the christian calendar on Decision-Fatigue

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...

Burnout is the disease of our age. Time magazine had an editorial way back in the 1980s about “the burnout of just about everybody.” I concluded that the metaphor of burnout was not quite right, parti...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the sobering truth of what happens to many leaders when they climb the “ladder of success”: The ground at the foot of the ladde...

In his book, Scary Close , Donald Miller acknowledges that over time he developed a mask, or a persona that kept even those closest to him from experiencing with him. As he began to peel back layers ...

Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (HarperOne, 1999).

We suffer these things and they fade from memory. But daily, hourly, to give up our own possessions and especially to subordinate our own impulses and wishes to others—these are hard, hard things; and...

Since failure is our unforgivable sin, we are willing to ignore all forms of deviance in people if they just achieve the success symbols which we worship.

Kristen Welch, in her book Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World , described the growing discontent their family experienced after pursuing more and more stuff. She describes it this way with ...

Judgment is at hand, promise of judgment and threat of judgment.... It is the same sort of ambivalence which Christians have been taught to recognize in the season of Advent.

You may think of quotes as a great thing to add a little gravity, insight, or humor to your sermons. And they are! But have you considered Lent quotes as a jumping-off point for sermon ideas? We pick...

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Just before Christmas, my whole family piled into our kid-moving vehicle and rushed to the nearest mall to grab some last minute Christmas presents before dashing to a holiday party. As usual, we were...

Every year at the end of November, my husband, Ike, and I load the kids in the car and drive to the nearest Christmas tree lot. We are committed “real tree” people—not to be confused with “fake tree” ...

Most of us are under pressure, external and internal, to do everything, be good at everything, be accountable to everyone for everything! It is not so. In the divine economy each of us has a particula...

It is a sprinting, squirting, shoving age.

In the midst of all you are facing Your burdens Your responsibilities Your hustle Hear the invitation “Come to the Table” In the midst of all you are facing Your longing Your ambition Your distractio...

To Lent or Not to Lent As someone who grew up Catholic but who "crossed the Tiber north" in middle school (to Presbyterian land), I've experienced some very different perspectives on wh...

There are two things to be aware of if the fight against evil inclinations is to have any chance of success. First, our efforts will never be sufficient on their own. Only the grace of Christ can win ...

Ann was a working mother in her 30’s, and one of the millions of women who saw the marshmallow castle on the December cover of a popular women’s magazine. Ann confessed, later, that she felt like a “b...

Not long ago, just as the season of Lent had got underway, a friend complained to me, “I know it’s Lent, but where’s the joy?” It is easy to understand why Lent is often misunderstood as a period of s...

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the ar...

Finding Grace in Lent The practice of Lent has become a place of grace for me over the last number of years. While some feel that Lent is a failure to recognize that our salvation is rooted in gr...

Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows ou...

If you ever find yourself sympathizing with Charles Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the commercialization of Christmas, you’re not alone—this has been a common complaint for quite some t...

Christians have no business thinking that the good life consists mainly in not doing bad things. We have no business thinking that to do evil in this world you have to be a Bengal tiger, when, in fact...

Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach an...

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion ...

Just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil an...

In today’s culture, it’s a race to the top of the ladder. According to Pew Research, millennials are the most educated generation. No one does comparison quite like millennials. We have apps for every...