Personal Development on Life Story

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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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Sue Monk Kidd

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Philippians 1:6, James 1:2-4, Jeremiah 29:11, 1 Peter 5:10, Psalm 51:10

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs.

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Brené Brown

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If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging an...

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Boris Cyrulnik

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All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.

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I Once was Lost

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Travis Dickinson

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Jonah 1:4, Genesis 3:8-19, Matthew 18:12-14, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 23:

I once was significantly lost. When I was a college student in northern Wisconsin, my dad and I were hiking on a trail that was somewhat familiar to me. I had been on this trail just a few weeks befor...

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Virtue as Part of Our Story

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue reconnected thinking about ethics back to virtue by connecting virtue to the story a life is a part of. In order to know how we ought to live, we first need to answ...

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Our Stories Shape Our Values

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Dan B. Allender

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Revelation 12:11, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Acts 22:3-8, John 1:46-47, Isaiah 61:1-3, Psalm 78:4

A close friend who started a financial loan business took thirty of his executives to the poverty- and violence-filled section of Montreal where he grew up in order to introduce them to the section of...

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What Would You Erase?

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Kyle Idleman

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John 16:33, Genesis 50:20, 1 Peter 1:6-7, Psalm 119:71, Isaiah 43:2

Recently I read about an experiment done by psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He came up with a fascinating hypothetical exercise, which went something like this: Participants were handed a summary of a p...

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Psalm 30 | Gratitude for Rescue and Healing

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C. Hassell Bullock

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Psalm 30:, 1 Samuel 13:14, Hebrews 12:2

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Autobiographies Have you ever thought about writing your autobiography? It would be a little like reliving your life, at least in miniscule. As a write...

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The Christian Self-Actualization Plan

Author

Ashley Hales

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Galatians 5:13-14, Matthew 16:24-25, Romans 12:4-5, Philippians 2:3-4, Ephesians 2:8-10

In her excellent book on following Jesus in the suburbs, Ashley Hales describes one of the ways in which our discipleship has been influenced by modern secular trends such as the desire for self-actua...

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Light Emerging from a Dense Fog

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Helen Keller

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Since the advent of widespread public education in the West, it seems that many people express dissatisfaction with their schooling more often than they share positive experiences. This makes it all t...

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Lessons from MJ, Lionel, LeBron, and Every Other GOAT

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Tod E. Bolsinger

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The Difference a Coach Makes Back in the days when Phil Jackson’s Chicago Bulls (and Los Angeles Lakers) were dominating the NBA, the joke was that all the coach needed to do was “roll out the basket...

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Do You Know Where You Are Going?

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Charles Swindoll

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In his book Growing strong in the Seasons of Life , the author Charles Swindoll tells a story about the 19th Century agnostic Thomas Huxley. The story goes like this – Huxley was in Dublin and was ru...

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Author

Frederick Buechner

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Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.

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It's My Life!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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In Redeeming Productivity , Reagan Rose tells his own story to illustrate the two ways in which the idea that “it’s my life” leads to two very different and disordered outlooks on productivity. When ...

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Excellence, the Jeremiah Way

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

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Matthew 23:12, 2 Corinthians 4:7, Romans 12:2, Galatians 5:16-17, Colossians 3:12-14, Micah 6:8, Philippians 3:7-8

In Jeremiah it is clear that the excellence comes from a life of faith, from being more interested in God than in self, and has almost nothing to do with comfort or esteem or achievement. Here is a pe...

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A Life Re-Defined by The Spirit of God

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Mark Labberton

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Acts 8:36-38, Acts 8:29-31, Acts 10:44-46, Acts 10:3-6, Acts 10:1-48, Acts 9:17-18, Acts 9:3-6

In his excellent book on worship, The Dangerous Act of Worship , pastor and president of Fuller Seminary Mark Labberton shares a story of the transformation of one of his former congregants: Ben ...

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The Sense of an Ending

Author

James Bryan Smith

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Colossians 3:23-24, 1 Corinthians 3:6-9, Matthew 6:19-21, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Galatians 6:9, 1 John 3:2, Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Life is short, and we can accomplish only so much. Much of what we do will remain unfinished. For now. In one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Leaf by Niggle,” author J. R. R. Tolkien provid...

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Changing Direction

Author

Fred Rogers

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Scripture

Philippians 2:3-4, Galatians 6:2, Matthew 20:26-28, 1 John 3:18, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26

There was a story going around about the Special Olympics. For the hundred-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at ...

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Stories Teach Us about How the World Works

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Steven Sloman

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A good story goes beyond just describing what actually happened. It tells us about how the world works more broadly, in ways that pertain to things that didn’t actually happen or at least haven’t happ...

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The Church Losing its Place as the Center of Attention

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Tim Wu

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The Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention; and through its daily and weekly offices, as well as its sometimes-central role in education, that is exactly what i...

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Stories Expand our Lives

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Martha Nussbaum

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We have never lived enough. Our experience is, without fiction, too confined and too parochial. Literature extends it, making us reflect and feel about what might otherwise be too distant for feeling....

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PTSD and Our Core Story

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Casey K. Tygrett

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Genesis 1:31, 1 John 3:2, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Revelation 21:4, Jeremiah 31:3

The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted...

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Building on a Solid Foundation

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A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

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Building an antifragile faith takes time. It can’t be rushed. Consider this: It takes (on average) around twelve to eighteen months to construct a new single-family home in America. This process incl...

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Sabbath for Pastors: Why Is It So Hard to Rest?

Author

Dan Baumgartner

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If you are a pastor…this one’s for you. Sabbath. So many things have been written. Most of us have taught our people or preached about Sabbath, and underscored how busy people in our churches re...

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When Rest is Radical: Why the Sabbath Matters for Christian Leaders

Author

Jason Jensen

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What Eric Liddell Did Not Do Scottish athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, whose story is told in the movie Chariots of Fire , was a favorite to win the hundred-meter sprint in the 1924 Paris Olym...

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Waiting is Not Wasting Time: Advent 2024

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Luke 2:29-32

God’s dealings with us are always on the order of what he did with Abram and Sarai. He makes his promises, and he will keep his promises; but just how and when he will keep them is something for which...

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What is the Christian Imagination Deficit? How Do We Fix It?

Author

Brian Brown

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There Are No Ordinary Things J. R. R. Tolkien tells a short story about an ordinary fellow who just wants to finish a painting. Over time, he is constantly distracted by the requests of his neighbors...

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Criticizing Everything

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Matthew 5:11-12, 1 Peter 2:12, Galatians 1:10, Acts 17:16-34, Ephesians 4:29, Matthew 7:1-5, James 4:11-12

In life, whenever someone achieves success, criticism usually follows—regardless of their skill or the effort they’ve invested. An old story illustrates this truth. A woman crafted artificial fruit so...

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