When the going gets rough, we're going nowhere without desire. And the going will get rough. The world, the minions of darkness, and your own double-mindedness are all set against you. Just try coming alive, try living from your heart for the...
READ MOREReserves are replenished when there’s more coming in than there is going out.
That’s how it works. That’s why people come back from their vacations feeling better, and why folks who have taken real time off, like a sabbatical,...
READ MOREScripture tells us that we might at any time entertain an angel simply by welcoming a stranger. The serpent in the garden is really the Prince of Darkness. The carpenter from Nazareth—there is more to him than meets the eye as well. Things are...
READ MOREBut we are not like those who turn away from God to their own destruction. We are the faithful ones, whose souls will be saved. (Hebrews 10:39)
I wonder—could our heightened state of longing for things to be...
READ MOREYou might think that keeping Jesus all mysterious and heavenly is the proper thing to do, but consider this: When he came, he came as presented in the Gospels—very much human, a person, a man, with a very distinct personality. This is the primary...
READ MOREI know I am not alone in this nagging sense of failing to measure up, a feeling of not being good enough as a woman. Every woman I've ever met feels it—something deeper than just the sense of failing at what she does. An underlying, gut...
READ MOREYears in the Comfort Culture made us emotionally soft.
If we don’t feel like doing something, we don’t do it.
If we don’t feel like believing something, we don’t believe it.
Folks like to call this authenticity, but it’s...
READ MOREI think everyone prays at some point in their life, even if they’re not sure someone is listening. And I’ll bet that one of the most common prayers goes something like, Lord help me; give me strength.
I really like that prayer. It...
READ MOREWhat exactly are you perfectly clear on these days? How about your life—why have things gone the way they have? Where was God in all that? And do you know what you ought to do next, with a deep, settled confidence that it will work out? Neither...
READ MOREOnce we come to accept that we can never find or hang on to the life we have been seeking, what then? As Dallas Willard writes, it matters for all the world to know that life is ahead of us.
I meet many faithful Christians who, in...
READ MOREResignation is not just the sigh that groans with something gone wrong. Such a sigh can be redemptive if it does not let go of the Haunting we have all experienced of something presently lost. Resignation is the acceptance of the loss as final....
READ MOREGod has given each of us an inheritance in Christ. Jesus came that we might have life and life to the full. When we get into relationships with people or institutions or into patterns of behavior or addictions that are not God’s highest for us,...
READ MOREIf you want to turn your children off to Jesus, ignore holiness (or choose the technical rule-keeping impostor). Be a jerk and then insist the family pray at mealtimes; let them see you lie to your boss or your aging parents and then insist you...
READ MOREThe Evil One lied to us about where true life was found...and we believed him.
God gave us the wondrous world as our playground, and he told us to enjoy it fully and freely. Yet despite his extravagant generosity, we had to reach for the...
READ MOREMost of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. "I think I'm just trying to get God to make my life work easier," a client of mine confessed, but he could have been speaking for most of us. We're asking the wrong...
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