authenticity on Epiphanies

Frank Laubach recounts the profound shift in his life that came when he wholeheartedly committed to following God’s will: Before that moment, I was barely alive—like a tree rotting from within. Bu...

The Power (and Peril) of Words One time, I lied to the elders. (That’s another story except to say that they were blinded by trust.) It wasn’t a big lie—I said I’d done something I hadn’t—but I reali...

It’s a wild and wonderful thing to bump into someone and realize it’s you.

God meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be.

It is a spiritual disaster for a man to rest content with his exterior identity, with his passport picture of himself. Is his life merely in his fingerprints?

In his introduction to Scott Sauls’ Book, Irresistable Faith, Bob Goff tells a story about a summer adventure hitchhiking across New England, which would ultimately lead to staying with a hermit in Ma...

Pastor: Who are you? Ministers: We are God’s people, called by God’s love in Jesus the Christ, not because we are adequate or worthy, but because of God’s ac­ceptance of us. Pastor: Why have you c...

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You ...

We artful dodgers act as if we do not understand the New Testament, because we realize full well that [if we let on that we did] we should have to change our way of life drastically. That is why we in...

Every movement toward the humiliation of the false self, if we accept it, is a step toward interior freedom and inner resurrection.

The more authentic our desires, the more they touch upon our identities and also upon the reality of God at the heart of our being. Our most authentic desires spring ultimately from the deep inner wel...

But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin...

The open doors left me wanting more . . . It’s another way to win a useless fight You’ve been lying so long don’t know you’re faking.

Far too easily we settle for holiness rather than wholeness, conformity rather than authenticity, becoming spiritual rather than deeply human, fulfillment rather than transformation, and a journey tow...

Erik Thoennes, professor at Biola University and elder at Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, California, sees the authenticity trend in the undergrads he teaches. At the beginning of each cla...

We disappear because we are uncomfortable with being in process.

The Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot.

It is my belief that we’re currently in the middle of a cultural overdose on authenticity—but without that necessary companion of vulnerability. I love that we’re all being so authentic and genuine. B...

There was a basic logical paradox that I called the 'fraudulence paradox' that I had discovered more or less on my own while taking a mathematical logic course in school...The fraudulence para...

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a true friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This absence of the need to put on a façade is an essential and foundational aspect of all genuine friendships. He ...

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

Some of the Words are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon by is a book by a preacher who loves the craft of writing . And what is the writing of poetry, fiction, essay, but offering ins...

Prayer of Adoration We praise you, Lord for you are all-wise and all-powerful, faithful, loving and gracious, holy, just, merciful, constant and pure, omnipresent, intimate and immortal. You are big...

Twenty-five years ago, when I was just getting started, vulnerability was not a high value. Things have changed. But with a higher value on transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability in the church,...

A Leadership Coach’s Perspective I make it a habit to study what’s happening in churches across the country. I get the honor of coaching some incredible pastors, so I need to stay fresh. Any time I’m...

The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: “What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say."

Do we honestly believe that the best witness we can have as Christians before a watching world is to show moral perfection? While that might convince some, our odds of pulling it off seem less than sl...

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though ...

As the modern day person struggles with the baffling question of his own existence… science falls short of providing full answers… it can tell how, but not why.” Coleman adds, “Despite their fine auto...

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...