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Consider your Habits, They Make up 40% of Your Life
A 2014 study by Wendy Wood found that approximately 40% of people’s daily activities are performed out of habit. According to Wood, “an important characteristic of a habit is that it’s automatic…We fi... -
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Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather have these because we have acted rightly; these virtues are formed in man by d... -
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The Nebulous "They"
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... -
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Jesus Christ is what God does, and the cross where God did it. -
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The Danger of Service Alone
The fact that our works are done in the service of God is not enough, by itself, to prevent us from losing our interior life if we let them devour all our time and all our strength. Work is good and n... -
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A Missionary's Influence
R.W. DeHann wrote of a missionary who, shortly after arriving on the field, was speaking for the first time to a group of villagers. He was trying to present the gospel to them. He began by describing... -
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Spiritual Formation: Essential to Human Existence
In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form... -
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The Crucial Thing
In a journal entry by the Danish Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the great existentialist philosopher describes the importance not simply of grasping the truth of the Christian faith, but having the tr... -
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Fearing to Want
In her thought-provoking book, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the tension in listening to our deepest desires: some of them these desires are integral to our identity, but they a... -
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A Better Idea
A businessman well known for his ruthlessness once announced to writer Mark Twain, “Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the 10 Commandments alo... -
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How do you help People Change: The Story of the St. Lucian Parrot
But could you imagine how valuable it would be to be able to change people’s thoughts, actions, behaviors across a whole host of areas from one to another? This is precisely the question Dan and Chip... -
lectionary
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Preaching Commentary A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in t... -
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We Are What We Love
Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the... -
lectionary
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h... -
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Our Stories, Incarnated by God
Every person in Scripture lived out a personal story incarnated by an even greater story about God, life, and the world. That story came from the politics, theology, and culture ingrained in their mem... -
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Forgiving Her Husband's Killers
Elizabeth Elliot's story of forgiveness started in 1956 on the banks of the Curaray River in Ecuador when her husband and four other young missionaries were attacked and killed by members of the H... -
liturgy
Confess Sins, Receive God's Mercy
Pastor: Peter calls on believers in exile to rid themselves of those things that would point themselves and others away from Christ. Like the early church, we too are to rid ourselves of all mali... -
liturgy
Confessing Sins, Seeking God's Mercy
Pastor: Peter calls on believers in exile to rid themselves of those things that would point themselves and others away from Christ. Like the early church, we too are to rid ourselves of all mali... -
liturgy
Invoking God's Presence and Mercy
Pastor: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: The very stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Come now ... -
liturgy
Embracing Forgiveness and Easter Joy
PRAYER OF CONFESSION Pastor: Even in our Easter joy, we confess before our gracious God our failings and sin. For though our voices sing out Alleluias this day, we fail to live every day as Easter... -
liturgy
Living in Light of Eternity
Pastor: Lord, we confess that too often we don’t live as people filled with the light of eternity. People: We complain. We focus on the problems we face and not the blessings you give. Pastor: W... -
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Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious tha... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide James 2:1-17
A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc... -
lectionary
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Preaching commentary Questions for Consideration What does a prayer reveal about a person? What do you most often pray for/about and what might that reveal about you? A Beautiful and Compel... -
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To Become a Fish
I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is no easy task. I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels... -
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A Wandering Mind
In a 2010 study called “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind” (gulp), Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert developed an iPhone app to survey the thoughts, feelings, and action... -
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Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their wh... -
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Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. -
liturgy
Work with God's Purpose
O God, who gives to every man and woman their work, and through their labors does accomplish your purposes upon earth: Grant your blessing, we beg you, to those who are engaged in the work and busines... -
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The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.
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