At the beginning of every year, I, along with my church family (Destiny Metropolitan Worship Church in Atlanta, Georgia) embark on a 21-day fast in order to sharpen our senses, deepen our relationship with God, & gain insight, wisdom, & purpose for the upcoming.

For the first 21 days of January, beginning at 6am on the 1st, we remove the following things from our diet: meat, dairy, breads, sugars, caffeine, and sweets. Essentially, we eat only fruits & vegetables. This is called a Daniel Fast.

It’s taken from the story of Daniel in the first chapter of the Biblical book bearing his name:

8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.9 Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, 10 but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”

14 So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. 16 So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

11 Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah,1213 Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.

During this time, many people also take a break from media, such as TV, music, and movies, or perhaps social media as well. This allows us to eliminate any distractions that would fully prevent us from hearing the voice of God during this time.

The idea is that we take the time we would normally spend eating or watching TV, or listening to music, and instead spend it in fellowship & communion with God. It’s also a time where we gain control over our fleshly desires and bring our bodies into submission by taking away something (in this case, food) we enjoy.

Why am I tell you all this? Two reasons: A) I’d love for you to join me if you feel so inclined; B) my blogging will likely change a bit during the fast to focus more on spiritual and personal things that I may be experiencing. I’ll be doing more journalling & writing in general during the fast, but it’s likely that a large portion of those writings won’t be published just yet. There’s no telling what I’ll be writing about, but I wanted to give you a heads up that it may not be “business as usual” for a few weeks.

If you’ll be joining me, I’d love to hear about it! I’ll also be posting some tips & things to help you make it through. I promise it’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be. Our bodies can do a lot more than we think they can, trust me.

It’s the end of the year, 2009. It’s also the end of the first decade of the 2000s. Wow.

Seems like it was just yesterday that you couldn’t find bread, milk, water or batteries to save you life because everyone (or at least the majority of America) was concerned that the world would end because we “forgot” that at some point, computers might not understand that “01” means “2001” and not “1901.”

But alas, ten years have passed. And now is the time when all the writers, bloggers, and basically everyone and their mothers, will be writing about what we can learn from 2009 (or the previous ten years) and all the great things that happened and all the bad things that happened and yada, yada, yada…

Honestly, I don’t care. That sounds mean; I do care.

2009 was a memorable year for so many reasons: The first African American President was sworn into office; the King of Pop, Michael Jackson died (and nearly took Twitter with him); everyone started talking about Health Care Reform, swine flu, and Kanye West; a plane landed on the Hudson river and everyone survived; we learned that 8 kids and a TV show is a recipe for divorce; and some boy climbed into a weather ballon (while simultaneously hiding in the attic) and had the whole country wondering, “Why white people keep balloons in their backyard.”

Will we remember the majority of those things by this time next year? Probably not.

The past in the past. We can’t change it, so must learn to live with it. I don’t like to spend a lot of time dwelling on the past and thinking about how we could have changed things, and what we could have done better. We can’t do it now. Move on.

If you haven’t learned the lessons you were supposed to learn in 2009, chances are that you’ve already missed them. This isn’t a college exam you can go back and study for at the last minute. If there was a lesson to be learned in February, you should have learned it then. If you’re trying to learn it now, you might as well put down the books. It’s been my experience that you rarely learn a lesson more than a few weeks after the event. Occasionally, however, certain things do look different in the light of time. But those are the exceptions, not the rules.

Am I being a little cynical? Perhaps. Maybe because I’ve been a little disappointed with this year and what I’ve done with it, or perhaps because I, sometimes, have cynical inclinations — I don’t know. So sue me. Someone has to “keep it real,” right?

[Written by Stuart McDonald for Elev8.com.]

I don’t have a job. Well that’s not entirely true. I am in school full time & I have a few sites I have a blogging commitment with. But neither of those produce money for me. Not yet anyway.

What I mean is this: I haven’t had a job where I filled out a W-2 since 2004.

I’ve mostly been doing freelance graphic design because, well, I was decent at it. Maybe even good. And it was fairly easy for me. But I always knew that it was just a temporary thing; it wasn’t my passion. It wasn’t my calling. I could do without it.

Now I find myself in a place where I need a job — not because I want one, because, honestly, who does — but because I need money.

However, I refuse to have a boring, mundane, average job that I constantly complain about. Two reasons for this: A) I’m an all-or-nothing type of person. If I love it, it gets done regardless of how hard it seems. If I hate it, you could pay me to do it. B) I’m not the complaining type. So why would I put myself in a situation knowing that it’ll lead to complaining?

Now, I’m not knocking people who do a job that they don’t love (sometimes it’s necessary). I just don’t believe that’s for me. I want a job that I can be excited about. One that I look forward to working at. A job that develops my gifts, talents, and skills, while making me money.

So I find myself in a predicament. I need a job. Yet my school schedule is 18 hours heavy (more than full time) and I don’t want a job just to have a job.

All that to say, I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do. Any ideas and suggestions or connections are more than welcome.

I’ll be sure to keep the updates coming as things progress.

It’s Christmas morning… but not exactly the picturesque mental image that you might imagine. There are no presents under the tree. Mama isn’t in the kitchen getting some delicious vittles ready for our consumption. There are no kids running around with their new toys. No. It’s 2:30am. There’s not much around but me and this laptop. And the rain outside — it’s much more a wet Christmas than a white one. Oh, and I’m tired.

So what kind of wisdom do I want to leave you with on December 25th, 2009? Simply this:

When you give your gifts today, remember that the most important gift you can give is that of love. Learn to love people when they’re at their worst. That is, after all, when they need it most.

Christmas is all about gifts. And there’s no doubt that the tangible, material gifts are, honestly, the ones we tend to desire, but the truth of the matter is this: when you give the gift of love, you makes a greater impact than any material thing ever could. Love outlasts any possession that money could buy.

Now, Lord knows it’s not easy to give, but if we want to leave any kind of legitimate mark on this world after we leave it, love is far more than a suggestion, it’s a requirement.

So starting this Christmas, make the cliche come true, and give the gift that keeps on giving — love.

Merry Christmas to you, your family and friends. Have a wonderful day!

PS: Do everyone a favor and spend some time away from reading blogs today. I know I am.

Ah, Christmas… It’s that time of year again. The time when we sing Christmas… err… to be politically correct… holiday songs (most of which have little or nothing to do with Jesus and more to do with Santa), give gifts to those we care about (because doing it any other time just wouldn’t make sense), and, of course, we put up all kinds of decorations around the house — lights, trees, ornaments, stockings, berries, branches, and ribbons. All this in order to, allegedly, celebrate the birth of Christ.

But wait… did I miss something? What does a Christmas tree, eggnog, mistletoe, stockings, or eight reindeer have to do with the Son of God? Sounds like some kind of bad riddle, doesn’t it?

I’m pretty sure those things — in fact, probably 85 percent of what we do when it comes to Christmas — have absolutely nothing to do with the true reason for the season, which, is the birth of Jesus Christ into the world.

We talk about giving gifts to symbolize the gift that God gave us in His son, Jesus, and that’s great. Wonderful. But what about the other things? What about stockings? What about the Christmas tree? How do those relate to Jesus? (And let’s not even get into the whole Santa thing.)

But maybe it’s just some harmless traditions. Maybe it doesn’t really mean anything. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with gifts, and trees, and non-Jesus Christmas songs. Or maybe there is something wrong with it all. Maybe we become so focused on the “stuff” around the holidays that we forget what it’s really about. And if those things detract from our understanding and celebration of Christ does that mean they’re an idol in our lives? Because what is an idol, but something which we place in higher esteem than God?

Doesn’t Christmas become so all consuming that we schedule our lives around it sometimes? Trying to figure out when and where we can get the best gifts, and thinking about how we want to decorate the house, and what’s for dinner, and who’s coming over, and who’ll sit where, and the list goes on and on, doesn’t it?

Overall, there’s not a doubt in my mind that we have lost focus of what Christmas in about. But I can’t change the way a country celebrates a holiday and neither can you. So what can we do? Focus on the “who” behind the “why” and tell those you love about Christ, and his coming to Earth for the sole purpose of dying for their sins that they might accept His gift, gain eternal life, and have the most memorable Christmas ever.

I think too often we — whether singles, Christians, whatever — tend to “tag along” with ideas without asking any questions Certain ideas and ways of doing things have just become the status quo. We blindly adopt the “if they’re doing it, I probably should too” ideology.

I would categorize marriage as one of those things. We never really examine if it’s something that’s for us. Instead we just assume it’s the natural next step and right and we fall right in line.

Do we get married because we have legitimate, real reasons, or do we do it just because that’s what society, and especially the church, tell us that we should do? If you get down to the heart of the matter, almost everything that one could do inside a marriage, could also be done outside of a marriage, whether in a committed partnership, or in some cases, just a “regular” relationship.

Having and raising children, for example, while best done with a husband and wife, can also be carried out as long as two loving parents are equally involved in the lives of their children. And with the divorce rate being as high as it is and single parenting being so common, the idea that you have to be married to successfully raise a child can easily be thrown out the window.

Getting married for sex is popular among Christians. While that may not be the only reason, for those Christians who have committed to abstaining from sex while they’re single, you had best believe that thought has crossed their minds as the wedding day approaches. But here again we find something that can be easily accomplished outside of a marriage. It may not be Godly, but it can be done.

These are just two aspects of married life. There’s also the love, support, and companionship that is shared between the husband and a wife. In addition there are countless other things that are crucial to having a healthy, Godly marriage. Yet, honestly, I don’t know that I can come up with one thing that can only be accomplished inside a marriage.

However, that’s a very worldly mindset to have, don’t you agree? God did create marriage. He created it in order that we might perpetuate a Godly legacy through our families and saw that the marriage would be the best means of coming to that end. He did create man and woman to be monogamous, despite what current events and common human behaviors might tell you. We know that a three stranded cord is not easily broken. When those three strands are composed of God, a man, and a woman, each committed to the other wholeheartedly, there is a bond, a covenant that is formed that cannot be broken. That bond is marriage.

There are undoubtedly many singles who have done, and are doing, great things for God. Yet there are special callings and purposes that God has given a married couple as well. They’re things that often cannot be achieved by just one person, but rather require the partnership of marriage in order to fulfill.

So here’s my question for you: why do you want to get married? What purpose or fulfillment would it add to your life that you would not otherwise have? What things do you feel can only be realized within the context of a marriage?