Your decisions . . . along with your responses to other people’s decisions, which are also your decisions...are about the only thing you can control in life, which means your decisions are how you con...
1 Kings 3:5-14 , Joshua 24:14-15 , Nehemiah 6:1-4, Matthew 6:33 , Luke 10:42, Psalm 27:4
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burn...
Deuteronomy 30:19–20, Joshua 24:14–15, 1 Kings 18:21, John 14:6, Matthew 11:28–30, Psalm 119:105
When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...
Columbia researcher Sheena Iyengar has found that the average person makes about seventy conscious decisions every day. That’s 25,550 decisions a year. Over seventy years, that’s 1,788,500 decisions. ...
The famous poem The Charge of the Light Brigade includes these haunting lines: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred… Someone had blundered. Theirs not to reason why, ...
Philippians 2:3, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Proverbs 27:14, James 1:19, Joshua 1:9, 1 Kings 19:11-12
Angela Merkel breaks almost every stereotype we have about world leaders. Her appearances and actions are plain and modest. She's humble. She couldn't care less about showmanship or fancy dis...
Mark 7:1-23, Mark 7:1-12, Isaiah 29:13, Exodus 12:6-20, Deuteronomy 6:20-25, Joshua 4:1-9
Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ...
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, Mark 7:11-12, Isaiah 29:13, Exodus 12:6-20, Deuteronomy 6:20-25, Joshua 4:1-9
Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ...
In this short excerpt written by the Christian Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas to his godson, he pontificates on the topic of courage: Usually courage is identified with dramatic and heroic acts. Though I...
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...
1 Timothy 6:6-19, Deuteronomy 6:5, Deuteronomy 5:21, Isaiah 1:23, Joshua 1:7, Psalm 62:9-10, Matthew 7:24-25, Luke 12:15, Luke 12:32-34
Ageless Wisdom If you are reading this as a pastor, teacher or preacher, I want you to jot down how old you are here _________. If you wrote a number less than 30 know this letter and this passage...
As you go forth from this place, may you have the courage to confront the dark places. May you trust in God’s goodness to lead you to the living water. May you act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly ...
Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Joshua 24:15, Matthew 6:24, Luke 10:41-42, Matthew 7:13-14 , Psalm 16:11
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike and Claudia, who had recently returned from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. We were sitting in a booth at one of those chai...
Introduction Leaning Toward the Light What does it mean to lean towards the light of Christ? What does it mean to be open to the work of God? For the Pharisee in Jesus’ time, the answer was clear: y...
1 Timothy 6:6-19, Deuteronomy 6:5, Deuteronomy 5:21, Isaiah 1:23, Joshua 1:7, Psalm 62:9-10, Matthew 7:24-25, Luke 12:15, Luke 12:32-34
AIM Commentary Ageless Wisdom If you are reading this as a pastor, teacher or preacher, I want you to jot down how old you are here _________. If you wrote a number less than 30 know this letter...
AIM Commentary Introduction Leaning Toward the Light What does it mean to lean towards the light of Christ? What does it mean to be open to the work of God? For the Pharisee in Jesus’ time, the an...
Exodus 3:10-12, Joshua 1:9, Matthew 6:33, Romans 8:28, Psalm 121:1-2
Pastor: Lord God, we thank You that You have taught us what You would have us believe and do. Help us by Your Holy Spirit, for the sake of Jesus Christ, to hold fast Your Word in our hearts. You ha...
Many Israelites Had Leprosy, but Naaman Was Healed As we go from mountains to fresh water, we go from Elijah to Elisha. Despite having a double dose of Elijah’s power and a fraction of his hair, Eli...
Luke 15:11-32, Romans 8:1, 1 John 1:9, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 103:12
Leader: The good news in Christ is that when we face ourselves and God with the awareness of our need, we are given grace to grow, and courage to continue the journey. Friends, believe the good news o...
Matthew 7:24, Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 119:105, Joshua 1:8, Deuteronomy 6:6-7
In C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, Jill meets the lion, Aslan, high atop a mountain before her quest begins to save a prince. Aslan shares four important signs for her to remember along the way. These ...
Exodus 16:3, Numbers 14:4, Luke 5:37-38, Isaiah 43:19, Joshua 1:9
Churches, seminaries, and nonprofit organizations are notorious for saying they need change and then resisting the very leader they called to bring it. One of my consulting clients told me that he cal...
I’d grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges or protected by huge yards and neighbors hardly knew each other. And they didn’t need to: nothing ever happened in my t...
Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...
James 4:10, Luke 22:54-62, 1 John 1:9, Joshua 1:9, Luke 9:23, Philippians 2:13 , Psalm 51:10
Father, we confess to boasting in success and security. We have denied you rather that desire you. We have cowered when we needed to be courageous. Jesus, we long to be people who follow you, no...
This is an age for spiritual heroes—a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its messa...