relationships and community on Completion

In a time where leader after leader's calls end in disgrace, it is helpful to remember that finishing, not starting, is what is most important. The following story illustrates this well: Two ship...

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was one of my favorite shows for a while, mainly because I loved to see the before and after shots. The water damage in the bathroom, the rotting ceiling beams, and the ...

“Good work! You did your job well” (Matt. 25:23 MSG). That phrase reminds me of a story Joe Stowell told me about a time he met the president at the White House. Joe was president of Moody Bible Insti...

The whole Bible is itself a missional phenomenon. The writings that now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of and witness to the ultimate mission of God. The Bible renders to us the story o...

A man or woman’s aim is to find a mate who completes him or her. In this view, marriage is an end in itself, and sexual consummation is a celebration of such completion. Yet the Bible teaches that God...

The final word is love.

While I was at a concert in college, I responded to a flyer requesting volunteers to sponsor a child overseas. For years I read the letters from this little girl in El Salvador. Ruth seemed happy to b...

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

In every repetition of communion by presenting the sacrament God confirms his resolution to stick to his covenant; and by eating it the receiver commits himself to keep close to the condition of faith...

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity.

Think of a contract. Think perhaps of an employment contract or a memorandum of sale or an IOU. What you hold in your hand is a sheet of paper with a series of commitments written on it. This is what ...

Communication usually fails, except by accident

He has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind in others the conviction and will to carry on.

The full theological import of Koinonia will only be revealed in the Pauline letters as that most intimate union of man with God and with his fellow-men accomplished through Christ that constitutes ...

The Great Commission is an expanding and self-replicating task, not a ticking clock for the end times.

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because, while both parties came prepared to forgive, neither party came prepared to be forgiven.

We may say that in the possession of the Spirit we who are in Christ have a foretaste of the blessings of the age to come, and a pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of the body. Yet we have only ...

Connection gives purpose and meaning to our lives.

There is a peculiar gratification in receiving congratulations from one’s squadron for a victory in the air. It is worth more to a pilot than the applause of the whole outside world.

It happens sooner or later in every relationship: someone will let you down. We have a term for the earliest stages of a relationship: the “honeymoon phase”—that rosy time period when everything but d...

We spend the whole of our whole lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished/

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Recently I’ve wondered about the connection between the English words “longing” and “belonging”. Isn’t belonging one of our greatest longings in life? Don’t we all have some deep, inner desire t...

Christmas is fast approaching. And now that Christ has aroused our seasonal expectations, he’ll soon fulfill them all!

There were two important steps to a Jewish marriage: the betrothal (the promised agreement to marry) and the actual wedding ceremony. These two events were often separated by an extended period of tim...

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.