Personal Development on Thought World

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Help with My Chaotic Thoughts

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Scripture

2 Corinthians 10:5, Matthew 6:22-23, Luke 11:34-35, Psalm 19:14, Matthew 15:18-19, Mark 7:20-23

In the first chapter of her book, Get Out of Your Head , author Jennie Allen shares a vulnerable and honest moment from her own life about just how hard it can be to focus in a world of distraction...

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Author

Daniel Kahneman

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Scripture

Exodus 14:13-14 , 1 Kings 3:9-12, Isaiah 40:28-31, Luke 21:15, James 1:5, Psalm 119:105

A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped.

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Stories Teach Us about How the World Works

Author

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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Author

Knox McCoy

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Too often we give real estate to things in our lives that either haven’t earned their land or were never meant to occupy important space in the first place.

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Author

George Bernard Shaw

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Scripture

Proverbs 23:7, Acts 3:19, Isaiah 55:7, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Colossians 3:2, Ephesians 4:23-24, Philippians 2:5

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

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Searching for a Screwdriver

Author

A. J. Swoboda

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Scripture

Genesis 3:7, Romans 10:11, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Psalm 34:5, Zephaniah 3:19

The following story by professor and author A. J. Swoboda is a vivid example of how shame works in our lives, often causing us to hide and run away from the pain and embarrassment: One of the greate...

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The North and South of Temperament

Author

Anne Bogel

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Even though Carl Jung first introduced the terms introvert and extravert back in 1921 (in his now-classic volume Psychological Types), the concepts—especially introversion—crashed into the public’s co...

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Discipleship Begins with Active Listening

Author

Adam S. McHugh

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Scripture

1 Samuel 3:9-10, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 , Matthew 4:19-20, John 10:27, Luke 11:28, Psalm 85:8

The interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in our lives all the time. Sound has the ability to “command” us, to summon a response in us, forcing us to take notice. Unlike visual ...

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Author

Meister Eckhart

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As thou art in church or cell, that same frame of mind carry out into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness.

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The Habits that Bind: Sermon Illustration Tuesday

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it this way. Each of us has what he called a habitus: a set of dispositions to respond more or less spontaneously to the world in particular ways, without mu...

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Bourdieu’s Habitus

Author

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Keywords

Habits

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it this way. Each of us has what he called a habitus: a set of dispositions to respond more or less spontaneously to the world in particular ways, without mu...

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Author

Haruki Murakami

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If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

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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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Fighting Sleep

Author

John Koessler

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Scripture

Psalm 4:8, Psalm 127:2, Proverbs 3:24, Job 11:18-19, Deuteronomy 33:12, Proverbs 3:5

When my eldest son, Drew, was a toddler, bedtime was a battleground in our house. I think he felt cheated by the prospect of sleep. He hated the thought of going to bed while the rest of the world con...

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Spiritual Blindness in The Magician’s Nephew

Author

C. S. Lewis

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 2:14, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Matthew 13:13-15, Acts 28:27, Hebrews 3:7-8, Jeremiah 7:24, John 10:27, Mark 6:52

Jesus is clear that it is dangerous to close one’s ears, eyes, and heart to the leadings of the Holy Spirit. In The Magician’s Nephew , a novel from C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, Narnia i...

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Cultivating the Garden of Your Mind

Author

Robert A. Emmons

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In Thanks! I wrote that legendary investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton had posed the question, “How can we get six billion people around the world to practice gratitude?” Not long after Sir ...

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Growing Up in a World that Doesn’t Require Courage

Author

Sebastian Junger

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Scripture

Joshua 1:6-9

I’d grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges or protected by huge yards and neighbors hardly knew each other. And they didn’t need to: nothing ever happened in my t...

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First and Third World Fears & Authentic Worship

Author

Mark Labberton

Keywords

Fear

Scripture

Psalm 27:null, 1 John 4:19

One Sunday I was preaching on Psalm 27. It is a remarkable psalm of hope for God’s- deliverance from fear for those who have faced tough times. With the same candor found in many psalms, this one vivi...

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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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The One Ring and the Failure of Willpower

Author

Ryan Bundrick

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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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Getting to the Bottom of the Problem

Author

Max Lucado

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Scripture

Genesis 3:1-15 , Numbers 21:6-9, Isaiah 53:4-6, John 3:16-17 , Romans 5:12-19, Psalm 51:10-12

I love golf. If only it loved me in return. Alas, it is a one-sided romance. My golf swing is the stuff that keeps an instructor awake at night. One kindly compared it to an octopus falling from a tre...

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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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Shame, Hypocrisy, and Empathy in The Scarlet Letter: A Pastor’s Take

Author

Scott B. Bullock

Keywords

The Puritans in American Literature “Welcome to Honors American Literature!” You probably haven’t heard that line since high school, right? After his first couple of weeks of school, my boy came home...

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The Road to Hope

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 5:3-5

On May 20, 1990, 42-year-old Georgene Johnson arrived 15 min early for her 10K race (6.2 mi) as part of the Revco-Cleveland Marathon and found runners already heading down the course. So, she jumped i...

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

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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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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Psalm 30 | Gratitude for Rescue and Healing

Author

C. Hassell Bullock

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Scripture

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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Preventing Pastoral Burnout: How to Cope with Overwhelm

Author

Alan Briggs

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A Leadership Coach’s Perspective I make it a habit to study what’s happening in churches across the country. I get the honor of coaching some incredible pastors, so I need to stay fresh. Any time I’m...

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Lord, you came among us, not in a way

Author

William H. Willimon

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Lord, you came among us, not in a way we expected, but as a baby. We had great difficulty seeing you in so small a form, so vulnerable an incarnation. Lord, you came to us where we least expected. Yo...

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Road Trips: 2, Acts 9:1-19

Author

Allen Thompson

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Scripture

Acts 9:1-19, Luke 10:30-37, John 14:6

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination. Today we move forward to Saul on...

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John Mark: The Comeback Kid

Author

Bryan M. Litfin

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 12:12, Acts 12:25, Acts 13:13, Acts 14:19, Acts 28:16, Colossians 4:10, Philemon 24:null, 2 Timothy 4:11

We all love a good comeback story. In such tales, the young upstart rises like a meteor, fails big, then fights back against the odds to win the victory. Tech whiz Steve Jobs was like that. After prod...

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