Exodus 6:33, Exodus 20:3, Deuteronomy 6:5, 1 Corinthians 10:31, James 1:17, 1 Timothy 6:17, Luke 14:26-27, Philippians 3:8
We sometimes imagine surrender to God as emotional starvation. Every pleasure feels suspicious, and every passion feels in competition with our love of God. We think that the more miserable we are in ...
Proverbs 16:18, Proverbs 11:2, Proverbs 29:23, Proverbs 8:23, James 4:6, Proverbs 16:5, 1 John 2:16, Philippians 2:3, Jeremiah 9:23, Daniel 4:28-33
“Casey at the Bat” has got to be the most well-known sports poem in American history. The “Mudville nine” are down four to two, with one inning left with two outs. Two men wait at second and third bas...
Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 31:9-16, Philippians 2:5-11, Mark 11:1-11
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 “...
Dear God, Sometimes fear is an idol that we believe will help us control our lives. Sometimes fear is a companion that we let take the place of You. Sometimes fear is the enemy that tells us You are n...
Micah 6:8, 1 Samuel 16:6–7, Isaiah 42:1–3, Matthew 5:14–16, Philippians 2:3–8, Psalm 1:1–3
The saints of the church flicker like candles along a dark corridor. They are not 1400-watt LED floodlights to blind you with their brilliance; those are the celebrities. A celebrity is a flashbulb st...
Ephesians 4:32, Luke 19:1-10, Matthew 22:37-39, Philippians 2:3-4, 1 John 1:9, Romans 3:23
Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...
Proverbs 16:18, Proverbs 11:2, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5-6, Philippians 2:3-4, Luke 18:9-14, Matthew 23:1-12
In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...
As we call ourselves to worship, let us remember that our God is an awesome God, who in Jesus Christ has lived in our flesh, faced our temptations, gone to cross for, and lives today in heaven. In thi...
Psalm 19:1, Genesis 1:2, John 4:1-26, Philippians 4:8, Genesis 1:27
You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental ...
Jesus, though you were in very nature God, you did not consider equality with God as something to be used to your own advantage. Rather, you humbled yourself, you made yourself nothing. Lord, you are ...
Matthew 23:12, Romans 12:3, 1 Peter 5:5, Daniel 4:37, Philippians 2:3-4
One of the great ironies of sin is that when human beings try to become more than human beings, to be as gods, they fall to become lower than human beings. To be your own God and live for your own glo...
During each full moon, believing himself equal to the Roman gods, the Roman emperor Caligula would summon the moon goddess to share his bedchamber. When he asked Aulus Vitellius—a member of the Roman ...
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to r...
Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught up in my failures, in all the ways I am not like you, that I neglect the deeper truth, the earlier truth of Genesis 1. You have made me, as a human being, in you...
In their book Friend and Foe, social psychologists Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer cite a study by Emory University scientist Frans de Waal regarding comparison. De Waal trained capuchin monkeys ...
Matthew 17:20, Matthew 19:20, Mark 10:27, Luke 1:37, Luke 18:27, Colossians 3:23-24, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 4:13, Philippians 2:13
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.
If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living...
Matthew 6:25-34, Galatians 1:10, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 23:1-12, Romans 12:2
In his book, Scary Close , Donald Miller acknowledges that over time he developed a mask, or a persona that kept even those closest to him from experiencing with him. As he began to peel back layers ...
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...
Isaiah 43:19, Song of Solomon 4:7, Philippians 4:8, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Psalm 147:3, Isaiah 61:3
If the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the . . . unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar...
Ephesians 5:1-2, Philippians 2:12-13, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 Corinthians 11:1, 1 Peter 2:21-23, John 13:15
My father was an artist. He had a black leather sketchbook filled with cartoons and doodles. As a boy I was enthralled by his drawings and wondered how I could learn to draw like him. I began by traci...
Colossians 1:15, John 1:14, Hebrews 1:3, John 14:9, Philippians 2:6-7
Origen, in the third century, had a great analogy. He told of a village with a huge statue—so immense you couldn’t see exactly what it was supposed to represent. Finally, someone miniaturized the stat...
John 3:30, Philippians 2:3-4, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5-6, Matthew 23:1-12, Galatians 6:14
One of the cardinal rules of improvisational theater is that actors must never steal scenes. In her book Improvisation for the Theater , Viola Spolin bluntly puts it this way: “Any player who ‘st...
Mark 10:35-45, Philippians 2:3-7, Psalm 139:23-24, John 3:1-17, Mark 10:17-27
Savior Jesus, we confess that all too often we are incapable of looking beyond our own ambitions. We get wrapped up in prestige and position, leaving you behind for our own aspirations. Forgive our mi...
Luke 2:8-11, Matthew 5:3, Philippians 2:6-8, Isaiah 57:15, Micah 5:2
The shepherds show us that we don’t prepare to receive the king of heaven the same way we prepare to meet the celebrities of our day, through earthly displays of showiness. In fact, receiving our King...
In her excellent little book (Mythical Me), Richella Parham begins by describing a single event that led to a personal journey into addressing her struggles with comparison. Having recently moved to a...