Personal Development on Encounter

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The Love of God Wrapped About Him

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Psalm 4:1-3, Psalm 30:5, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:2, Psalm 23:4, Job 1:, Job 2:, Job 42:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Kings 17:8-24, Daniel 6:, Psalm 34:18

The sense of Presence! I have spoken of it as stealing on one unawares. It is recorded of John Wilhelm Rowntree that as he left a great physician’s office, where he had just been told that his advanci...

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Author

John O'Donohue

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Patience

What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spiri...

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Author

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

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Author

Rick Lambert

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"Everything we encounter today is used by God to prepare us for tomorrow. he wastes no trials, withholds no blessings, nor does he hold back on the discipline of his soldiers. All He does prepare...

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Author

Bob Goff

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Oftentimes, when I encounter someone who makes me feel afraid, I instantly put up barriers. I put them up with my big words and opinions. I construct them to protect myself. Barriers make me feel righ...

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The Most Vital and Significant Moments

Author

David G. Benner

Keywords

Defining Moments

I have been pondering the nature of presence and encounter since first reading Martin Buber’s I and Thou as a university student. His assertion that “All real living is meeting” struck a deeply resona...

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When the Fire Goes Out

Author

Albert Schweitzer

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The missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in his memoir, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should...

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The Importance of Building Margin Into your Life

Author

Daniel Im

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Scripture

Exodus 18:13-24 , Leviticus 25:1-7, 1 Kings 19:4-12, Mark 6:30-32 , Luke 10:38-42, Psalm 46:10

[D]o you have margin in your life, like the white spaces between these words and the edges of the page? Having margin is about intentionally scheduling white space in your calendar to pray, rest, read...

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Harry Potter’s Dementors & Depression

Author

Mark Meynell

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Scripture

Isaiah 40:29-31, Job 3:25-26, 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, John 16:33, Psalm 34:17-18

When J. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter universe, she naturally drew on her own experiences to flesh it out. This is true even for such alarming creatures as ‘dementors’. These are soulless beings...

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In a Pastoral Identity Crisis? Go Beyond Burnout and Remember Your Identity in Christ

Author

Scott B. Bullock

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Scripture

Psalm 91:14-16

When Ministry Burnout Leaves You Empty I imagine that some of you feel like you have nothing left to give. Perhaps you’re in a period in which motivation has morphed into varying degrees of desponde...

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Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Matthew 5:9, Ephesians 4:32, James 5:15-16, John 14:27, Psalm 34:18

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

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Maximize the Moment: Be Diligent

Author

Claude Alexander

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Scripture

John 9:1-5, John 9:5, John 9:null, John 9:25, Matthew 27:54

Blog post adapted from Necessary Christianity by Claude Alexander, Jr. Adapted from Chapter 5, "I Must Be Diligent" The life of Jesus reveals that God’s call and God’s claim on the belie...

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Packing for Passage on the Mayflower

Author

Bill Bryson

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Many of us struggle to know exactly what to pack when we go on our various travels. The Pilgrims in their voyage to the new world were no different. As Bill Bryson describes in his book Made in Americ...

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One Very Important Word of Encouragement

Author

Dan B. Allender and Larry Crabb

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As a youngster I developed a thoroughly annoying and humiliating problem of stuttering…In the ninth grade, I was elected president of our junior high student body. During an assembly of the seventh, e...

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One Very Important Word of Encouragement: Sermon Illustration Tuesday

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Encouragement

As a youngster I developed a thoroughly annoying and humiliating problem of stuttering…In the ninth grade, I was elected president of our junior high student body. During an assembly of the seventh, e...

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Author

Richard Hendrix

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Second only to suffering, waiting may be the greatest teacher and trainer in godliness, maturity, and genuine spirituality most of us ever encounter.

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Pushed to the Brink of Destruction

Author

James A. Knight

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Scripture

Hebrews 12:12-13, Psalm 147:3, Romans 8:28, Isaiah 61:1, 1 Peter 5:10

Psychiatrist James Knight describes in graphic detail the experience that members of Alcoholics Anonymous experience: These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destructi...

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Author

Rick Richardson

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We have immense difficulty practicing God’s presence and keeping God’s reality before our mind’s eye because we have dismissed or denigrated our capacity to intuitively and imaginatively apprehend and...

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Author

John Milton

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Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

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Let Him Rest

Author

Benedicta Ward

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The following story comes from the collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt, teaching that would have first been transmitted orally (around 350-450 A.D.) and later written down...

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Mistakes More Valuable than Discoveries

Author

Benjamin Franklin

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Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not se...

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The Cheerful Barista

Author

Ken Costa

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In Know Your Why , Ken Costa related an encounter with a barista in an airport in Austin, Texas. When he went to pick up a coffee before an early flight, he noticed that she was “cheerfulness itself”...

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Author

Paul Tillich

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The question our century puts before us is: is it possible to regain the lost dimension, the encounter with the Holy, the dimension which cuts through the world of subjectivity and objectivity and goe...

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Author

Albert Schweitzer

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In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spiri...

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Author

Václav Havel

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Whenever I have encountered any kind of deep problem with civilization anywhere in the world—be it the logging of rain forests, ethnic or religious intolerance or the brutal destruction of a cultural ...

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The World is Full of Presence

Author

David G. Benner

Keywords

Presence

The world is full of presence. Every moment of life is crammed full of potential encounters with people and things that are present to us even though we may not be present to them: the presence of a c...

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Confrontation Defined

Author

Henry Cloud & John Townsend

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Scripture

Genesis 32:22-32, Exodus 5:1-21, 2 Samuel 12:1-14, Matthew 18:15-17, John 21:15-19, Psalm 141:5

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

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Road Trips: 2, Acts 9:1-19

Author

Allen Thompson

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Scripture

Acts 9:1-19, Luke 10:30-37, John 14:6

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination. Today we move forward to Saul on...

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Shame Enters our Lives at an Early Age

Author

Curt Thompson

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Scripture

Psalm 34:5, Hebrews 12:2, Luke 15:20–24, Isaiah 54:4, Genesis 37:23–28, Isaiah 54:4

Shame makes its way into our stories at an early age. So early, in fact, that we usually have no conscious memory of our initial encounters with it. This can take place as early as fifteen to eighteen...

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Stoop, Young Man, Stoop!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Scripture

Proverbs 16:18–19, 2 Chronicles 26:16–21 , Daniel 4:28–37, Luke 14:7–11, Philippians 2:3–8, Psalm 25:8–9

At eighteen, a self-assured Benjamin Franklin returned to Boston, the city he had fled just seven months earlier. Dressed in a fine new suit, with a watch on his wrist and a pocket full of coins, he p...

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