Relationships and Community on Practices

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Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers.

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that...

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Henri J. M. Nouwen

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Matthew 18:21-22, John 21:15-17, Matthew 18:21-35, 1 John 1:9, Colossians 3:13, Matthew 6:14-15, Ephesians 4:32

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is th...

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Julie Canlis

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2 Samuel 9:6-13, Exodus 4:22-23 , Romans 8:14-17, Ephesians 1:3-6, Psalm 68:5-6

Adoption … is not the cause merely of a partial salvation, but bestows salvation entire…

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Therese of Lisieux's Prayer

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Richard J. Mouw

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Exodus 34:6–7, Genesis 50:19–21, 2 Samuel 9:1–13, Luke 18:1–8 , Luke 7:36–50, Psalm 103:8–14

I personally get some inspiration for getting at the nature of this work from a story told by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Thérèse was born in 1873, to a devout Cath...

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David Putman & Ed Stetzer

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Isaiah 29:13, Malachi 3:10 , Exodus 20:8-10, Hebrews 10:24-25, Luke 4:16, Psalm 84:10

The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter.

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Our Spirituality and our Sexuality are Linked

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Ruth Haley Barton

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Genesis 2:23-25, Song of Solomon 7:10-12, Hosea 2:19-20, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, Ephesians 5:31-32, Psalm 63:1-5

As we begin to awaken fully to the spiritual, social and sexual dimensions of ourselves in God’s presence, we find that they are inseparably intertwined and not to be compartmentalized. In fact, many ...

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Evagrius Ponticus

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1 Kings 19:11-12, Exodus 3:1-6 , Isaiah 30:15, Matthew 14:23 , Luke 5:16, Psalm 46:10

A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all.

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Struggle is Not Failure: A Lesson from the Desert Fathers

Author

Andrew Arndt

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A Story from the Philokalia A story is told in The Philokalia about a young monk who went to an older monk to confess a struggle. The older monk was appalled, telling the young monk that his strugg...

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Anne Lamott

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You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

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We Are What We Love

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James K. A. Smith

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Galatians 5:22-23, Ruth 1:16, Luke 10:38-42, Luke 10:25-37, Colossians 3:17, 1 John 3:18, Matthew 22:37-40

Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the...

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Joy With Flesh On

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Ashley Hales

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Genesis 1:31, Exodus 16:4–5, Isaiah 40:31, Mark 10:14–15, John 15:5,11, Psalm 16:11

I have a photo of one of my children: on a day of pure sunshine, he is running down the hillside, leading with his chest, his smile and stride wide as his speed picks up. Running is pure delight. Agai...

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Eboni Marshall Turman

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It is in the uncomfortable dialogues that include all the voices, and in the transformative practices that employ all the bodies that the identity of Christ and the identity of Christ’s body converges...

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A Savior Who Was a Spitter

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Steve Arterburn and Jack Felton

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Genesis 2:21–23, Exodus 3:7–10, Isaiah 55:10–11, John 9:1–7 , Acts 10:34–35 , Psalm 19:3–4

Some time ago, I read about the work of a Wycliffe Bible translator in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. When the opening chapters of Genesis were first translated into the native language, the at...

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Developing an Anthropological Foundation for the Spiritual Disciplines

Author

James Bryan Smith

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Genesis 1:26-27 , Deuteronomy 6:4-6, Jeremiah 31:33, Matthew 23:25-26 , Romans 12:2 , Psalm 51:10

Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i...

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Quarreling Yesterday & Today

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Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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In Paul’s day the church quarreled over the Jewish law and over genealogies, over meat sacrificed to idols and sabbath practices, and over favoritism shown to the rich patrons and negligence shown to ...

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Realizing We are Biased

Author

Timothy Keller

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James 2:1-9, Leviticus 19:15, Deuteronomy 1:17, Romans 2:1-11

When I went to seminary to prepare for the ministry, I met an African-American student, Elward Ellis, who befriended both my future wife, Kathy Kristy, and me. He gave us gracious but bare-knuckled me...

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What Exactly Is Racial Reconciliation?

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Brenda Salter McNeil

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What exactly is racial reconciliation? If you asked ten different people, it’s likely you’d get ten different answers! At a gathering I attended of national multiethnic leaders—pastors, professors, di...

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Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

Author

Ashley Hales

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Perhaps there is no object more desired than a house in America. Meghan Daum writes in her hilarious and poignant book Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, “There is no object of desire qui...

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Waiting is More than In-Between Time

Author

Jason Farman

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Isaiah 40:31, Lamentations 3:25-26, James 5:7-8, 2 Peter 3:8-9, Habakkuk 2:3

Waiting isn’t an in-between time. Instead, this often-hated and under-appreciated time has been a silent force that has shaped our social interactions. Waiting isn’t a hurdle keeping us from intimacy ...

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The Problem of Forgetfulness

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Eugene H. Peterson

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One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

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Humanity's Problem of Forgetfulness

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

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Wear it As Long As You Can

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James Bryan Smith

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Romans 14:5, Galatians 5:18, John 16:13, Philippians 2:12-13, Psalm 150:, Isaiah 66:

George Fox (1624-1691) was the founder of the Quakers, a Christian movement, in seventeenth-century century England. Two of the great Quaker contributions are their teaching on pacifism (refusal to u...

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Performance-Oriented Worship

Author

D. A. Carson

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Luke 18:9-14

We have become so performance-oriented that it is hard to see how compromised we are. Consider one small example. In many of our churches, prayers in morning services now function, in large measure, a...

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Author

N. T. Wright

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James 2:17, Hebrews 6:10, Ephesians 2:10, Galatians 6:9, Matthew 5:16

What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...

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Author

Alan Redpath

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Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

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Thomas à Kempis

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Appearances

A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervor of soul, rather than to cultivate those ...

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The Giving Path

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John M. Templeton Jr

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In More Give to Live, Dr. Douglas Lawson provides evidence that the urge toward generosity begins early in life. He describes a continuum that he calls the “Giving Path.” This path begins with parents...

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Relationships Touch Almost Everything

Author

Gary Smalley

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Relationships

Almost everything we do touches a relationship in some way. Just think about your day. Whether you’re at home or at work, driving your car, playing, exercising, shopping, vacationing, worshipping at c...

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Author

G. K. Chesterton

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Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

relationships and community on Practices

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