The digital age’s technological advancements boast three major contributions to the improvement of human experience, which in turn have become its undeniable values: We have access to what we want wh...
1 Samuel 16:7, Micah 6:8, Proverbs 22:2 , James 2:1-4, Luke 14:12-14 , Psalm 146:3-7
Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...
Matthew 5:null, 1 Peter 2:9, Galatians 5:22-23, James 2:17, Romans 12:1, Mark 4:21, Philippians 2:15
Jesus describes his followers as being “salt” and “light” in the world in Matthew 5. When you think about salt, it doesn’t really have a whole lot of value when it’s just sitting in a salt shaker. Si...
1 Peter 4:12-13, Matthew 5:10-12, Isaiah 40:31, 2 Timothy 1:7, Proverbs 29:25, James 1:2-4, Galatians 1:10
Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.
Proverbs 14:12, Philippians 3:7-8, James 4:1-3, Matthew 16:26, Ecclesiastes 2:10-11
All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. T...
2 Corinthians 9:6-8, 1 Peter 4:10, Philippians 2:12-13, 1 Timothy 4:8, Galatians 5:6, Matthew 5:16, James 2:17
Just as our bodies need exercise to be strong physically, our faith needs exercise if we are to be strong spiritually. It has often been noted that several rivers flow into the Dead Sea, but no river ...
Philippians 2:null, John 13:14-15, Galatians 6:2, 1 Peter 5:6, James 4:10, Matthew 23:12
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your ...
Matthew 23:27, Isaiah 29:13, Luke 12:2, 1 Peter 3:4, James 5:16
People can say one thing and do something totally different. You see the darkness that is often hidden from polite society. The thing that you see is a widespread insecurity. I think people put on a f...
Psalm 23:null, Proverbs 10:19, Ecclesiastes 5:2, James 1:19, Proverbs 17:27, Matthew 6:7, Colossians 4:6
I was watching the old Dick Van Dyke Show recently, and he was at a party filled with pseudo intellectuals. Dick got trapped into a one-sided conversation with a self-absorbed philosophy professor. On...
Romans 12:3, Colossians 3:12, James 4:10, 1 Peter 5:5-6, Philippians 2:3-4, Proverbs 22:4, Matthew 23:12
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?
Psalm 90:17, 1 Peter 3:3-4, James 1:10-11, Ecclesiastes 3:11, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Isaiah 40:7-8, 1 Samuel 16:7
Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.
[These thoughts come from a journal entry of about 10 years ago when I was experiencing a deep and dark night of faith] I have found insight and wisdom for my journey with Christ in the writings of J...
James 4:7-8, 1 John 1:9, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Psalm 51:10, Romans 8:1-2, Galatians 5:16-17
"At the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering…I looked down…I was once more Edward Hyde."
Genesis 3:7-8, Proverbs 28:13, 1 John 1:7-9, James 5:16, Galatians 6:1-2
Shame has two conflicting instincts. It needs to isolate and hide, and it needs a community in which to be transparent. Hiding, of course, usually wins. It is the easier and more natural of the two. B...
2 Corinthians 12:9, Luke 15:11-32, Ephesians 2:8, Genesis 32:10, James 4:10, James 4:6, Isaiah 6:1-8
Growth in grace is growth downward. It is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves. It is a deepening realization of our nothingness. It is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the le...
Matthew 6:20-21, Proverbs 27:2, Luke 14:7-14, Psalm 90:10-14, James 4:13-17, Psalm 39:4-5
The politician Helen Violet Asquith (later Bonham Carter) was once attending a dinner with Winston Churchill, who initially seemed lost in abstraction for an awkwardly long period of time. Abruptly he...
Colossians 3:12, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 57:15, Matthew 23:12, 1 Peter 5:5-6, James 4:10, Philippians 2:3
Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am bla...
At a dinner party, [The Scottish playwright George Bernard] Shaw sat next to a young man who proved to be a bore of historic proportions. After suffering through a seemingly interminable monologue, Sh...
Proverbs 10:19, James 1:19, Matthew 12:36, Colossians 4:6, Amos 5:13, 1 Samuel 3:
My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...
Titus 3:2, Colossians 3:12, 1 Peter 3:4, Matthew 11:29, James 1:21
A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur was listening to a CD of a series of messages I had given on the Beatitudes. When he came to meekness, he told me, he skipped over it. He wasn’t interested in b...
James 3:16, 1 John 2:16, John 5:44, Matthew 6:1, Philippians 2:3
There’s undeniably a dark side to restless ambition, however. You can see it in dramatic fashion in the documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop , which follows the comedian on tour after he left the To...
See the leaves around us falling, Dry and withered to the ground; Thus to thoughtless mortals calling, In a sad and solemn sound "Youth on length of days presuming, Who the paths of pleasure tre...
One of the great lies humans have been told is that if we gain enough power and influence, we can be remembered and make a lasting impact. In his short poem Ozymandias , Percy Bysshe Shelley highligh...
James 1:19, James 3:2, Matthew 12:36, Proverbs 10:19, Ecclesiastes 5:3
My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...
Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 6:23, 1 John 1:8-9, Romans 5:8, James 2:10, Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:23
The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of it [sc. God’s glory]; but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you are as little able to touch t...
Matthew 16:24-25, Philippians 1:21, Romans 8:18, Matthew 23:12, James 4:10, Psalm 23:4
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me lear...
Luke 18:13-14, Proverbs 16:19, Micah 6:8, 2 Corinthians 12:9, James 4:10, Philippians 2:5-7
Only the poor in spirit can be humble. How often the experience, growth, and progress of a Christian become such precious matters to him that he loses his lowliness.