How To Memorize the Bible in Only 5 Minutes a Day

Memorizing scripture can be a daunting and intimidating task.  I have oftentimes made well-intentioned efforts to memorize both long and short passages of scriptures, knowing that there is something significant about the discipline of memorizing bible verses.  Recently I was introduced to a system for memorizing scripture that still requires discipline, but also will set you up to make scripture memorization a part of your daily devotional life and doesn't take much more than five minutes a day.

One blogger wrote, "Practice makes perfect. An accomplished musician may not be able to explain how he can play a particular line of music so well and with such speed. His learning started with slow movements and progressed through repetition, repetition, and more repetition."

If you want to memorize scripture, you need to repeat it often.  Repeat it daily; repeat it audibly. And then do it again.

How to Memorize the Bible in Only 5 Minutes a Day

1. Repeat it once daily for 7 weeks. This means that every day you will be saying the scripture you have chosen out loud.  The first week you should do this with one verse, the second week add a second, and so on.  By the 8th week, you will be always doing 7 verses daily and moving verses out of the daily category and into the weekly category.

2. Repeat it once weekly for 7 months. Once you've repeated a verse out loud for 7 weeks, you should have it pretty well memorized.  But you don't want to forget it so repeating it weekly will keep it on your mind.  At the end of 7 months (while also still doing other verses weekly and daily) you will move that verse into the monthly category.

3. Repeat it once monthly for 7 years.  Okay this seems a bit extreme, but at this point we are just making sure it sticks in our memory forever.

This system can be formatted however you want, and I actually learned this from Paul Arndt who learned from a man named Tom Frost.  If you want to see a more detailed what Tom's system looks like on paper, you can check out the charts that he uses to keep track of his memorization schedule.  The way that I have begun using this system is by using the Bible app by YouVersion.

How I use the Bible App to help with this process:

1. Highlight and Bookmark.  When I find a verse I want to memorize, I make sure to highlight and add it to my bookmarks so I can very quickly find it later.

2. Label appropriately.  Once it's highlighted I will created labels like, "1) Daily" so I remember which order I am memorizing them in and how often I need to be practicing each verse.

3. Set reading plan notifications.  Having a list of verses to memorize is not helpful if you don't actually remember to do it.  I use the Bible app's reading plan notifications to remind me each morning to read the Bible; when the notification comes up I am reminded that I need to practice my memory verses.

“I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture. . . . No other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends! Your prayer life will be strengthened. Your witnessing will be sharper and much more effective. Your attitudes and outlook will begin to change. Your mind will become alert and observant. Your confidence and assurance will be enhanced. Your faith will be solidified.” - Chuck Swindoll

Parenting: The Role of Coach

In ninth grade, I played on the football team. It was my first time ever playing football. I was a scrawny, little freshman on JV, trying to figure out how to tackle, learn plays, and how to hit a receiver in stride running a fade. At the end of every sports season, we would celebrate with an awards banquet. The awards banquet meant all the fall sports would gather together with friends and family and celebrate the past season, give awards to the Varsity athletes, and honor the seniors.

During the awards banquet, the varsity football coach got up and began giving his speech that would eventually lead into all the different awards. And he began to talk about me. Scrawny, freshmen, just learned to play football, me. And keep in mind, this is in front of my friends and my family and my teammates. And he began to talk about the beginning of football season and how I worked. I showed up. I showed up in early summer at a football camp, having never played a down of football in my life besides at recess. I’d never lifted a weight in my life, never learned a football play in my life. And I showed up and wanted to work and learn to play football. And he talked, in front of all these people, about how hard I worked.

Now when tenth grade football season came around, how do you think I responded when it was time to start putting in that work again? Do you think I just blew it off and said, “Oh, it’s really hard”? Do you think I sloughed it off and said, “You know what, guys, this is not this important; we’ll get to it in August when mandatory practice is starting”?

No, in tenth grade, I worked even harder than ninth grade because my coach saw something in me, and he pointed something out in me. In tenth grade, I wanted to work even harder at football. I wanted to live up to my coach’s expectations because my coach saw something, and he brought out the best in me. That’s what a good coach does. A coach brings out the best in his players.

“When you wake up”

The beginning of the day is a time when you get an opportunity to play the role of coach and bring out the best in your kids.

As a coach, you can look forward into the day with your kids. On the sideline of the day, with your arms around your kids, you can look at all the things your kids are about to face. You can point out the trials that they’re gonna face because you will probably know your kids schedule. You will have listened to them, and you know the troubles that they’re facing, and you can look forward into the day and say, “Here’s what you’re going to be up against today.”

As you prepare your kids for college, you can look forward into all that they’re going to go through, all that they’re going to face, and all the questions that they’re going to have. As your kids prepare to have families of their own, as a coach, you can stand alongside them and look forward to all the things that they’re going to face and not only do you look forward, but you can also point out the best in them. You remind them, “This is who you are. This is who God’s created you to be. And here’s what you’re going to face, but here’s what I know about you.”

Because as a coach, our job is to bring out the best in our kids. And the way we bring out the best in our kids is by loving them. Loving them for who they are and not what they do.

In our world, it’s so easy for our identity, especially our children’s identity, to get wrapped up in performance and in other people’s descriptions. And our kids’ identity gets wrapped up in their academic achievement, their athletic abilities, what their teacher thinks of them, what their peers think of them, whether they’re popular, or whether they’re picked on. As we become adults, and we start to figure out our career, our identity gets wrapped up in how well we do at our job, how well we climb the corporate ladder, how much money we make. It gets wrapped up in what other people think of us, what our spouse thinks of us, what our friends think of us, whether people like us or don’t like us.

And what we can do for our kids is we can affirm them not based on their academic achievement or their athletic ability, but on who they are. Because we love our kids because they’re our children. We love our kids not because of what they do, but because of who they are.

And as parents, you know your kids better than anybody else in the world. And so you, as a parent, can look at them and see the way that they’ve been uniquely wired. The passions, the talents, the gifts that God has given them, the way he’s knit them together in their mother’s womb. You can look at them and say, “You are God’s workmanship, and he’s created you exactly the way he wants you to be.”

As a coach, we can bring out the best. We get to stand on the sidelines of life and cheer our kids on, point out the schemes of the defense, and tell them we are proud of them.

What are some ways you can play the role of coach in your home?

The Power of Habit

If you’ve ever received an ad in the mail from Target you are experiencing an organization studying habits.  You may not have realized it by Target actually studies their customers in order to determine what to advertise and to whom to advertise. Target studies the habits of their customers, because if they can better understand the customers’ habits they can also better begin to predict which products they should advertise to those customers, because if they know which customers in which stages of their life are most likely to buy which items, then they can send advertisements that are very directed to those consumers.

One of the most valuable consumers for a company like Target to market to is pregnant women, because what Target realizes is that if they can attract a pregnant woman to begin shopping at Target, they also know is that when she has her baby she will continue to shop at Target.  And when a new mother shops at Target she does not go into Target to only buy diapers, because a new mother is busy, and so while she’s at Target she will also buy groceries. And while she’s there she may pick up a few cards for her relatives and the birthdays coming up. And while she’s passing the entertainment section, maybe she’ll pick out a movie for her and her husband to watch later. And since she’s there, maybe she’ll even buy that bathing suit that she’s been eyeing all season.  

As Target studies the habits of these pregnant women, it’s not such a simple process. It’s not as easy as Target looking at which women buy baby clothes and that means they’re pregnant. In fact, it’s much deeper, because not only do pregnant women buy baby clothes.  So do grandmothers, aunts, uncles, or people going to baby showers. So baby clothes could be an indicator to Target that a woman is pregnant, but it could also be an indicator that somebody is just going to a baby shower. Instead, Target looks for other things. For example, expectant mothers buy a significant amount of lotion. Now, many people going to Target will buy lotion, but pregnant women buy an unusually large amount of it and it’s always scent free. Sometime in the first 20 weeks of their pregnancy pregnant women will load up on scent free lotion. Now, many people buy things like vitamins at Target, but pregnant women will load up on vitamins, magnesium, calcium, and zinc sometime in the early stages of their pregnancy. So if Target, as they study the habits of their customers, notices somebody buying something like soap and cotton balls it may mean nothing; but if that soap is scent free soap and in addition to the cotton balls they are loading up on washcloths and this has happened months after buying scent free lotion and vitamins, calcium, magnesium, and zinc, this indicates to Target that not only is this woman pregnant, but she is approaching her due date. All from studying the habits of Target’s shoppers they can not only know if a woman is pregnant, but they can also predict when she is going to have her baby.

*this insight and more like it can be found in the book The Power of Habit.

Humans are creatures of habit.

We have habits that we routinely go through each and every morning. Businesses study our habits so they can increase their bottom line. A company like Google is the internet giant they are, not because of their great search engine, but because of the amount of information they have about our internet habits.  When I go to restaurants I order the same food that I order every time I go to that restaurant.  Why? Because I'm a creature of habit.

Habits can be both incredibly helpful and dangerously destructive. They can help us deepen our relationship with our spouse, with our family. They can help us take care of our bodies, our physical, our mental, our social well being. They can even help us deepen and grow in our understanding of the scriptures.  We can form habits around the study of scripture, disciplining ourselves to be in the word - to read and memorize scriptures.  We can form habits around our prayer life and around family devotions.  Habits are an important part of our life.  At the same time, habits can also be harmful. Our habits can destroy relationships. Our habits can harm us physically and mentally and socially, and our habits can even drive a wedge between us and God.

Blue Jeans and God's Calling

Eric Yelsma is the founder and owner of Detroit Denim, a company founded on the idea of building the highest quality craft blue jeans, made 100% in the United States.  I got the chance to hang out with Eric and his team one afternoon and hear a bit of his story about how he started his business.  As Eric talked about his love for blue jeans, the craftsmanship of the jeans they create, and the spirit of the company that he is trying to build I could not help but see God’s hand all over it.  Eric creates his products with high excellence only using products and materials that are made in the United States.  He emphasizes a “spirit of abundance” in the workplace, encouraging his team to act with generosity towards those around him.  As we talked about his faith and his work, one employee even chimed in stating that she sees the influence of his faith on their company every day and quickly started bragging on Eric’s character and the work environment he’s created.

Eric makes blue jeans because God has called him to make blue jeans.

But here’s what’s interesting; when initially talking about all the things that he is passionate about in his business and the journey into it, he struggled connecting his faith and God’s calling to his small factory in Detroit.  After all, he never heard God tell him to make blue jeans.

So Eric runs a blue jean company and does it by making the best product possible, does it with generosity, runs his company with integrity, treats his employees well, and only uses products that come from places where the workers are paid fairly... but he initially has trouble seeing God’s calling in it.  As Christians when we talk about God’s calling, we tend to immediately start separating the sacred and the secular.  We think of God’s calling as some mystical act in which God audibly speaks to some calling them out to become pastors, priests or missionaries, yet when we think of the ordinary jobs we think of something far more normal.  We rarely think of the assembly-line workers, the stay-at-home moms, and the baristas as experiencing God’s calling.  But what if we did?

Martin Luther said:

“The maid who sweeps here kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays - not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors.  The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”

Maybe you are like Eric was.  Maybe you have never thought what you did had anything to do with your belief in Jesus.  Maybe the daily commute, the making copies, the trips to refill your coffee, and getting your TPS reports in time has never seemed much like a calling to you.  Maybe you spend the majority of your time trying to keep your house clean and your kids fed all the while never once considering it your Christian duty.

We don’t decide our vocations, we discover them.

The word vocation literally means “calling.” This word needs some re-claiming; it needs to be taken back to help remind us that the things that seem so ordinary and every day are much more sacred then we have imagined. And the sacred things that we so often call “spiritual” are much more ordinary than we have imagined. God has called everyone. And he has done it by placing you in workplaces, in families, in neighborhoods, in schools and uniquely creating you with your own gifts, abilities, passions, and skills.

From the time we are little we are asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And then you enter college and are bombarded with pressure to get your career path worked out. But if we are really talking about calling, we don’t really decide our vocation, do we? It’s not that deciding your career path is bad, but how often do we end up exactly where we planned on being when we were 18? If vocation literally means “calling”, we are not the ones doing the work. We are not the ones doing the calling.  We are just discovering it.

You may not have realized that being a student is your vocation, but if you are in school, you are called to be a student. You may have not realized that the responsibility to take care of your kids is a calling form God, but if you have kids, it is. You may not realize that making copies, cleaning bathrooms, and typing into a spreadsheet could be a calling, but if that’s where God place you it is. God has called you to the places he has put you in right now, and he also will call you to other places throughout your life. Places in which he has given you unique relationships and unique opportunities to use your gifts, passions, and skills to make a big deal of Jesus.

Also, Eric shot an awesome video with us seeing God's calling in his work as a blue jean designer; if you haven't seen it, it's pretty awesome.

[tentblogger-vimeo 72840026]

Parenting: The Role of Friend

[This is an excerpt from a sermon preached on June 9th, 2013.] 

Do you enjoy your kids?  Do you delight in them? In the book of Proverbs, in Chapter 3, it says, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”  Now talking about parenting, it could be easy to focus on the idea of discipline, but what about the latter half of that verse, “The Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”  There's no doubt that if you are a parent you have to discipline, but do you also delight?

Relationship > Lecture

Most of us want to be able to teach our kids well.  We want to teach our kids the Scriptures, we want to teach them to value the right things, we want to teach them to do what is right, we want to teach them about Christ.  And the list could go on.  And if you ever want to be effective in the role of teacher, you have to also play the role of friend.  It's easy to ignore this and say, "Well, friendship, that’s not that significant.  That’s nowhere near the role of teacher.”  But if you want to play the role of teacher, you have to play the role of friend.  Because teaching without a relationship is just a lecture.  It doesn’t matter how life-changing the content of the things you have to say to your kids is, if the context of that is not in a loving relationship with their parents.

Your kids do not care how much you know.  They don’t care the influence you have in your organizations.  They don’t care about all the wisdom that you’ve learned.  They don’t even care if the very experience that they are going through is the exact same thing you went through when you were their age.  They don’t care.  But you better believe your kids know how much you care.  That they know when you’re there for them.  They know when you’re listening to them.  They know when you’re present physically but not present emotionally.  Your kids know how much you care.

Parenting: The Role of Teacher

[This is an excerpt from a sermon preached on June 9th, 2013.] 

Growing up, my dad would call family meetings occasionally. And as a kid - I remember hating family meeting time. Because what that meant for us was we couldn’t immediately be excused and go run back downstairs to continue the videogame that we had paused, or go back outside to continue our basketball game on the driveway. No, instead, we had to sit around the table and listen to what my dad had to say. And so, my dad would share with us. And I don’t remember the content of what we talked about in those family meetings. But what I do remember is that in the times of family meetings, something was important to my dad, and he wanted it to be important to us as kids.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” - Deuteronomy 6

When Moses says, “Talk about these things when you sit at home,” he does so because what he realizes is that you are going to sit down, that your kids have to eat; you have to eat. And so, when you do, how do you use the time that you have?  Dinnertime is an opportunity for you to play the role of teacher. It’s an opportunity for you to play the role of teacher, which helps you establish value in your homes.  As you sit at dinner with your kids, you can teach them. You can teach them the things that are important to you and that you want to be important to them. You can teach them the things that you read in the Scriptures that you want them to cling to in their lives.  For some of us, this might mean that dinner should look different. It might mean we have to actually have dinner with the family. It might mean the TV needs to be turned off at dinnertime, or the phones get put away.  Dinnertime is an opportunity for you to play the role of teacher.

Disciples are made through teaching...

When Jesus is leading the disciples, he’s equipping them, and they’re about to go out and start the Christian church, he gives them a command. And he says, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations.” The job of the disciples, as followers of Jesus, is to be disciple makers. The job for us as followers of Jesus is to make followers of Jesus. Our homes is one of the best environments to help our kids grow as disciples of Jesus. And so, when Jesus gives the disciples this command, he says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” And the way he instructs them to do this is by, “Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded them.”  If you want to help your kids grow to follow Jesus, you have to play the role of teacher. It doesn’t have to be at dinnertime, but you have to play the role of teacher.

Teaching happens not only through talking, but it also happens through modeling. When your kids are little especially, it’s gonna happen primarily through talking. They will copy you, and you will model things, but you are gonna be teaching your kids a lot of truths. You’re gonna teach them, “We believe the Bible. The Bible is true. This is how you pray. Jesus loves you.” But as your kids get older and older and older, more and more of the lessons that they will learn from you are going to be the things that they see you do. The things you say are still important, but more and more is gonna be taught through the things you do.  They will be taught lessons about marriage by how you interact with your spouse. They will be taught about grace and forgiveness by how you respond to them when they sin.  They will be learning about conflict based on how you respond to conflict in your family. This is why my wife and I, as adults, are still learning incredible lessons from our parents.  Even though neither one of our parents has sat down and told us the principles to having a healthy, happy marriage, we can both look to our parents and say, “That’s the type of marriage I would like to have when we are their age.”  We can look at our parents and say, “When my son has kids, I would like to be those type of grandparents.” They have never told us or taught us their philosophy on being a parent or a grandparent, but we can see that.

"Just copy Dad"

The Apostle Paul says, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” As he’s teaching his church, he says, “Follow me as I follow Jesus.” In your homes, can you say that? Can you, as a dad, say, “If you want to copy Jesus, if you want to know how to live like Jesus, just copy dad, ‘cause I’m copying Jesus”? As a mom, can you say, “If you want to live like Jesus, if you want to show the grace and the mercy like Jesus shows, just copy mom, ‘cause mom is copying Jesus”?  This is a difficult, important task for all parents.

[Feel free to also read an introduction about this, Outsourced Parenting]

Detroit Denim: God's Calling

[tentblogger-vimeo 72840026] Eric Yelsma, founder of Detroit Denim shares his thoughts on calling as it pertains to his work as a blue jean designer.  God not only calls people to be pastors and missionaries, but God also calls the assembly-line workers, the stay-at-home moms, the blue jean designers, the construction workers, the graphic designers, and so on.  No matter what the work is that you do, God has called you to use your gifts, to do your work, and to serve the people around you.

Outsourced Parenting

[This is an excerpt from a sermon preached on June 9th, 2013.] 

It’s probably no surprise if I tell you that virtually anything could be outsourced as a parent. Anything that is essential to your job as a parent, anything that you feel is integral to what it means for you to parent your child, any of those things could be outsourced.  If you wanted to give up the first year of your kid’s life – because we all know how exhausting the infant years can be – you could give up the thousands of diapers, the sleepless nights figuring out if your kid’s sick or if they’re teething, figuring out why they’re crying, the burping, the cuddling, the swaddling – if you wanted to, you could outsource that. For $170,000.00, you could find a professional to come in and handle it all for you. You’d never have to change a diaper during that first year.

Now, maybe that’s a bit extreme. So, maybe we’d tame it down a notch. Let’s say child-proofing overwhelms you. The idea of crawling around your housing, going to every nook and cranny, and trying to figure out which areas of your house are the most unsafe. You could hire a child-proofing consultant to come in and let you know which electrical outlets really need to be covered up, to let you know that the Drano should be locked up, and the medicine cabinet out of reach. For $1,000.00, somebody would come in and be happy to share with you what should be done to keep your child safe. If you had a child who struggled with thumb sucking – that, for a while, was cute, but now they’ve gone beyond the cute stage of thumb sucking – you could hire a thumb sucking guru from the city of Chicago to fly in and provide their consulting services. For $40,000.00, they would be happy to let you know how to correct this problem, and even throw in two phone consultations for no extra charge.

And the young years are hard and cause a lot of sleeplessness, but as you’re kids get older, you start to lose sleep for all kinds of other reasons. Don’t you? If you wanted, you could outsource discipline, teaching your kids to respect your authority, teaching them manners. In fact, there is such a thing as etiquette experts. In The New York Times, a journalist said,

“Etiquette experts say that new approaches are needed because parents no longer have the stomach, time, or know-how to play bad cop and teach manners. Parents no longer have the stomach, the time, or the know-how."

And so, this key job of teaching etiquette, discipline, teaching authority can be outsourced to somebody else. We can outsource throwing our kids’ birthday parties and buying our kids’ birthday gifts. Anything that is the job of the parent could be outsourced to somebody else who claims to be an expert or a professional.

And while we talk about these things, and while we list these things, many of them may be disturbing to think about, many of us do this very same thing when it comes to the spiritual influence in the lives of our children. Many of us have relied on an hour-and-a-half on a weekend to be the complete sum of the spiritual development of our kids. Now don’t misunderstand me, what we do when we gather is important. What the children’s ministry does on a Sunday is very important. And what the student ministry does is very important. But it is nothing compared to the lifetime that you spend with your kids, teaching, shepherding and influencing them. There is no greater spiritual influence in the lives of your kids than you are as parents.

Sitting, walking, lying down, and getting up

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses is preaching to the nation of Israel and says:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

When you sit down, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. What Moses realizes, and what Moses is trying to preach to the nation of Israel is that this is an all-of-life kind of thing. It’s not a once-you-have-time-for-it kind of thing. It’s not if-we-can-fit-it-into-our-busy-schedules kind of thing; it’s an all-of-life. It’s about building our kids’ relationship, their love for God with their heart, with their soul, with their mind. And he doesn’t list out all the things that they need to squeeze into their life. Instead, he lists their schedule.

He says, “When you sit, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up.” He doesn’t list new things for them to start doing. He lists things that they’re already doing, and he says just think differently about the things that you’re doing and use those to impress these on the lives of your kids.

As Christian families, God desires that all of our life, the times when we’re in the Scriptures and the times when we’re going to the baseball game, to be all about Jesus. It’s very easy to have opinions about what being a Christian should look like on a Sunday morning. But what does it look like to be a Christian family at dinnertime? And what does it look like to be a Christian family on Tuesday, on the way home from baseball? Or on Wednesday, when your daughter tells you about the boy who broke her heart? Or on Thursday, when you’re packing up your son or daughter to go off to college?

Your little church

The preacher, Jonathan Edwards, said, “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.”

In your homes, in your little churches, what would it look like if everything we did was shaped by what was actually most important? Because as Christians, we believe that Jesus lived the perfect life that none of us could ever live. And that by his death, he paid a price that none of us could pay. And by his resurrection, he conquered sin, death, and the devil. And if we believe that that changed our lives, shouldn’t it actually change the way we live? If we believe that we were slaves to sin, but now we’ve been made sons and daughters of God, shouldn’t that change the way we relate to our sons and daughters. And Moses says, “Talk about this. Talk about this when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.”

I will continue posting excerpts from this sermon; to listen or watch the sermon online - check it out.

In the News: George Zimmerman, Westboro Baptist, and Indulgences on Twitter

This week has brought about some interesting news and helpful blog posts that you might find valuable.  The crazy Westboro Baptist Church no longer has just Christians and human rights activist as their opposition, but they now also will feel the wrath of One Direction fans.  As with any news, the George Zimmerman verdict regarding the death of Trayvon Martin has caused lots of controversy.  One of the best posts I've read about this has nothing to do with who's right and who's wrong, but instead with "weeping with those who weep."  And lastly I learned that indulgences didn't disappear after Martin Luther, they just aren't sold anymore… they are given away to twitter followers. 

Westboro Baptist Church to Picket One Direction Concert

"WBC will picket this perverted pop boy band from the UK who claim to be the world's #1 band. Indeed, they are a perfect representation of this filthy world and the sin-chasing...God-hating, Christ-rejecting UK who has banned WBC from preaching within her borders." - quoting WBC from Huffington Post

The George Zimmerman Verdict and the National Anthem

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” (v. 13)

It is only through conversations with others that I:

• Began to feel the weight of what it would be like to talk with my son about the dangers that can come with how others may perceive you because of your race and the dangers that can come if you respond to their suspicion with frustration or aggression.
• Could feel the uncertainty that emerges from events like the Zimmerman trial when people of your ethnic background’s personal freedoms have changed radically in a single generation and court decisions were a major factor in those changes (sometimes for the better; other times for the worse).

The fact that my reaction to this case did not echo any highly-personal historical events or immediately draw me back to a formative conversation with my parents means I have work to do (in the form of listening) in order to “weep with those who weep.” - bradhambrick.com

How You Can Save Your Soul: In 140 Characters or Less

The indulgences, which Catholics believe can reduce the time a soul spends in purgatory, will be available to Francis' nearly 7.5 million Twitter followers in all languages — if they tune in to World Youth Day broadcasts or take other spiritual actions. To get an indulgence, Catholics must have already had their sins absolved by a priest.

Pope Francis issued a decree about indulgences and social media on July 9, according to the Rome-based Zenit news organization, which covers the Vatican. - USA Today

Surviving the Project Plateau

The hardest part of any project is not the beginning or the end of the project, but the middle.  Whenever I start a new project, the beginning stages are filled with excitement.  My whiteboard gets filled with ideas and possibilities; my conversations are filled with passion as the potential of my new idea is virtually limitless.  When I finish a project, there is again great excitement as I get so see a project come to fruition; there is a sense of pride and ownership as a new creation is done.  But what about the middle?

Every project will inevitably face the project plateau; that moment when the motivation and excitement quickly fade and the finish line starts to seem like it will never come.  The middle of a project is the most difficult.  But it is also the part of the project that separates those that succeed and those that don't.  It's the part of the artistic process that separates the occasional one-hit wonder from the art legends.  It's easy for us to see the allure of creativity - whether that be creating music, sermons, events, films, or something else - and completely overlook the blood, sweat, and tears that are required to make great art.

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."  - Thomas Edison

The project plateau is the moment in your project when you start to hit the wall of resistance.  It stops being exciting and you actually have to discipline yourself to work another two hours.  It stops being endless amounts of creative ideas and instead requires you to force yourself into editing mode.  The only way to survive the project plateau is to persevere through it.  It sucks.  But it's making it through those moments that allows you to not simply be somebody full of great ideas without ever delivering.  It's making it through those moments that allows you to not simply have a decent idea, but something that you can be truly proud of.

Photo Credit: reillyandrew

The Hymns Playlist

I've had a love for the theological depth of great hymns lately.  Because of that I put together a Spotify playlist of some of my favorite arrangements of some great classics.

[If you cannot view the embedded playlist, click here]