Thought Exercise on Exposure

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Opening Our Eyes to Deception

Author

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 11:13-15, 1 John 4:1, Proverbs 14:15, John 8:32, Psalm 119:105

It’s important, then, to have our eyes open to this deception. How is it that so many modern promises sound true but in the end lead to our deception, or even our destruction? A long, long time ago, t...

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Having Your Feet Washed is Difficult

Author

Stanley Hauerwas

Keywords

Scripture

John 13:1-17

I am more or less ready to wash someone’s feet, but, like Peter, I discover I am not prepared to have my feet washed. I am willing to play like I am a servant and wash the feet of someone else. When I...

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The Importance of Becoming Antifragile

Author

Uche Anizor

Keywords

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a best-selling statistician, argues that it is not even mere resilience we need, but what he calls antifragility . He groups things into three categories. First, fragile...

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Entering the Darkroom

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 2:10, Psalm 139:12, Romans 5:3-4, Isaiah 45:3, Ephesians 2:10

While we are now surrounded by a never-ending number of pixels with our smartphones, there once was a time where the process of developing photographs took something much more significant than pointin...

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Defenders Of Children

Author

Ben Lansing and D. J.Marotta

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 1:15–22, 1 Samuel 1:20–28, 2 Kings 4:18–37, Matthew 2:16–18, Mark 10:13–16, Psalm 127:3–5

Pharaoh viewed the Hebrews as a growing threat to the Egyptian way of life, so he ordered all Hebrew baby boys killed. King Herod feared that a future king would arise from Bethlehem, so he ordered al...

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The Gift of College Students

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 3:1-10, Ecclesiastes 12:1 , Proverbs 2:1-11, Mark 10:17-22 , 1 Timothy 4:12 , Psalm 119:9-11

I have been moved to a different course of action, however, inspired largely by my daily exposure to college students in a great university during the course of a preaching and teaching ministry that ...

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The Cruelty of Crucifixion

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Exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…past. No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung nake...

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Don’t Look Down But Up

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 10:24-25, Philippians 2:3-4, Ephesians 4:2, Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 5:5

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

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Disney Princesses & Body Image

Author

Craig Detweiler

Keywords

A study led by Brigham Young University found that 96 percent of girls and 87 percent of boys had interacted with Disney princesses by age four. Girls who engaged the most with princess culture (via m...

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One Step Away from Disaster

Author

D. L. Mayfield

Keywords

I was teaching an English class in a high-rise apartment complex full of low-income families in Minneapolis—mostly immigrant and refugees from East Africa. The tenants’ association paid for me to come...

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The Mixed Bag of Human Culture

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

Culture

Regarding the average human’s awareness of their own culture, career anthropologist Darrell Whiteman has said that “it is scarcely a fish who would discover water.” This is a reliable statement. Human...

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The Peaks and Troughs of our Hypersexual Age

Author

Jonathan Grant

Keywords

Sex

A few years ago, while celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary, my wife, Esther, and I stayed at the base of the twin mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb, the mammoth ski resort on Canada’s West...

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Defining Idolatry

Author

G.K. Beale

Keywords

Idolatry

Martin Luther’s larger catechism discussion of the first commandment (“You shall have no other gods before Me” [Ex 20:3]) included “whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is your God; tru...

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What If Satan Told The Truth When He Tempted Us? [Part 1 of 2]

Author

Mike McKinley

Keywords

Think for a second what it would be like if Satan were to tell the truth when he tempted people? Could you picture what that would look like? Imagine if Satan tried to tempt us honestly; it might go s...

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Experience is Honest

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs ...

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Confrontation Defined

Author

Henry Cloud & John Townsend

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 32:22-32, Exodus 5:1-21, 2 Samuel 12:1-14, Matthew 18:15-17, John 21:15-19, Psalm 141:5

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

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Locard’s Exchange Principle

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Have you ever heard of the forensic science theory known as Locard’s Exchange Principle? Named after the "Sherlock Holmes of France," the French criminologist Emile Locard, this theory sugge...

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Vicarious Sensory Experiences

Author

Keywords

Experience

The drug problems in the U.S. demonstrate this pattern: by heightening powers of perception, chemical stimulants open up a new world to a generation that has never learned to appreciate fully the worl...

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The Experience of Knowing a Person

Author

Mark Galli

Keywords

Intimacy

You never really know a person until you know how that person perceives himself. I’m sure you have had experiences like I’ve had when you were sharing with another person, and that sharing became dee...

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Vulnerability vs. Fauxnerability

Author

Chuck DeGroat

Keywords

Twenty-five years ago, when I was just getting started, vulnerability was not a high value. Things have changed. But with a higher value on transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability in the church,...

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A Place of Revelation

Author

Marlena Graves

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:14-15, Exodus 33:18-19

On this earth, then, in our deserts, God personally reveals and names himself. When he does so, his pleasure floods our senses, his beauty engulfs us, and our God-misconceptions are devastated. He mov...

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Daring to Glance

Author

Terry Linhart

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 12:15, 1 Corinthians 13:12, James 1:22-25, Psalm 19:12, Proverbs 14:12, Jeremiah 17:9, 1 Corinthians 3:18-19

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

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Shame Enters our Lives at an Early Age

Author

Curt Thompson

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 34:5, Hebrews 12:2, Luke 15:20–24, Isaiah 54:4, Genesis 37:23–28, Isaiah 54:4

Shame makes its way into our stories at an early age. So early, in fact, that we usually have no conscious memory of our initial encounters with it. This can take place as early as fifteen to eighteen...

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Heightening Powers of Perception: the Bad and the Good

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 34:8, Matthew 6:28-29, Romans 1:20, 1 Kings 19:11-12, Exodus 3:1-6, Genesis 2:7

The drug problems in the U.S. demonstrate this pattern: by heightening powers of perception, chemical stimulants open up a new world to a generation that has never learned to appreciate fully the worl...

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Relationships Touch Almost Everything

Author

Gary Smalley

Keywords

Relationships

Almost everything we do touches a relationship in some way. Just think about your day. Whether you’re at home or at work, driving your car, playing, exercising, shopping, vacationing, worshipping at c...

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Vulnerability that Leads to Flourishing

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk, which is the possibility of loss—the chance that when we act, we will lose something we value. Risk, like life, is always about probabilities...

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Experiencing Transference

Author

Barbara Brown Taylor

Keywords

In seminary I had read about the phenomenon of transference, whereby human beings sometimes transfer the feelings they have for one pivotal person in their lives to another pivotal person in their liv...

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The Love of God Wrapped About Him

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 4:1-3, Psalm 30:5, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:2, Psalm 23:4, Job 1:, Job 2:, Job 42:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Kings 17:8-24, Daniel 6:, Psalm 34:18

The sense of Presence! I have spoken of it as stealing on one unawares. It is recorded of John Wilhelm Rowntree that as he left a great physician’s office, where he had just been told that his advanci...

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Living In Excess Comes in Different Sizes

Author

Kyle David Bennett

Keywords

For many of us, living in excess doesn’t express itself in extremities. It doesn’t translate to tying $4,000 to balloons and releasing it into the air. It doesn’t have to amount to owning six houses (...

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Crowd Control

Author

Stanley Hauerwas

Keywords

In a sermon delivered at Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, Tennessee, Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas turns his attention to the dangerous seduction of crowds: It is a terrible thing to fall...

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