Life on Planet Earth on Childhood

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Genesis 3:1-7, 1 Samuel 15:13-15, Matthew 7:15-20, Ephesians 4:25, Psalm 52:2-4

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.

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What causes anxiety? I offer this list so you can engage in an exercise… genetic predispositions parenting (overprotective, overcontrollers, inconsistent responders) early childhood experiences tha...

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Lyman Abbott

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A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice, but as yet unstained.

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Maurice Sendak

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“He’s just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be king”

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Happiness Levels in Children and Adults

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Randy Alcorn

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There’s a cartoon that makes a profound statement about happiness. The first panel shows happy schoolchildren entering a street-level subway station—laughing, playing, tossing their hats in the air. T...

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Acknowledging our Shadows

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Chuck DeGroat

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Psalm 51:3, Psalm 139:23-24, Jeremiah 17:9, Luke 18:3, Romans 7:18-19

Almost every parent experiences that lovely moment when small child says, “Mommy, Daddy, my shadow is following me. I remember my daughter Maggie, maybe two or three years old. Dancing around our driv...

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Nature vs. Nurture

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Jonathan Haidt

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For most of the late twentieth century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched. Some political scien...

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You are who you Surround Yourself with

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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1 Corinthians 15:33-34, Proverbs 27:17, 1 Corinthians 5:11, Proverbs 13:20, 1 Corinthians 15:33, Psalm 1:1-2, Hebrews 10:24-25

Context matters. According to the Terman Study, which followed one thousand study participants from childhood until their death, the people we surround ourselves with are who we become. We see those a...

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You Need Nutrition to Grow: Physically and Spiritually

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Luke 19:1-10, Ephesians 2:10, Titus 2:11-12, 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, John 15:4, Hebrews 5:11-12, Acts 9:1-22

A lack of nutrition in early life can result in stunted growth. Stunting results in lifelong health complications. According to the WHO: Stunting in early life -- particularly in the first 1000 days...

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We are people of desire. We want things

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Curt Thompson

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Genesis 32:22-32, Exodus 33:18-23 , 1 Samuel 1:9-20, Psalm 42:1-2, Mark 10:46-52, John 4:7-26

We are people of desire. We want things. We long for things. It is primal to our nature to yearn. As Saint Augustine reflected, “The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. . . . That is o...

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Psalm 8 | God's Majesty

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Scott B. Bullock

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Psalm 8:, Psalm 144:3, Job 7:17, Hebrews 2:6-10, Matthew 21:16, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

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Faithful God–Father, Son and Holy

Faithful God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You are always there in times of transition or trial, times of uncertainty and anxiety, or times of accomplishment and celebration. You do not leave us nor fo...

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O God, Giver of all good, and Fountain

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Psalm 118:24, James 1:17, Psalm 136:1, Philippians 4:19, Lamentations 3:22-23, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

O God, Giver of all good, and Fountain of all mercies, in whom are all the springs of our life; all glory, thanks and praise be unto thee for thine unfailing goodness; for thy faithfulness which is fr...

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The Search for Satisfaction

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Ginny Owens

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In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

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The Habits that Bind: Sermon Illustration Tuesday

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it this way. Each of us has what he called a habitus: a set of dispositions to respond more or less spontaneously to the world in particular ways, without mu...

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Smell and Prejudice

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Lauren F. Winner

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Scripture

Romans 12:16, John 13:14-15, Luke 6:20-21, Matthew 7:12, Proverbs 22:2

I read George Orwell’s book about class and working conditions in early-twentieth-century England, The Road to Wigan Pier . The book’s most famous passage considers smell: Here you come to the...

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Bearing Secrets

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Poverty

In his book Prayer , Phillip Yancey shares the testimony of a man named “John” who has spent the past 25 years working in street ministry, primarily with the homeless population of his city: I he...

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Covering the Bald Spots

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Sharon Hodde Miller

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Jeremiah 17:7-8, John 15:4-5, Matthew 23:27-28, Isaiah 58:11, Ezekiel 36:26-27

Every year at the end of November, my husband, Ike, and I load the kids in the car and drive to the nearest Christmas tree lot. We are committed “real tree” people—not to be confused with “fake tree” ...

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No Such Thing as a Secure Life

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Nick Vujicic

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Risks

Helen Keller, who lost both her sight and hearing in childhood but became a renowned activist and author, said that there is no such thing as a secure life. “It does not exist in nature.… Life is eith...

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Fathers and Faith

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Lee Strobel

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Romans 5:6-8, Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8-9, Mark 10:17-22, Galatians 2:16

In his book The Case for Grace , pastor and author Lee Strobel describes a dream he had as a child after having a significant argument with his father. Strobel does what most of us would do at that...

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The Blood Suckers

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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During a large part of my childhood my father was in school, so we never really went on a traditional “vacation” until late in my elementary school years. I distinctly remember one of our first trips,...

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I Would Take Half

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Galatians 6:2, Romans 12:21, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17, Proverbs 31:8-9, Psalm 82:3-4

The British romantic poet Lord Byron (George Gordon) grew up with the disability of clubfoot, which kept him from engaging in many of the activities and joys of childhood. He was nevertheless, a perso...

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Adolescence and the Pings, Not Pong

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Craig Detweiler

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Adolescents have been offered a license to post without any accompanying ethical framework. Is it fair to blame teens for misusing tools that didn’t exist in our childhood? If I had been given a phone...

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Depression is a Thief

Author

Sergei Marchenko

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Scripture

2 Corinthians 1:3-4, John 16:33

Depression is a thief. A pickpocket. Swiping a memory here and there. An emotion, a plan for the afternoon, part of a conversation. It is a burglar. Leaving behind empty surfaces and containers that u...

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The Devil Buried the Bones

Author

Austin Fischer

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Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Revelation 21:4, Philippians 4:6-7, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:38-39, John 1:5, Isaiah 40:31

And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o...

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Running His Race

Author

Jon Tyson

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Scripture

Romans 12:3, 1 Corinthians 9:24-25, Isaiah 40:31, Philippians 3:13-14, Galatians 5:7, 2 Timothy 4:7, Hebrews 12:1-2

In his book The Burden is the Light, Jon Tyson shares how, as a child, he had excelled as a runner, winning a number of races and even breaking state records. But everything changed when another athle...

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The Growing Awareness of our Bodies

Author

Liuan Huska

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The Body

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Philippians 3:20-21, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Romans 8:22-23, Romans 8:11, Ecclesiastes 12:7, Isaiah 46:4

We come into this world blissfully unaware of these fragile, beautiful things we call our bodies. In our mother’s womb, we bathe in continuous warmth and nourishment, changing shadows and muffled voic...

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Driven by Demons

Author

Samuel Chand

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Scripture

Ecclesiastes 9:10, 2 Corinthians 8:7, 1 Timothy 6:9-10, Ephesians 5:18, Galatians 1:10, Psalm 27:10

Brett Favre was a driven man. He explained to USA Today that his father’s message that he was never good enough drove him to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history…His dad had also been hi...

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Author

Caroline Leaf

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Mind-management is a skill that needs to be learned and constantly upgraded as we grow from childhood into adulthood. For every new experience we need a new set of mind-management tools.

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Author

Theophan the Recluse

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The Body

The chief evil with relation to the body is love for the body and pitying it. This takes away all the soul's authority over the body and makes the soul the slave of the body. And on the contrary, ...

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