Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew, or we start some project and in the middle of it we wish we didn’t. I think God designed life with this in mind.

If we always knew the price we would pay starting something, we might not attempt it. Think of all the times you’ve said to yourself, “Why did I think I could do this”? The fact you didn’t realize the whole picture caused to you try something you might never have done before. Sometime ignorance is helpful to get us “unstuck” from where we are.

When we open our eyes to the beauty of the earth around us, we can start to get a glimpse of the possibility of our own potential.

To many times people and circumstances loudly yell at us that we are so flawed that the best we can hope for is hanging on to life to get the best we can from the ride of life rather than developing our potential. Parents, friends, teachers and strangers may not have noticed our potential, yet God has deposited so much raw potential for us and others to develop. Satan wants us to believe we will never amount to much. Unfortunately many have been drinking from his lies instead of drinking from the waters of life in Christ.

John 4:10 (NLTSE)Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

When we were kids, most of us played the game of hide and seek. Sue and I use to play it with our grandkids when they were under one year old but putting our hands over our face and then pulling them away saying “Boo”! The kids would laugh their heads off. When we all became older as kids we played a more complicated version of hide and seek with our friends were we had to find the person or persons that were hiding behind trees or bushes.

The game was fun when we could discover the person hiding quickly, but if it took to long we all got discouraged and wanted to quit the game.

Many churches are encouraging their people to consider prayer and fasting in the month of January. They are trying to start out the year with greater understanding and insight as to the mind and heart of God rather than living life as “doing business as usual” mentality. A high and lofty goal, combining fasting and prayer use to be part of the fabric of the Christian culture through the centuries, but since the 1900 many Christians have lost the idea, let alone the practice. Since the 1970s a Holy Spirit stirring has being happening where believers have seen that they have embraced their freedom in Christ and often abandoned many of the disciplines Christ taught, one being fasting.

The question that needs to be addressed is “Why & How” should we fast, not if.

Philippians 1:6 says, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Try as he might, my son couldn’t force enough air from his full lung capacity to blow up the little red balloon he was trying to inflate. Dizzy from the strain, he collapsed into a chair in frustration, just as his father walked by and held out his hand. He took the balloon and started to work.

After four or five stretches of the latex material, he pressed the opening to his lips and gave it several strong blows, then cinched it between two fingers and handed the partially filled balloon back. Our son looked confused.”

“You’re not going to finish it? I’ve already tried and can’t do it.”

“You can now because I got it started. You can take care of the rest.”

How can you become a more effective leader? By building a strong spiritual foundation from the ground up! Writing as a friend and mentor, MacDonald draws from biblical truth and life experience to help you grow in all areas of leadership, including cultivating spiritual formation, encouraging restoration and renewal, and dealing with difficult people.

Just like Superman, who can leap over any hurdle and defeat every foe, followers of Christ have the supernatural ability to conquer the challenges we face. But the problem for both Superman and us is there’s a kryptonite that steals our strength.

Of course, both Superman and kryptonite are fictional. But spiritual kryptonite is not. This study offers answers to why so many of us are unable to experience the divine strength that was evident among first-century Christians.

Can you live up to the example Jesus set? Why would anyone choose a mentor who’s impossible to follow? What if it’s possible to experience real transformation? What if we really can be conformed to his image–in this life? The Impossible Mentor explores why Christians find Jesus a worthy role model but also hold the conviction that no one could possibly live up to his example. Discipleship and spiritual formation books come and go at the pace of diet and exercise manuals, with approximately the same results in the lives of believers. It’s the same cycle: good intentions, fresh starts, followed by frustration, guilt, and eventually resignation. You can break the yo-yo cycle of false starts and the guilt that follows when you stumble. The Impossible Mentor explores the four great challenges to following Jesus, and suggests five practical answers that have helped people of faith through the ages. You can put these answers to work in your life, right now. Author Ray Hollenbach combines slice-of-life vignettes with Biblical resources in a highly readable, conversational style: part pastor, part theologian and fellow-traveller, he explores how to take the yoke of discipleship Jesus offered in a manner that will break the cycle of resolve-and-failure.

Jesus swept onto the scene declaring that the Kingdom of God had arrived! He proclaimed that we would experience life at its fullest only when we organize our lives around the Kingdom. E. Stanley Jones suggests that life in any other way is a muddled, maddening, and impossible way to live. Throughout the centuries we have lost the Kingdom as a clearly defined and workable system for order and influence in our daily lives. We have reduced the Kingdom by putting it into narrower molds, a refuge now, a present security, a future hope, anything but the Kingdom as Jesus preached it – God’s total answer to man’s total need now.” Dr. Jones shows us how to claim our spiritual heritage and the abundant life promised us by embracing the Kingdom and Person of Jesus. He suggests how our experience with God and His Kingdom should be taught and shared in the life of the individual, in the life of the church and in the nations of the world.

We have all heard about spiritual warfare, and putting on the armor of God. But who are we fighting? And what form does our conflict take? Dr. Greg Boyd, in God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, attempts to answer these questions and more.

Some in our culture, because of the call for Christians to be peacemakers, feel that a warfare mentality is un-Christian. Dr. Boyd feels that a warfare mentality is the only mindset that enables us to truly deal with the very real problem of evil (and a call to be a peacemaker assumes that war is going on). He shows that the writers of the Bible, like the cultures around them, saw existence as a cosmic conflict between good and evil, and how the Bible calls us to join that conflict. This call is to more than just exorcism and the like. It is a call to holiness and a passion for God. All godly actions, including prayer, feeding the poor, charity, etc., can be seen as warfare, as acts which stand against the evil and chaos present in our world.