philippians on Adventure

Journalist Eric Severeid recalls a valuable lesson he learned at seventeen while preparing for an ambitious journey. He and a friend had set out to canoe from Minneapolis to the historic fur-trading p...

Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challeng...

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you.

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.

Prayer of Adoration Good morning, Father. While we slept last night – You were awake, sustaining our world, protecting us and readying a new day. Jesus – You hold us in the palms of Your hands: str...

In his book, Running Scared, Pychologist Edward Welch illustrates how the fear of an event is often worse than the event itself. To demonstrate this, he provides two examples of people whose lives are...

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of fear.

The myth seems to be that you’re born with some magic combination of parents, DNA, and lucky breaks, and they conspire to determine what you accomplish in life. Nonsense. And a good thing, too, becaus...

Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.

It is the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts.

It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

Because of this we have hope: Two men look out through the same bars One sees mud, one sees stars.

Go, as God’s people of joy, carrying in your hearts the good news that our God delights to seek and save all who are lost. May you know how deeply Christ values each and every person who you encounter...

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.

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...

The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given,...

Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

When we lose sight of beauty our struggle becomes tired and functional. When we expect and engage the Beautiful, a new fluency is set free within us and between us. The heart becomes rekindled and our...

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

[T]he old adage “it’s the journey, not the destination that matters most” is particularly true of modern pilgrimage. If the destination is the point, I can get to Santiago from anywhere in the world i...

[Speaking about art] As you climb the stairs of quality, you’ll meet individual works that you’ll need for the rest of your life, works that will thrill you, energize you, lift your soul, soothe you, ...

It is important to learn hoping. Its work does not despair, it fell in love with succeeding rather than with failure. Hoping, located above fearing, is neither passive like the latter nor imprisoned i...

And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.