefest nanosecond, in exactly the same way it came, this vision is gone.  However, the memory of what those few incredible moments revealed is anything but gone. What times like this most often reveal is the paralyzing reality that we are not where we intended to be.  This was not the destination that we had mapped out as pimply-faced teens or adventurous young adults or giddy newlyweds.  The line that we had drawn from those younger years forward in time didn’t go where we’re at now, or weren’t supposed to go here; to this place that we now realize we are.  We never really considered the heading on our compass.  And now we pick it up, shake it to make certain it’s actually working and we’re left realizing that it’s working perfectly but we didn’t follow it.  And now we stand at some point far removed from, and possibly decades away from where we were supposed to be, or thought we were supposed to be. What hits us really hard is that we didn’t fully realize the deviation from the path that our dreams had laid out so long ago.  We got here and we didn’t even realize that we got here.  But now we know it.  And we’re standing deflated, attempting to figure out where we got so terribly off course, all the while madly calculating how many years we have left, and how many responsibilities we have on our plate in order to determine if we have the time and the freedom to ever get back on course. Worse yet, some of us don’t even remember what the course was in order to retrace it.  Others of us never set a course for ourselves in the first place; having allowed the winds of life and the currents of circumstance to bring us here.  Whatever the case, there is this chilling, haunting sense that we are not where we wanted to be, and that the path intended to take us there may now be forever forfeited.  We fear a life squandered.  And the question wildly reverberates in a near panic, “how did I get here?”   I Am Where I Am At these times we can certainly pull out our tattered life map, grab whatever compass we’ve used over the years, or review the saved settings on our personal or relational or spiritual GPS.  We can then hunker down over the topography of our past trying to scrawl out the line that brought us here.  We can do all of that.  And in doing that there may be value. However, we are where we are.  Like it or not, we’re “here,” wherever “here” is.  First, the task is really about determining exactly where we’re at in order to get some sort of bearing on our life.  After that, we need to determine where we want to go.  Then we need to determine do we have the time and the resources to get there.  It’s not about bemoaning where we are.  Certainly we can make room to do that for a bit if that gets it off our chests.  It’s really more about grabbing hold of our lives and planning a strategy to take us where we want to go.   Where Am I? So where am I anyway?  Not where I think I am or necessarily perceive myself to be or have deluded myself into believing I am.  But where am I . . .  really?  It may be a tough or even painful thing to think about.  It may be harder to accept and embrace.  It’s likely that not thinking about it was a major contributor to getting you here in the first place.  So look around and be chillingly honest. Embracing where we’re actually at will likely involve grieving time and opportunities lost, anger that it happened, disappointment in that we let it happen, frustration that we weren’t attentive enough to keep it from happening, confusion over how it happened, and a host of other weighty and powerful emotions.  Our desire to avoid these may result in a less than honest assessment of our location.  However, such a less than honest assessment of where we’re at will entirely undermine any ability to reclaim lost dreams and dashed hopes.   Where Do I Want to Go? Where I want to go is not about running from where I am.  Sometimes our destination in life is determined by our desire to get away from where we are.  If fleeing our present place in life is what drives us, we’re likely to make poor choices about where we want to go simply because the motivation is not entirely adequate. Second, where we want to go does not necessarily have to be a radical resurrection or reconstitution of our old hopes or dreams.  We’re in a different place under different circumstances with different realities and different responsibilities than we had way back when.  It’s more about re-evaluating life and asking fresh and new questions about where we want to go. Third, we may find that we really shouldn’t go anywhere at all.  It may be that we should commit to build upon and expand where we are.  Investment and renovation in the very place we’re at may result in the exact life we’re looking for.  Where we want to go may very well be utilizing the resources that we have right here and shaping them into something that we didn’t ever consider they could be.   Do I Have the Resources? Some resources we have less of, like time.  Other resources we have more of, like maturity and knowledge and experience.  It’s about assessing our resources and realizing that we likely have more resources at our disposal than we did in the earlier years; we just don’t realize it.  Then it’s about pooling and maximizing those resources into whatever endeavor we feel directed toward.   Have You Considered . . . ? In reality, most of us end up someplace other than what we intended.  Life is not so smooth or manageable as to chart direct courses on tidy timelines.  It’s more about recalibrating and making course corrections along the way, believing that life is a journey that takes us off course at times, but provides us resources to likewise alter those courses.  Not where you want to be?  Think about it.

“Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close.’” Psalm 27:10 There are many things that are meant to be forever.  There are those things whose permanence in our lives is never questioned because they are designed to be permanent.  Their role in our lives had nothing of a temporary nature built into them.  Therefore, we have no reason to doubt their permanence.  As such, we never stop to consider what life would be like without them because such a thought is entirely at odds with their permanence.  Yet, we live in a world where permanence can be traded for lesser agendas and what should never have left us does. When a parent abandons us, the immense internal conflict of their supposed permanence as held in juxtaposition against their absence rocks our world to dark places.  In our desperate efforts to correlate the irreconcilable discrepancies of permanence as held against abandonment, we rationalize the loss of the parent or we work to suppress the pain by denying the loss altogether.  We work to believe that this might be better anyway, or that they were going to leave sooner or later, or that they needed their space to live their lives.  Yet we soon discover that no rationalization is ever big enough or convincing enough to release someone of a commitment for which there is no release. And in the desperation of times like these we begin to realize that we’ve turned to God because He has remained permanent.  It is His permanence that becomes our sure refuge.  Our sense of stability arises from His stability.  Our ability to somehow craft a future empty of a parent that should have been part of that crafting is centered on the fact that God is a certain part of that future as much as He is a part of the present that is shaping that future.  And we have the certainty that He will never abandon us in either. You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" in paperback or hardcover at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part Three The concept of sacrifice seems more suited to novels or epic movies.  It appears more an ideal; a concept that when observed from a safe distance seems wonderfully heroic, deeply inspiring and chivalrous in a way that stirs up something powerful in us that seems to be forever held hostage despite the fact that it gets stirred.  Sacrifice, as we watch it displayed from afar, awakens some internal passion that chafes against our souls in its quest to be unleashed within us. Somehow sacrifice seems to be something that is entirely right, that is likewise entirely lost.  There are those things that we believe exist yet are lost to mankind; the things we are ever in search of not because we are caught up in some sort of shallow fascination with them.  Rather, there are those things that we know to be authentically real whose absence must be remedied by their discovery.  There are those things that we are made for, yet which are entirely absent. Sacrifice is one of those things.  It’s something that we know we are all called to.  It’s one of those things that we know is the right thing to do; that it’s part of our humanity and represents something undeniably central.  Sacrifice is the totality of our humanity called upward and outward in a grand display of selfless behavior.  It declares that we are not made solely for ourselves, but that we are made for others.  It captivates our minds and catapults our actions to do things we never dreamt possible.  Indeed, it defines the core of our humanity; representing the ultimate action that one human being can take on behalf of another human being.  That’s sacrifice.   The Balance of Sacrifice All of this doesn’t mean that our lives are always about other people.  It’s simply about priority and the arrangement of things in our lives.  Our culture, and in many cases our world seems bent on maximizing our personal gains in any situation.  There appears to be an inherent mentality that the self can be sacrificed, but only to the degree that the self is not actually threatened, or threatened beyond likely recovery.  Sacrifice is calculated and made clean.  Certainly, we must exercise wisdom when we take actions on the behalf of others, but a clear set of priorities would seem to dictate the manner in which we act with others in mind.   Priorities It seems that our actions are dictated by our priorities.  There appears to be this inherent grid that we run decisions through.  That grid seems primarily to hold the welfare of self above everything else.  Clearly, that seems to be in keeping with the natural tendencies and behaviors of base human nature. Yet, there is a sense of some deep sort that runs entirely contrary to human nature; that in putting ourselves first, we must by necessity put others first.  There’s some sort of sense of community, of relationship and connection that deems us only a part of a much large whole.  And as a part of that larger whole, we are obligated to preserve the whole above the preservation of self.  That dichotomy all seems rather strange because it appears to run against our natural inclinations to make certain that we’re okay and that our personal interests are protected.   What’s the End-Game? We all ask where we want everything to end up.  At the end of it all, when our days are over and the fullness of our time, talents and energies are spent what will be left?  That’s a terribly big, and in some cases, a terribly frightening question. If our focus is upon ourselves, then the end results of our lives will be likewise focused on us.  The benefits and resources that we will have garnered and spent will serve us and us alone.  That might make for a life that we perceived as satisfying and a good ride, but it ends at our end.  The service of self terminates at our own death.  Therefore we will have left nothing that outlives us, nothing that serves the greater good, nothing for those who remain.  It would seem that the end-game is indeed the end-game in a manner tragic and unfortunate.   What about Legacy? What kind of footprint will each of us leave?  Will it be big enough and broad enough that others are enriched by it and find both comfort and inspiration in it?  Will it have changed lives, redirected people who were on crash courses to their own destruction, or given someone somewhere some degree of hope in a place where they saw none for themselves?  Will our legacy live on, not just for the purpose of living on but for the purpose of giving others purpose?  Are we committed to leaving something of value behind that will cost us, but will in turn be of inestimable value to someone else, someplace else?  Or are our lives spent in the service of self which means it all begins, and more tragically ends there? In leaving a legacy, we can’t be so shallow as to leave a legacy of who we were as some sort of monument to self.  Monuments are not legacies, they are simply reminders.  A legacy is leaving something to others for the sole purpose that it gives them something valuable and needed in their own journey whether we are given the credit for that or not.  It’s a selfless detachment where we hand another human being something that may very well be life-saving without them knowing its origin or being able to credit the one who gave it to them.  It’s a gift that is given for no other purpose than the nature of the gift and the recipient who will receive it; the giver being entirely lost in the transaction.  That is sacrifice.   How Will I Live? Sacrifice . . . it runs contrary to who we are, but it is in reality everything that we are.  The pinnacle of our humanity is ascended when we descend in the service of others.  We are raised up when we lay ourselves down.  It builds us, it builds others, and it builds families, communities and nations.  Sacrifice is the best of our humanity manifest in shining moments when everything that would diminish us is overcome and set aside.  It is all of us at our very best.  So how then will you live?

Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part Two Forgiveness often seems to be one of those things that’s a genuinely nice idea, but not really a life liberating reality.  Life is full of nice ideas; those trite sayings, gentle stories and brave concepts that would make life a whole lot better if they were really real.  Nice ideas often seem to be spun of the threads of idealism and the fabric of fanciful thinking.  The reality is that they don’t really seem to work in the real world.  Sometimes the very things that we wish were true simply dissolve and disintegrate when the reality of life hits them.  Forgiveness seems to be one of those things. Sometimes the greatest, most profound truths seem to be the very things that are completely removed from the reality of the lives that we live.  In reality, it’s not that they don’t fit or are idealistic or naïve or far-fetched.  Most often it’s simply the fact that we don’t know how to incorporate them.  Sometimes the greatest truths are so big and so encompassing that we can’t figure out how to figure them in.  And because we can’t somehow make them fit, we assume them to be irrelevant, weak, inadequate or just plain stupid.  Such often seems the fate of forgiveness. The Oxford English Dictionary defines forgiveness as “to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offence or debt.”  The American Psychological Association expands the definition of forgiveness “as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and/or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.”  Whatever your definition might be, forgiveness is about letting go in a manner so total that the offense and the restitution are released.   Obstacles to Forgiving Forgiveness is a releasing which makes it difficult on at least three basic fronts.  First, we typically demand restitution be obtained or that justice be meted out for whatever offense we have incurred.  There is a deep sense of justice that demands correction of an offense through some sort of action that both compensates us for whatever loss we’re sustained while teaching the offending party that such actions are inappropriate and intolerable.  The act of forgiveness works against this feeling, making forgiveness difficult and contrary. Second, forgiveness creates a perceived sense of vulnerability.  If we “grant free pardon,” do we then open ourselves up to have the same offense perpetrated upon us again?  Are we giving space and opportunity for the offending party to do to us what they did before?  In forgiving, have we relinquished power that we can no longer hold over the person who offended us in order to keep ourselves safe or make them pay? Third, we see forgiveness as letting someone ‘off the hook.’  It’s a free pass, a mulligan, a turning away where we permit ignorance to erase that which should not be erased.  We feel we do an injustice by not handing out justice and instead waving off an offense in a manner that seems both irresponsible and ignorant.  Forgiveness is often seen as an easy way to resolve or bypass something that should be dealt with.   What Forgiveness is Not Forgiveness is not saying that the offense was ‘okay’ or somehow less than what it really was.  It’s not watering down the offense or somehow sweeping the whole thing under the proverbial carpet in some sort of passive gesture.  Forgiveness has nothing at all to do with avoidance or passivity.  There’s nothing placating or escapist about it.  It’s not an act of weakness nor is it a means to maneuver around that which we find unsavory or downright scary.  It is in reality an act of the utmost strength, the highest form of sacrifice and the deepest manifestation of our humanity.  The truth is, it’s simply saying that to hold the offense against the person is simply too toxic for the one holding it.  We will be offended and we will take hits that are deep, searing and violently cutting.  When that happens, we must have an alternative to holding them.  There must be a release of some sort.  Holding the offense stymies the one holding it, therefore not allowing the offended party to move on.  Forgiveness makes nothing ‘okay.’  It’s not about that.  It’s about creating freedom and release in manner that nothing else affords us. Neither is forgiveness a means of giving the offending individual permission to reoffend.  Forgiveness comes with the understanding of the nature of the offense, as well as the establishment of boundaries to keep the offense from happening again.  Forgiveness is not permissive or passive.  It’s not about being an inflatable punching clown that pops up for the sole purpose of taking another hit in an endless series of hits.  It is an intentional act of release, not an act of permission.   What Forgiveness Is The old saying is quite true . . . forgiveness is more for the one who forgives than for him who is being forgiven.  In forgiveness, we choose to let go of the emotional toxicity that harboring anger over an offense breeds.  We are not granting permission to the offense or minimizing it.  Forgiveness is an act of personal liberation where we are setting ourselves free from whatever was done to us.  It is not an action that invalidates the offense.  Rather, it is an action that leaves the consequences of the action between a just God and the offending party while freeing us up to move on with our lives.  Forgiveness is a choice to leave the past with those who created it so that we can move on to a future yet to be created.  It has nothing to do with weakness and it has everything to do with strength.   The Hardest Person to Forgive     In all of this forgiveness stuff, the absolutely hardest person to forgive is most often ourselves.  There’s some sort of blockage when we are the one in need of our own forgiveness.  There’s something doubly binding when we are both the offending party and the one extending forgiveness all wrapped in one.  The duality of all of that puts us in two roles at the same time, making forgiveness doubly difficult. Despite the inherent difficulty, it’s right here that the greatest grace (unmerited favor) needs to be extended in that we embrace both authentic remorse for offenses we’ve incurred while extending ourselves the full release of forgiveness.  Something about this dichotomy is terribly difficult, holding many hostage to mistakes far in the past that dim or even rob the hope of the future.  Forgiveness is inherently powerful enough to extend itself wholly and completely to us even when we are the ones in need of forgiving ourselves.   Freeing Ourselves What are you holding onto and why are you doing it?  If you look closely enough you’re likely to see that the rationale for withholding forgiveness is far outweighed by the liberating release inherent in forgiving.  Take stock of what you’re holding onto and consider the worth of holding it verses the freedom found in releasing it.     

Obstacles to Prayer LifeTalk “I want to live a life where prayer is the first thing that I do, the second thing, the third thing, and the last thing after the prayer has been answered.” Craig D. Lounsbrough Many of the obstacles to prayer are things that we have not given sufficient attention to, or we think that they’re somehow normal, appropriate, or of no real concern. These are the things that present themselves as rather casual issues that are of little importance. But they can (in fact) be major obstacles to an effective prayer life. In this podcast we’re going to outline a handful of these destructive factors that too often lay hidden in our lives. And in wondering how or why our prayer lives seem so ineffectual or hollow, we might ask if any of these factors have found a place of residence in our lives.   Obstacles to Prayer Sin. Sin is an intentional living outside of the will of God that places us at odds with who God created us to be. Sin is described as “anything that separates us from God.” If we are engaging in such behaviors, we come to prayer already separated from the God to Whom we are praying. Self-Centered Agendas. We tend to live out our lives based on our agendas and our perception of what is in our best interest. Therefore, we do not come to prayer seeking God’s direction, God’s will, God’s insights, or God’s perspective. Rather, we come with a prepared agenda where we wrangle with God in order to achieve these agendas or obtain the resources to achieve them. Distractions.  Prayer becomes the thing that we squeeze into the many demands in our lives. It’s something that sits somewhere near the bottom of the rather extensive checklist that outlines our obligations and duties. We intend to give prayer space and time, but it often falls prey to the many other demands that press prayer off of our calendar. Shiny Object and Squirrels. There are many things that vie for our attention. In reality, most of those things are not imperative to life and living, although we grant them that exact status. It’s often assumed that if something in our life demands our attention it’s because ignoring it will have dire consequences, when in fact deferring the majority of these things is unlikely to result in any consequence of consequence. As such, in the perpetual bombardment of an unnecessarily busy life, prayer is easily set aside. Lack of Faith.  We are lacking in faith. The lack of faith either inhibits our prayers as we feel that we bring very little to the process, or we bring little to the process because we don’t necessarily believe in praying anyway. We must remember that the size of our faith only becomes an issue when we refuse to use the faith that we have. So, use the faith that you’ve got to increase the faith that you don’t have. Unmet Expectations.   We come to prayer with expectations regarding the outcome of our prayers. If those outcomes are not achieved, we feel that prayer is ineffectual or irrelevant. If it fails to generate our prescribed outcomes, we’re quick to label prayer as irrelevant or entirely powerless. Our assumptions rest in the belief that our expectations are the ones that are right for our situation, rather than being the one’s that we should explore in order to determine what might actually be right for us. A Jaded Heart.  We feel that God has not answered our prayers in the way that we wanted, or in the time frame that we wanted, or maybe He didn’t answer them at all. We have found God disappointing, demanding, less than generous, absent, or a God that crushes our desires despite how passionately we bring them to Him. We refuse to understand that God cannot fulfill many of our desires because it is the fulfilling that would do the crushing.  Therefore, we either refuse to pray any longer, or we do so in such a limited fashion that it can barely be defined as prayer. The Lure of the World.  The world is full of enticing things that have no depth and lack any substance whatsoever. And therein lies the absurdity of it all. We chase after that which we believe will do the things that we’re chasing them to do. And once we actually catch them (or in some cases realize that we can’t because nobody does), we’re struck with the reality that these things weren’t what they appeared to be, or they didn’t possess the resources that we had errantly endowed them with.     The Insurance Policy. Is prayer some supplemental thing that we do out of guilt, or a sense of obligation, or to cover the holes that we might have left in our efforts to tidy up our lives? Is prayer that safety net that we keep in place just in case the world fails us, or we fail ourselves? Is prayer that supplemental insurance policy that we hold onto ‘just in case?’ Prayer is not insurance. Rather, it's the assurance that we won’t need insurance. There are many things that create obstacles to our prayer. And we would be wise to thoughtfully inventory our lives and ferret out anything that would create and sustain any such obstacle regardless of what it might be. You will find all of these outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” This book is a fresh, entirely relevant, and thoughtfully targeted thirty-day devotional that will bring the power of prayer to ‘life’ in your life. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.