faith and work on Understanding

I remember a story that R. A. Torrey told, growing out of a series of meetings he had held in Melbourne, Australia. He had been speaking on prayer. One day just before a noon meeting a note was placed...

Precious Lord, take our hand, Lead us on, help us stand; We’re tired, we’re weak, we’re worn; Thru the storm, thru the night, Lead us on to the light, Take our hand, precious Lord, Lead us home. The o...

Only one petition in the Lord’s Prayer has any condition attached to it; it is the petition for forgiveness.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing...

An understanding and living of Sabbath time can help support a sane and holy rhythm of life for us. With it, we are given an alternative to the culture’s growing movement between driven achievement an...

Understanding Jesus’ economic interest and competency should not be surprising when we remember that Jesus spent the majority of his life on earth learning carpentry and running a small business. In J...

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora...

When the Reformers broke with Rome and claimed the view that the Bible was to be the supreme authority of the church (sola Scriptura), they were very careful to define basic principles of interpretati...

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

Pastor: “Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what wa...

Robert Lupton offers insight into the complexities of human impoverishment, reminding us that in spite of our best intentions sometimes our philanthropic efforts can yield unintended consequences: “Wh...

First, most Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel ...

Food production entails at every stage judgments and practices that bear directly on the health of the earth and living creatures, on the emotional, economic, and physical well-being of families and c...

Every one of us has a WHY, a deep-seated purpose, cause or belief that is the source of our passion and inspiration. You may not yet know what yours is or how to express it in words. But we guarantee,...

I heard a woman named Veda Gill who is the Executive Director, Presbyterian Education Board in Pakistan preach on a Palm Sunday. Perhaps you’ve heard this story before, but it is so powerful that I th...

Older notions of vocation and vocational development assumed that people wrestled with matters of vocation as a young adult. It has been commonly assumed that vocational counseling was provided in hig...

My first call to ministry was in Eastern Washington state. It turned out to be one of the most prolific winemaking regions in the country. One of the things I learned from a local winery was really qu...

In Understanding Genesis Nahum Sarna explodes the myth that in the story of Cain and Abel represents a biblical preference for the shepherd over the tiller of the soil. He points out that “there is no...

In their beginnings, many universities were connected to the church and religious orders, and a sabbatical was considered a time to experiment, learn anew, or pray and meditate. That understanding, un...

A. W. Tozer once wrote,  Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

The bottom line is this: never grow complacent. Never grow tired of learning. As soon as we stop learning we lose the capacity to grow and mature in our work and our relationships. This continual lear...

Communications are much clearer if you recognize that there are three kinds of feedback: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation.

The more I understand people and their needs, the more I am persuaded that God has uniquely designed the local church to respond to those needs.

Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of these two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance.

The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lor...

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

We talk about our work all the time. It is rare that a conversation with a person we have recently met does not at some point lead to the inevitable question, What do you do? by which we mean, how do ...

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.