christian living on Gifts

The coaching philosophy of Don Shula helps us understand the gifting of the church for God’s mission. Shula spent 26 years as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Under his leadership they had their ...

We should always remember that love is the highest gift of God. All of our revelations and gifts are little things compared to love.... Settle in your heart that from this moment on you will aim at no...

In his helpful book Peace Catalysts , Rick Love shares a poignant example of how sharing a meal can break down the familiar walls of status, power, and economics: In 2011, my wife, Fran, and I we...

Father, as we go to our homes and our work this coming week we ask you to send the Holy Spirit into our lives. Open our ears- to hear what you are saying to us in the things that happen to us and i...

Trust is sweet. It is better than gold. Trust is always a gift of the heart, and therefore it just may be the most precious thing in life, next to love. Trust between two people is so valuable and pre...

If you want to impact someone’s life, love them when they least expect it and least deserve it.

Humble. Before Jesus, almost no pagan author had used “humble” as a compliment. Yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth ca...

Creator of all things, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, Father, Shepherd, Servant, Brother, Priest and King. Whose love poured out mends broken hearts. Whose wounded hands reach out to all. Whose S...

To accept this [Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the disciples' feet] is to be converted. And nothing can be added to this. If you imagine that you can add something to what is given in the ...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Loving and forgiving God, we want to answer your invitation to experience a Christ-centered life. Yet all too often, our lives are much more centered around our ourselves than around Jesus. Jesus send...

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. All: Thanks be to God.

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. A...

[Humility is] to become like Jesus in his willingness to choose the hidden way of love rather than the way of power.

The gospels are earthy. People are close to the earth. They travel here and there by foot. They eat the live heads of grain growing from the soil as they walk through the fields. They get grubby and h...

Love that reaches up is adoration. Love that reaches out is affection. But love that stoops is grace.

The final word is love.

To love is to will the good of another. .

Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays.

Jesus reassures us that every effort to love ourselves and others more faithfully, however imperfectly we are able to do this, is a response to God's call to love as he loved. It is a response to ...

Son of God Savior Sacrifice Your love is Fierce and Forever Abounding and Intimate Generous, Goodness, and Grace Fill me with your Spirit Make me your love It is your command It is your way It is ...

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 ...

Marriage calls us to an entirely new and selfless life. . . . Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly began to understand that the real purpos...

My father was an artist. He had a black leather sketchbook filled with cartoons and doodles. As a boy I was enthralled by his drawings and wondered how I could learn to draw like him. I began by traci...

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation, and gu...

A friend sat down in a small London restaurant and picked up a menu. “What will it be?” the waiter asked. Studying the puzzling selections, my friend said, “Uhh …” The waiter smiled. “Oh, a Yank. What...

We cannot be closed off to one another and be open to God. That’s not how this works. Do you remember the commercial when the woman says “that’s not how this works, that's not how any of this work...

It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.

Grace to You and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by hi...