Java for the Spirit: Fueled by Faith, Fitness and Coffee Grounds

We all have daily wars we wage inside ourselves. We battle against guilt, anger, depression and insecurity. We fight fear, lust and addiction. Our minds and our hearts are under attack relentlessly by an enemy that wants to paralyze us and trap us inside our own minds and keep us constantly on the defensive. It amazes me how often we try to fight these battles without the most powerful weapon at our disposal - God's Word. Far too often, the weapon sits within our grasp at arms reach, but remains untouched as the world fires a barrage of bullets aimed straight at our hearts. The book sits on our coffee tables uncracked and the app sits on our phones unopened. Determined to fight the battles alone, we do not pick up the one weapon that has already won the war. 2 Corinthians 10:4 says, "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have the divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and tak...

“ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of  things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 ESV Read Also: Proverbs 16:9; Isaiah 55:6-13 Fifteen years ago today, my world was turned upside down in a single day. That’s because fifteen years ago today, I left everything, and everyone, I had ever known in urban Colorado, and moved to rural Kansas. I knew nothing about the area, except that it was, at the time, the last place on earth I thought I wanted to be. I did not know anyone. All of my family and friends were 400 miles or more away. At a tender 22 years of age, I may as well have moved to a foreign country. That’s how out of place I felt when I moved to the state I now call home. I did not know what God was doing with my life then. To be honest, as I look back, I spent a lot of time in the wilderness wandering, and I definitely messed a lot of things up along the way. But I can also reflect on the last decade and a half and know that even when I did not know wh...

Read: Romans 8:31-39   " When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:   'Death is swallowed up in victory.'   ' O death, where is your victory?        O death, where is your sting? ' "  1  Cornthians  15:54-55 ESV   A local  14 year old  young man passed away a couple days ago  of cancer, and I am sitting here at 5:30 in the morning just trying to figure out how to process it.   Right now, there's a million thoughts going through my mind all at once. The young man had battled the disease for somewhere around nine years, or the bulk of his young life.  I did not really know this young man personally, but I have a lot of friends who did. His inspirational fight with cancer over a period of years had touched countless hearts locally, mine included. As a parent, I cannot fathom the heartbreak of ha...

NEVER DISQUALIFIED Read: Exodus 3 “ But he said to me, “My  grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV Voltaire once said, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” A recent email conversation with my old youth pastor brought to mind this famous utterance, because it is so applicable to an issue I – and I have to imagine many others – struggle with often. Since I was a teenager, I felt drawn into a ministerial role, something which I have already spent time in these pages writing about. However, I never really heeded or explored the call much, and spent a lot of my 20’s as a wanderer, a “prodigal” if you will. I took many wrong turns, and made several grievous mistakes I have spent a lot of the last years trying to reconcile in my own heart. As I got into my mid-thirties and started to feel that pull to mi...

Read: 1 Kings 19:9-13   " “ Be   still , and know that I am God. I will  be  exalted among the nations, I will  be  exalted in the earth!”  Psalm 46:10 ESV   Sometimes, when the pace of life overwhelms me, I just step outside, close my eyes and open my ears. To gain a measure of calm in a frenetic world, it is a comfort just to let the soft sounds carried on the breeze wash over me like a breaking wave.   In the pre-dawn hours, I listen to the chirping of the crickets and the birds singing their sweet songs as if to welcome th e new day. In the afternoon and evening, as the waning sunlight sweeps over me, I listen to the Kansas wind sweeping through the grass, rustling the trees, and flapping the flags high on the poles. At any time of day, in  Kansas, too, it  is not  unusual to hear livestock calls in the distance, whinnies, moos, and bleating,   even  in more populated areas.   In these...

By way of confession, in the midst of a project where I set out to write one piece a day, this is actually the third piece I have written today. And it is not even 11 a.m. Why? As I have often said, writing is my way of working through complex issues I am chewing on mentally and emotionally. It’s how I process stuff. This morning, though, I am writing to process a thought that my book-writing project has actually triggered – again. As I have previously written, the marathon – a daunting 26.2 mile race – is the one distance which has always gotten the better of me. Even on the two I actually finished, I felt woefully unprepared for what I encountered during the race, and the one I did not finish a few months ago left me wondering if I was even capable of successfully accomplishing the distance. It has always been my “big picture” goal as a runner – for me, it is the running equivalent of publishing a book as a writer. Finishing – more to the point, finishing strong – has always...

SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP Read: 2 Samuel 12:1-15 "For I want very much to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, to be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine."  Romans 1:11-12 This morning at 4:15 a.m., I had a minor disagreement with my alarm clock. That disagreement? It told me to get out of bed, and I did not want to. “If you didn’t want it to go off that early, why did you set it for that early?” you ask. It’s a perfectly reasonable question, and one I spent the next five minutes sitting on the couch in a dark living room asking myself. The answer is a very simple one. About 8:30 p.m. last night a friend of mine sent me a (mildly) joking four-word message: “Suck it up, buttercup!” It was because of those four words ringing in my head I chose to listen to my alarm instead of crawling back under the covers. See, the friend who sent me this message invited me to begin taking a 5 a.m. fitness c...