Personal Development on Out Of Our Control

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Waking Up to the Illusion of Control

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Keywords

With the New Year comes resolutions. But are your resolutions an attempt to assert control over your life, rather than submit to God's transformational plans? Alan Fadling offers his wisdom as a p...

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Holy God, we can be so full of fear at

Author

Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

Keywords

Holy God, we can be so full of fear at times – afraid of the unknown; afraid of what is beyond our control; afraid of what is strange to us. And we know that fear stops us in our tracks, hinders our a...

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Heavenly Father We confess before you

Author

Jacob Traeger

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Heavenly Father We confess before you and before one another that we do not always trust your goodness. We are worried about losing control of our lives, and we are scared of what taking up our cros...

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Gracious God, sometimes I think that I

Author

Mark D. Roberts

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Gracious God, sometimes I think that I can figure out all the consequences of my decisions. I can become overly impressed with what I perceive to be my strategic vision and analysis. Forgive me for my...

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God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: You

Author

Richard Herman

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Scripture

Psalm 139:7-10, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28-30, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 40:31, Luke 10:25-37, John 11:32-35

God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: You are always and forever for us: We can’t run away from Your presence; nor out-sin Your amazing grace and forgiveness. We can’t exhaust Your unconditional love nor ...

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Prayer of Confession for Transfiguration Sunday

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Scripture

Proverbs 3:5-6, Micah 6:8, Matthew 6:33, James 1:5, Philippians 2:3-4

Save us, Glorious Christ, from every false understanding and motivation Save us from the temptation to just stay on the mountain Save us from the temptation to never engage Save us from the temptation...

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Almighty and loving God, all of us here

Author

Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 4:32, Colossians 3:13, Romans 5:8, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 34:18

Almighty and loving God, all of us here today are hurting. Some of us are hurting as the result of circumstances beyond our control. Some of us are hurting because of our own choices. Some of us are f...

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Author

Dan Allender

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Crises serve to remind us that we are fundamentally not in control.

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Waiting Forces us To Reckon with the Deep Questions of our Identity

Author

Ashley Hales

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But as we grow older, waiting feels like an inconvenience or affront. We take out our phones when we’re waiting in the grocery store aisle for two minutes. We listen to podcasts on our commute. We lea...

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The Banshees of Inisherin Movie Review

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 4:null

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or. what's a heaven for? " Robert Browning A part of our desire at The Pastor’s Workshop is to help pastors connect the stories in ...

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A Deeper Look at Sleep

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

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Sleep reminds us of our helplessness. Asleep, we have nothing to commend us; we accomplish nothing to put on our resume. Because of this, sleep is a counter-formative practice that reminds us that our...

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Being Formed in Christ’s Image

Author

Robert Mulholland Jr.

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In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey, M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the Biblical understanding of the process of spiritual formation over and against the “self-help” p...

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Author

Lysa TerKeurst

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I can face things that are out of my control and not act out of control.

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An Opportunity to Come out Strong or Never

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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The novel Martin Chuzzlewit , written by Charles Dickens, is one of his least successful works, though Dickens himself commented to a friend that he believed it was his greatest work up to its pu...

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How Much Stress Would You Like?

Author

Richard A Swenson

Keywords

Would you like a no-stress life? A wise person would not accept that option, no matter how tempting it might sound. A stress-free life would be fatal. If we do not have change, challenge, and novelty ...

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Replacing Morality with Psychology

Author

Phillip Cary

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Christian morality has fallen on hard times these days. No one seems to believe in it, least of all Christians. Even the word “morality” is dropping out of our vocabulary—and I do mean the vocabulary ...

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What Created the Fears in Your Life?

Author

Susie Davis

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Scripture

Lamentations 3:22-23, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, John 16:33, Habakkuk 3:17-18, Romans 8:28, Isaiah 43:2, Psalm 34:18

In her beautifully written memoir Unafraid, Susie Davis reflects on fear after experiencing a school-shooting as a high-school student. It was after this that Davis began to experience regular bouts o...

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Getting the Right Attitude

Author

Les and Leslie Parrott

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Scripture

James 1:2-4, Galatians 5:22-23, 1 Peter 3:8, Proverbs 15:1, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:2-3, Colossians 3:12-13

While taking a flight in a small plane in Washington state, marriage counselors Les and Leslie Parrot were given some interesting information from their pilot: We crossed over the islands of Puget S...

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Waiting is Not Wasting Time: Advent 2024

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

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

Author

Scott B. Bullock

Keywords

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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Our Problem with Time

Author

Dorothy C. Bass

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 40:31, Colossians 3:23-24, Matthew 6:33-34, Genesis 2:2-3, Psalm 90:12, Ecclesiastes 3:1

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

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The Patient Father

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

There is a story about a man who stopped in the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a couple of items for his wife. He wandered around aimlessly for a while searching out the needed gro...

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The Importance of the Prefrontal Cortex

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The prefrontal cortex is responsible for the success of the human species. It enables us to learn from our mistakes and make plans. When the PFC is healthy, we behave consistently in ways that enable ...

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Strange Advice from a Counselor

Author

Annie F. Downs

Keywords

My counselor gave me the strangest advice a few months ago. Almost out of the blue, she said, “You should start waiting in the longest lines you can find.” She meant everywhere—at the grocery store, g...

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10 Great Quotes from How to Lead... by Clay Scroggins

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

How to Lead Without Being in Charge: Leveraging Influence When You Lack Authority came out just about a year ago, so for my timing, I'm actually a bit ahead having just finished it. It is really...

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Weighing the Options

Author

Bits and Pieces

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 4:8, Romans 12:17-18, Ephesians 4:2, Matthew 7:3-4, James 1:19

Many years ago a senior executive of the then Standard Oil Company made a wrong decision that cost the company more than $2 million. John D. Rockefeller was then running the firm. On the day the news ...

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The One Ring and the Failure of Willpower

Author

Ryan Bundrick

Keywords

Scripture

John 8:34-36, Hebrews 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 3:5, Romans 7:15-24, Proverbs 20:9, Numbers 21:

Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...

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Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i...

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Lord of all, you are in control. We

Author

Austin D. Hill

Keywords

Lord of all, you are in control. We live under the illusion that we have control, yet all life is sustained by you. We live for our own purposes, we try to become gods over our own lives. We unjustly ...

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Author

William Shakespeare

Keywords

Responsibility

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

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