Ya know one of the disciplines that has been practiced over the eons of time is kind of an obscure one known as secrecy, and this particular discipline that the saints have done has to do with the idea of expressing your faith and loving God in ways that you don’t overtly tout.

Sometimes when you’re wanting to spend some time with God, and you want to focus it’s very distracting when you have all the noise that’s in our world jammin into your head. I mean not even just the TV’s, and the radios and the iPods and stuff, but just the noise of our lives, sometimes the to-dos that we have or the stupid things that we do…

Right now in our Christian community we’re taking time to study the disciplines. We’re talking about these ancient practices that church folks have done like study and prayer and silence and service that they’ve done all through the ages, and the reason that people do these things and believers have practiced these things is because it’s so easy to forget the story that we’re part of…

When a person goes out in the woods and sort of gets off the trail its pretty easy to get disoriented because you’re in unfamiliar territory. That’s where one of these little puppies come in handy. It’s a compass because a compass helps you to get your orientation. It helps you to really find where true north is, and sort of calibrate where it is you’re headed towards and where it is you’ve come from.

Prayer is one of those issues that kind of messes with your head. When I first started this journey I would hear about the fact that you're supposed to pray and that Jesus would call us to pray, and it was hard for me to get my mind around it. I didn't know how much I was supposed to pray. But Jesus says prayer is less about the words we say and more about orienting our heart towards God.

How much should we read the Bible? I grew up in a community of faith that really pushed the deal. A lot of people talked about how much they read and whether they read it today or not. The way it was communicated was almost like a thing to do or like a badge of spirituality.

I think we focus on the wrong thing when we focus on expressing our faith and walking with Jesus. I think we want everything to be exactly right and exactly perfect. But I'm not sure Christianity is about that... I think it's more of a story of a people who are a little bit messed up, but somehow God got involved in their lives and begins to tell the story of redemption and freedom.

In Matthew chapter five, Jesus says you are the "salt of the earth" and the "light of the world." When you read these texts you have to kind of wonder where did Jesus get these statements?

There are times in our lives when we get stuck. The Bible says there are sins and there are attitudes and things that easily trip us up... but the Bible promises there is no temptation that comes to us where God doesn't make sure to find an escape for us.

When the bible talks about the idea of time it talks a lot about right now. Paul says, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6). This whole idea of now is very critical in God’s mind, because it’s the place that’s He is creating...He’s still creating the “now” moment...