life on planet earth on Hesitation

Do you hesitate, man, to go this way, when this is the way that God came to you?

Too many young guys are waiting for writing in the sky before they make a relational commitment. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. My grandpa DeYoung met my grandma on his paper route. Then they...

Holy God, we confess that we feel like we are incapable of doing what you ask of us. In our hesitation and doubt, we confess that we do not do what you ask of us. Forgive us for our fear. Forgive us f...

An elderly couple lies in bed. She is not satisfied with the distance between them. She reminds him, “When we were young, you used to hold my hand in bed.” He hesitates, but in a few moments a wrinkle...

An Admirer once asked Leonard Bernstein, celebrated orchestra conductor, what was the hardest instrument to play. He replied without hesitation: “Second fiddle. I can always get plenty of first violin...

In his book Surprise Endings, Ron Mehl recounted a story about a seventy-eight-year-old minister who was hired by a church in California. Not long after his arrival, the church members began to compla...

The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become cl...

Doubt is not unbelief, but it is not faith either. It wavers between faith and unbelief, unable to make up its mind what it wants to be. It is like the hitchhiker who was thumbing a ride with his hand...

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

Anxiety is the interest paid on trouble before it is due.

He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease t...

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

Waiting is difficult. It requires an attitude of humility and hope that few of us come by naturally. And so we must cultivate that perspective. If we are going to learn to wait, then we must … wait.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

Most of us go through life praying a little, planning a little, jockeying for position, hoping but never being quite certain of anything, and always secretly afraid that we will miss the way.

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes one of our greatest temptations in the modern age—hurry: Hurry is a great temptation. Hurry looks like impulsive, knee-jerk reactions...

Underneath our frantic pace is a question: Is this work I do good enough?

Hurry sickness is a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.

He wonders if he’s lying. If he is, he is hung in the middle of nowhere, and the thought hollows him.

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.

The root of our English term doubt has to do with duplicity. It is being divided or doubled up in our thinking. But this isn’t a matter of simply being confused or unable to make up our mind or ...

What you call “worry” . . . I call “preparation.”

One of our main problems is that in this chatty society, silence has become a very fearful thing. For most people, silence creates itchiness and nervousness.

Taking a new step, uttering, a new word, is what people fear most.

“The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal; while the more practiced veteran made his arrangeme...

[The one] who hurries delays the things of God.

Honest doubts, then, are open to belief. If you are really asking for information and good arguments, you might get some.

It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.

Do not scrutinize so closely whether you are doing much or little, ill or well, so long as what you do is not sinful and that you are heartily seeking to do everything for God. Try as far as you can t...

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive ner...