(Praying before a meal is one of my favorite subjects to write about on SCL. I’ve covered it a few times, but never in the way Some Guy did today. I continue to be a huge fan of his writing and the funny approach he takes to things. Enjoy.)

Debating why we pray before a meal. – by Some Guy

One of the secrets of Christianity is that this behavior is an unwritten rule. Don’t tell anyone, but nowhere is it written that meals must be blessed before being consumed. Look it up if you want. Dare I say, “Google it.”

Among Christians though, there seem to be three philosophies about praying for a meal:

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On July 30th, in Nashville, Tennessee we’re going to hold a special event called “Quitter Conference: Close the Gap Between Your Day Job & Your Dream Job.”

After talking with hundreds of people with big dreams who wanted to discover how to take big steps to them, we decided to put together a fun one day experience.

Who is it for?
Anyone who has ever felt called to do something extraordinary with their life. (Whether you’re at a day job you don’t love, unemployed, a stay at home mom or the CEO of a company.)

Why should you come? Well, I’ll teach you things like how to:
1. Figure out your unique dream.
2. Beat the 3 most common fears that destroy most dreams.
3. Find one word that completely changes your understanding of “failure.”
4. Work on your dream even in an impossibly busy week.
5. Discover how to build the 3 circles of support every dream needs to succeed.
6. Create 10 times the amount of new ideas in half the time.
7. Understand when it’s time to jump.

…and much, much more!

What is it?
A crash course in turning your dream from “what if” to “what is.” It’s everything I spent 12 years learning about closing the gap between a day job and a dream job condensed into one intensive day. In addition, we’ll be joined by special guest Ben Arment, of Dream Year.

When is it?
Saturday, July 30th from 9AM – 4PM.

I’ll be talking about the Quitter Conference in the weeks ahead and will certainly answer any questions you have. For now though, know that we’re planning to have an amazing day where your dream gets renewed, refreshed and equipped with real things you can do right away to take big steps in the right direction.

We’re going to keep it small and intimate so that there’s a lot of interaction between the attendees. It’s going to fill up fast, so please sign up today!

I found out an hour ago that my new book Quitter made the Wall Street Journal Best-selling books list! I’ve included a screen shot of the newspaper below which has the book as #3 in the hardcover business section. I have three quick thoughts about that:

1. God does big, unexpected things. When I wrote my first blog post on Stuff Christians Like in 2008 I never imagined this.

2. Thank you! Your support of the book has been overwhelmingly kind and gracious and a whole list of words that mean awesome!

3. The Quitter Conference is going to be crazy. I feel like the conversation is just starting. And unbelievable things can happen if you and I are brave and do things that are way over our heads.

Thank you so much for your help!

Jon

Ahh, Sunday morning. I love attending Cross Point Church. In addition to them not having the mysterious “e” at the end of “Point” they’ve got Pete Wilson in the pulpit. It’s really not a pulpit so much as it is a small round table. That doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic though does it? “They’ve got Pete Wilson behind the small round table.”

I’m sticking with pulpit. But I love him as a pastor and the whole team is great as well. Plus, we meet in an old school church that has pews. It’s like the best of both worlds, modern worship meets 1950s pew style seating, lasers meet liturgy, sermon video trailer meets classic fill in the blank sermon notes.

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I recently received an email that knocked me over.

I decided to post it for two reasons:

1. Somebody has a story like this and needs to know they’re not alone.

2. A lot of us have gifts we’re supposed to use that we can’t ever imagine God doing something with and this is a testament to what happens when we try. When we do something as silly and insignificant feeling as starting a blog.

After she emailed this to me, I asked Beth if I could share her story and she graciously agreed. I changed some of the details to protect her privacy for reasons that will become crystal clear as you read it. It’s time for me to just get out of the way and introduce you to the amazingly awesome Beth.

Hello!

My name is Beth and I’m from Texas. I am painfully shy. I didn’t always used to be. I used to be the crazy, silly gal that everyone laughed with. But now, I am shy. I used to be NUTS! I distinctly remember going to a pool hall and crawling around under the tables pretending like I was an alligator to cheer up a friend who had just broken up with her boyfriend. I was the only one who was SOBER.

My mother was a practicing (sorta) Catholic & my father was a Buddist. Since they could not see eye-to-eye on religion, I was not baptized. My younger sister, on-the-other-hand, was born 4 months premature & in 1977, there was no surviving that. She was baptized right away. She did survive though and in our Catholic upbringing, what that meant was that all my family went through the Christian education and rituals while I constantly sat in a pew. Because I was never baptized, I wasn’t able to go through church school or learn about the bible. My mom did the best she could to teach me, but she was hurt by being disowned by her family when she became divorced. It was difficult for her to teach me about Christ’s love when she was having a hard time experiencing it herself.

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