I don’t seem to be ‘on fire’ as I once was. I’m not sure of what is happening, but I am sure of one thing, I’m scared.

Running?  Why would anyone run if they weren’t being chased?  What do you mean when you say “fun run”?  Isn’t that an oxymoron?  That’s what I used to think until about a year and a half ago when I started running for exercise and to get ready to run the Coronado Bay Bridge.  After the bridge run, I felt good and wanted to continue.  I kept at it with the encouragement of a few friends, and completed a half marathon last August.  It was exciting coming across the finish line, but man was I sore.  I thought I had trained enough so I wouldn’t feel so bad once I finished.  I guess it could have been worse.  I saw people at the 3 mile mark looking like they wouldn’t make it to 4.  I began to wonder why on earth they signed up for a 13.1 mile run and hadn’t, at least from my perspective, trained for it ahead of time.  Did they think they could just wake up, go to the start line, and finish a run like that without training for it? 

            Then I started wondering about our spiritual race.  The one Paul talked about in 1^st Corinthians chapter 9.  Should we think that we can just wake up one day, become a Christian, and everything will be just peachy?  That we will never stumble?  Why do we think we don’t need to go to church, or hang out with and encourage other Christians?  What makes us think we can run the race of life, the Christian life, without constant training?  I trained for almost a year, got serious and on an actual schedule about 16 weeks before the race, and I still felt like I had my butt kicked the day after the race.  Did I miss a day or two here and there during my training?  Of course.  Could I have trained better?  Sure.  Am I going to do it again?  You bet!  What a sense of accomplishment.  I praise God for giving me the ability to do it and thank him for being with me throughout everything. 

            Here are a few lessons for the race of life that I learned from my run.

-  It’s a lot easier to do when you have someone beside you, encouraging you, challenging you.  There are those days where you don’t even feel like getting out of bed, much less going for a training run, even when everyone else is busy and you have to go by yourself.  What do you do?  Do you say to yourself, “I’ll just take off this week and make up for it next week”?  Everyone else is going to watch the game today, so what could it hurt.  After all, it’s just one day! 

-  It takes determination and commitment.  Many a time during my training I had to ask myself what I was doing this for…especially after a hard run.  I felt sore and beat up, but always came back to my motivation.  We as Christians should have the perfect motivation and example in Jesus.  (Ephesians 5:1-20 sets out a great example on how we should live). 

-  A good pair of shoes helps!  Ok, that doesn’t really apply to our spiritual race, but boy a good pair of shoes helps your run.  Then again, maybe Eph 6:15 applies: “For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you can be fully prepared” (NLT).  Who doesn’t want to run the race “fully prepared”?  God’s peace can help you to keep running and running and running and… If we’re worried about what awaits us around the next turn we won’t be able to focus on the ultimate goal. So lace up your feet daily with the Good News and run in peace! 

-  Training, training, training.  Don’t ever stop training for something that’s important.  Is our spiritual race important?  I guess that depends on where you want to end up.  Our pastor has been going through a series on “The Journey” and things that are important.  One thing he says every week is that we will all end our journey one day, but will we finish in the location we want to be in or will we be where we want to be when it’s all over?  Are we headed in the right direction and are we running in that direction on purpose?  If we’re not focused on the “prize” as Paul put it, we can get distracted by all sorts of things that will waste our time and seek to keep us from reaching our goal.

-  Sole-mates.  Or if you wish, Soul-mates…those friends that encourage you day after day or week after week, to keep you going either by their example or their motivating words.  All of us tend to hang out with those we want to be like or those who want to be like us.  If your friends are not helping you reach your goal, in fact if they are hindering you from reaching your goal, it might be time to re-evaluate the friendship.  I’m not saying necessarily finding new friends but maybe it’s time to help them change or get them focused and back in the race especially if it’s a Christian brother or sister.

So what’s next?  Well, for me, another Half-Marathon in January.  I’m already in training again using what I have learned from the last one to make sure I don’t, or at least try not to make the same mistakes I made last time.  In the spiritual realm it’s time to read through the Bible in a year…again.  But that’s a different story and maybe the subject of another article.  Until then, keep running!!!

For the unsaved there can be, however quiet or small, a disturbance in a person’s way of life outside of Jesus Christ. Faith and fellowship with Jesus is in stark opposition in every way to the natural man. The inception of faith then would be a disturbance wherein the natural man starts to feel a deep sense of conviction over his sinful life. Consciously or unconsciously he just knows that what he is doing or the way he is living is somehow wrong, though he may not yet know why.

For a saved, growing Christian their faith prods and challenges them to more fully rely on Jesus and his will for us. It is altogether too easy to fall back into old habits, become complacent, or worse yet, to tell God “Thanks for the Salvation, but I’ll take it from here.” True Biblical faith leads the growing Christian to submission and to fully rest in the arms of Abba, Father, Daddy.

For the mature Christian there is a steady walk of faith that oftentimes leads to difficult, challenging places. Your faith will test your reliance on God and teach you to act in ways that are contrary to this world. To walk by faith knowingly and fearlessly into the fiery furnace would be the mark of a mature Christian persistently, doggedly, following Christ.

Genuine faith, I believe, leads us to this pleasant disquietude as the Holy Spirit works within the hearts and minds to move us from living in this world to preparing us for the next: to brings His sons and daughters into glory!

 A disturbance. A pleasant disquietude. A perturbing, disruptive faith. For these things I pray.

Honey! Where did you put my muse??

Where is that confounded muse anyways?

The East coast had a rumbling this week that usually only those of us on the West coast get to experience. It’s scary when we feel or even see the ground shifting beneath our feet…the very same ground that we thought was rock solid and immovable. All we can do is hang on and ride it out. There’s nothing we or anyone else can do to make it stop. It happens; and as long as our life belongs to Jesus we know we’re safe for eternity.

The question is what are we going to do once the storm passes?

Blogomine is looking for contributing Bloggers. Come, join the conversation.

A Christian Pilgrim’s Journey. That is our mission here at Blogomine.com. To speak of the magnificent obsession, this walk along the Way. Your struggles, your Eureka moments and your @#*!?^ moments as well.

Isn’t that what this journey is all about? As we walk with the Father we trip and stumble, stub our toes and skip lightly beside Him. We ask a million questions over and over while we scurry about trying to be more like Daddy.

So here is the challenge; I’m looking for one or two contributing writers. New Christians,  Mature Christians, seeking, struggling and searching Christians. Christian writers that have something they want to share with others. We’re not talkin’ FB 14o characters or less writing here. If you feel like that might be you please send me a note via the comment panel below.

Looking forward to hearing from you. And welcome to the Journey!

Here is my Top Ten Proven Effective Strategies to Maximize Search Engine Optimization list. I hope it helps!

1. Find keywords that are pertinent to your niche and use them throughout your posts. This will help Google and others find you. Use them liberally! Don’t sprinkle! inundate! More is better, right? While you’re at it, use words that just bring in searches, like porn, pornography, twitter, Facebook,  Copa Mundial, and zeitgeist. It doesn’t matter as long as you get your ratings higher.
2. When in doubt, see Rule #1. Repeat as necessary. Top Ten Proven Effective Strategies to Maximize Search Engine Optimization. Top Ten Proven Effective Strategies to Maximize Search Engine Optimization. You get the picture.
3. While we’re on the subject of zeitgeist, eschew pusillanimity, eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation. Venerate sesquipedalianism. Utilize verbosity. Why use short words when you can use one that’s at least six syllables long. Utilize homonyms, antonyms, and synonyms as much as possible. It shows your readers how much smarterer you am.  Cogito epanalepsis ergo epanalepsis sum.
4. Obscure Unclear Acronyms (OUA) are your friend! Just like overly large words, they make people who don’t know what they mean feel stupid! Go ahead, bring out your SEOs, proudly display your HVACs, get your RFD freak on! Throw out your YMMV, your AFOA, XML, SCSI, HDMI, and your FIGMO. Forget those losers that are stuck on LOL and BFF. Go Obscure or Stay on the Porch. GOOSOTP! And never, ever, let the uninitiated know what they stand for. That spoils the fun!
5. Make up quotes to support your point. “In what would become the pivotal tome in his long illustrious career, H.K. Chetterson in his speech before Seton Hall University is quoted as saying: ‘A philosopher cannot speak upon anything without proving himself either a fool or a very wise man indeed’.” Sounds good, sounds impressive and important, who is ever going to check anyways?
6. Plagiarise whenever possible. Why work hard to write something when you can easily rip off somebody else who actually knows how to write. Two rules; make sure it is at least two or three years old and change enough words around so it sounds like it really is yours. A couple of minutes of work and Bam! you’re in business.
7. Ramble on endlessly about subjects that no one cares about. Don’t be shallow, dive in I say, dive in! Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not the soul of the blog. Make sure your blog posts are no less than two to three thousand words with long unending paragraphs that blur your reader’s vision. People want more, more, more. Give it to them in mass quantities. Give them herds and herds of words and words. Get that word count up!
8. Use words incorrectly as often as possible. Malapropisms are an exciting addition to your quiver of errors. To plummet your way to the top, you simply need to grasp the bondage between blogger and reader. Write things that are beyond your wildest apprehension, things that are unparalyzed in the blogging world. Another quick typ whlie were hear. Donut blather to eus SpillCheckers. It woount do no good anyhowe.
9. And finally, always leave your readers wanting more. They’ll come back again and again.

Well there it is. my Top Ten Proven Effective Strategies to Maximize Search Engine Optimization list. I hope it helped!

I ran across this quote recently on FB and researched its origin. Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers (September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005) was a Southern Baptist pastor and conservative author who served as a two-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention. This very profound quotation is part of a longer sermon by Dr. Rogers’ from 1984 in a series titled God’s Way to Health, Wealth and Wisdom. I find this to be a very troubling, very frightening, albeit a very prescient quote as I look at the terrible state of our economy today.

I heard a story that an economics professor once made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s quasi-socialistic policies worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else Every student failed the class.

The professor told them that these policies would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great. But, when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. This is a great illustration of Dr. Rogers’ quote.

In his book, Ten Secrets for a Successful Family, Dr. Rogers also stated that “by and large our young people do not know either the importance or the value of honest labor”. The evidence of this becomes more and more clear every day. ‘What can I do for you’ has turned into ‘what’s in it for me’. ‘How may I help you’ into the constant din, almost mantra-like whine of instant gratification”.

“How can we know the God of the Bible if we don’t know the Bible of God?” is by far my favorite quote for Dr. Rogers. Beyond all the politics. Beyond all the other financial, social, and ‘worldly’ issues there is a God who is seated on the throne, exalted and still in charge. My contentment day-to-day comes from the knowledge that ‘all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose’. (Romans 8:28)

We talk about baptism often in our Kidz Rock worship service. My Granddaughter Layla has been taking all this in and she comes to me saying she wants to be Bap-pitized too. ‘Baptized?’ I replied. ‘Yes, I want to be bap-pitized,’ she says with that “isn’t that what I just said” look that kids get in her eyes. ‘I want to be bap-pitized!’ She was beaming ear to ear with this news. I asked her if she knew what baptism meant. ‘It means serving God’ was her pure, innocent answer. As I was picking myself off the floor I told her that her answer couldn’t be more perfect. Serving God. Isn’t that what we are we supposed to be doing?

Jesus instructs us to have childlike faith. She exemplifies this in every way. I believe God has plans to use Layla in mighty ways. Although thrilled, I am still a bit hesitant and I would like her to have a more adequate understanding about Baptism. I pray that I can be the one to bap-pitize her into Christ. That would make this Grampa the happiest man on earth.