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My mornings are often the strongest indicator of how successfully[footnote]Whatever that means. For me, mostly that I didn’t waste (too much) time and I did the major things I needed to do for that day.[/footnote] my day will turn out. If I start by wasting time, it’s hard for me to recover, and I might as well go back to bed before lunch and hope to start fresh tomorrow. I’m currently making my way through Timothy Keller’s excellent book Prayer. One idea that I’ve already put into practice comes from our Reforming friend Martin Luther.  Note: I'm pretty sure this isn't Marty in a coffee shop, but I bet this guy is meditating on the Word. I’m a pretty weak meditator. That’s my own fault, as it is difficult to meditate if you don’t create gaps of silence in your life. It feels like I’m reading, thinking about tasks, listening, or speaking nearly constantly, but rarely deeply contemplating or wrestling with big ideas. I have a morning manifesto, ideas for a new morning routine, and ways I’ve been trying to meditate. But, I don’t do what I want to do. I’m a good doctor and a horrible patient. I can prescribe the lights out but fail to pop the necessary pills or take the appropriate measures to become well. So, with the help of the Poster Boy of the Reformation, I’ve started doing (a tiny bit) more work to prepare the day before, so that when I wander out to our living room in the morning, well-rested but still groggy, I’m ready to dive into time with the Lord. It’s better to start my morning in a half-stupor of prayer and meditation than to wake up over the course of an hour having wasted time on things that won’t matter 10 minutes from now. Reading tweets doesn’t wake me up. It puts me on a high-speed slide toward dawdling and distraction. Luther’s Recipe for starting your day with prayer: ...

Right now I’m writing on my iPad. But I’m not really writing. I’m dictating all of my speech to Siri, our favorite spastic iOS assistant. Everyone has had their bouts with her, going round and round between “Sorry I didn’t catch that,” blatant misunderstandings, and occasionally amazing precision. Huge improvements have been made over the years, and if you’re a long-time iOS user who was tired of taking Siri’s flack in the past and haven’t revisited her, I’d say give it another go. Now, she’s even correcting words as she sees the context changing, going back earlier sentences to make sure the words are correct, to the best of her ability. I just told her, “new paragraph” and she did the equivalent of tapping return twice. [footnote]So, yes, I had to come back and edit this line.[/footnote] You see, when I gave that new paragraph command she didn’t type the words “new paragraph”, but instead she inserted a new paragraph. The dictation has gotten pretty impressive over the years and now that you can see that the words are appearing on the screen rather than dictating a massive chunk of text and watching a spinning dotted circle for 20 seconds only to have nothing get typed because of a so-called network error. I wanted to share some of the best shortcuts Siri understands. Sure, it’s weird holding your iPad or iPhone a few inches in front of your face and speaking to a screen, but for longer messages it sure beats the socks off typing everything [footnote]like an animal![/footnote][/footnote] because I can speak a whole lot faster than I can type. ...

One interesting aspect of the Christian life is how some components are absolutely critical and worth disagreement and breaking fellowship. Things like Salvation by faith in Christ The divinity of Jesus Acknowledgement and confession of sin Confessing Jesus as Lord are really critical if you want to call yourself a Christian, but that’s by no means an exhaustive list. If you throw those components out, it’s kind of like saying you want to bake chocolate chip cookies but not use chocolate, eggs, flour, butter, sugar or an oven. You can call those cookies, but I think us orthodox-chocolate-chip-cookie eaters are going to think you’re pretty off-base. Other things are a lot less critical, but are (sometimes) worth discussing. Can you be a faithful Christian and… Watch Breaking Bad? Wear V-neck t-shirts? Use Android products? Read only eBooks? Use credit cards instead of Dave Ramsey’s envelope system? I’ve obviously chosen rather fluffy topics instead of something like drinking alcohol, wearing head coverings, or whatever the flame-war-du-jour is on often-non-essential Christian arguments, which I undoubtedly still engage in when it isn’t always wise. Feel free to substitute these questions with anything that is generally unmentioned in the Bible or something that isn’t completely clear in scripture but faithful Christians are found on both sides of the topic. In a theology class I recently took on Romans, the professor suggested three applications from Romans 14:1–23 in what I like to call, “How Not To Be A Pharisee.” ...

I follow a fair number of blogs using RSS, which is a bit uncommon in 2015. The death of Google Reader changed how we follow blogs, and I’d guess most people follow blogs or authors via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or email. I’m old school, so I thought I’d share how I read, follow, and share the best posts I find.  A simple workflow of following blogs and saving articles Twitter > Readability > Reader | RSS > Feedly > Reader An RSS Subscription Service I subscribe using Feedly. It’s a free service and honestly I hardly think about it because I merely use it to keep all of my subscriptions in one place. You could think of it as knowing if your credit card is VISA or MasterCard–it doesn’t make a significant difference–and you’re likely more attached to the bank or card company than the system that processes your payments. An RSS service is the (potentially unimportant) backend where everything is organized. The only time I login to Feedly is if I come across a blog I want to subscribe to while using my Mac. Otherwise, I merely sync Feedly with Reeder, the app I use to read blogs. Reeder for iOS I read the blogs I follow exclusively on iOS. I use Reeder ($5, universal iOS app) because it’s beautiful, connects with all my services,[footnote]Evernote, Pinboard, etc.[/footnote] and does more than I need to do without a clunky interface getting in the way of reading. I don’t use any apps to read on my Mac. The reading experience on an iPad is better because I can quickly navigate by tapping a screen to move between blogs instead of clicking around. When I read, I want to read a bunch of posts, all at once, and it feels cumbersome without a touch interface. Reeder has tons of gesture support and built in sharing, all while displaying blogs in a beautiful way. It makes following blogs that don’t have a great design a whole lot more enjoyable. ...

I’ve long been a fan of Kayak.com for all of my flight booking needs, but there’s a new sheriff in town. Hopper is a free iOS app that helps you find the best prices for flights. It’s a bit different from other apps and services because it uses algorithms to constantly check flight prices. You can set “Watch Trips” which alerts you the minute prices drop or if Hopper thinks prices will go up soon. Other services only do daily searches and send email digests, while Hopper is at work constantly. Here’s what makes Hopper better than Kayak. ...

Looking for the quick and dirty winner? It’s Backblaze for speed and price. Get a free month by using this link to give it a shot. No one needs a backup until they need a backup. It’s kind of like buying insurance–completely unnecessary until something goes wrong. Something most definitely broke when I spilled coffee on my laptop. Despite my best efforts to resuscitate it, [footnote]I did everything short of mouth-to-mouth, and if it would have worked, I probably would have tried that too[/footnote] my laptop was cooked. The silver lining is I was able to clean it up, disassemble the beast and sell the parts–with the disclaimer that they I baptized them in coffee–for some cash to mitigate the disaster. ...

My parents are Christians. They love the Lord and, as essentially first-generation followers of Jesus, they did a good job of pointing me to Him. However, an official time of family worship was never a “thing” in our family–I honestly don’t think the thought crossed anyones mind. We did our own things for spiritual growth–Bible reading and private prayer–and we went to church together on Sundays. But we never cracked open the Word together or as a family worshipped outside of church. ...

Before you get into this post, know that it’s a 2,400+ word labor of love. This stuff is tricky for me to explain, but I cannot overemphasize how important it is, and that’s why you’re reading a preface to a blog post. The few minutes it’ll take to read this post and the 20-minute process of setting up 2-step verification is worth it. At the bottom of this post you’ll see all the links you need to get started. ...

In light of doling out suggestions on reading more books, I thought I’d share the list of books I’m planning to read this year. These are always subject to change, and I’ve purposely not included enough for each week of the year because 1. I’ll come across more recommendastions–perhaps even from you–and 2. new books published this year will catch my eye and get added to the list. You’ll notice some books on this list have a * beside them–that means I’ve already read the book and I’m planning on reading it again. Some books are that good. I’ve assembled my list from a myriad of sources: blogs that I follow, Twitter links, personal recommendations, and from the book behemoth Amazon itself. I’ve included affiliate links so you can snag copies for your reading pleasure. I can’t endorse any of these books that I haven’t read yet[footnote]Weird, huh?.[/footnote] and I’m mostly taking other people’s word on them. This is the part where I wash my hands of any books you pick up and absolutely hate on this list. Maybe we can hate them together at the end of the year. Without further ado, in no particular order, my 2015 incomplete reading list. ...

For the last few years, I’ve tried to read a book per week. That didn’t quite happen in 2014, but I’ve found two keys to getting close to that goal. 1. You have to actually read. Most of us like the idea of reading more than reading itself (myself include, at times) and planning to read versus actually reading are about as similar as being an armchair quarterback and an actual quarterback. ...