personal development on Exclusion

He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

Gracious God, today we think of those we have ignored when they were suffering, excluded when they different, written off when they were difficult, harassed when they were our enemies. We take this mo...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

God of love—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You loved us before we ever knew You. Give us such a deep love for You, that we can see the world as You see it, feel the compassion You feel, and be a people ...

What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.

When we are regularly shamed away from thoughts that venture near spirituality and transcendence, we learn to avoid it altogether, even in our thoughts. We develop a resistance to thoughts that would ...

Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event. Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things. It is a way we think about outcomes.

Unable to value, unable to enjoy.

What Jesus prohibits…is sinful, improper judging. It is the hypocrisy of condemning others but failing to see one’s own glaring sins. Jesus forbids self-righteous criticism, a hypercritical spirit, an...

If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you're serving in the wrong place.

If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sin...

How many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom of God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be inside!

The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standards.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

A friend cannot be known in prosperity. An enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.

Grace frees us from having to earn God’s acceptance by meeting others’ expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others’ acceptance by God on the basis of o...

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Grace does not cancel out our responsibility or accountability for the things God has given us to do.

We prefer the not wanting and not having to the losing.

If you never left your home and avoided all interaction with other people, you couldn’t be characterized as a loving person. Instead, you might even be unloving because of your lack of concern for oth...

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.

A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act li...

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in...

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

Let’s state the obvious, because the obvious is easy to take for granted and forget. You are not other people. You are you. You have no control over other people. You have no absolute control over wha...