So Lent is centralized around three actions that are lived out through the season…prayer, fasting, and generosity. I’ve already covered prayer.

The idea behind fasting is two fold. The first is to deny yourself of something you like/need in order to drive/draw to you God. The second is to give yourself extra time to pray (which pours back into the first part).

Most fasts typically give up food for a season of time, but there are a lot of options for fasting during the Lent season. You normally start on Ash Wednesday and go until Easter taking Sunday’s off (adding up to 47 days). Sunday is suppose to be a time of celebration, therefore you don’t fast at that time.

In this post I hope to give you a few tips for fasting that I’ve picked up. Once again, I’ve only been regularly fasting for about a half-a-year, but hopefully you can learn from the mistakes that I’ve already made.

1. Be honest with yourself
   Forty days is a long time to go without something no matter what it is. For most this will be a life changing event. Be honest with yourself. Don’t say you are going to give up TV for Lent if you know that there is no way that you really will. You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. Be honest with yourself and give up something that you know you will be able to go without for 40 days.
   If you’ve already started a fast and are realizing now that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew (sorry I couldn’t pass up that pun), it’s ok to edit your fast. God won’t shot you with lightening bolts from heaven (or will He….hmmmm).
2. Start Small
   If this is the first time that you are going to fast, don’t give up everything but water (by the way this is the hardest and most dangerous of all fasts and should only be done with a doctors supervision). Start off small. Give up meat or alcohol (for all my boozers out there). Then work your way up to harder fasts later down the road.
   My first fast was a three day all juice fast. Since then I’ve done a three week juice fast and a three week fruits and vegetable fast. But the key is to start small and work your way up to more challenging fasts.
   A side note though, make sure that the fast is still challenging, or else you’re not fasting. You’re just giving something up for a little while.
3. Check your calendar
   This will happen every time you decide to do a fast. You will swear off booz for a week, and an hour later your best friend who you haven’t seen in four years will call you up out of the blue for a beer. These are the things you have to prepare yourself for. But you need to make sure in advance that you don’t already have something scheduled that will conflict with your fast. This might mean that you are going to need to reschedule your fast, alter your fast, reschedule your event, or be prepared for the temptation that comes with your event.
4. People will find out
   Jesus tells us that we aren’t to proclaim to people that we are fasting, but the reality is that people will find out (unless you’re giving up some obscure thing that no one would notice anyways…even you). When people notice that you turn down their offer for a Starbucks run for the fifth time in a row, they will start to ask questions. I find this is a great opportunity to share the gospel with them in a simple and humble fashion. “Oh I’ve given up coffee for Lent so I can draw closer to God.” The key is to not make a big deal about it and most of the time they won’t either.
5. Don’t do it alone
   Fasting isn’t a glamorous or easy act. So don’t go it alone. Team up with a friend or a group of friends. This way you have someone to pray with during lunch. You can also pray for each other during your fasts too.
6. It’s not a contest
   This happened to me on my first 40-day fast. I had given up all food for forty days and I was doing really well…too well in fact. I was getting really excited. I was half way through the fast and was really starting to get full of my self. I was starting to think about how cool it was going to be to tell people that I had gone 40 days without any solid food (I was just having juice and smoothie every now and then). I knew I needed to edit my fast mid-stream and start a fruits and vegetables fast. This kept me from being prideful, but still allowed me to deny myself and drive myself to God.
   If you find yourself getting prideful about your fast, it’s time stop and reevaluate your actions. Remember your purpose is to draw closer to God.
7. If necessary, STOP
   There are times when you will just need to stop your fast all together. Your health is a really good reason for this. Any fast where you deny yourself of food can be dangerous to your health (do lots of research before you give up any type of food).
   The main reason to stop is if your fast interferes with your relationship with God. I have a friend who doesn’t fast because he says that he ends up focusing on the fast rather than focusing on God. Remember the ultimate purpose of a fast is to draw you closer to God. If you find that your fast is doing the opposite, STOP! No fast is worth your relationship with God. Stop your fast and find other avenues to draw closer to God.

That’s it for now. Until next time, enjoy your chicken broth.

I came across this article today about a church that is handing out shot glasses (with the phrase “give us a shot” on it) in a local bar to invite people to their church. I love to hear stories about churches doing things like this. I’m personally up for just starting a church service in the bar, but this is a step in the right direction.

You see this past Sunday our pastor spoke about the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. One of the things that he pointed out that really struck a chord with me was in verse 7. Jesus enters Jericho this famous rabbi who everyone loves. Then he decides to go against the grain of what all the religious people have been doing (separating themselves from sinners), and he tells the greatest sinner in town that he is going to go eat at his house (the den of iniquity….dum, dum, dum).

Then you see in verse 7, “And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”" I love that verse. With one act of love and compassion for a man that was the least to deserve it, Jesus looses his entire reputation. You constantly see him loosing his reputation because he would go where “righteous people” wouldn’t go and hang out with people that “righteous people” wouldn’t hang out with.

We need to do the same. Our churches need to the same.

Welcome back all my fellow beer drinkers out there. This next one is just a short tip for those who are looking for the full experience here.† If you remember from BTotD #1, your perception of taste is drastically affected by you sense of smell. From some research that I did on the internet (a quick google search), your sense of smell affects the way something tastes by up to 75%. From some other research that I’ve done (listened to a podcast), it is said that your first smell of a beer is the most important. So how do we make that first smell of a new beer count? Use a coaster.

No this isn’t some random way for me to get you to save your furniture from unsightly rings. You actually cover the TOP of the glass with the coaster. While you are doing the four step beer tasting process (Look, Agitate, Smell, Drink), you cover the top of the glass with a coaster while agitating the beer (the cheap paper coasters from bars, applebees, and the sort work real well and keep you from getting in trouble for making all you coaster smell like beer). Then when you go lift the coaster to smell your beer, all those good smells have been trapped for your smelling pleasure.

One other small tip. Unless you are using a really big glass, only fill the glass about 3/4 of the way full. This gives you room to agitate the beer without covering your coaster with beer. This also gives your beer room to breath. After you’ve tasted the beer, then you fill it up the rest of the way.

So here is your homework. Get a beer that you haven’t tried before (or haven’t tried in a glass before) and taste it straight from the bottle. Then try the coaster method and see how much of a difference it makes.

Until next time, enjoy your beer.

‘So I’ve been listening to a lot of what I have learned about beer has come friends, podcasts, and the beeradvocate.com. One of the greatest tips I learned was from the podcast beerschool.com. It is as follows…it takes three drinks of a beer to really know if you like it.

Before you look at the reason for three drinks, go to the beeradvocate.com article on How to Taste Beer. There are certain steps to drinking a beer (Look, Agitate, Smell, Taste).

This one sounded a little weird to me when I first heard it, but I have found it to be so true. Here is the reason why. Drink one cleans your pallet from all the weird tastes that are already in it (for instance I have the coffee taste in my mouth right now). Drink two is for the retro-olfaction process.† This is where you swish the beer around in your mouth and exhale after you drink the beer.

“This process of exhaling is called “retro-olfaction” and will release retained stimulations at the mucus and mouthfeel level, but at a higher temperature.” – beeradvocate.com

Drink Three gives you your final overall taste of the beer giving you a full experience of what the beer really tastes like.

Like I said I thought this was crazy talk. But as I started doing this, I noticed that certain beers that I thought I didn’t like after one drink I started to like after three.† As a side note, this works for any drink: beer, wine, Dr. Pepper.

So here is your homework for this tip. Take a beer that you had discredited before and give it the three drink chance. You never know you might find that you’ve found your new favorite beer.

Until next time, enjoy your beer.

We know that God works in mysterious ways. But sometimes I think His ways are more weird than anything. You see, Shannon and I have been wanting to get to know our neighbors. And by getting to know our neighbors I mean that we’ve been waiting for them to show up at our door with cookies. We’ve known that God wants us to reach out to our neighbors and not live in our own little bubble. We just haven’t acted on it. So God decided to do some action for us.

The other night Shannon and I were watching the last few minutes of Shark on TV when our door bell began to ring. Now this wasn’t your typical ding dong door bell ringing that most people do. This was a ding ding ding ding dong ding ding dong dong ding ding. You know that annoying kind of door bell ringing that your ADHD friend does when they show up at the door.

Expecting to open to the door and see one of my college friends or a very confused tricker treater, I was quite confused to see a vey scared women at my door step. “Help Me!….someone chasing me….Help Me!” she said between he deep breaths as she had obviously been running. I quickly invited into the house and locked the door behind her.

As I smelled the alcohol on her breath, I asked her if she wanted me to call the police. Still breathing heavily, she said, “Yes….yes…” As I get the phone the lady stood in the corner trying to catch her breath and kept looking around the room with this crazed look in her eyes.

I called 911 and gave her my information and explained the situation. At this point I expected the operator to ask me for a description of the ladies attacker. Instead the operator began to ask me to describe the lady in my house. A little odd, but I obliged. In fact after I gave her the description of the lady, the operator informed that she had dispatched an officer and they would be on there way. She then got off the phone with me.

So I’m standing in my living room with this lady who is huddled in the corner, with alcohol on her breath, and a crazed look in her eyes. At this point, I kinda realized that there isn’t anyone following this lady. I just got this feeling that she is on some kind of a drug induced state and this is all in her head.

As I’m coming to this realization, she turns, unlocks the door, and proceed to run out the door and down the street. At this point, I started to put on my shoes (was just wearing some blue jeans and t-shirt). Shannon asked me, “Are you going after her?”"No…I’m getting ready for the police.”So I got my shoes, jacket and bennie on and waited outside for the police (and kept my eye out for the lady or a possible attacker).

A few minutes later the lady came running back down the street in the opposite direction (At this point I’m pretty sure she is crazy.). She ran down the street and went to my neighbors house across the street and a few houses down and proceeded to do the same thing to them that she did to me. Right after she runs out of their house and bolts down the street, the police finally arrive and pick her up. Having dealt with the law in the past (as an RA) I knew they were going to want to talk to me.

So I started to walk down the street to where they were. At that time, I saw my neighbor come out of his house and walk over to the police (they only a house over from where he was). Before I could get to the police, my neighbor was walking back to his house. At this point I talked to my neighbor for the first time.

“Do they need to talk to us?”

“No they said they have it under control.” he responded and I stopped walking and compared stories with him in front of his house. As they put the lady inside the cruiser, I began to introduce my self to my neighbor and his wife for the first time. As we were talking, I began to realize that it took God sending a crazy lady that was being chased by and invisible man to my front door to get me to go meet my neighbors. It’s not as nice as a plate of cookies…but it worked.

So I’m trying to get myself to do more blogging. I have a friend who does an occasional blog post called LotD (Link of the Day). The idea is that when he comes across a cool link…he posts it. It isn’t about frequency…but about having a link for that day. So I was thinking I might start doing the same thing. But I don’t come across cool links that often (except for when my friend posts a new one…hint…hint…).

Well for those of you who don’t know, I have recently acquired a taste for the wonderful alcoholic beverage called beer…Yeah I know. A Christian drinking bee. Not only a Christian but a former youth pastor. I’ll give you a few seconds to compose yourself… Ready…Ok… for those of you who think I’ve gone off the deep end and need to repent and ask Jesus to help, let me give you some context.

First, I don’t get drunk (it’s amazing…you can drink and not get drunk…it really is possible). Second, I don’t drink around those you have a problem with alcohol. I understand that there are people out there who have a problem with alcohol. That is completely understandable…and I won’t drink around you. Third, I am of legal age to be drinking beer (and I don’t advocate the drinking of those who aren’t).

Now before you come at with me with comments on how I’m wrong for drinking, read the entire Bible and show me where it says that I’m in the wrong (by the way you’re not going to find anything unless you take things out of context…or just simple make things up…my pastor did a recent blog on this which was really good).

So now that is of the way, lets get back to the topic at hand. Oh yeah…I like beer and I want to blog more. So I came up with the idea of a Beer Tip of the Day. This is where I will post the most recent tip that I’ve learned for beer. The topics will range all over the place from recent beers that I’ve tasted to how to pour your beer (and there is a correct way). I don’t know how consitant they are going to be…but I’m going to try for once a week. Let me know what you think (as long as you follow the rules above).