The gift of presence is a rare and beautiful gift. To come — unguarded, undistracted — and be fully present, fully engaged with whoever we are with at that moment. Have you noticed in reading the Gospels that people enjoyed being around Jesus?...
READ MORENow may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT)
I absolutely love this verse; I love the hope of my...
READ MOREI was thumbing through a Williams-Sonoma catalog. It calls itself "a catalog for cooks," but really, it's a catalog of the life we wish we had. Everything is beautiful, delicious, elegant. The kitchens portrayed are immaculate — there are no...
READ MOREOne of the most remarkable things about human beings is how resilient we can be. The Primal Drive for Life can accomplish impressive things. Saint John took his suffering and brought forth beauty; Nelson Mandela survived twenty-seven years of...
READ MOREOn a visit to London, I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery. Loving art, and being with two of my sons — one of whom was an art major — I was excited to spend hours there. I loved the Van Gogh, the Monet, the Rembrandt paintings and...
READ MOREI had an old desk lamp with a wiggly switch, picked up for spare change at a garage sale. It had this annoying habit of turning on and off without rhyme or reason. One moment the room would be lit; next moment I’d be sitting in total darkness....
READ MOREI’ll let you in on a little secret: your heart is made for the kingdom of God. This might be the most important thing anyone will ever tell you about yourself: your heart only thrives in one habitat, and that safe place is called the kingdom of...
READ MORESomething has gone wrong with the human race, and we know it. Better said, something has gone wrong within the human race. It doesn't take a theologian or a psychologist to tell you that. Read a newspaper. Spend a weekend with your...
READ MOREOur God is a warrior because there are certain things in life worth fighting for, must be fought for. He makes man a warrior in his own image, because he intends for man to join him in that battle.
One day the young man Moses, prince of...
READ MOREI saw Heaven and earth new-created. (Revelation 21:1 The Message)
What if? A large golden eagle in this world can carry a sheep. What load can a renewed eagle bear? I would love to ride a golden eagle, with...
We begin our journey into sonship by looking backward, to what our lives as boys were like, and, more important, what they were meant to be. For so much of the way we now approach life as men was set in motion in our youth — some of it for good,...
READ MOREFor what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God's presence resides? Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart...
READ MOREThen the Lord God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature. –Genesis 2:7 (John Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary)
... READ MOREWe must come to face our style of relating, of course. As men, we look to where we are passive, and where we are domineering or harsh or violent. As women, we face where we are controlling, and where we are desperately clingy. And as God reveals...
READ MOREThe Sermon on the Mount is a revolution in holiness. Jesus takes all the external issues and makes them first and foremost internal. He begins with a few examples of the most egregious sins: murder and adultery. This is a crowd that congratulates...
READ MORENotice that all the great stories pretty much follow the same story line. Things were once good, then something awful happened, and now a great battle must be fought or a journey taken. At just the right moment (which feels like the last possible...
READ MOREGod gives us dozens of encounters every day, opportunities to be honest about what motivates us. What we do with them is up to us.
This is how he honors us. When God created each of us, he gave us a will, and that beautiful and...
READ MOREAgainst the flesh, the traitor within, a warrior uses discipline. We have a two-dimensional version of this now, which we call a "quiet time." But most men have a hard time sustaining any sort of devotional life because it has no vital connection...
READ MOREThen the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. The five who were foolish didn’t take enough olive oil for their lamps, but the other...
READ MOREI think even a quick read of the Old Testament would be enough to convince you that war is a central theme of God's activity. There is the Exodus, where God goes to war to set his captive people free. Blood. Hail. Locusts. Darkness....
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