Colossians 3:12-13, Ephesians 4:2, Luke 22:26-27, 1 Peter 5:5, Mark 10:43-45
O Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned in the majesty of heaven, who, when you came forth from God, did make yourself one that serves: We adore you because you did lay aside the garment of your glory, and clo...
Brett Favre was a driven man. He explained to USA Today that his father’s message that he was never good enough drove him to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history…His dad had also been hi...
Matthew 6:33, Colossians 3:23, Psalm 39:6, Luke 12:15, Acts 15:29, Matthew 5:14-16, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:62, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, James 1:12, Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 2:20
The true story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, two British sprinters who qualified for the 1924 Olympic Games, illustrates two contrasting approaches to life and identity. Abrahams was driven by ...
Romans 5:8, Luke 15:11-32, Luke 10:25-37, John 4:1-26, John 3:16, Ephesians 4:32, 2 Timothy 1:9
Everyone: Holy God, we live our lives struggling in our own burdens and failing to trust You with all the things that hold us down. Leader: Your Scripture says, "Come to Me all you who are wear...
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.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. –George Bernard Shaw Problems w...
Ephesians 4:11-12, 1 Peter 5:1-4, Acts 20:28, 2 Timothy 4:2
Success is a Long Obedience, Not a Quick Climb Let me start with this: I am predisposed to believing that the ideal church size is relatively small. Eugene Peterson has often been quoted as saying h...
Psalm 139:13-16, John 16:33, Ephesians 4:3-6, Isaiah 40:29-31, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Jeremiah 1:4-10, Matthew 5:9
Faithful God, our Father, Lord and Counselor: By your grace you know our names before we are even born. By your grace you call us your own sons and daughters. By your grace you give us an eternal purp...
Spoiler Alert: This review contains some minor spoilers about the plot of Oppenheimer . Content Alert: Oppenheimer contains adult themes, nudity, and graphic language. If I were to tell you th...
A lesson often learned the hard way in each of our spiritual journeys is mistaking goodwill for vocation. Sometimes we feel deeply about an experience we have, whether it be on a mission trip or even ...
We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...
Matthew 5:11-12, 1 Peter 2:12, Galatians 1:10, Acts 17:16-34, Ephesians 4:29, Matthew 7:1-5, James 4:11-12
In life, whenever someone achieves success, criticism usually follows—regardless of their skill or the effort they’ve invested. An old story illustrates this truth. A woman crafted artificial fruit so...
Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or the...
Ephesians 5:18-21, Proverbs 20:1, 1 Corinthians 10:23-24, Colossians 3:5, James 1:12-15, Matthew 6:19-24, Ecclesiastes 6:9
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...
Luke 18:10-14, Matthew 6:1, Ephesians 2:8-9, James 4:10, Galatians 6:4, Micah 6:8, Romans 12:3
In the Christian subculture, there is an unspoken standard, a notorious goal to “win the contest.” It’s there, the contest. We don’t say it out loud, because it sounds ludicrous spoken into the open a...
Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to li...
Hebrews 6:19, John 17:21, Ephesians 1:10, 1 Peter 1:3-4, Colossians 1:20, 2 Corinthians 5:17
Hope orients all thought, action, and relationships to God’s ultimate redemption of the creation and to the ultimate communion with the triune God...hope is the steady orientation to God’s making all ...
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 ...
Matthew 20:26-28, Micah 6:8, Philippians 2:3, Ephesians 4:2, 1 Peter 5:5, Colossians 3:12, James 4:10
I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every p...
Ephesians 4:2-3, Matthew 5:9, Proverbs 15:1, 2 Timothy 2:24-25, Philippians 2:3-4, James 1:19-20, Colossians 4:6
The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this ca...
Have you ever noticed how closely the words longing and belonging are connected? I’m not sure of their exact etymology, but I do believe that our deepest longing in life is to be-...
So the first and most basic task of the Christian leader in the future will be to lead his people out of the land of confusion into the land of hope. Therefore, he must first have the courage to be an...
Ephesians 4:15, John 14:6, Ephesians 4:25, 1 John 3:18, Zechariah 8:16, James 5:12, Proverbs 12:19, 1 Corinthians 13:1
My goal is to speak the truth in love. There are a lot of people speaking the truth with no love, and there are a lot of people talking about love without much truth.
Take anger, for example. Think of how little of your anger in the last couple months had anything at all to do with the kingdom of God. You’re not generally angry because things are in the way of God ...
John 9:39, Habakkuk 2:2-3, Colossians 3:2, Psalm 119:18, Ephesians 1:18
Vision is the ability to see God’s presence, to perceive God’s power, to focus on God’s plan In spite of the obstacles….Vision is the ability to see above and beyond the majority. Vision is perception...
The noted English architect Sir Christopher Wren was supervising the construction of a magnificent cathedral in London. A journalist thought it would be interesting to interview some of the workers, s...