hebrews on Self-Help

The hole in our holiness is that we don’t really care much about it. Passionate exhortation to pursue gospel-driven holiness is barely heard in most of our churches. It’s not that we don’t talk about ...

Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control… we face what is, and we ask for mercy.

Paradoxically…healing means moving from your pain to the pain…When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclin...

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...

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...

In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy which gets rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

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...

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. ...

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.

In his introduction to Scott Sauls’ Book, Irresistable Faith, Bob Goff tells a story about a summer adventure hitchhiking across New England, which would ultimately lead to staying with a hermit in Ma...

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...

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

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding ways to rest and relax as part of a healthy, balanced life: I once read a book in which the author sa...

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.

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...

Context matters. According to the Terman Study, which followed one thousand study participants from childhood until their death, the people we surround ourselves with are who we become. We see those a...

Pastor: O God of grace, you have taken my sin and put it on Jesus’ head, and you’ve taken his righteousness and put it on mine. You’ve made me holy and blameless in your sight; therefore, you delight ...

He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of sel...

The Messy Middle In his classic work Transitions, author and professor William Bridges shares an excellent anecdote about life in crisis: it can happen at any time and in a myriad of ways. It also de...

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

Leadership Trauma is Taking a Toll The word is out. According to Barna, as of March 2022, the percentage of pastors considering quitting full-time ministry within the past year sits at 42 percen...

Total need requires total help

We pray to You our Lord, our Savior, our Merciful God, that all our sins may be forgiven. Our sins are like a straight jacket, binding us, and keeping us from relationship with You. Although we know w...

Philip Yancey writes of a spiritual seeker who interrupted his busy, acquisitive life to spend a few days in a monastery. “I hope your stay is a blessed one,” said the monk who showed him to his simpl...

Psychiatrist James Knight describes in graphic detail the experience that members of Alcoholics Anonymous experience: These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destructi...

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...

Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values.

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often take stock of your work and your goodness based on what we have and see in a particular moment. We follow the desires and encouragements of crowds rather than...