There will be seasons of life when we might become introspective on how short it can be. We don't have a lot of control over what our end date is, but we can have some say on what happens throughout the dash in the middle. How do we make our days count?

The feeling of being abandoned by someone we trust or love might be one of the worst human emotions we have to experience. Feeling like God has abandoned us can be overwhelming. How could we possibly allow pain to live in our lives and still believe?

Most religious people have been trained to believe that being honest with God is not acceptable. We accept what life throws at us and live with it even though we have deep questions. But the Scriptures are full of heartfelt and honest cries to God, even tough honesty. Where are you God? Why do you seem hidden?

Easter ties our faith to something that happened rather than to something we merely believe. The foundation of Christianity is not a belief. Something happened—something that addresses and diminishes our fear of loss. It changes everything!

One of the greatest faith questions we can tackle personally is "Who is Jesus"? Is he our King? Our Savior? A good buddy? An "out" when life is hard? People have been asking "Who is he?" for a long time. The problem is the answer we often have is insufficient for what Jesus said and did.

Your family probably has a lot of Easter traditions - candy, egg hunts, new clothes and maybe even a church service. Easter can be a source of great memories as kids. But at the center of the Easter story is the idea that someone was raised from the dead. That's difficult to believe. So what's the big deal?

Have a smartphone? You probably love your apps! We have apps for our finances, coupons, games, exercise/diet, weather and even our Bibles! Long before phone apps, another application was important to the followers of Jesus. In fact, the brother of Jesus writes a letter that spells it out. What difference can application really make in our lives?

When it comes to spiritual growth and nourishment, the responsibility falls on us. The model of "You feed me" doesn't work. We make excuses, we leave churches because they weren't good at feeding us and we eliminate our responsibility. So what's your plan to feed yourself? If you have no plan, you probably aren't going anywhere.

There is no question that wisdom can be in short order in our world today. Our lives are littered with poor choices and decisions. How does one gain wisdom? Paul challenges the church to be renewed day by day. How is that possible when I'm only in church once a week? Maybe it's as simple as a Bible and a pen.

Remember your first crush? The butterflies whenever you saw them and feelings of infatuation? Remember the first time you heard about the love and grace of Jesus? We easily can go from passionate follower of Jesus to simply going through the routine. Following can become more about doing things and orthodoxy than loving Jesus. How can we renew our love for Jesus?