stories on Discernment

One simple sentence, from my first pastoral supervisor, has significantly shaped how I seek to discern God’s personal will. Each Wednesday during my first year of congregational ministry, we met to re...

Not long ago, I had a young couple come to me and say, “Pastor, we’re looking at buying a house. We’ve looked at this one house, and we really like it, but we want to make sure it’s God’s will. Would ...

In 2002, M. Night Shyamalan released his film Signs , about a widowed former pastor, Graham Hess, who suddenly sees crop circles appear on his farm. At first he thinks they are just the product of mi...

Earl Palmer frequently tells the story of a cross-country with two other young pastors early in his pastoral ministry. They were making a cross-country trip from the East Coast back to California. I...

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...

St. Martin of Tours was a Frankish soldier in the Roman army who abandoned his military post to follow Jesus at a time when Christianity had only begun to take root in France. He later became the bish...

Some of you may remember the film A Beautiful Mind , named after the book with the same title. The book is based on the life of John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, a brilliant mathematician and profe...

In this modern day parable, Alan Fadling describes a king and his two servants. Each of the servants desires to do the will of the king, but they approach their work very differently: One of the serv...

Early in his career, St. Francis of Assisi was in great agony of doubt about how to proceed. Should he devote himself to prayer and meditation alone or to preach? A humble man, he sought out the wisdo...

When the movie The Da Vinci Code hit the theaters and the swirl of related controversy began to pick up speed, I decided finally to read the book so that I wouldn’t be found ignorant dinner parties. I...