personal development on Trap

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation...

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...

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

In her excellent little book ( Mythical Me ), Richella Parham describes how her meditation on the Trinity helped her escape the comparison and competition trap: The relationship among the Father, So...

On a beautiful April afternoon in 2008, two college softball teams faced off in a decisive playoff game beneath the Cascade Mountains. The Western Oregon Wolves battled Central Washington University, ...

Reflection The television series Alone follows ten individuals who are left to fend for themselves and by themselves in the wilderness. Now, these aren’t everyday individuals plucked from Main St...

God of grace and truth, hope and power: in the midst of an ever-changing world, we delight that You are constant, joyous and loving, always the same, but never stagnant or boring. That’s why we’re so ...

Gracious God, You have called us out of darkness and into the light of Your love. You have redeemed us and made us whole in order to set us free from bondage. The challenge You place before us is to d...

The following advice on success, written by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, is extremely different from what we are used to (at least in the West,) where success is often seen as an absolute good. ...

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 ...

Have you ever seen an episode of the A&E TV show Hoarders? It’s a show about perfectly normal-looking people who live in perfectly normal-looking houses who become overwhelmed by their possessions...

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...

To understand why the Andrea Gail never had a chance, one needs only to search the clues along the shoreline of the Eastern Seaboard. At first, it went by the name of the “Halloween Storm,” given its...

Editor’s Note: This story is often told as a true story, when in fact it is probably fictitious. Nevertheless, there is a significant illustrative point: sometimes the things we fear most may in fact ...

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it.

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...

A stumble may prevent a fall.

A gladiator's first distraction is his last.

Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...

There are two tragedies in lie. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

Once, a bird flew into our tiny house and wouldn’t fly out. It took more than an hour for our whole family working together to catch that silly little sparrow. Shooting the bird with a BB gun? Easy. B...

The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern.

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

Freedom is found when undesirable habits are identified and the cue-routine-reward structure is defined, pulled apart, and reframed. In the context of our discussion, the cue is a desire for comfort, ...

Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth.

If you can’t get out of it, get into it.

Trials come to prove and improve us.

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause.