Have you ever concluded a prayer time with the tag-on, “In Jesus’ Name”?  Yeah, me too. I mean sometimes I pray, and beg, and plead for His intervention in a difficult situation as if He is an unreachable God. And when I don’t see immediate answers, I resort to praying more fervently with the same repeated phrases, not withholding tears. I might lie prostrate on the floor, in a flattening and humble position. Or maybe I’ll pace and raise my...

I’m the kind of guy who can’t sit still. When I go to a thing, I can’t just go there, I need a purpose, a job to do. I don’t care if it is taking out the trash. Yesterday, that’s what I did. I took out the trash. I was at this church dinner with no job to do, so I took out the trash.

That’s the thing. Most Sundays when I go to church I’ve got a job to do...

I was so freaking stressed. Has that ever happened to you? Being so freaking stressed? Well, it was happening to me a few weeks ago. It was because I was in this situation where I was completely out of control. My fate was in somebody else’s hands. There was nothing I could do about it.

It was stressing me out. I was losing sleep. And when I was sleeping, I was having stress dreams. It was frustrating I tell you.

And who...

One summer, I took several high school friends of mine to British Columbia for a week of sea kayaking through the Princess Louisa Inlet. A yachting magazine had recently ranked the area the most beautiful place in the world. Baby seals, bald eagles, salmon the size of your arm – it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trip. And we got to live it for seven days.

The night before we returned to base camp, one of the guys and I stayed...