worldview and perspective on Out of Our Control

Save us, Glorious Christ, from every false understanding and motivation Save us from the temptation to just stay on the mountain Save us from the temptation to never engage Save us from the temptation...

The novel Martin Chuzzlewit , written by Charles Dickens, is one of his least successful works, though Dickens himself commented to a friend that he believed it was his greatest work up to its pu...

The circumstances we ask God to CHANGE are often the circumstances God is using to CHANGE US.

Every year at Christmastime, the world looks back two thousand years to the birth of a baby. But for more than four thousand years, people living on the other side of that birth looked forward to the ...

Christian morality has fallen on hard times these days. No one seems to believe in it, least of all Christians. Even the word “morality” is dropping out of our vocabulary—and I do mean the vocabulary ...

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...

I am convinced that the scourge of our scientific and technological age is depersonalization. There is a heartbeat pulsating at the center of the universe, giving life and meaning to everything, but o...

"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...

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for the success of the human species. It enables us to learn from our mistakes and make plans. When the PFC is healthy, we behave consistently in ways that enable ...

Editors Note: This is perhaps less a review as a jumping off part to articulate some thoughts I developed while reading The Minority Experience. For a full review of the title, a cursory google search...

Advertising as we now know it started not on Madison Avenue but in another city: Berlin. With another group of power brokers: the Nazis. They took the ideas of an Austrian psychotherapist named Freud,...

We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our at...

Eternal God, we recognize that Your ways are mysterious. Teach us to be still and to wait for You. We confess our sinfulness, our need for control, and our discomfort with the unknown. Instead of turn...

Please forgive us, O Lord, for we often forget how powerful you are. You are the potentate of time, yet we think we rule our lives. We are sorry for creating images of you that are smaller than realit...

Great and gracious God, we have run after things and others instead of coming home to You. We have lived as though we were the centers of our universe. We have avoided the harder issues in life so o...

Forgive us, O God, when we limit you – When we remake you in our image, When we claim our causes as your own, When we box you in, And explain you away, And in our attempts at understanding, whittle aw...

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

We think our problem is with God, but remember, God is perfect. Our problem is really with ourselves.

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...

While there are an infinite number of ways for a movie to fall short, a common complaint is if the inciting incident of the drama is solved in a way that comes out of nowhere, even breaking the logic ...

The answer to decision-making is not putting the Lord to the test by ascribing arbitrary significance to events in his providence ... God has not authorized us to make oracles of events.

It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. T...

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered ...

Almighty God, the Psalmist most accurately describes the state of our distance from you, “[We] have all turned aside; together we have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” While...

God of our hearts, we come to You admitting that we are lost. In our lives of chaos, we have lost our peace. In our selfishness, we have lost our ability to care for others. In our self-reliance, we h...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we have too often forgotten that we are Yours. At times, we live our lives as if there was no God and we fall short of being who You created us to be. We have lived fo...

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

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

Merciful God, We come before you with thankful hearts. Thankful for the many gifts you have given us. You have clothed us and given us shelter. You have given us food to fill our stomachs, friendship...

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.