I realized something about myself today: I feel like its easier for me to believe these days. I am not sure how that will come across as you read that statement, but it makes a lot of sense to me.When I first started on this journey of raising our salary, I could literally feel the pressure in my chest. I could feel the weight of the responsibility I had to my family to provide for them, to take care of them and simply pay the bills. Most people don't know that I actually ended up on the doctor's table getting an EKG because my chest was so tight. I was literally crumbling under the...

Today marked the beginning of Max and Mary's first official baseball league. It was so much fun to head out there and work with them and their teammates on a game that I have loved my whole life. Max was really into the practice for the most part. Mary kept wandering off to play in the dirt and squirt her new water bottle.We headed straight from there and celebrated Mary's birthday one week late (because of the incredibly gross sickness they had last week). We met their cousin, Brooke, at Build-A-Bear Workshop. It was SO cute to see them so excited to pick out their stuffed animals and see...

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out a way to find new music. Most of my new music comes from word of mouth, but I just found an awesome new outlet.Pandora is a website that allows you to type in your favorite artist and then it chooses music similar to those artists. It then puts that music into a play list and you can tell it whether or not you like those songs. It then feeds your "personal radio station" songs that you like. I listened to this for a while today and came up with some great new songs that I'll be able to use on Sundays at Hope.You can set up several stations...

I heard an interesting podcast from Malcolm Gladwell and then the same topic was brought up in our small group last week.We have historically learned to try to work on our areas of weakness so that we can be more well rounded. Studies have shown that we can improve our natural strengths by 50-60%. We can only improve our areas of natural weakness by 1-5%.This is an interesting observation which leads one to conclude that we are much better delegating the areas that we struggle with and focusing on the areas that we are naturally strong.Go with what you're good at doing. You'll go much...

Mike and I had a great meeting today with Martha Seger from Habitat for Humanity. We have been trying to find an outlet for us to serve as a church and it was a great to hear Martha's heart for helping underprivileged families in the community.Habitat enlists the help of churches, businesses, individuals, etc. to provide financing and man power to build homes for families in need. We are praying about what we can do at Hope to jump in and lend a hand.I feel alive when we talk about bringing our faith outside the walls of the church in a very tangible way. Great, great meeting.

I have been thinking a lot lately about a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven will pause to say, 'There lived a great street sweeper who did his job well'."I think about the things that I put my hands to every week. I believe that God has truly opened a door for me to be a barista at Caribou Coffee. If that's the case, I believe that my goal should be to do my job as a barista...

I was preparing dinner the other night for the kids and Max was not feeling well at all. He busted out with a classic one liner:Max: "Dad, will you come cuddle me?"Me : "Hang on one second, Max, I'm getting dinner for you guys."Max: "Daddy, if you don't come cuddle me I'm going to be frustrated!"I cracked up and now Max is inserting that word into many different situations. I don't even think he really knows what it means.

Dara and Ben came back home today and the family is slowly but surely returning to normal. Our precious little Mary is still dragging a bit, so I may have to spoil her a bit more to make sure she makes it all the way back :-)Thanks for your continued prayers for our family!

“He who lives without prayer, he who lives with little prayer, he who seldom reads the word, and he who seldom looks up to heaven for a fresh influence from on high - he will become the man whose heart will become dry and barren.”- Charles Spurgeon

Check out this new teaching video/short film on the life of Abraham. It's produced by Bluefish.tv and it features Mark Batterson. There is a preview screen on the right that will give a glimpse at this video that centers around the life of Abraham.I am seriously passionate about finding new ways to do ministry and communicate the gospel. This is a great example of that and even the preview will encourage you to chase after your God-given dreams.