Life on Planet Earth on Growing Up

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When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

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Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming sp...

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Taking Inventory

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Rebekah Lyons

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Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak arrested my heart a few years back. It begins with a poem by William Stafford, “Ask Me”, that begs this question: “Some time when the river is ice ask me mista...

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Mark Batterson

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Neuroimaging has shown that as we age, our cognitive center of gravity shifts from the imaginative right brain to the logical left brain. At some point, most of us top living out of imagination and st...

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Growing Up in a World that Doesn’t Require Courage

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Sebastian Junger

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Joshua 1:6-9

I’d grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges or protected by huge yards and neighbors hardly knew each other. And they didn’t need to: nothing ever happened in my t...

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Prayer for Young Persons

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God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing a...

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Maria Goff and Insecurity

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Maria Goff

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Scripture

Ephesians 2:10, Zephaniah 3:17, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Galatians 1:10, Isaiah 43:1

Insecurity is a funny thing. It makes us into someone we’re not as a way to cope with someone we used to be. For me, it started at home. Growing up, my dad had been critical of my mother’s weight, and...

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Christian Culture Concerning Alcohol

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E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien

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Proverbs 20:1, Proverbs 23:31-32, 1 Timothy 5:23

In the excellent book, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes , Brandon J. O’Brien shares a helpful illustration of how different churches deal with alcohol very differently: When I (Brandon) w...

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Only the Penitent Man Shall Pass

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The Pastor's Workshop

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1 Peter 5:6, Luke 18:13-14, James 4:10, Acts 3:19, Matthew 3:8

With the recent release of a new installment in the Indiana Jones movie series, our family decided to re-watch the original trilogy (I like to act as though Kingdom of the Crystal Skull never existe...

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Is it a Note Worth Playing?

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Seth Godin

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Passion

I’ve never really played a single note in my life. For 8 years I played the clarinet growing up. Actually, that’s not true. I took lessons but I’m not sure I actually played the clarinet. I went to h...

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Annie F. Downs

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I think when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for is home. We are looking for peace. We are looking for simplicity, something to fill that spot that has been left by growing up or gr...

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You Remind Me Of…

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Mark D. Roberts

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Genesis 1:null

Have you ever been told that you’re like someone else, someone you admire and respect, someone you’d love to be like? I had that experience many times while growing up. My family and I were members of...

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How To Keep Your Kids From Talking All the Time (Unfortunately, Through Lying)

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Steve May

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Proverbs 10:19, James 1:19, Matthew 12:36, Colossians 4:6, Amos 5:13, 1 Samuel 3:

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...

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Silence Adding Days to Your Life

Author

Francis Chan

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Scripture

James 1:19, James 3:2, Matthew 12:36, Proverbs 10:19, Ecclesiastes 5:3

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...

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Punching Holes in the Darkness

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Billy Graham

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I’ve always loved the story about Robert Louis Stevenson growing up in Scotland. In those days, streetlamps didn’t just come on automatically; people were hired to light each one individually. One eve...

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The Prodigal Daughter

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Scripture

Ephesians 2:4-5, Luke 19:1-10, Genesis 37:50, Isaiah 55:7, Psalm 103:8-12, Jeremiah 31:3

In What’s So Amazing about Grace?, Philip Yancey offers an updated version of the parable of the prodigal son. Growing up in the countryside in Michigan, a young girl rebels against her old-fashioned...

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Being A Body

Author

Liuan Huska

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The Body

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Psalm 139:13-14, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Timothy 4:4-5, Colossians 3:17, Romans 12:1-2, Ephesians 5:29

I wasn’t raised in a Christian family. I only entered the “Christian bubble” of a Southern Baptist youth group in junior high, where I pledged myself to abstinence before marriage at a True Love Waits...

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Living in Transition

Author

William Bridges

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I became interested in the subject of transition outer changes around 1970 when I was going through some difficult inner and outer changes. Although I gave up my teaching career because of those chang...

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Author

Henry Cloud

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Scripture

James 5:16, Ecclesiastes 4:10

We grow in part by confessing our faults and weaknesses to each other (James 5:16; Eccl. 4:10). If we are always being strong and without needs, we are not growing, and we are setting ourselves up for...

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No Food, No Riot

Author

Charles Duhigg

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I had been in Iraq for about two months when I heard about an officer conducting an impromptu habit modification program in Kufa, a small city ninety miles south of the capital. He was an army major w...

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End of Construction, Thank you for your Patience

Author

Billy Graham

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My wife, Ruth…was one of those who could lighten heavy hearts, especially mine. I will never forget when she announced what she wanted engraved on her gravestone, and for those who have so respectfull...

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Psalm 8 | God's Majesty

Author

Scott B. Bullock

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Scripture

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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The Perfect Soil for Winemaking

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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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...

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Covering the Bald Spots

Author

Sharon Hodde Miller

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Scripture

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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Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

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Dreams

When we were young, we said, ‘This is what I am going to do with my life.’ When we grew old, we said, ‘What happened to the dream?’

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Mother's Day Sermon Ideas: Four Verses That Find Motherhood in the Heart of God

Author

Ryan Bundrick

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Mother’s Day is complicated for a pastor. Among the happy families that are celebrating, there are children who were abused by mothers, mothers who lost lost a child, and women suffering from inferti...

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Throwing Away Valuable Resources

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Psalm 42:, Philippians 3:13-14, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 11:24-30

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

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We are Better Together: Moving from Empire to Kingdom

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Angie Ward

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A Multi-faceted Church Who loses by the church and parachurch’s lack of unity and cooperation? Absolutely everyone : congregations, ministry organizations, ministry leaders, individual believers . ....

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Broken Trees and Unbroken Hope: In the Path of Hurricane Helene

Author

Allen Thompson

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Landmarks Lost For those of us who have been in the path of Hurricane Helene—quite surprisingly, I might add, since the hurricane models even a few hours before landfall had it going about 100-200 mi...

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Sacred Space: Lessons from Ethiopia’s Church Forests

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William Rowley

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Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

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