God can change our circumstances, but sometimes He waits for us to show real desire for change as well as our faith in Him.

I need the spiritual revival that comes from spending quiet time alone with Jesus in prayer and in thoughtful meditation on His Word.

For years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?

The devil resists serious, focused prayer because he's defeated by it. And so the devil will try to attack our concentration in prayer; he will try to confuse or contradict the content of our prayers; he will do his best to distract and/or divert us in prayer so that we're crippled by inconsistency.

Communication with God is vital to a vibrant relationship with him. We will never really know God in an intimate, personal relationship if we don't talk to him. Half of our communication with God is listening to what he has to say through his Word, which is why reading our Bibles is so important. The other half of communication is talking to him, which is prayer. Prayer is also important because the Bible commands us to pray.

If God can bring blessing from the broken body of Jesus and glory from something that's obscene as the cross, He can bring blessing from my problems and my pain and my unanswered prayer.

When life is good and we have no problems, we can almost let ourselves believe we have no need for God. But in my experience, sometimes the richest blessings come through pain and hard things.