mark on Resistance

The indwelling Spirit shall teach him what is of God and what is not. This is why sometimes we can conjure up no logical reason for opposing a certain teaching, yet in the very depth of our being aris...

Resilience for faith leaders is the ability to wisely persevere toward the mission God has put before them amid both the external challenges and the internal resistance of the leader’s followers.

A Sopping Wet Week in the Lectionary Today’s readings are thoroughly wet. In Job, God is master of the sea, Psalm 107 concerns mariners in the storm, Paul is a little drier, but still gets shipwrecke...

AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Original Passover If you frequent any web sites that have thread or message board formats, you occasionally run into the acronym “...

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview Dave Rimoldi, one of our ministry partners, from Soul Shepherding on the importance of sabbaticals in for pastors to rest, recharge, and refle...

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make t...

Internal conflict is not only dangerous—it can threaten the long-term flourishing of any organization, including the church. According to tradition, during the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Horatio Nelson...

Merciful Jesus Grant us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety and take up the cross of opportunity and justice Merciful Jesus Grant us courage to deny consumerism to lay down conve...

Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls. We have served this god of self-preservation. But y...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

The fact that our works are done in the service of God is not enough, by itself, to prevent us from losing our interior life if we let them devour all our time and all our strength. Work is good and n...

Dangerous levels of exhaustion usually accumulate over a longer period of time in which we are consistently living beyond human limits, functioning outside our giftedness, or not paying attention to t...

Whenever there is a separation between values and practice, things break down. In ancient China, the people desired security from the barbaric, invading hordes to the north. To get this protection, th...

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Dear Heavenly Father, We are grateful that we can come to You at any time, about anything. We know that You listen to the earnest cries of our hearts. We know that You have great power; You are the Cr...

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are to subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

A fourteenth-century definition of courage is “to speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” Courage is connecting one’s heart back to one’s mind, stitching together the separated parts of ourse...

Gracious God, our decisions are often rooted in keeping comfortable. We keep quiet in order to protect ourselves. We give just enough to look good in front of others. We hold back to avoid pain. Yet y...

I find your lack of faith—disturbing.

The word radical comes from the same root as the word radish and literally means “root.” It’s truly a root word! But apart from the painful pun, it has something to teach us. So often, when we think o...

Almighty God, nothing is more powerful than love, yet we live as if your love is weak and doesn’t last. We confess our self-sufficiency and our pride.  Help us live and grow in you, that we might disp...

As a pastor, I have received my fair share of letters and missives criticizing my words or actions. Some have been anonymous, others put their name on it. When the criticism felt unfair or angered me,...

People in a hurry never have time for recovery. Their minds have little time to meditate and pray so that problems can be put in perspective. In short, people in our age are showing signs of physiolog...

Gracious God of love–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We are grateful that You’ve revealed yourself to us, telling us that each of us are loved by You as children, each precious in Your sight, each a refl...

We live in an age when belief comes hard because we’re much more afraid of being gullible (believing something that’s not true) than we are of being skeptical (not believing something that is true). W...

Almighty God, we have failed to trust you. Overwhelmed by the pains of life, we have taken charge and pushed you aside. O God, be gracious to us. Remind us of your daily mercies and redemptive power t...

In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using i...