No discussion of holiness is true or helpful without a healthy appreciation for how earnestly Satan wants to destroy us. Steal, kill, and destroy is how Jesus described it (John 10:10). Satan lured Adam and Eve to compromise one single act, one...
READ MOREWhen our boys were young, they would gather blankets, pillows, and cushions in the basement and build elaborate forts. This was their most-played game, a weekly if not daily affair. Once constructed and made secure, blankets tucked into sofas,...
READ MOREGod has a beauty to unveil. There's a reason that a man is captivated by a woman. Eve is the crown of creation. If you follow the Genesis narrative carefully, you'll see that each new stage of creation is better than the one before. First, all is...
READ MOREIn the dawn of our childhood, we lived with God in a garden paradise. We walked with our Abba Father in the cool of the day, in conversational intimacy. We were ordinary mystics, drinking in the rich company of God and the fullness of his Kingdom...
READ MOREI have counseled thousands of men and women, and I can tell you with utter confidence — both from their experiences and my own — that whatever else the enemy brings against you, he will always bring with it a feeling of I don’t want to fight...
READ MOREChesterton conducted something of a personal experiment to see what the overall impression would be if a person simply read the Gospels without any previous information regarding Jesus. What he found surprised him:
It is full of...
Repeated processes shape the soul; this has been core to discipleship for millennia.
It was inevitable that years of Internet life would shape our souls whether we wanted it to or not. As a friend said, “It’s not that we’ve done something...
READ MOREIf then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus without loss to itself [it shares] its...
READ MOREWaiting can be an experience of emptiness. Our hands are empty. Our desires unfulfilled. Our hearts feel empty as well.
George MacDonald described it this way:
’Tis hard for man to rouse his spirit up—
It is...
The Internet has taught its disciples that there shall be no mystery to anything. We can get to the bottom of any question, lay open the bare facts to any secret. In fact, if there is mystery, we’ve been thoroughly discipled to question...
READ MOREThe book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.
[Sam] Should you have killed a lion before you commit? Many traditional cultures like the...
READ MOREIt was in the depths of his personal tragedies that Job uttered the ruling sentence of his heart: “What I feared has come upon me” (3:25). In other words, “I knew it! I knew I couldn’t really trust God—not with the things that matter...
READ MORELife on the road requires recollection of our Love’s past deeds on our behalf and his promise of continued faithfulness to us. We will need courage and patience and those are strengthened by remembering. We will need memory, which is to say, we...
READ MOREIt seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them. (George Eliot)
And I still haven't found what I'm...
Jesus is more impressed with the cunning of “the people of this world” than he is the naïveté so common to “the people of the light.” And then — back to the doves and snakes analogy — he urges us to be cunning: “I want you to be smart in the same...
READ MORELook again at the story — when God gave us the earth, he gave us a mission. God blessed them:
“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for...
READ MOREI shudder at how easily my heart can be divided. I do love God, I really do. I know you do too. The double-mindedness is revealed when we only sort of want God. Our longing for life to be good again becomes the test we hold up against...
READ MOREAbiding in the love of God is our only hope, the only true home for our hearts. It's not that we mentally acknowledge that God loves us. It's that we let our hearts come home to him, and stay in his love. MacDonald says it this way:
...
READ MOREWe do need more of God, much more. Little sips between long droughts will not sustain us. We need more of God in our bodies, our souls, our relationships, our work, everywhere in our lives. But when you live in a culture of the incessant...
READ MOREIn our own times of severe testing, we want to be made “holy in every way,” our entire “spirit and soul and body ... kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT). Let me be quick to add, I think much of the testing and the Falling Away takes place...
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