A classic mission dilemma: The chief of a village in a remote area, whose people practice a tribal religion, becomes a believer and declares the whole village is now Christian. Most of the leading m...
Too many young guys are waiting for writing in the sky before they make a relational commitment. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. My grandpa DeYoung met my grandma on his paper route. Then they...
In love . What does that even mean? “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them. I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See ...
Proverbs 3:5-8, Matthew 22:37, Romans 12:1-2, Luke 14:26-27, Deuteronomy 6:5, Luke 16:13, Mark 12:30, John 14:15, Matthew 16:24-26, Luke 9:59-62, Matthew 6:24, Hebrews 11:13-16, Hebrews 10:38-39, Matthew 6:33-34, Matthew 10:37-39
What are you willing to do for love? An instructor for the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course shared with a class the major hang-up he had to get over before asking his wife to ma...
Mark 8:36, Matthew 16:26, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, Mark 4:18-19, Mark 10:43-44, Matthew 19:23-24, Matthew 6:19-21, 24-34, Luke 12:13-21, Luke 12:32-34, Mark 10:24-25, Hebrews 10:25
The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...
James 1:2-4, Galatians 5:22-23, 1 Peter 3:8, Proverbs 15:1, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:2-3, Colossians 3:12-13
While taking a flight in a small plane in Washington state, marriage counselors Les and Leslie Parrot were given some interesting information from their pilot: We crossed over the islands of Puget S...
My wife is a very social person. She loves being with groups of people, having dinners, celebrating special occasions or just hanging out with her friends. She is an elementary school teacher, which m...
As was the normal routine on a Sunday morning, a wife got ready for church. She got up, had breakfast, showered, got dressed, put on makeup and was ready to go. It was just as she was ready to leave t...
If we want the advantages of love, then we must be willing to take the risks of love. And that requires vulnerability. Of course, we can refuse this path and trod another one devoid of openness. But t...
All addictions begin in shame. They don’t begin with troubling behavior—a binge on porn, a night of overdrinking–but with a sense of lack or limitation. An addict may be loved deeply, but sense of lac...
In her excellent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren describes an encoutner her husband experienced while working on his PhD. While my husband, Jonathan, was getting...
You cannot expect people to seriously consider your idea without accepting the possibility that they will challenge it. Accepting that process of engagement as the terrain of leadership liberates you ...
Contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the ...
The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. What disturbs us in this world is not “trouble,” but ou...
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...
Matthew 10:29-31, Luke 12:24, Matthew 6:26, Matthew 12:11-12, Romans 5:8
A missionary in a Muslim-majority country got a call one day from his wife. Their local house-helper (a common practice in that country) had accidentally dropped and broken their carafe from the coffe...
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...
The last 80 years of American politics have unfortunately seen a dramatic increase in political polarization. One reporter likened the relationship between Republicans and Democrats to the famous Shak...
My friend Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute once used the following example to demonstrate how important frames are if we are to make sense of reality’s puzzle. This may seem like a head scratcher...
Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:4-5, Matthew 6:6-8, Matthew 6:6-8, Galatians 50:20
I’m convinced some company today could make a killing if it had the guts to market dysfunctional greeting cards. Most birthday or holiday cards gush with flowery sentiments such as, “To the greatest f...
Galatians 6:10, John 13:1-17, Luke 10:25-37, Colossians 3:14, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Philippians 2:3-4, 1 John 4:7-8
Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. A...
"Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines outcome. If we see only the problems, we wi...
Contradiction, paradox, the tension of opposites: these have always been at the heart of my experience, and I think I am not alone. I am tugged one way and then the other. My beliefs and my actions of...
1 Corinthians 7:1-9, Matthew 19:3-12 , Psalm 139:13-16 , Genesis 2:18-25, Song of Solomon 4:1-16, Proverbs 5:15-19, Genesis 2:18
James Nelson describes sexuality as the central clue to what God is up to in the world. While this might seem a little over the top, when you think about it, sexuality factors integrally in our relati...