Just a quick encouragement for you to be great.  But what is 'great'?  Great isn't power, reputation, wealth or embarrassing Tom Brady in the Superbowl (no matter how awesome that was).  It's serving.  God wants us to serve others. So in his book, you get more 'points' for serving, and none for being awesome and cool.  Greatness IS Serving.  So who are the people God placed in your life to serve?  Family members, friends, coworkers, church people, even Tom Brady.  Figure out what you can do for them and start doing serving things today - and be great.

MT 20: [25] Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. [26] Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, [27] and whoever wants to be first must be your slave-- [28] just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

MT 23: [11] The greatest among you will be your servant. [12] For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

We've all been in situations where a fellow Christian attacks us or is a big fat jerk to us in some way.  It happens all the time.  At school, work, church, with our family members, in ministry, on the internets, on a rocketship or in an underwater lair.  I'm sure we've all let our emotions get the better of us.  And I doubt that God wants us to respond by calling them 'poopie-pants' and then punching them in the face, then sending out a mass email written in all-caps to your all your friends saying exactly how much of a poopie-pants that person is.

So how do we deal with it without sinning?

Salt makes most everything better. McDonald's fries is one of the greatest foods that God has blessed us with, but it's better with salt. All meat needs salt to actually taste good. And I think bacon somehow naturally has salt, that's why it's a perfect food. It's already naturally satly. It's like they made the bacon from pigs who bathed daily in a rainbow from heaven. A rainbow made of salt.

I don't even want to know what bacon would taste like if it wasn't salty. It'd be bland grease and fat. Not offering anything good. It's like if you took away Pixar from Disney, you'd have nothing.

We all know people suck. The people you love the most will always wrong you in some way. Random people will bug you. Weird internet people will be mean to you. People are sinful. We can live our lives annoyed and mad at everyone, living a miserable life.

Think about the people who really annoy you. I'm not talking about Aerosmith or the NY Yankees. I'm talking about the people you've interacted with that have done something to you that you didn't like and wish they would die a terrible death or fall into a tiger trap or be forced to watch Matrix 2 AND 3.

Search your heart. You'll find people. And if Christ can forgive us of a lifetime's worth of sin, we should be able to forgive someone of a few instances of sin. If we can't then, we aren't quite grateful for Christ's forgiveness are we?

Hopefully you've heard me say this before. But if you don't know God's specific will in a situation, then you at least know how you should act during the situation with this one passage - Galatians 5:22-23 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." It's like the master key for life.

For example, if you find yourself in the line at the grocery store and for some reason the lady in takes out her check book, which or course adds thirty minutes to your line, how are you supposed to act?

No, you don't say, "Ever heard of a debit card?"

"Religion comes from the stupid infancy of our species..." so says Christopher Hitchens. If you haven't heard of this British author you are sure to hear his name soon. His most recent book has garnered him numerous appearances on TV talk shows. The title of the book? "god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

What makes Hitchens worthy of discussion here is not that he is another atheist out to see Christianity run into the ground. Rather, it is the wit, and skill with which he argues his case. It is the publicity he is gaining and will gain as he spews pop-philosophy across the airwaves. His arguments aren't anything new, in fact most of them are old. He won't destroy the faith, that is not what makes him worth talking about. As Dr. Al Mohler has stated, "He accepts most of the most extreme criticisms of faith in God...the big issue here is not that...Christopher Hitchens [is] going to bring down the household of faith..." Rest assured friends that God's Word will stand as it always has.

I hope you all do some sort of daily devotion with prayer. It's obviously a good thing and you don't need me to tell you that you should be doing it. It's one thing to know you should be doing something and another to be motivated to do it.

Like, just cause I know I should eat healthy doesn't mean I can't stop eating chocolate covered bacon for breakfast.

But in case you are motivated in doing some sort of daily devotional and prayer and you need a little structure to your prayers and don't want to just randomly pray for stuff that happens to pop into your head, this is for you.

There are four main sections that you could have during your prayers. And it's all in this little acronym:

"A.C.T.S."

I'll explain what each part is.

A - "Adoration". This is the praise part of praying. Praise is adoration of who God is. You praise someone for their traits and attributes. A really simple way of defining praise is if you can fill in the blank here, "God is ________," that's most likely praise. God is love, God is just, God is sovereign, etc. Praise would be like, "God I praise you because you are a God of love."

C - "Confession". You also should be confessing your sins during prayer. We should always realize that we suck. We're not any better than anyone around us. The only righteousness we have in God's eyes is from Christ. So confession would be like, "God, I pray that you would forgive me for throwing bacon on my mom in anger."

T - "Thanks". Duh. You know what giving thanks is right? But sometimes it's easy to get thanks confused with praise. Praise is for a trait someone has, thanks is for what someone has done.

Like you can't thank me for being super good looking, cause I didn't do anything to be super good looking, God made me that way. But you can praise me for being super good looking. You can thank me for giving you a aardvark, but you can't praise me for the aardvark.

You can however praise my generosity for giving you an aardvark. Now you are praising my generosity, not the aardvark. Thanks for giving me the aardvark, praise for the generosity. Difference. But don't get too bent out of shape if you kinda get praise confused with thanks. I'm guessing God understands what you mean.

S - "Supplication". This is more commonly known has prayer requests. And if I used "PR" instead of "S", then the acronym would spell ACTPR and that doesn't make any sense. I could say PRACT, but that's not a word either. So anyways ‘supplication' is asking God for stuff. Supplication would be like, "God, please heal my headache, help me stop throwing cheese at my enemies, I pray for wisdom," and whatever.

So at night or morning, or whenever you do your devotions, this little acronym pretty much covers the bases to have a complete prayer.

Now we just need to be motivated to actually do devotions. Would it help if I gave you an aardvark?

(Verses Used: Psalm 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.  I John 1:9-10 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.  Psalm 119:170 May my supplication come before you; deliver me according to your promise.)

Many times as Christians we like to fool ourselves and condone our sins. There is one particular area that I've noticed this behavior - sex outside of marriage.

For you Christians, the Bible is super clear on it - but I've seen countless times where Christians tell other Christians it's okay.

So I'll make it as simple as possible. When the Bible uses the terms "fornication" (King James Version) or "sexual immorality" (NIV Version) it is talking about sex outside of marriage. It talks about fornication as a sin.

1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

EPH 5:3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

Mark 7:21-23 [21] For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, [22] Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: [23] All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

Galatians 5:19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;

Remember, you have to pay for the goods before you take it out of the store. Just cause you're engaged or think you're gonna get married doesn't count. You can't tell the cops, "Yeah, I took the car, but I'm gonna pay for it eventually. I promise."

So you Christians - taking without paying is stealing, sex without marriage is sin.

I’m sure as Christians we’re all trying to grow our faith but a lot of us don’t know how. I’ll give you one really simple way to grow your faith – with just one verse.

Faith is truly believing God’s promises. So just remember this one promise that is applicable in every situation you are in:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

The more you can truly believe that every situation you are in can turn out for good - the more faith you have.

Try thinking of God's promise in all kinds of situations:

 - Someone cuts you off in traffic
 - You picked the longer line in McDonalds
 - Your boy/girlfriend breaks up with you
 - Something you own is destroyed
 - Someone is mean to you

Maybe God is growing your patience, maybe he’s causing you to be late to avoid a car wreck, maybe your relationship broke up to save you from a worse heartbreak later in life.

You might not even figure out why God allowed something to happen, but if you remember His promise and try to consider why He allowed it to happen - you are living in faith. Even if you haven’t figured out the good that will come of your situation, just the fact that you are trying to figure it out assumes that you believe God is trying to do something good. And that is faith.

The less you think on God's promises in your situations - the less faith you will have.

The quicker you are to remember God's promises when an issue arises - the more you see the situation from His perspective and therefore the more faith you have.

So remember this in all situations and you'll have faith:

As Christians we are called to do God's will. But how do we know what God wants us to do? I'll first open up with the most common (and wrong) way Christians determine God's will.

- I need to make a decision. I'll pray that God will tell me what I need to do.

This is wrong. Yet this is the way most Christians figure out God's will. I'll call this method of discerning God's will, "The Pray, Wait then Act" method.

Now before you call me a heretic, there's something fundamentally wrong with that statement. Have you figured it out yet?

Let me show how this type of thinking will get you into trouble.

1CO 12:12-14 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.

How can a solider in the middle of a war be effective if he or she doesn't know what their assignment is? Are they supposed to lie back and defend or should they attack? They'll end up not doing anything, the wrong thing or even end up hurting soldiers on their side.

When it comes to the Christian walk, which God refers to as a spiritual battle (Eph. 6:10-20), many Christians have no idea what their assignment is. This reduces the Christian to an ineffective life. This Christian ends up walking aimlessly around the battlefield in the wrong place and maybe shooting Christians along the way (which happens way to often). If there are enough Christians who are like this, the entire army is reduced to ineffectiveness.

What is Faith?
Many Christians use the term "Faith" all the time without fully realizing what it really is. When Christians don't understand it fully they cannot increase in it.

Faith is made up of 3 things:
1. Knowing God's Word
2. Believing God's Word
3. Doing God's Word

If you are missing or unbalanced with any of these three concepts then your faith will suffer.

A Common Misconception…
The most common misconception about Faith is: "We should focus less on doctrine and theology and get to what really matters - spreading the gospel and doing God's will."

The ever burning question in many Christians' hearts is, "Can I listen to secular music?" There is something already wrong with this question. The problem that is inherent in a statement like this is separating music into Sacred and Secular, Spiritual and Non-Spiritual.

I'll start from the beginning – literally. Only God existed. He made stuff like heaven, angels, the world and cows. He also created music. God created everything to glorify himself (See the Faith section for more). There is not one thing that was created that did not glorify God. Can God make something that does not glorify himself? No. God did not make a sacred and a secular, everything to God was God's. In God's universe there is no such separation, all is unified as glorifying to God.

Are movies bad to watch? Movies, like books, TV and school, are a part of our culture that is portraying some sort of philosophy or thinking, and as with all other aspects of culture we must understand our response to it. So in regards to movies, what should we keep in mind so that we're not blindly accepting anything that is put before us?

The first question we have to ask is: Can evil movies be used for good? This is actually a theological question of whether evil can be used for good. Movies, just like music, money and food, can be used for good or evil. Typically, Hollywood movies are made with some sort of evil intent (evil being something not in motivation for God), thus making the movie evil. But that does not mean it cannot ever be used for good. When Joseph was sold into slavery and later confronted his brothers about it, he said this: "But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good." (Gen. 50:20)

Why is it important to learn more about God (Theology)? Christ says, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent (John 17:3)." God wants us to know him. Many times we as Christians focus so much on our actions and forget that our actions are based on our knowledge of God and his commandments. How can we expect to please God unless we know what pleases him? How can be obey him unless we know what to obey and know how to obey it.

Our lives are based on three things: Knowing, Believing and Doing. For example, first we must know that God says we must teach all nations, then we must believe it, for only then can we possibly do it. A faith in God must be based in the knowledge of God. If it is not based in real knowledge of God, then it is based on what we make up or happen to believe. And faith based on what we would like to believe rather than what is God's Truth, is faith grounded in false beliefs, no matter how sincere you might be.