colossians on Inadequacy

Famed pastor and educator A. T. Pierson (1837–1911) lamented his own human inadequacies in communicating to his congregation the depth and levels of the “unsearchable riches of Christ:” “Unsearchabl...

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...

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

Aseity refers to God’s self-existence (a—from, se—oneself). God exists ‘from himself.’ God owes his existence and completeness as God to nothing outside himself. . . . God’s act of creation was not c...

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

If your salvation does not include living with God in beauty, truth, and goodness, it’s going to be a very dry haul. And so much of our difficulty today for Christians in this world, and for the world...

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

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

When we don’t meet Christ in Scripture and are not regularly being discipled by or discipling others, it is impossible to discern what being a Christian means or to cultivate a relationship with God. ...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

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...

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred’s soon hit; This hi...

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?

[If] Christ is not all to you he is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part Savior of men. If he be something he must be everything, and if he be not everything he is nothing to yo...

Sam and Pam, two friends, both arrived in the United States as immigrants from the country of Quadora. Each one wanted to buy a house, and it so happened they each found one for sale by a certain weal...

This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing towar...

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won th...

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the tension that all ministries must live in; the focus on this world or the wor...

Perhaps the greatest irony in the life of continual comparison is that while it involves so much attention to the attributes and gifts of other people, it’s actually quite self-focused. From that hype...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

I had just finished presenting much of the material in this chapter [on the role of the Church helping the poor] to an audience in Africa. A very tall and muscular African man in the audience approach...

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...

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from ...

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.