A Deeper Understanding

PREPARATION

I am adding a new category to my blog in order to incorporate a new passion of mine. As I wrestle through the truth claims of the Bible, God has really pushed me to learn more about Christian apologetics. I’ve had the opportunity to take a course in apologetics here at Wesley Seminary, and I’ve never been so willing to actually do the reading assignments for a class. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term apologetics, it comes from the Greek term ‘apologia’ which means ‘a defense’ or ‘justification’. So it’s the act of defending and clarifying Christianity in the face of objections or questions.

As I’ve become fairly obsessed with different writings and videos of debates on the existence of God, I’ve started to wonder if the Christian faith is something that can really be argued out to the point that someone can become convinced of its truth. For me the simplest way to answer that is: no, it can’t. But, that doesn’t mean you must abandon reason in order to put faith in Christ.

The other day I sat down with a good friend over some beers. Typically when he and I do this it’s a sure thing that we will end up discussing/debating theology. We started with one of the more simple Christian ideas and talked about the Holy Trinity. I was trying to use my newfound love of apologetics to say that its possible to rationally explain these kinds of issues. He took me to task and by the end of our conversation it was clear that while I still believed it was logical, I could not put into words properly why I believed it.

In the next few days I did some casual searching of different explanations of the Trinity and found some very compelling ones. It occurred to me that even though I believe these explanations have merit and are logical, I’m not sure you can really make someone believe them simply through description. Then, I had a conversation today that really drove the point home. The newest trailer for the upcoming Superman film came out today and I was talking about how excited I am with another friend who is also a fan. The trailer clearly paints Superman as a Christ-figure and seems to be riddled with Biblical themes. They show part of the scene when Superman’s father must send his son to Earth and my friend commented that now that he has a son whenever this idea of a father having to leave his son comes up it really affects him emotionally. I was so struck by that. This friend and I have known Superman’s story since we were both tying towels around our necks and pretending to be Christopher Reeve as 5-year-olds. We’ve also always known the story of God sending Jesus to Earth. We’ve both heard the same words and seen the same movies, but my friend now understands this on a level that I cannot.

One of the metaphors that I have heard used to explain the Trinity is marriage. My wife and I are both separate persons in one unit, one marriage. I can’t explain that with words, but I can look at my marriage and attest to its truth. I think God also uses marriage in another way when it comes to understanding our relationship with Him. I know a lot of people that think marriage is a very scary idea. A lot of them don’t know why they should bother with it when they can look around and see there is no guarantee it will last. How can you know if the person is right for you? How can you know that you will be happy? We ask these same questions about God don’t we? In both cases, our intentions are what will lead to our answers. If you are waiting for proof in order to commit yourself to someone, it will never come. You make both decisions rationally, but in the end it becomes about humility and sacrifice. Once you enter into that relationship, the doubts go away and the questions change. I’m no longer asking whether or not it was the right decision. Now I’m asking how to continue putting both God and my wife before myself, which in turn gives me fulfillment. I’m not sure I could ever put that in words in a way that it would make sense, but I believe it’s rational and logical.

In summary: God has given me enough reason to put my faith in Him, but it will always require trust. Some things we can only understand by being inside relationships.

Ashamed of Blessings: 5 Things I’ve Learned About Money, Part 5

SLAVERY

This morning my wife and I did our daily bible reading and it inspired me to finally write my final blog about the things I’ve learned about money. We are reading through the book of Ecclesiastes and today we read chapter 5. For this entry I really wanted to address the tension that seems to be building around the subject of economic classes. There is a lot of public discussion about the responsibility that high-income earners have in society and I wanted to comment on it. The verses I read this morning seem like the best possible place to start. Here is Ecclesiastes 5:8-20:

Riches Are Meaningless

⁸ If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. ⁹ The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields.

¹⁰ Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.

¹¹ As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owners
except to feast their eyes on them?

¹² The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether they eat little or much,
but as for the rich, their abundance
permits them no sleep.

¹³ I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:

wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners,
¹⁴     or wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when they have children
there is nothing left for them to inherit.
¹⁵ Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb,
and as everyone comes, so they depart.
They take nothing from their toil
that they can carry in their hands.

¹⁶ This too is a grievous evil:

As everyone comes, so they depart,
and what do they gain,
since they toil for the wind?
¹⁷ All their days they eat in darkness,
with great frustration, affliction and anger.

¹⁸ This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. ¹⁹ Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. ²⁰ They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.

 

For me, this was a really helpful excerpt for understanding a biblical stance on wealth. Verses 8-18 have always been second nature for me, but 19 and 20 are more challenging. The key, in my opinion, is separating wealth from a love of money. The bible says the love of money will eat away your soul and most people I know would say they agree. We’ve seen some of our nation’s most wealthy become disgustingly greedy and cause a lot of pain. According to the bible, though, it’s not good enough to just equate wealth with greed. Doing so has led a lot of people to feel a strong sense of guilt over the blessings God has given them. For me, that feeling of guilt comes from the fact that if I spend $50 on dinner for myself, that’s $50 that could have paid for two people to have clean water for the rest of their lives.

I think the bible is telling me that it’s actually ok to enjoy my dinner free from guilt. It’s a gift from God that I am able to afford it and if I feel guilty about it, I’m actually disrespecting God and His gift. That DOES NOT mean I don’t need to do anything about the people without water. The best way to think about it is in terms of ratios. If I budget a percentage of my income to be given to charity, then I will end up giving so much more money throughout my lifetime than if I constantly beat myself up over the money I spend on myself. If I gave 100% of my money throughout all of my life, two things are guaranteed to take place: 1) poverty will still exist when I die and 2) my family will have zero money when I die. It’s common sense if you think about it: we must have money in order to give it away. It’s not surprising that the bible spends much more time speaking about the dangers of greed in this passage, but we can’t ignore the last part where it talks about enjoying the gifts God gives us. It’s ok to go out to eat and buy expensive toys when you are able to afford it. If I have $10 million and I spend $200,000 on a sports car, that’s a very small percentage of my wealth that I have wrapped up in my car. I could still give $1 million to charity which is far more than most people are able to do. We should try to enjoy our wealth without falling in love with it and we should DEFINITELY stop judging other people for their wealth. When we do that the real problem isn’t greed, it’s envy.

Two People, One Budget: 5 Things I’ve Learned About Money, Part 4

SLAVERY, ONE FLESH

As I went through the process of getting married, I heard from several different places the importance of money in a marriage. It’s a commonly held belief that financial issues are the number one cause of divorce. I think it might be too simple to say money causes divorce, but it makes perfect sense to me that money is somehow mentioned in the majority of divorce cases. Thankfully, Antonia and I both knew from the beginning that as married people, we would completely combine our finances. As I’ve been paying more attention, I’ve realized that a lot of people don’t necessarily agree with that practice. I hear a lot about couples that get married and just never get around to combining their bank accounts. Probably the most common situation that I hear about from listening to Dave Ramsey’s show as well as hearing stories from my dad (in his pre-marital counseling) is that both husband and wife maintain their own checking account and then have one joint account where they deposit money for the bills they have to pay. It actually makes perfect sense if you think about it. You are helping provide for each other by contributing your fair share to the rent, utilities and other bills. Then, on top of that you have whatever extra money you earn to buy the things you want as an individual.

Only problem is: that’s not marriage. That’s the relationship you had with your roommates in college.

I think that situation reflects our increasing understanding of marriage as an agreement that we enter into with the purpose of increasing our own happiness. We also tend to assume that a marriage is about fairness. If one person makes more money, then they should have more money in their bank account to spend, right? I could probably write an entire post about where that mentality comes from (Movies, TV Shows, etc.), but I want to focus on the fact that it’s crucial to have a healthy view of money within your marriage in order to be successful with money.

Marriage is about sacrifice. Period. That doesn’t mean that we don’t gain anything from being married, but like most things in life, what we gain comes through the sacrifice. The bible says that as a husband, I’m to love my wife the same way Jesus loved the church. What did Jesus do for the church? He died for her. Traditional marriage vows speak of giving ourselves to the other person as well as all of our worldly goods, which includes money. Anything I have also belongs to Antonia. WE have debt. WE have income. WE have financial goals. WE have a budget that we have to live by. Of course we have individual goals with money, and that’s part of the joy is putting our money towards the other person’s happiness. Why should I have my own bank account to buy things for myself unless I either don’t want her to know how I spend my money or I don’t want her to have a say in it. That isn’t marriage in my opinion. I should be choosing to give Antonia a say in all areas of my life because I trust her.

It’s a bit of a chicken vs. the egg situation when it comes to financial struggles and divorce. I don’t know if money struggles indicate problems that already exist or if money leads to problems in a marriage, but it’s very clear that it’s an important thing to consider.

LAMP OF THE BODY

Here are my thoughts on the movies I’ve seen in the last couple months in a few sentences:

ARGO- Incredible suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. It also made me really admire the bravery of people that go through those things.

The Hobbit- Tried to bring the weight of the Lord of the Rings to a story that couldn’t hold it. It was silly dwarfs mixed with over-played melodrama. The Hobbit has great themes that are different from the Lord of the Rings. Rather than exploring those themes, it tried to inject the themes from Lord of the Rings where they didn’t really fit.

Django Unchained- Tarantino is so good at gritty, interesting dialogue it’s ridiculous. The movie was very well done but I found myself feeling strange about all of the violence considering where we are right now in our culture. It’s a cathartic experience to watch disgusting racists get blown away, but is that really good for anyone?

Lincoln- Felt like spending a long weekend at your grandparent’s house. There’s very little excitement and everything seems to move slow, but every once in a while there’s a nice moment where Grandpa sits you down and imparts great wisdom and you feel like you learned something. My admiration for Daniel Day-Lewis also grew. That guy is so good.

Les Misérables- Several people around me were in tears at the end of the movie. The story is one of the greatest ever with powerful messages and I think they did well with the movie. But for some reason the music doesn’t elevate the story to the place where it really moves me to tears. Maybe I just don’t like the operatic way of singing every word. However, I was told that seeing the right actors on stage can totally change that since Hugh Jackman and definitely Russell Crowe didn’t totally do justice to the music.

PATIENCE AND A GENTLE TONGUE

There’s a lot of buzz about the inauguration on Monday here in D.C. I think God put it on my heart to pray for the President’s safety on Monday. I guess I was thinking about all the anger and hate in our country and I think the people who pray should be praying for peace, regardless of our politics.

You Wear Your Heart on Your Wallet: 5 Things I’ve Learned About Money, Part 3

SLAVERY

We’ve all heard the expression ‘He wears his heart on his sleeve’. We use it when someone’s emotions are so obvious that they can’t hide them. For example, take the other day when I clicked on a video someone shared on facebook of a flash mob singing Christmas carols at the mall. Well, if someone had walked into my office at that moment my sleeve would have screamed ‘I’m a big baby!’ at them while I would have tried to quickly wipe the tears and speak in a manly, over-compensatingly low voice.

Anyway, we know that only God can truly know someone else’s heart (1 Samuel 16:7), but Jesus also taught us that there are some pretty big clues that you can look at in order to take an inventory of your own heart. He says in Matthew 6 that ‘where you put your treasure, that’s where your heart is’. Jesus said that it’s not your sleeve that betrays the state of your heart, it’s actually your wallet.

I’ve pretty much always brushed over that verse with a “yeah, yeah, yeah, what else ya got?” attitude. Not to say I disagreed with it or something, just that I didn’t even give it enough thought to even disagree with it in the first place. It kinda has that feel of a fluffy, heavenly thing that Jesus said. But if you think about it, it’s actually pretty wise.

Like a lot of people my age, I’ve grown up with a pretty shallow ideology in terms of money. I think the simplest way to outline my financial philosophy would be something like this: ‘Don’t have? Complain. Have? Spend. Have too much? Spend more and maybe give some away.’ I figured that if I gave too much thought to money I would make it an idol in my life, so I tried to be as content as possible living paycheck to paycheck. (Ironically, looking back, that was only possible because I was bailed out by my parents all through high school and even in college.)

If we take the time to listen to what Jesus said, we’ll see that He was right. You know how forensic scientists can basically figure out if you’ve ever been in a place because everywhere you go, you leave a little bit of yourself behind in the form of a hair or a piece of skin or something? Well think about that in terms of money. Almost every move you make in the world requires some kind of cost. You pay for transportation, food, housing and having fun. If you’re not directly paying for things, every minute you spend not making money will eventually have to be compensated by a job if you want to maintain any kind of lifestyle.

If you look at things that way, start to think about the money trail you leave behind. A few years ago my money trail would show that my heart was in video games, Taco Bell and going to the movies. The funny thing is that I also would have said that it was a good thing to tithe 10% of my income, but I was always making the case to God that I didn’t have enough to do that. When I tried to ignore the importance of money, my natural outflow of money revealed what was really important to me. You could see that my heart was in the wrong place. If you say that you want God to be in control of your money, but then all of your money is spent on yourself, where is your heart truly? Money is a discipline, just like losing weight or exercising. You can say you want to lose weight or get stronger but if you never go on a diet or lift any weights, will people really believe that you care about those things?

Where your money is, that’s where your heart is.

CROWNS THAT DON’T LAST

Redskins > Ravens

You Are Not Outsmarting Your Credit Card Company: 5 Things I’ve Learned About Money, Part 2

SLAVERY

According to creditcards.com, talking about credit card debt was ranked as the most taboo subject to talk openly about in a survey. It was ranked just as high as discussing the DETAILS OF YOUR LOVE LIFE!! Well, I guess I’m going to make people very uncomfortable in this post, so be prepared!

In my last post I brought up the fact that credit card companies are NOT afraid of your wheeling and dealing. Sometimes when you’re talking to people about credit cards, they will suddenly start speaking in a low voice and tell you their secret plan to defeat their credit card company by paying off their balance every month in order to get the points without paying any interest. They usually follow that up with their “evil plan laugh“. The problem with this is, the statistics don’t show that it’s working. Most credit card holders (including myself at one time) have the mentality that a credit card is a useful tool if used correctly, but it requires strong self-discipline. Ok. Now imagine you have a friend that is an alcoholic and they say to you, ‘Look, the bar is a really great place to make friends and have community. I just have to be self-disciplined when I go in there.” If you want to be a good friend, you’ll tell them they need to steer the hell away from the bar. VISA and AmericanExpress are cashing in on your logic. On the flip side, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are not going to tell you that they got to where they are because they had a few free flights from their SkyMiles. As a matter of fact, if you research the tips that millionaires and billionaires give for success, the thing they all seem to agree on is living within your means.

I want to throw a few important facts out there for everyone to keep in mind, especially as we go through the holidays:

1) Paying off your balance every month CAN STILL cost you money.

If you are very, very careful you can live that way without going into debt, but there is a really important factor that is left out of most people’s mindsets. There is a psychological factor in how we spend our money. When we use a credit card we are almost ALWAYS inclined to spend more money because we don’t feel the pain of money actually leaving our hands. That means that when you’re spending your “future money” with your credit card, you’re much more likely to say things like, “Go ahead and supersize it and throw in an extra hash brown.” Your cash is flowing out significantly faster with credit cards than it would be with cash or even a debit card. (And in that example, you’re also getting fatter.) As we’re developing even easier ways to pay for things like “the Square” and being able to swipe our iphones at starbucks, it will show in how much faster our money flows out. Source

2) Minimum payments are not designed to encourage you to pay down your balance, they are designed to DISCOURAGE you to pay down your balance.

This one isn’t hard to figure out. Your minimum balance tells you nothing about how much money you can actually afford to throw at your debt. What it really says is, “Give us this little amount of money and you can keep all your toys and you won’t hear from us for a whole month!” The credit card companies know this and it distracts people from the amount of money they lose in interest by only paying the minimum. Decide how much you are going to pay on a card based on how much you can fit into your personal budget, not based on their minimum payment. Source

3) We (myself included) criticize our government for going trillions of dollars into debt. Well, right now American consumers as a whole owe $11.38 trillion in debt. Households with debt owe an average of $15,328 on credit cards, $149,782 on mortgages and $34,703 on student loans. Not quite as much as the government’s debt, but it’s close enough for us to realize that as individuals we might be a part of the economic problem as well. Source

4) Credit card rewards programs do just enough to keep people believing in them. Most airline miles go unredeemed and in the end the rewards just aren’t worth any interest you might pay. Research the statistics on this and think about it from the credit card company’s perspective. Do you think it’s working in their favor or in the favor of the customer? If their customers spend more money by holding their card, they aren’t going to be upset about shelling out a few bucks here and there in rewards. In the end, we are not ‘beating them’ at this game. Source

Since this is apparently a taboo subject I want to say that I hope I don’t ever sound judgmental when I write about money. I started to learn about these things because I have made some major mistakes with money that I’m still paying for. Once I started to learn, I became pretty passionate about sharing some of the information so that other people might not make those mistakes. So I pray that you all make good decisions and experience blessings with money.

MISCELLANEOUS

A friend of mine has recently started a blog here. In one of his posts, he talked about the power of podcasts. I totally related to it since I’ve started devouring podcasts recently. It started with Dave Ramsey’s daily radio show about money (of course), but now I’ve branched out to Ravi Zacharias, Andy Stanley and a photography podcast. It’s such an underrated bit of technology. After a while listening to these guys every day, it starts to feel like they are actually mentoring me in some form. You can actually start to see your knowledge and wisdom grow by just listening to them while working out or walking to the metro. If you want to get better at something or understand something better, there are tons of free podcasts out there on almost every topic. Look into it.

A Good Credit Score Should Not Be ‘North’ On Your Financial Compass: 5 Things I’ve Learned About Money, Part 1

SLAVERY

In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to pass along some of the things I’ve learned about money in the last year. To give some background, when I got married about a year ago I realized that my wife and I were facing some pretty serious debt from student loans and a couple credit cards. We took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class and began to change how we handled our money. Two days ago we calculated that since June of this year, we’ve paid off around $8,000 of our debt. We still have a very long way to go (We are shooting to be done with debt by December of 2015) but it was so encouraging to see how much progress we are making. We actually could have paid off a full $10,000 but we have taken that extra money and put it aside until Antonia’s job situation is more secure. (She’s a government contractor and her contract expires in a couple months.) So that’s a rate of around $10K per 6 months. Right now together we make about $80K per year just to give you an idea of the income we’re working with.

There are a few things I’ve learned since trying to turn around my finances that surprised me. A few things I assumed were true turned out to be harmful for my ability to save money. The first one I’m going to share involves your Credit Score.

I can remember sometime in high school being told by someone in my family that I should consider getting a credit card soon because it would help me to begin building my credit. Luckily I held off on getting a credit card until I was almost done with college, but ever since they told me that I had it in my head that it was true. That idea was reinforced by other people over the years as well as catchy jingles on TV for free credit check websites. In fact, if you watch that video, you’ll be bombarded with the dangers of a bad credit score in the first 10 seconds. “Now we can’t get a loan for a respectable home.” Bad credit score equals bad life.

Well, here’s what we need to understand about credit scores: Yes, they are important when it comes to getting loans. But you actually cannot even HAVE a credit score without FIRST having a loan (credit cards count as loans) and you can’t KEEP a GOOD credit score without CONTINUING to take out loans. Ok, does everyone understand what I just said? You CAN NOT have a good credit score without being in debt. You also CAN NOT have a great credit score without MAINTAINING debt. Here is a link to the breakdown of a FICO score.

I need to acknowledge that this is a bit of a controversial idea. The manager at Wells Fargo once asked me if I wanted to open a line of credit to act as overdraft insurance. I told him I was trying to get rid of all of my lines of credit. He looked at me as if I was a member of a cult and he nicely told me it was a dangerous idea that I was following. His argument (and the argument of many people) was this: He agreed that it was bad financial advice to tell someone to keep a balance on a credit card because of the interest, but to not have any would destroy your credit score which would destroy your ability to borrow. He offered me a scenario: ‘What happens if your roof collapses and you need a $2000 loan to fix it? The best thing to do is use a credit card for small things like McDonalds and just pay it off at the end of the month so you maintain good credit but don’t pay interest.’

That is how most financially savvy people handle their credit score and I totally agree that it’s possible to live that way and not find yourself incredibly deep in debt (as long as you are very careful). However, that doesn’t change my opinion and here’s why:

First of all, what would happen to credit card companies if everyone were to live this responsibly? They would be handing out free loans to everyone without making any money and therefore they would go out of business. Do you think credit card companies are shaking in their boots over the advice that the Wells Fargo guy gave me? They aren’t, but I want to talk about credit cards in a later post. I want to focus just on the credit score today.

Let’s pretend that I had gone all the way through college without taking out student loans and without ever having a credit card. Crazy talk, right? Debate that all you want, but I had the choice to go to community college and work, but I didn’t. It’s important to understand that if you don’t have any debt, you don’t have a ‘bad credit score’ you have NO CREDIT SCORE. It can’t be calculated without debt. So when a company searches your name, they get an error message. Anyway, let’s say that I came out of college without any debt, what would I do if my roof collapsed? Well, I started out telling you that in 6 months, $10,000 of our money went to savings and towards our debt. Everyone, please imagine a world where you get to actually keep the money that you earn. It’s incredible what you could do with your money if you were able to keep it and you were actually disciplined with it. If we didn’t have debt (which could have been possible if I had made different choices), then in 6 months we could have saved up $10,000 to take care of any emergencies that came our way. Then 6 months later we could have had $10,000 to buy a car in cash and not live with car payments. 6 months later we could have had $10,000 to enjoy a nice vacation without paying interest on credit cards to pay for it. So in 1 1/2 years we could have had a strong emergency fund, a nice paid-for car and a vacation to wherever we want!

My overall point here is not to tell you that credit scores don’t matter. They do. If I didn’t have a good credit score, but also wasn’t good at saving, I’d be in trouble. My point is very simply that your end goal should NOT be to have a good credit score. It should be to establish yourself without debt so that you can save up enough money to take care of your own emergencies. It wasn’t that long ago that common wisdom was to save money for a rainy day. Who do you think is responsible for the shift towards credit score dependance? I can tell you that it’s not a system designed to help you become wealthy.

There’s a lot more to the topic than what I’ve said here. Like, for example, your auto and home insurance rates are generally higher if you don’t have a credit score. That’s inconvenient and arguably wrong, but I’d still rather pay more money in insurance than pay all the interest for debt that it would take to have a good credit score. Also, it is possible to manually underwrite a mortgage which means you wouldn’t need a credit score to get one. That’s my opinion and hopefully I’ve given you a different way of thinking about it so that you don’t just go along with the assumption that you must build your credit. I’d encourage you to do your own research and I’ll even give you some links:

More information provided by the people behind the FICO score. (PLEASE CONSIDER THE SOURCE)

What Dave Ramsey says about FICO

Someone who disagrees with me (Just to be fair)

I’m by no means an expert on money, but if you want to challenge me, change my mind or ask me a question in the comments I will try to respond.

Just do it.

ONE FLESH

I hate to use that clichéd phrase as the title of my post, but is there any better way to tell someone to quit over-thinking something and get to work? When Antonia and I were doing pre-marital counseling in preparation for our marriage, we asked a man that we both respected a lot, Hap Struthers, to meet with us. When we met with Hap, he asked us about our prayer life as a couple and we admitted that we weren’t always disciplined about praying together. Out of everything we talked about that day, that is what he challenged us on the most. In fact, he told us that if we didn’t get in our car and pray together when we left and then continue praying together regularly that he would refuse to see us again. I think his exact words were something like, “If you can’t do that, I’ll give up on you two.” Woah. Seemed a bit harsh, but this is not someone whose wisdom I would ever question. He warned us that as soon as we left Satan was going to do everything he could to get us not to pray together. He was right. And he’s been right to this day. We did pray in the car after leaving Hap, but it’s amazing how quickly we started to forget the urgency and started saying things like “Oh I love this song! Well, we can at least wait until the next song to pray” or “I’m tired. I’ll take a nap first because I’d like to be more alert when I pray.” We had to have a JUST DO IT moment in order to get ourselves to pray.

We got better at praying together after that… but not by much. We told ourselves a long time ago that we would pray together before bed each night, but surprise, surprise: we often go to bed at different times. So how did we fix that? Well, we didn’t. We continued telling ourselves that we would do better the next time around. Some days I was very determined to make it happen and of course, that would be the day that Antonia would do something that would irk me just enough that I just didn’t feel like praying with her. It might sound extreme to some people to say that the Devil is manipulating my marriage, but after a year of little progress in this area, it makes you wonder. Have you ever tried to start a spiritual discipline? Explain it however you want, you will find yourself in a serious battle.

So God has placed it on my heart to really engage in this battle and claim a victory. Antonia and I go to bed at different times, but every day we have about a 15 minute walk down to the bus stop on our way to work. So, I asked if we could start reading through a book of the bible each day and then pray on our way to the bus stop. Yesterday was day 1 and the war began to rage. It went something like this:

We started walking down the street and I started to think, Well if I don’t bring it up, I bet she won’t. Gosh, that’s so annoying! Why do I always have to be the one?  JUST DO IT.

“Ok, I’m going to read something for us.”
“Ok.”
“Any preference about what book I should read?”
“No.”
UGH! So typical! Don’t you have any input in this?! JUST DO IT.

“Ok… how about… Jeremiah?”
“Sure.”
GRRRRR JUST DO IT.

(As I’m reading) This book has no relevance to our lives right now. What is the point of this. Is she even listening right now? Am I even listening right now? JUST DO IT.

“Ok, I guess I’m going to pray for us now.”
“Ok.”
It’s 6:45AM and I have no idea what to pray for right now. JUST DO IT.

“Uhh.. God… thanks for today, thanks for Antonia. Please give us a good day at work. Amen.”

“Cool.”
“Cool.”

This morning was almost exactly the same way. But I have to say, it felt great afterwards. I instantly want to put my arm around her and kiss her cheek and I feel much more ready to face the day.

Following God feels like this a lot of times. I don’t know exactly why I’m doing it and I can think of a million reasons why NOT to. But when you start JUST DOING things, it’s amazing how your heart and soul will fall in line and feel full.

CROWNS THAT DON’T LAST

As a lot of people know, some years ago, the guitarist from the band KORN became a Christian and turned away from drugs and partying. If you do a search on YouTube for Brian “Head” Welch, you’ll find his story. Today I stumbled upon the fact that the bassist from KORN, Fieldy, also became a Christian in order to turn his own life around and get away from drugs/alcohol/anger. I know this story has been told in Christian circles but it struck me anew today that these guys came from such a hugely popular group and legitimately turned everything over to Christ. It’s nice to remember that this is why we believe. It’s easy to get caught up in politics and theology, but at the end of the day we believe because Jesus died to forgive the sins of everyone, especially people like Head and Fieldy. Good reminder for me today.

SLAVERY

My plan for my upcoming blogs is to do a 5-part series in which I want to share 5 things that I’ve learned about money in the last year. I talk about this often in my blogs and I’d like to choose 5 things that I believe people my age will find useful and interesting. There are some things that I was so oblivious to before and I think they are important. Stay tuned for that.