1 samuel on Complexity

Our current cultural moment makes rich, life-giving friendships like the one David and Jonathan shared a challenge. We are connected like never before, yet isolated and lonely like never before. MIT p...

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.

A. W. Tozer once wrote,  Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near.

George Herbert Mead, an influential early 20th-century sociologist, coined the term “generalized other” to describe the vague group we consider when shaping our actions. How often do we behave a certa...

To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.

The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it i...

[God’s grace is] always hidden under the strangest appearances.

Two decades after I worked with the airmen, I read a fascinating article, “The Quasimodo Complex,” in The British Journal of Plastic Surgery, Two physicians reported in 1967 on a landmark study of e...

The Great Wall of China was an immense and costly project, built with tremendous effort and resources, designed to provide security and protection. Yet, within a few years of its completion, it was br...

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.

Any social science study will tell you relationships are key to happiness and well-being. But there’s more. Friendship isn’t just an elective in the course of life, it’s required. In my line of work I...

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.

One of my favorite movies is Hoosiers (1986). It tells the story of a small-town basketball team from Hickory, Indiana, that finds greatness under the leadership of their coach, Norman Dale. The...

Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

By failing to come to grips with how cultural dysfunctions deeply impact the health of the church, our leaders will continue to fail to discern an essential reality concerning the nature of change: Cu...

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

In an institutionalized church, the good has become the enemy of the best, and activity has choked out productivity.

The farther you go…the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it’s easy to fall off. Anderson Cooper, Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Hearing God&...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

It’s difficult for people to love the real you when you are covering up who you really are. We connect with others when we take our mask off and let others in.

The Missing “Advent” Text A lectionary preacher moving from the fifth to the sixth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A will notice that a familiar chunk is missing, sent back in time to the third Sunday...

In most cases, the existing church culture is from a former era that is only meaningful to those in the church, not those in the community.

It is more helpful to recognize that God is looking for people of ability who will make their ability available to God.

Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.”

Read any study on human satisfaction and you will see the paramount role of relationships with others. And yet, so many of us readily exchange friendship and community for success and achievement, onl...

Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.

I like to say that generalizations are always wrong and usually helpful.