A 3-Minute Prayer for Busy Christians

How faithful and consistent are you in your prayer life?

That can be a tough question to answer for many of us.

I know that I struggle to keep prayer in its rightful place as a daily and meaningful practice in my life.

When I do make the time to pray and have a wonderful conversation with God, it’s usually while I’m laying in bed at night at the end of a long day.

Inevitably, I end up going off on some crazy daydream tangent and/or falling asleep before my “chat” is complete.

The problem I seem to have with prayer is two-fold:

• I don’t make it a high priority in my schedule
• I sometimes just don’t know what to pray about – which really doesn’t make it very effective in my case

To me, prayer is one of those things that should just come naturally, but it doesn’t always happen that way.  I crave some structure (I am an engineer after all), yet I want to have a very personal and real conversation with our Lord.

That means that simply saying the Our Father, while it’s wonderful, isn’t enough – I need to connect through a prayerful conversation.  



Continue Reading...

Read more »

Believe

As I reflect back on the past week, I realize just how lucky we are to be able to celebrate Christmas with our three kids at the ages of one, four and almost seven years old.

I don’t know how many more years we’ll have while they still believe in the magic of Santa Claus, our Elf on the Shelf and that clever NORAD tracking system on Christmas Eve night.  We are certainly enjoying it while it lasts.

I know that their belief in these things will eventually get spoiled by someone at school, something on television – some message that they’ll pick up from a common interaction with our society.  It’s inevitable, but it’s also okay.

This got me to thinking about all of the counter-cultural beliefs I hold dear, and how Bethany and I will have to do everything we can (starting now) to help our children continue to believe in what matters – even as they are bombarded with messages that will tell them otherwise:  



Continue Reading...

• I believe in God and his son Jesus.
• I believe in Marriage.
• I believe in Family.
• I believe in Life.
• I believe in Personal Responsibility.

Read more »

Love is Sacrificial

This guest post is written by my friend Lori D. Lowe, marriage blogger at MarriageGems and author of First Kiss to Lasting Bliss: Hope & Inspiration for Your Marriage, out Dec. 8, 2011.

After interviewing happily married couples across the U.S. who have overcome adversity and been strengthened by it, one of the twelve overarching lessons that emerged from the stories is that love is sacrificial, and that we need to create a virtuous cycle of giving.

This shouldn’t be a big surprise to the many Catholic and other Christian readers at Engaged Marriage who try to model their lives after Christ’s. After all, He never promised an easy road, and he modeled a life of sacrifice until the end.

Despite this spiritual understanding, most of us enter married life with a completely different view of what marriage will entail. We are in love with our sweethearts and envision a carefree life full of happiness and satisfaction and empty of pain, frustration or difficulties.

The reality is that marriage taught most of us (me, at least) how to grow up and learn to live in harmony with another human being who depends on us.  



Continue Reading...

Read more »

Hope

“How many of you remember spiritually adopting a baby last October?”

Our Mass had ended, it was hot and our kids were crabby, so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to another talk after a long evening in church.

However, when the director of our parish Life Teen program asked this question of the small group of teenagers gathered in the front pews, it got my attention.

And it really impressed me to see so many enthusiastic hands go up from a group that would usually be stereotyped as completely apathetic.

This was a story worth tuning in for, and I think you’ll agree that it’s a God-given thing of absolute beauty.  So, I’m sharing it with you with the hopes that it will touch you the way it has impacted me.

The Story of Hope

In October of last year, the teenagers in the Life Teen program at our church decided to spiritually adopt a baby.  In effect, they would pray faithfully that a young woman who was recently or about to become pregnant would choose life for her baby.

Naturally, they had no way of knowing if there would be any fruit from their prayers and discussions.  And so the “adoption” continued on faith alone through the winter.  



Continue Reading...

Read more »

Family Economics 101 – How Broken Families Are Killing Our Economy

Note: This guest editorial by Rob Marco really resonated with me.  Whether you agree or disagree, let’s chat about it in the comments.

With all the talks about our debt ceiling, government spending, and the floundering economy, the fiscal state of our nation is on everyone’s mind.

How did things get so messed up?

Well, aside from the sub-prime mortgage debacle, I think there is another issue that is undermining our financial well-being as Americans: the breakdown of the traditional family.

Less than half of children in America today live in in-tact families – that is, with parents in their first marriage. And yet research has proven that financial well-being is vastly improved when people stay married.

According to Patrick Fagan of The Heritage Foundation, divorced households typically see a forty percent drop in income – larger than the drop in income the national economy experienced during the Great Depression. For single parent households, the median income is even less. 92 percent of children on welfare today come from broken homes.

Is it possible our financial instability as a nation is due, in some part, to the breakdown of the traditional family?  



Continue Reading...

Read more »

Next Page »