Author name: Tom Stuart

5 Ways to Revive Your Prayer Life

2 Comments / Check this out!, I wish I'd said that., Prayer /

“When was the last time you found yourself flat on your face before the Almighty? When was the last time you cut off circulation kneeling before the Lord? When was the last time you pulled an all-nighter in prayer?” Mark Batterson
When a guy asks questions like these you know he is taking prayer pretty seriously. And if you can’t answer these questions with recent occurrences you know you aren’t. The questions are from Mark Batterson’s recent book The Circle Maker. This book on prayer is the best I’ve read in years.
If your prayer life is missing a beat, on life support or has given up the ghost, this book, like an AED, is guaranteed to shock it back to life. Covering nearly every facet of prayer while using many faith-building stories it will inspire and revitalize prayer in your life once again.
The book’s title and guiding illustration for effective prayer is based on the true story of a first Century BC praying Jew who lived in the generation preceding Jesus’ birth. At that time a devastating drought threatened Israel. This eccentric sage by the name Honi with a six foot staff in his hand drew a circle around himself and kneeling inside that circle prayed “Lord of the universe, I swear before Your great name that I will not move from this circle until You have shown mercy upon Your children.” And immediately rain began to fall.
Launching forth from this story the author does a masterful job of awakening faith in the reader as he unfolds what it means for us today to pray Circle Making prayers. He divides the book into three key topical challenges to true circle-making prayer: Dream Big, Pray Hard and Think Long.

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8 Ways to Be Present

22 Comments / Life Balance, Overcoming /

“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Be Present! What does it mean? There are different ways to be present. Being physically present and accounted for is obviously important. Just ask a child about that regarding their parents or ask a supervisor about that regarding their subordinate. But everyone knows, especially children and bosses, that truly being present entails much more than that. Being present also means to be focused and engaged in the person and/or task at hand. Being present requires a focused engagement of every aspect of our being including the physical, mental, emotional and even the spiritual.

We live in a world that militates against that. We are bombarded 24/7 with distractions and demands for our presence, primarily through media, social networking websites, and e communication. We delude ourselves into thinking that with the sophistication of technology we can now be omni-present because we can multitask. But the stark reality is that a person cannot multitask and be fully present at the same time! It is a conceit to think that way and may actually border on idolatry because we make ourselves to be like God, who alone is omnipresent. How ridiculous it is when you stop to think about it.

So having established that, here is my take on what it means to be present from a Biblical perspective. The verse “Be still and know that I am God” says it like no other. The Hebrew word for “be still” literally means to “cease” or “cease striving”. It means to push the pause button on and forsake everything else in our lives to focus on Him.

To be present means to first and foremost ask God to be present in our lives and to focus on His presence. To fully be present in any situation or relationship we must begin there.

With that as a foundation for our understanding of what it means to “be present” I want to share with you what I am calling the 8 BE PRESENT Attitudes. I have discovered these from a study of the Scriptures and they provide eight simple ways to improve our ability to truly be present in any and every circumstance. In fact in six out of eight, the scripture used as an illustration literally tells us that these respective attitudes are to be done at all times and in every circumstance.

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213 Ways to Read the Bible

Check this out!, Growth & Development /

One of the greatest resources I know of for help in selecting and keeping to a Bible reading plan is the YouVersion website.

At last count it had 213 Bible reading plans arranged by five categories: Topical, Youth, Devotional, Partial Bible and Whole Bible. There are Bible studies here for everyone, no matter what your age, status in life, relationship with God, Bible knowledge, time availability or reading ability.

This website removes every excuse for not reading the Bible. There are plans of varying lengths ranging from as short as 3-5 days and 1-3 weeks to everything from 40-280 days all the way through one to two years.

YouVersion provides 27 different Bible translations to choose from with 10 of the most common versions available in an audio format for easy listening while you read or are on the move. There are mobile apps for all smart phones that give you access to your daily readings and help you track your progress. And amazingly 75 different language translations are also just a click away.

The Topical Reading Plans have studies focused on over hundred and twenty five different topics – something for every taste and interest. It is a great place to begin for building a Bible reading hunger and habit into one’s life.

It includes many 7 day studies on topics like Bible Introduction, Parenting, Decisions, Job Loss, Reconciliation, Prayer, and Relationships. There are overview studies of key topics in the Bible such as Major Beliefs, Major Themes, Major People (all 65 days in length). It also has various Old Testament focus studies on such topics as the Life of Abraham (10 days) The Books of Moses (10 weeks), Books of History (90 days), Books of Wisdom (10 weeks) and the Major Prophets (60 days). And there are seasonal Bible reading plans for 40 Days of Lent, Words of Jesus During Passion Week (12 days) and Rediscovering the Christmas Season (1 month).

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Why you are a work of art!

1 Comment / Growth & Development, Overcoming, Relationship with God /

This past week my wife and I visited the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It is a museum that hosts among things exhibitions of contemporary art. One of the exhibits was a work of art by Robert Gober created in the late 1980s entitled “Untitled Door And Door Frame” and the elements used were “wood, enamel paint.” This particular “work” consisted of two major elements. First there was a wood framed doorway, the only entrance into a white ten by fourteen windowless, featureless room. The door frame was painted with a healthy coat of creamy beige enamel. Inside the room leaning against the opposite wall farthest from the doorway was the second element of the “work” – an old six-panel interior door without a door knob or latch which was also painted a creamy beige.
Like so much of modern art, it takes a right-brained creative to fully appreciate the categorization of certain things as “art.” And this display by Gober, constructed and arranged using such common objects was no exception. Typically when most people think of art they imagine works like the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci or The Pieta by Michelangelo.
To a left-brained home fixit guy like myself, Untitled Door And Door Frame looked more like an unfinished project and anything but a work of art. In my linear, structured way of thinking the paint was dry so why not get the necessary hardware, grab the door and install the hinges and latch set, measure the doorframe to match, install its hinges and mount the door?
Perhaps that is some of the emotional response Gober was looking for when he came up with his idea. I know that good art is meant to be evocative but typically we associate the response of its beholder be one of aesthetic enjoyment rather than frenetic deployment.
It raises a very important question “When is art, art?”

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A hope-filled message from Job

Overcoming, Relationship with God /

I just completed my annual pilgrimage through the book of Job. It always falls at the end of the year in the Robert Roberts Bible reading plan that I follow. One of the extraordinary things about reading passages of Scripture again and again is having the Holy Spirit illuminate things one has never seen before. This year I specifically read Job seeking to discover fresh insights into the nature and character of God. I was not disappointed.

Since I knew, from my familiarity with the book, that Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were rebuked by God in the end for not faithfully representing Him I thought I would skim through their portions of dialogue in order to give more time to concentrate on the dialogue of Job and the fourth observer Elihu. “He (God) said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7 NIV)

We know from the outset that Job is someone worth listening to because God Himself singles him out as a man who has an exemplary relationship with Him. “Then the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.’” (Job 1:7 NIV)

We also know that the dialogue of Elihu is worth studying because he challenges the advice of the three friends and is not rebuked by God for what he says.

As I read through the discourse of these two men to make sense of Job’s sufferings one salient hope-filled theme emerged. It is the message of promised redemption. More specifically, and I had never really seen this before, it is the message of the presence of an unseen redeemer who is mediating on behalf of those who are crying out to God in their affliction.

All those who have read the book of Job know that it is a story about redemption. In the beginning Job loses everything but his life and his wife, but in the end has everything restored to him. “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first.” (Job 42:12)

The most famous Scripture verses from the book of Job, read frequently at funerals, speak of redemption. It is a portion of Job’s complaint in which the veil of suffering is drawn back and he has a revelation in which he utters these words: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.” (Job 19:25-26) This of course is a great comfort both to him and to us, to know that “in the end” we “will see God” and know that He has not abandoned us.

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