Personal Development on Inside Out

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Holy God, You call us to a passionate,

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Scripture

Philippians 2:15, Deuteronomy 6:5, 1 John 4:9-10, Psalm 51:10, Romans 12:1-2, Revelation 3:15-16

Holy God, You call us to a passionate, all-consuming faith. Yet, so frequently, we give You half-hearted obedience or distracted, leftover moments of our time. You tell us that we are the salt of the ...

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Healing From the Inside Out

Author

Dave Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:13, Psalm 147:3, James 1:2-4, Romans 8:28, Jeremiah 17:14, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Isaiah 41:10

The bad news was that a friend’s leg was severed in a gruesome automobile accident. The good news was that it was surgically reattached. A few months later she asked if I wanted to see her scar. I swa...

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Author

Parker J. Palmer

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There is no way out of one’s inner life, so one had better get into it. On the inward and downward spiritual journey, the only way out is through.

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Stuck in the Houses Our Words Construct

Author

Gregory Spencer

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Scripture

James 3:5-6, Psalm 19:14, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Proverbs 18:21, Romans 12:2

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

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Author

Lauren Migliore

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Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b...

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Author

Harper Lee

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You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

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The CEO & The Service Station Attendant

Author

John Ortberg

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Not too long ago, there was a CEO of a Fortune 500 company who pulled into a service station to get gas. He went inside to pay, and when he came out, he noticed his wife engaged in a deep discussion w...

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Author

Etty Hillesum

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Scripture

1 Kings 19:11-13 , Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 , Isaiah 30:15 , Luke 10:38-42, Matthew 6:6, Psalm 46:10

But it’s not so simple, that sort of “quiet hour”. It has to be learned. A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside wi...

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Transcendent God, you are the creator

Author

Austin D. Hill

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:8-9, 2 Peter 3:8, Galatians 4:4-5, Philippians 2:6-8, Colossians 1:16-17, Psalm 90:2

Transcendent God, you are the creator of time, You exist inside, outside, and around time and space. In your immeasurable power, you created and ordered the universe. Amazingly, you limited yourself b...

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Author

Rob Gordon (John Cusack)

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Scripture

Jeremiah 17:9, Psalm 51:5, Romans 3:10-12, Psalm 14:1-3, Psalm 53:1-3

"I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have sh** for brains."

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Stronger on the Inside

Author

Alisha Illian

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I was listening to a show on the National Geographic channel. Two deep-sea diving experts were discussing the physics of a submarine. I found it fascinating that every square inch of a submarine’s hul...

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A Watchman at the Gate

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 24:36-44

Editor’s Note: The following was an imagination exercise used while preaching on Matthew 24:36-44, I began by inviting the congregation to close their eyes. Imagine you are a watchmen (or woman) stan...

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The Meeting Place of Deep Intentionality and Self-Forgetting

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In his prose and poetry, David Whyte shares what David Brooks refers to as “emotional joy” in his book, While not necessarily unique to the Christian, this type of joy has the ability to draw us towar...

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Spiritual Food Belongs in the Heart

Author

Dane C. Ortlund

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Scripture

Matthew 23:25-26, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Colossians 2:6-7, Jeremiah 31:33

Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our...

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Author

Robert N. Bellah

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[In expressive individualism] each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.

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Author

Patrick Rothfuss

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It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

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Transformed by an Elevator

Author

Owen Bourgaize

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:10, Galatians 2:20, Isaiah 61:3, John 3:3, Philippians 1:6, Ezekiel 36:26

A family from a remote area was making their first visit to a big city. They checked in to a grand hotel and stood in amazement at the impressive sight. Leaving the reception desk they came to the ele...

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Author

David Kidd

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Deep within there is a glorious and terrible empty space – loneliness. It is out of sight, pushing us to our best and to our worst. Behind every effort to make a friend – Behind ambition – Behind prid...

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Missing the Stars

Author

Keywords

Blindness

Scripture

2 Corinthians 4:18, Colossians 3:1-2, Ephesians 1:18, Psalm 119:18, Matthew 13:16-17, Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1

Søren Kierkegaard told a parable about a rich man riding in a lighted carriage driven by a peasant who sat behind the horse in the cold and dark outside. Precisely because he sat near the artificial l...

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Our Emotional Lives are Complicated

Author

Marc Brackett

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So, how are you feeling? It’s not a trick question. But it’s more complicated than it sounds. We’re always feeling something, usually more than one thing at a time. Our emotions are a continuous ...

Author

Mark Meynell

Keywords

Scripture

1 John 4:20, Matthew 6:6-8, Matthew 15:7-9, Titus 1:16, Proverbs 26:24-26, Romans 12:9

The ancient Greek word for actor was hypocritēs (ὑποκρῐτής), which, at first, only implied someone who explained or interpreted something. But by New Testament times, it was more negative. It suggest...

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Overextending Ourselves & The Tyranny of the Urgent

Author

Stephen W. Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 55:22, Isaiah 26:3, Jeremiah 17:5-8, Philippians 4:6-7

In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...

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