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The coupon code is feb2010
via Greg Qualls & the Resurgence
Bible reading and prayer are the two most basic spiritual disciplines of Christian faith. Prayer in the simplest way is talking to God. It is sharing with your loving father your heart, thoughts, emotions, requests, needs, cares, anxieties, worries, praises, thanksgivings, hopes, and desires. The list could go on for days. God speaks to you through his Word and you speak to him through prayer.
Here are some simple tips for developing a discipline of prayer:
1. Set up “triggers” in your life.
Take things that you do every day and make them triggers for you to pray. Here are some ideas to help you get started: taking a shower, using the bathroom, getting in your car, making coffee, getting in bed, getting ready to read your Bible, finishing reading your Bible, driving to work, driving home, finishing lunch, eating eggs, sailing on a boat, scratching your nose, and buying a tambourine. You get the idea. Take things that you do every day and use them as a trigger to pray.
2. Have a plan.
If you don’t have a plan, you can easily become a random prayer. Whatever comes to your head at the time is what you will pray for. You will constantly be praying for the same things over and over. This isn’t necessarily bad, but there are a lot more things/people in your life that you could be praying for. So have a standard place where you keep track of all the things that you want to pray about. Then review this list at least once a day. This way nothing gets left behind.
3. Talk to God.
This might sound dumb to some, but for others this will be an epiphany. I don’t know if you have noticed this or not, but some people like to use what could be called “prayer talk.” This is where a person suddenly embodies the spirit of a TV evangelist and sees how many times they can say the words God, Father God, Lord, or Jesus (whichever is the person’s favorite) in a prayer.
It comes as a surprise to most that you can actually just talk to God. You don’t have to use his name as the punctuation to every sentence. You don’t have to speak in old English. You can just talk to him. Just like you talk to your friends about your troubles and your successes, you can talk to him. You can tell him your struggles and failures. You can tell him jokes. You can even be angry and cry out to him (read a few Psalms and you’ll get the idea). Prayer is you simply talking to God. No flair. No technicalities. No special formulas. Just talking.
4. Write it down.
When you develop a habit of constantly praying, it becomes easy to forget what you’ve prayed about. Therefore, you can lose track of whether or not God has answered your prayers. This is so you can look back and see how God has answered your prayers over time. Keep it simple though. Don’t set a limit. That means no minimum or maximum. It puts an unnecessary burden on you. Some days you will write pages worth of prayer to God. Other days it will be the simple phrase, “God help me.” The idea is to simply write it out.
5. Keep it simple.
During the time of Jesus, Jews would have standard prayers for everything that they would do. You would have a standard prayer for plowing a field, eating a meal, drinking wine, and even going to the bathroom (see Marvin R. Wilson’s book). The key was that most of these prayers were only a sentence long. The reality is that our prayers don’t have to be five minutes long for God to hear us. Sometimes the simplest prayers are the best prayers. If you can only think of a few things to say to God, then say them. God isn’t keeping a tally on how much you pray. He just wants to hear from you.
6. Keep it sweet.
Remember whom you are talking to. While God is the king of the universe, he is also the lover of your soul. One of the reasons that David was a man after God’s own heart was because he was passionate and honest with God. He was open and honest as you can only be with a closest friend. The worst prayer isn’t a long prayer or a prayer said in Old English but a prayer that has no heart. If you aren’t praying out of a love for God, then are you really praying? The reality is that this is the core of all prayer—to seek the face of God and to seek after his heart. Prayer is one of the most intimate times we have with God. Treat it that way.
Adrian Knott Interview
Published 05/02/2010 Art , Liquid Salt , Rake Clothing , Surfing Leave a Comment
Another great interview by Liquid Salt Surfing Magazine: Adrian Knott/Enjoy Life. Adrian is an Australian illustrator and is the creator of the Rake Clothing line. Click here to read the interview.
Check out the new Andy Davis (one of my favorite surf artists) website.
If you are on the Gold Coast this weekend, check out some of the festivities at this year’s Rhythm Kirra Teams Challenge:
via Korduroy.tv
In this episode we teach you how to make your own high spf, water proof sunblock from organic and natural ingredients for pennies on the dollar compared to buying it off the shelf. Ingredients include- zinc oxide (sunblocking agent), coconut oil (soothes and conditions skin), bee’s wax (waterproofing agent), and tea tree oil (soothes and repairs skin and smells good too). Rub on and paddle out. Distributed by Tubemogul.
New Redeemer City to City Site
Published 01/02/2010 Church Planting , Redeemer City to City , Theology Leave a Comment
Below are some quotes from a message John Piper gave entitled, “Born Blind For the Glory of God.”
“There are about 3,000 abortions a day in the United States and about 130,000 a day worldwide. Which means that the horrific, gut-wrenching reality of Haiti’s earthquake on January 12 happens everyday in the abortion clinics of the world. And it is likely that if the dismemberment and bloodshed and helplessness of 130,000 dead babies a day received as much media coverage as the earthquake victims have—rightly have!—there would be the same outcry and outpouring of effort to end the slaughter and relieve the suffering.
Americans have been giving 1.6 million dollars an hour for Haiti Relief for the last ten days—a beautiful thing. I hope you are part of it. It is so unbelievably easy to give with phones and computers. But the funding and resistance to the suffering of the silent, hidden destruction of the unborn is not so easy. So the 3,000 babies who are crushed to death every day in America by the earthquake of abortion go largely unnoticed.”
“According to Dr. Brian Skotko, pediatric geneticist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, in a November 2009 article from ABC News, “An estimated 92 percent of all women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies.” This is true, even though, as Gary Bauer points out, there are many “waiting lists of couples ready to adopt children with Down syndrome.”
“One estimate is that 70% of the women who get abortions in America are professing Christians.”
“So my aim in this message is modest and, I think, explosive, if the church really took hold of it and lived it. The message is that God knits all the children together in their mothers’ wombs, and they are all—all of them of every degree of ability—conceived for the purpose of displaying the glory of God.
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. (Psalms 139:13-15)”
Kelly Slater’s Latest Experiment – The Chunnel
Published 27/01/2010 Channel Islands Surfboards , Kelly Slater , Surfing Leave a Comment
via Channel Islands Surfboards Blog
Water is compressed over the hole. As it passes over, it draws air into the Chunnel (channel/tunnel). It is the principal of the U class racing boats on pontoons. Each side panel is veed out with hard concaves toward the rails.
via Korduroy.tv
Stuart D’arcy purports to have the greenest surfboard factory in Australia (located in Currumbin Waters, QLD). Accepting the use of petrochemicals as the foundation for his surfboard business, D’arcy acknowledges their toll on the environment and takes steps to minimize his impact through conservation of materials. The specifics aren’t mentioned in this short produced by Circulate Motion Pictures (www.circulatepictures.com) but he explains his passion for making his operation clean while handshaping a thruster for pro surfer Asher Pacey. Asher hand paints the board and gets some nice rides in solid, empty Australian surf. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Tom Wegener on Tuna Evolution
Published 24/01/2010 Surfing , Tom Wegener , Tuna Surfboard Leave a Comment
Tom has an excellent piece ( with videos ) at Drift Magazine on his latest installment of the Tuna. Check it out!
A great reminder of the dignity and value of human life on the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Be warned: this video will move you.
How Much Difference Would It Make?
Published 22/01/2010 Francis Schaeffer , Theology Leave a CommentFrancis Schaeffer once asked his wife:
“Edith, I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible. I don’t mean just ignored, but actually cut out—disappeared. I wonder how much difference it would make?” We concluded it would not make much difference in many board meetings, committee meetings, decisions and activities.
—Edith Schaeffer, The Tapestry: The Life and Times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer(Waco: Word, 1981), 356.
art by Jeff Canham
A Fresh Start > 2 Sermons
Published 08/01/2010 Alan Radloff , Christ Church , The Psalms Leave a Comment
Listen to the first 2 sermons in the current series through the Psalms at Christ Church (Currumbin, QLD).
I am glad I am surfing in 23 c/75 f water right now on the Goldy.
Tmoe at the White Walls and Water Caves art show in SF.
Here are the audio sessions from the Gospel Growth = People Growth Conference with speakers such as: Philip Jensen, Tony Payne, Mark Dever, and Don Carson.
How N.T. Wright Stole Christmas
Published 31/12/2009 N.T. Wright , Peter Leithart , Theology Leave a Commentvia Peter Leithart
Several years ago, when The Passion of the Christ was making headlines, I realized that N. T. Wright has spoiled every Jesus film. Once you’ve read Wright, you realize that none of the movies get Jesus right. Pharisees and scribes are reduced stock villains with caricatured Jewish features. Pilate has to make an appearance, and Herod, but we are given no sense that first-century Israel was the powder keg that it actually was.
No film ever gives us what Wright says we should be looking for: a “crucifiable” Jesus, a Jesus who does something so provocative to make the Jews murderously hostile. In the movies, Jesus is a hippy peace-child, a delicate flower of a man, a dew-eyed first-century Jewish Gandhi. Why would anyone want to hurt Him? Maybe because He’s so annoyingly precious; but that’s not the story of the gospels.
Just this year, I had another realization. N. T. Wright has spoiled Christmas too.
Read the full article here.
Art by Chris Del Moro
via My Life In Water
via Andrew Kidman
If you are on the Gold Coast this summer, join us at Christ Church for a fresh start in 2010 by spending some time in the Psalms.
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