You must understand an important distinction — there is Christianity, and then there is church culture. They are not the same. Often they are far from the same. The personality conveyed through much of Christian culture is not the personality of...
READ MOREWe feel that God is not only unconcerned with our plight, but that he is actually working against us. And sometimes, we are right… Indeed, in the seventeenth chapter of Acts, Paul gives the Athenians the stunning news that every single thing in...
READ MOREWisdom is crucial. But wisdom is not enough. Wisdom is essential...and insufficient.
Saul of Tarsus was headed to Damascus, "breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples," with official documents granting him...
How God loves his people to ask him in faith—pressing in, continuing to ask no matter how long it takes, believing that he will come through for us. I just got off the phone with a friend who has been praying for her children to come to know...
READ MOREScripture names hope as one of the Three Great Forces of human existence:
Three things will last forever — faith, hope, and love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NLT)
By saying they last forever, God names these...
READ MOREThrough his cross he paid for our sin, cleansed us, bought us out of the dungeons of the evil one and brought us back to his Abba. Jesus established a whole new way of relating to God. He often reclined at meals with people; he stopped along the...
READ MOREWe grow during meaningful conversations with kindred spirits. But that's often hard to find in the midst of our non-stop days filled with never-ending to-do lists. Today, we want to lift up several powerful podcast conversations as a way to...
READ MOREStasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be.
Like you, I have areas in my life that I want and need to change. But I’ve learned the freeing truth that God...
READ MOREEvery woman knows now that she is not what she was meant to be. And she fears that soon it will be known—if it hasn't already been discovered—and that she will be abandoned. Left alone to die a death of the heart. That is a woman's worst fear—...
READ MOREI don't fully understand the modern church's amnesia-plus-aversion regarding one of the most central qualities of God understood for centuries before us:
The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name. (Ex. 15:3 NIV)
...
READ MOREImagine the stories that we'll hear. And all the questions that shall finally have answers. "What were you thinking when you drove the old Ford out on the ice?" "Did you hear that Betty and Dan got back together? But of course you did — you were...
READ MORELife on the road takes us into our heart, for only when we are present in the deep sentences can God speak to them. That's why the Story is a journey; it has to be lived, it cannot simply be talked about. When we face trials, our most...
READ MOREJesus is inviting us to relax into the beauty he has bestowed upon us and cease striving to attain a level of smooth perfection that looks wonderful on a doll or on a magazine cover but is not attainable in the living, breathing realm of humanity...
READ MOREThe things that have happened to us often suggest that the real script of the play we're all living in is "God is indifferent" rather than "God is love." Deep down in our hearts, in the place where the story is formed, this experience of God as...
READ MORECreation sometimes screams a confusing message — fear, pain, grief. Fire burns, rivers flood, winds go hurricane, the earth shudders so hard it levels cities. But you must remember — this was not so in Eden. Mankind fell, surrendering this earth...
READ MOREUnveiling our beauty really just means unveiling our hearts.
It’s scary, for sure. That is why it is our greatest expression of faith, because we are going to have to trust Jesus—really trust him. We’ll have to trust him that we...
READ MOREYou probably know what you have been afraid to entrust to God. When we surrender our fear, we are offering it to Jesus. We are saying, “This fear is too much fear for me to bear. I give it to you because I believe you are good and worthy of my...
READ MOREWe are faced with a decision that grows with urgency each passing day: Will we leave our small stories behind and venture forth to follow our Beloved into the Sacred Romance? The choice to become a pilgrim of the heart can happen any day and we...
READ MOREStasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be.
Who do you think you are? Who are you on the road to becoming? Do you have a vision of who you could become?...
READ MOREDespair, wrote James Houston, "is the fate of the desiring soul." Or as Scripture says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Prov. 13:12 NLT). How agonizing it can be to awaken desire! Over the past year I have wrestled deeply with what it means...
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