Life on Planet Earth on Messages

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Missing the Message

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Keywords

What if you were sent a message, but you never received it? Or, put another way—what if the most important message of your life was sent to you, but it never reached you? It’s hard for us in the digit...

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His Legacy Lives On

Author

Brant P. Hansen

Keywords

In South Florida several years ago, there was a skywriter who occasionally spelled out happy messages about God—things like “God loves you.” Often, on a clear morning, you could step out and see the p...

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The Messenger Pigeon

Author

Billy Graham

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 8:6-12, 1 Kings 17:2-6, Isaiah 40:31, Matthew 3:16 , Psalm 55:6, Acts 10:9-16

Many years ago a great Arctic explorer started on an expedition to the North Pole. After two long years in the lonely northland, he wrote a short message, tied it under the wing of a carrier pigeon, a...

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Receiving the Message

Author

Gary Preston

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When the telegraph was the fastest means of long-distance communication, a young man applied for a job as a Morse code operator. Answering an ad in the newspaper, he went to the address that was liste...

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The Three Basic Truths About Guilt

Author

Valorie Burton

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There are three basic truths about guilt. If you’ll come back to these concepts anytime you begin to feel guilty, you will understand better what is going on emotionally and how you should approach th...

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Author

Edward T. Hall

Keywords

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken languag...

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What Hath God Wrought?

Author

Mark Batterson

Keywords

Scripture

Numbers 23:23, 1 Peter 4:10, Romans 1:20, Habakkuk 2:2, Proverbs 8:12, Genesis 1:1

In the crypt of the Capitol, there hangs a bronze plaque commemorating the inventor of telegraphy, Samuel Morse…In 1825, Morse returned to Washington to paint a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, t...

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Author

Jean Kilbourne

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We are surrounded by hundreds, thousands of messages every day that link our deepest emotions to products that objectify people and trivialize our most heartfelt moments and relationships. Every emoti...

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Alone Together

Author

Jay Y. Kim

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Scripture

Proverbs 18:24, Romans 12:9-12, Hebrews 10:24-25, Galatians 3:2, John 13:34-35, 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Proverbs 27:17, Proverbs 18:1

In this excerpt from Jay Y. Kim’s book, Analog Church , the author shares about an experience at a local restaurant after being convicted of his own smartphone use at home, keeping him from being p...

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The Saturated Self

Author

Steven Garber

Keywords

Looking into his life and out to the wider world, Kenneth Gergen writes about The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, arguing that “social saturation brings with it a general lo...

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Hot Down Here

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of their ...

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Contempt, a Prayer of Confession

Author

Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 4:21-30, Mark 6:1-6, Matthew 5:44, Colossians 3:12-13, James 4:11, 1 Peter 2:1, Romans 12:10

Contempt is so painful To be dismissed, disregarded Questioning instead of dignity Accusation instead of personhood I have felt its sting and hollowness As have you, my Jesus Help me hear the needed ...

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Loving and grace-filled God, we confess

Author

Chip Hardwick

Keywords

Loving and grace-filled God, we confess that it is difficult to keep you first in our lives. There are so many urgent demands on us that we find it hard to focus ourselves on you. The culture around u...

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Contempt, a Prayer of Confession

Author

Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 4:31-32, Matthew 5:44, Colossians 3:12-13, James 4:11, 1 Peter 2:1, Romans 12:10

Contempt is so painful To be dismissed, disregarded Questioning instead of dignity Accusation instead of personhood I have felt its sting and hollowness As have you, my Jesus Help me hear the needed m...

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Emotions are Divine: Why Pastors Need Biblical Permission to Feel

Author

David Lamb

Keywords

Scripture

John 11:35, Psalm 5:5, Psalm 6:1, Psalm 78:58, Psalm 78:40, Psalm 18:19, Psalm 25:6, Psalm 5:7, Exodus 20:5, Exodus 22:23, Isaiah 15:5, Luke 15:null, Genesis 23:2, Genesis 42:24, 1 Samuel 1:10, 2 Samuel 1:11-12, 2 Kings 8:11-12, 2 Kings 22:18-20, Mark 14:72, John 20:11, Acts 20:37, Revelation 5:4

When the Professor Weeps: A Personal Story About ten years ago, I was teaching a course on the psalms for my seminary students in the midst of a personal health crisis. It wasn’t in my notes, but I ...

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The Art of Waiting: Sermon Illustration Tuesday

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

This week, we have chosen two illustrations that describe the nature of waiting, and perhaps can inspire each of us to wait well as we long for life to return, at least in part, to normalcy: Hope y...

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How the World Might End

Author

Chris Stroup

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For centuries there have been innumerable theories as to when and how the world might end. Here are some highlights gleaned from alleged prophecies: In 960 Bernard of Thuringia, a German theologian, ...

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Author

Shelly Miller

Keywords

Rest

Rest provides fine-tuning for hearing God's messages amidst the static of life.

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The Mayor in the Projects

Author

Melinda Joy Mingo

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 21:3, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 8:3, Isaiah 53:5, Hebrews 2:14-15, Matthew 1:23

During spring 1981, one of my favorite persons at the time, Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, made the announcement that she and her husband were going to move into my old neighborhood: the Cabrini-Green hous...

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Waiting is More than In-Between Time

Author

Jason Farman

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 40:31, Lamentations 3:25-26, James 5:7-8, 2 Peter 3:8-9, Habakkuk 2:3

Waiting isn’t an in-between time. Instead, this often-hated and under-appreciated time has been a silent force that has shaped our social interactions. Waiting isn’t a hurdle keeping us from intimacy ...

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How Hurry Sick Are You?

Author

Tim Chester

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In The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness , Tim Chester has come up with twelve diagnostic questions to determine if and how much we’ve become sick with “hurry sickness.” “Do you regularly work ...

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Anywhere the Eye Can See

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Have you noticed the ever-increasing arm of advertising in our lives? According to a New York Times article, supermarket eggs have begun to be stamped by CBS television shows, turnstiles in subways ar...

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Just Look Inside

Author

David Brooks

Keywords

Advice

As Ellen DeGeneres put it in a 2009 commencement address, “My advice to you is to be true to yourself and everything will be fine.” Celebrity chef Mario Batali advised graduates to follow “your own tr...

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When Vasili Arkhipov Saved the World

Author

William Rowley

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Everyone knows that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis we were perilously close to WWIII and nuclear Armageddon. Most people don’t know HOW close we were. Or how much we owe to Vasili Arkhipov. Ark...

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Solitude has a Learning Curve

Author

Mike Cosper

Keywords

In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper explains the value in persevering through the difficult realities of practicing solitude. ...

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Our Bodies Need Silence

Author

Rick Hamlin

Keywords

Your body knows about schedules. It gets used to those times of day when it says, Feed me right now. I’m hungry, and those times of night when it says, Get me to bed. I’m exhausted. Your body will spe...

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Paul Making Decision

Author

Kevin DeYoung

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 1:17, Philippians 3:13-14, Acts 20:22-23, 1 Corinthians 16:5-9, Romans 15:20-21, Acts 16:6-7

You’re not getting the sense that Paul got angelic visits every other day and waited for his dreams, visions of his heart, and supernatural messages written out in the clouds to tell him what to do…Wi...

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Being A Body

Author

Liuan Huska

Keywords

The Body

Scripture

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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Born Again Bodies and Christian Weight-Loss

Author

Liuan Huska

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Timothy 4:8, Matthew 6:25, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9, John 9:1-3, 1 Timothy 4:8

In recent decades, many Christians have tried to make sense of the tension between our bodies and spirits by swinging to the opposite pole. Instead of saying, “The body doesn’t matter,” they have said...

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Author

Rick Warren

Keywords

Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts."

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