hebrews on Self-Absorption

I think the most selfish, self-centered individual in this world is not an unsaved person. It's a Christian who accepts the salvation God offers freely and goes out and lives for himself.

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 ...

Myself unholy, from myself unholy to the sweet living of my friends I look—eye-greeting doves bright-counter to the rook, fresh sand to salt sand-teasing waters shoaly:—and they are purér, but alas! n...

…there are two ways to fail to let Jesus be your Savior. One is by being too proud, having a superiority complex—not to accept his challenge [to accept what the gospel says about our unworthiness]. Bu...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation: We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. . . . ...

A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act li...

Quite often the absence of immediate success is the mark of a genuine call., My Creator, My friend.

As the speed and choices of the digital age send us hurling toward impatience and shallowness, they culminate in its most damaging consequence: isolation. Social media, in particular, lures us in unde...

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

We all have shadows and skeletons in our backgrounds. But listen, there is something bigger in this world than we are, and that something bigger is full of grace and mercy, patience and ingenuity. The...

Our godlike beauty is hidden beneath curtains of shame.

For every one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.

The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free

Why should I, who have been living from all eternity in the enjoyment of the Father’s love, go to cast myself into such a furnace for them that never can requite me for it? Why should I yield myself t...

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

Perhaps you have been ensnared by a sinful habit that you will not abandon, and your guilt is so overwhelming you are ashamed to approach Christ. Whatever the reason for your broken intimacy with God,...

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...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

Sin is a position which out of itself develops a more and more positive continuity. . . .Sin grows every instant one does not get out of it.

It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.

By shifting the focus away from myself and onto Christ and his love for me, I have noticed that everything comes into view. When Martin Luther was suffering under the weight of guilt, his spiritual di...

Prayer of Adoration Good and Gracious Lord, You hold us in the palm of Your strong hand, working all things for our good and to Your glory. There is no place we can go that escapes your notice and i...

The strangest thing happens when what we have most wanted to conceal is brought into the open. We don’t die. Instead, we often begin to heal.

“Empathy” literally means “in-feeling”—it is to project myself into another person’s feelings so that I begin to understand what it is like to have his experiences. If I want to gain empathy for a nei...

Plenipotentiary Anyone know what a “plenipotentiary” is? Try that compound Latin word on for size! It is derived from the Latin words plenus “full” and potens “power.” It refers to a person who p...

Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i...

Origen, in the third century, had a great analogy. He told of a village with a huge statue—so immense you couldn’t see exactly what it was supposed to represent. Finally, someone miniaturized the stat...

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever bea...

The Incarnation [and I might add Communion] remains a scandal to anyone who wants religion to be a purely spiritual matter, an etherized, bloodless bliss.