Personal Development on Play

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What Play Means

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Zechariah 8:5

[M]isery gives way to fun when you take an object, event, situation, or scenario that wasn’t designed for you, that isn’t invested in you, that isn’t concerned in the slightest for your experience of ...

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Author

Fred Rogers

Keywords

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

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A Firm Foundation of Joy

Author

Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw

Keywords

Children—and then adults—with a firm foundation of joy also have the capacity to make positive contributions in the world. It starts with play and exploration. When a child has a firm foundation of jo...

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

Author

Dan Baumgartner

Keywords

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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Benchmarks Motivate us to Grow

Author

Chip and Dan Heath

Keywords

Companies in this era of apps and personal tracking devices have grown much smarter about surfacing milestones that were previously invisible. The app Pocket, which stores articles from the Internet o...

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Is it a Note Worth Playing?

Author

Seth Godin

Keywords

Passion

I’ve never really played a single note in my life. For 8 years I played the clarinet growing up. Actually, that’s not true. I took lessons but I’m not sure I actually played the clarinet. I went to h...

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Author

Patient of James Hollis, Psychologist

Keywords

Competition

I always sought to win whatever the game was, and only now do I realize how much I have been played by the game.

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Author

Robert Wright

Keywords

Gratitude

No other animal plays non-zero sum games as tirelessly as we do. Much of your emotional life is natural selection’s way of getting you to play. Gratitude for favors rendered and guilt over neglecting ...

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Author

Maya Angelou

Keywords

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out ...

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There and Back Again, A Human Tale

Author

Alan Jones

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 15:11-32

Let us begin with a question. Do you really know how to enjoy the world? Do you know how to enjoy yourself? One of the greatest parables in the New Testament has to do with the search for enjoyment an...

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The Practice of Indirection

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 119:11, Philippians 4:9, Luke 6:48, 2 Timothy 2:15, Proverbs 6:6-8, Hebrews 12:11

Payton Manning practiced indirection. He was the winning quarterback of Super Bowl XLI. It was a rainy night, and the ball was slippery. Rex Grossman, the quarterback for the losing team, fumbled the ...

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Writing Like Shakespeare, Living Like Jesus

Author

John R. W. Stott

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Romans 8:11, Galatians 5:16-18, Ephesians 3:16-19, 1 John 4:13, John 7:37-39, John 16:13-14

In describing whether it is possible for us to live like Jesus, pastor John Stott shares an illustration from William Temple: It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear, and telling me ...

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Two Options to Deal with Online Critcism

Author

Brant P. Hansen

Keywords

In this short excerpt from Brant Hansen’s excellent book, Unoffendable, the author shares a “hypothetical” example of how he deals with online criticism. Generally speaking, it never goes the way you ...

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Mending is an Act of Courage

Author

Bonnie Smith Whitehouse

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 33:4, Nehemiah 2:17–18, Isaiah 58:12, Luke 15:20–24, 2 Corinthians 5:18–19, Psalm 147:3

Mending is an act that requires courage. To mend can be to repair a relationship, as described in the line above from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing . In this splendid play, Benedick and Be...

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Pragmatism vs. the Pursuit of Truth

Author

R. C. Sproul

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 1:15–21, Daniel 3:16–18 , 1 Kings 3:16–28 , Matthew 4:1–11, Galatians 1:6–10, Psalm 73:

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

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Building for Glory and Good

Author

Tom Nelson

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:26–28, Exodus 35:30–35, Proverbs 8:22–31, Matthew 25:14–30, Colossians 3:23–24, Psalm 104:24

I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...

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

Author

Tod E. Bolsinger

Keywords

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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Climbing the Pastor's Ladder: Holy Ambition and Escaping the Comparison Trap

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

We pastors don't drive fancy cars or rake in the dough (most of us, anyway). But there is still a temptation to a skewed version of "holy success" that we need to watch out for, the idea...

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Pursuing a Version of Something

Keywords

Scripture

John 10:10, Psalm 16:11

There is a lovely book of advice for writers called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield, which talks about how much easier it is to pursue a version of something than the real thing. Pressfield say...

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Cultivating a Spirit of Generosity: A Pastoral Call to Year-End Giving

Author

Aaron Schweizer

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 11:1, Philippians 4:18

As a five-year-old at Christmas I remember how excited I was to get my first bike. It was a yellow BMX Huffy, a mean machine for a kid in the late 70s. It is one of my fondest memories because I remem...

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God of the common and of the uncommon.

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:17, Matthew 5:16, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:18-19, James 5:14-15

God of the common and of the uncommon. You meet us in the ordinary routines of life–when we play and when we rest, while we work and while we worship. And You reveal yourself in the extraordinary, too...

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God–our Father, Lord and indwelling

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-2, Psalm 133:1, 2 Corinthians 9:13-14, Matthew 28:19-20

God–our Father, Lord and indwelling Spirit of grace and power: Thank you for hearing us when we pray whether in songs of rejoicing or through tears of sorrow. Thank you for gifts–for the gifts of musi...

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The Importance of Monkey Bars

Author

Clay Scroggins

Keywords

As much as we laugh at it, trying to keep kids safe, avoiding failing or falling, has its own consequences. My friend, Dr. Tim Ellmore says that the removal of monkey bars on playgrounds is perhaps th...

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Little Musicians that Lasted

Author

David Brooks

Keywords

In 1997 Gary McPherson studied 157 randomly selected children as they picked out and learned a musical instrument. Some went on to become fine musicians and some faltered. McPherson searched for the t...

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Control Issues

Author

M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 16:9, Jeremiah 29:11, John 15:1-27, Proverbs 3:5-6, Galatians 2:20, Matthew 6:25-34

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

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Crazy, But True Stories of Criticism at a Christian Radio Station

Author

Brant P. Hansen

Keywords

In his excellent book, Unoffendable, Brant Hansen shares a few humorous, but sadly true, stories of people being critical of his work at a Christian music station: One day, we talked about the local...

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The Importance of Practice in Developing Virtue

Author

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung

Keywords

Virtues

Very simply, a virtue (or vice) is acquired through practice— repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and repeated activity that increases our proficiency at the activity and ...

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Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But soon I found that my p...

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Strategic Withdrawal

Author

Ruth Haley Barton

Keywords

In her book Invitation to Retreat , Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking intentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own des...

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Author

Alain de Botton

Keywords

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determinin...

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