christian living on Sin

The psychotherapist M. Scott Peck spent many years of his practice as an agnostic. He, along with thousands upon thousands of his colleagues were taught that evil was a social construct, and therefore...

You know all about us–our weakness, our failing, our sin; and you still love us enough to give your Son to redeem us. Hear the cries of our hearts today. There’s someone for whom it was hard to get ou...

Up until the twentieth century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the w...

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest...

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

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...

Today I come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone loathes when he sees it in so...

Compassionate God—In Christ, you enter our condition; you experience our sorrow and our joy ... and redeem them. By Your Holy Spirit, you carry us along: in crisis and celebration, in despair and acco...

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...

Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need. He is not entirely sorry for the ...

The way to rise in the kingdom is to sink in ourselves.

Gracious, almighty God, we think of John the Baptist, who was a faithful witness to you. He understood that this role was pointing people toward you and not himself. Yet we know that all too often we ...

When I think of the way God allows His servants to suffer, I can’t help but remember the classic story of poor Jack, who was out jogging. As he passed a cliff, he got a little too close to the edge, a...

God of grace, love, and hope–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You know and understand us–not just because You made us in Your image, and not just because You are omniscient and all wise. You took on flesh...

All of us struggle with our own desires for accomplishment and ambition. Christians especially find it difficult to discern their own worldly ambitions vs. following Jesus’ comand to seek first the ki...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament) , scholar Ken Bailey provides context to the 23rd...

The invincible weapon against all our enemies is humility.

If pride turned some of the angels into demons, then humility can doubtless make angels out of demons.

The way up is to go down; the way down is to go up.

There once was a popular shaman in India whom people would seek out for advice. People would stand in line for hours, waiting to hear the choices they should make in their lives or the changes that wo...

Several times during the day, but especially in the morning and evening, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it…. If yo...

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave up everything to come down from heaven in order to love and serve us. Unlike you, we find self-sacrifice hard. Most of us look for ways to puff ourselves up, so that we loo...

An angel fell from Heaven without any other passion except pride, and so we may ask whether it is possible to ascend to Heaven by humility alone, without any other of the virtues.

[God’s] greatest grace is found at the lowest place

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others. In your ...

All: Knowing God, we often believe our way is the best way. In our arrogance, we ignore your will and your ways. We confess our dependence on knowledge and our independence from you. Thank you that yo...

Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to ...

For the times when we fail to notice others’ needs, we repent. For our apathy for those you’ve entrusted to us, we repent. For the amount of time we spend focused on ourselves, we repent. For fa...

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

“So to end this time together, I won’t say everything will be okay. How could I know that? I’ll just look you in the eye, give you a nod of solidarity, and smile. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack ...