Imagination is the road less taken, but it is the pathway of prayer.

Every act of obedience, no matter how small, makes our heavenly Father proud. Every act of faith - even a faith as small as a mustard seed - puts on a smile on His face. Every sacrifice, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, makes a difference.

God is honored when we act as if He is going to answer our prayers! And acting as if means acting on our prayers. After hitting our knees, we need to take a small step of faith. And those small steps of faith often turn into giant leaps.

We'll never see God part the Jordan River if our feet are firmly planted on dry ground. But if we step into the river, God will part it.

…the tiny mustard seed contains all the nutrients you need to survive. It's packed with vitamins B1, B6, C, E, and K. It's a source of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Faith is a lot like that. It doesn't look like much, but we never know what it can become. A little faith goes a long way; in fact, a little faith will last an eternity.

...what God loves more than anything else is childlike faith. It's our childlike faith, not our theological vocabulary, that moves the heart of our heavenly Father. It's simple childlike trust. It's the bedrock belief that God is bigger than our problem, bigger than our mistake, bigger than our dream.

Throwing down your staff is letting go and letting God. And that's counterintuitive for those of us who are control freaks. As our executive pastor Joel Schmidgall likes to say, "You can have faith or you can have control, but you cannot have both." If you want God to do something off the chart, you have to take your hands off the controls.

Faith is unlearning this senseless worries and misguided beliefs that keep us captive. It is far more complex than simply modifying behavior. Faith is rewiring the human brain. We are literally upgrading our minds by downloading the mind of Christ.

I don't know about you, but I want God to reveal the second step before I take the first step of faith. But I've discovered that if I don't take the first step, God generally won't reveal the next step...Most of us will only follow Christ to the point of precedence -- the place where we have been before. But ...If you want God to do something new, you cannot keep doing what you've always done. You've got to push past the fear of the unknown. You've got to do something different.