1 peter on Avoidance

A typical response to threat and burden is to want to flee it. It’s evacuation as the cure for trouble. If only I could get away is our mantra. Then I would be safe. Then I could enjoy my life. But wh...

Poet Donald Hall told the story of a hermit in New Hampshire, a man who passed away leaving behind sheds full of hoarded stuff. In one of the sheds was a box labeled, “string too short to be saved.” ...

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence…. Faith, being belief that isn...

A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur was listening to a CD of a series of messages I had given on the Beatitudes. When he came to meekness, he told me, he skipped over it. He wasn’t interested in b...

If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you're serving in the wrong place.

Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.

What I’m learning about love is that we have to tackle a good amount of fear to love people who are difficult. .

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

Recently I read about an experiment done by psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He came up with a fascinating hypothetical exercise, which went something like this: Participants were handed a summary of a p...

In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy which gets rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

Editor’s Note: This story is often told as a true story, when in fact it is probably fictitious. Nevertheless, there is a significant illustrative point: sometimes the things we fear most may in fact ...

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

Almighty God, harsh words and personal attacks can bring out the worst in us. We find ourselves spending energy on thoughts of retaliation and plans to protect ourselves. Father forgive us. We long to...

Merciful God, you have moved and changed our lives in amazing ways, yet we have kept these stories to ourselves. We confess the times we have kept these stories to ourselves out of fear of rejection a...

Of all the values at our disposal, humility seems to be the least attractive. You don’t see many television ads or billboards extolling the virtues of humility, do you?

Called to Pastor, Inclined to Argue When I was graduating from college in the mid-2000s, I was encouraged to take a career test to determine where my personality type would fit in the working world. ...

But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he sor’d, obnoxious first or last To basest things.

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation...

Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challeng...

By illustration, I have been told that when a cow is born, she innately senses that her departure from her mother’s warm womb to a cold, scary, unknown world outside is upon her. In response, she will...

A person who suffers bitterly when slighted or insulted should recognize from this that he still harbors the ancient serpent in his breast. If he quietly endures the insult or responds with great humi...

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity..

Gracious God, too often we believe that our hard work should earn us comfort, conveniences, and control. Too often, we rely on our own abilities to craft and maintain a life independent from You. Forg...

If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God.

Fear is an emotion that produces worry. Here is a story from a friend: When I was a teenager, I worried about everything – grades, friends, what college I would attend. My mother confronted me and ...

When we are bitter, we delude ourselves into thinking that those who hurt us are more likely to be punished as long as we are set on revenge. We are afraid to let go of those feelings. After all, if w...

Anxiety feels like a weight. It has been described as the feeling of tripping—the “moment where you don’t know whether you are going to catch yourself is how you feel all day long.” Or “when you tap y...

One of the cardinal rules of improvisational theater is that actors must never steal scenes. In her book Improvisation for the Theater , Viola Spolin bluntly puts it this way: “Any player who ‘st...

Dear God, Sometimes fear is an idol that we believe will help us control our lives. Sometimes fear is a companion that we let take the place of You. Sometimes fear is the enemy that tells us You are n...