stories on Character Formation

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

In March 1845, Henry David Thoreau received a letter from poet William Ellery Channing. “Build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive,” wrote Channing. “I see ...

Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you. He custom designed you for a one-of-a-kind assignment. Mine like a gold digger the unique-to-you...

At eighteen, a self-assured Benjamin Franklin returned to Boston, the city he had fled just seven months earlier. Dressed in a fine new suit, with a watch on his wrist and a pocket full of coins, he p...

There is a story—likely apocryphal—of Alexander the Great discovering a soldier asleep at his post, a grave offense. When the guard was brought before him, the king asked his name. “Alexander,” the yo...

In her book, The Next Right Thing, Emily Freeman describes the difficulty in making decisions, including the decision that would eventually lead to her enrollment in Graduate school. After a prolonged...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

Jesus, as always, gets caught in the middle—along with a good number of his followers. Many people in America today were brought up in strict Christian homes and churches of one sort or another. There...

My friend and colleague Keas Keasler, who teaches a class on spiritual formation, recently asked the class to close their eyes and picture God. After a few moments he had them open their eyes and, if ...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

A close friend who started a financial loan business took thirty of his executives to the poverty- and violence-filled section of Montreal where he grew up in order to introduce them to the section of...

[M]ost Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel or li...

One afternoon, I was playing with my son in our living room when I suddenly smelled something burning. I stood up and walked around, nose high in the air, sniffing furiously. My wife smelled it too, s...

The U of C [University of Chicago] has produced ninety-eight Nobel laureates, but I’m not sure any of them left as big an imprint on that university as its famed football coach, Amos Alonzo Stagg. Sta...

When Albert Berte Thorwaldsen, the renowned Dutch sculptor, finished the clay model of his statue of Christ with arms raised in blessing, he left it to harden overnight in his studio. The next morni...

A number of you may be aware of Jerry Bridges’ series of books on holiness, and the book that maybe put him on the map was Pursuit of Holiness . Jerry’s a friend, so he’s told me these stories, and I...

On a daily basis we’re faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging t...

I spent a considerable amount of time with a guy I’ll call Martin. As a brand-new follower of Christ, Martin felt guilty for having previously embezzled a lot of money from his employer. After discuss...

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...

When my daughter Hope was little, I told her a bedtime story every night. I read her the usual books— Goodnight Moon and Winnie-the-Pooh —but her favorite stories were the “made-up ones.” Th...

On May 20, 1990, 42-year-old Georgene Johnson arrived 15 min early for her 10K race (6.2 mi) as part of the Revco-Cleveland Marathon and found runners already heading down the course. So, she jumped i...

A few years ago, HBO released a gritty (surprise!) crime drama called True Detective . The show starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as the two detectives responsible for catching a serial...

In 1463, members of the City Council of Firenze (Florence) Italy decided they needed a monument to enhance their city. They commissioned a sculptor to carve a giant statue to stand in front of city ha...

Again and again in China I talked to people who had never heard of Christianity, never heard of Jesus, never heard a single word from the Bible. Yet through nature and their God-given conscience, many...

In his seminal work, The Cross of Christ , British pastor and author John Stott describes the unique, upside-down kingdom instituted on the cross: ‘Irresistible’ is the very word an Iranian stude...

In a documentary film on the medieval statesmen William the Marshal, professor Thomas Asbridge shares his experience of the power behind Marshal’s knighting ceremony. It provides an interesting coroll...

Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i...

On March 11, 1830, a young English girl was studying a lesson on the royal family with her tutor. As she examined the genealogical chart, she suddenly realized the astonishing truth—she was next in li...