christian living on Boldness

In a story circulated among an ancient monastic community, a vicious warlord intimidated whole villages, sending it’s entire population into the hills to hide in caves, waiting for the ruler to move o...

Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcome. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.

Faith is dead to doubts— dumb to discouragements, blind to impossibilities, knows nothing but success. Faith lifts its hand up through the threatening clouds, lays hold of Him who has all power in hea...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

Never doubt in the dark what God showed you in the light

Fear and growth go together like macaroni and cheese. It’s a package deal. The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must re...

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

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...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith provides an important analogy about the importance of spiritually preparing ourselves for the adversity and challenges that come with su...

Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf, unbelief s...

Heavenly Father, our Savior told us, "Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for My sake will gain it." These are hard words. We confess that we oft...

A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur was listening to a CD of a series of messages I had given on the Beatitudes. When he came to meekness, he told me, he skipped over it. He wasn’t interested in b...

Be humble because you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Lord God, forgive us for how we have let our faith atrophy. We grow complacent, stagnant, and we fail to strive to follow you. Give us passion, give us courage, and give us motivation to excel for you...

If we desire our faith to be strengthened, we should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened.

A successful Irish boxer was converted and became a preacher. He happened to be in a new town setting up his evangelistic tent when a couple of tough thugs noticed what he was doing. Knowing nothing o...

I find your lack of faith—disturbing.

Pastor: O Spirit of God, help my infirmities. When I am pressed down because of my sin, perplexed and not knowing what to do, help me. All: When you see that I desire evil things, delighting in sinf...

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

The disciples are tossed on the waves again. They are in a storm, fully as bad as the previous one. Gently and by degrees he excites and urges the disciples on toward greater responsiveness, even to t...

We live in an age when belief comes hard because we’re much more afraid of being gullible (believing something that’s not true) than we are of being skeptical (not believing something that is true). W...

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...

Many years ago a senior executive of the then Standard Oil Company made a wrong decision that cost the company more than $2 million. John D. Rockefeller was then running the firm. On the day the news ...

Frank Laubach recounts the profound shift in his life that came when he wholeheartedly committed to following God’s will: Before that moment, I was barely alive—like a tree rotting from within. Bu...

Generous Lord Jesus We confess that we do not receive others with compassion. We object to being interrupted And respond with anger or frustration. We confess that we do not share generously Not trus...

Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.

It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. T...

Let us drink to the success of our hopeless cause.

In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...

“[Zach] had gone from seeing beauty in the midst of suffering to creating it. He had taken this thing that could have suffocated him with despair and stripped it down until all that was left was hope....