Colossians 1:15-17, Hebrews 1:3, John 1:1-5, Matthew 16:13-20, John 14:6, Acts 4:12
There’s Republican Jesus who is against tax increases and activists judges, and for family values and owning firearms. There’s Democrat Jesus who is against Wall Street and Walmart, and for reducing ...
In Jeremiah it is clear that the excellence comes from a life of faith, from being more interested in God than in self, and has almost nothing to do with comfort or esteem or achievement. Here is a pe...
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...
John 4:13-14, 1 Timothy 6:9-10, Psalm 62:5-6, Jeremiah 2:13, Colossians 3:5, Romans 1:25, Matthew 6:33
I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and I define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. Instead of telling them they are sinning b...
Matthew 16:24-26, Colossians 3:1-3, Romans 8:12-13, Romans 6:18-19, Galatians 2:20, Colossians 3:5, 2 Timothy 2:3-4, 1 Peter 4:1-2, Luke 9:23, Mark 8:34-38, Luke 14:26-28
Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...
Matthew 17:20, Matthew 19:20, Mark 10:27, Luke 1:37, Luke 18:27, Colossians 3:23-24, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 4:13, Philippians 2:13
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.
Matthew 11:28-30, Luke 10:39-42, Colossians 3:1-2, Philippians 4:6-7, Matthew 6:19-21
People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic securit...
Galatians 1:10, Colossians 3:23, Psalm 139:13-14, Proverbs 29:25, Romans 8:31, 1 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Samuel 16:7, Romans 12:2, John 1:12
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...
1 John 1:9, Luke 6:37, Romans 12:10, Proverbs 15:1, Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:32, James 5:16
The Golden Result is a corollary to the Golden Rule, which calls us to do to others as we would have them do to us. The Golden Result says that people will usually treat us as we treat them. If we bla...
Hobart Mowrer was Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Mowrer critiqued Freudian psychology and its assertion that guilt was merely a pathology to be dispensed with. In this...
Matthew 23:11-13, Luke 14:7-11, Colossians 3:23-24, Ephesians 4:2, Proverbs 3:34, Philippians 2:13, Romans 12:1
Loving Father, You receive all who come humbly before You. Yet we approach You far too often with much satisfaction and inappropriate pride. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. W...
What Determines Happiness? Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...
The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same ti...
These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in cons...
Context of Galatians I still remember my intro to New Testament class in college and the professor discussing Paul’s letter to the Galatians. All of Paul’s other letters begin with words of adoration...
Psalm 37:8, Colossians 3:8, Galatians 5:22-23, Romans 12:17-18, Matthew 7:1-2
The political cartoonist and Op-Ed writer Tim Kreider has provided us with some insight into the “world of outrage” we currently inhabit. A world that has been amplified by the dawn of the Internet an...
Matthew 23:25-26, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Colossians 2:6-7, Jeremiah 31:33
Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our...
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...
Zechariah 4:10, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Matthew 25:21, Colossians 3:23-24, Luke 16:10, Psalm 90:17
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...
Considered perhaps the greatest guitarist alive, Christopher Parkening appeared to have it all. Signed to an international recording deal as a teenager, Parkening traveled across the world playing bea...
The basis of life is people and how they relate to each other. Our success, fulfillment, and happiness depend upon our ability to relate effectively. The best way to become a person that others are dr...
A truly gospel-humble person is not a self-hating person or a self-loving person, but a gospel-humble person. The truly gospel-humble person is a self-forgetful person whose ego is just like his or he...
2 Corinthians 5:15, Colossians 3:1-2, Romans 12:1, John 15:4-5, Philippians 3:7-8, Galatians 2:20, Matthew 6:33
Let this be thy whole Endeavour, this thy prayer, this thy desire, that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.
Stop being so sure that you are always right, and others wrong. Don't trust your own opinion, when you find it contrary to that of older men, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives ...
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 ...
2 Corinthians 5:17-19, Matthew 6:14-15, Luke 15:11-32 , Colossians 3:12-14, Ephesians 4:31-32 , Romans 12:18, Genesis 33:1-4
Gracious God, we are sorry for withholding good things. We have offered judgment and held back mercy. We have kept comfortable and withheld justice. We have ignored cries for help. God we cannot love ...
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...
Philippians 2:3-4, 1 Peter 3:8, Colossians 3:12, Romans 14:12
Paradoxically, if we wish to become more aware of others and their concerns, there is perhaps no better work we can do than developing self-awareness. Consider the findings of a team of psychologists ...
Isaiah 26:3, 2 Corinthians 5:17, John 15:5, Colossians 3:3-4, Luke 9:23, Philippians 2:3-5, Romans 12:1-2
The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when ...