personal development on Stumbling Blocks

As a pastor, I have received my fair share of letters and missives criticizing my words or actions. Some have been anonymous, others put their name on it. When the criticism felt unfair or angered me,...

A stumble may prevent a fall.

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are the...

It’s hard to see, but sometimes the greatest barriers to our spiritual growth and flourishing are the things we’re already carrying or that we assume are essential. We may have picked them up on our o...

I came home the other day to a house of blocked doors. Not just shut doors, closed doors, or locked doors. Blocked doors. Blame them on Molly, our nine-year-old, ninety-pound golden retriever, who, on...

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

"A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction."

If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake.

The cornerstone was a critical element of ancient architecture, the anchor that the rest of the building relied on. The cornerstone was the stone that set the alignment of the entire building. Every o...

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...

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.

Courage is putting one foot in front of the other when all you can see is a faint outline of the future.

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...

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there...

Charles Spurgeon related a trip through the Lake District, when a dense fog descended on him and his fellow travelers, “we felt ourselves to be transported into a world of mystery where everything was...

The following illustration, taken from Ronald Rolheiser book, The Holy Longing, can be applied to the idea of bad habits, that they often have a way of returning, no matter how hard we try to kill t...

We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially bein...

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step—on the level it looks petty; but then this step they keep up, on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and ...

At eighteen, a self-assured Benjamin Franklin returned to Boston, the city he had fled just seven months earlier. Dressed in a fine new suit, with a watch on his wrist and a pocket full of coins, he p...

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

I stepped from Plank to Plank So slow and cautiously The Stars about my Head I felt, About my Feet the Sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch — This gave me that precarious Gait Some call...

There are walls that need to come down. You can pray unity but then you have to work unity by demonstrating what unity really looks like.

What are blind spots? They are areas in which people continually fail to see themselves or their situation realistically.

When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...

For many of us, life can easily become disorienting and discouraging. Existential questions often emerge that never have before. As stressful as modern life can be, it is somewhat comforting to know t...

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

A great building will never stand if you neglect the small bricks.

"Trying is the first step toward failure."