Sometimes in our adolescence what we need most is just someone to stick by our side, even if we make some rather hasty decisions. In this short excerpt, Bob Goff tells a story from his own teenage yea...
In a surprisingly honest confession, the millennial writer Veronica Rae Saron shared this interesting fact in her 2016 article for Medium: Conversation after conversation, it has become more and mor...
Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...
Stop being so sure that you are always right, and others wrong. Don't trust your own opinion, when you find it contrary to that of older men, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives ...
John 1:46, 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, Matthew 20:16, Luke 1:51-53, James 2:1-9, Matthew 11:25, Isaiah 52:2-3, Philippians 2:5-8
The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...
Genesis 21:8-21, 1 Samuel 1:9-20 , Proverbs 22:6, Psalm 37:4, Matthew 18:1-5, Luke 11:9-13
Desire is something no child has to be taught. Early in the developmental process, most of a child’s desires center around physical needs being met or objects that attract interest. If a child is secu...
A woman and her six-year-old daughter were found dead in their neat, orange brick suburban home. The husband and father had murdered them and attempted to take his own life. He was found unconscious a...
Heavenly father, we confess to you that we do not always think or act as the children which you made us to be. You tell us to honour our fathers and mothers, not to murder, commit adultery, steal or c...
Lukewarm people feel secure because they attend church, made a profession of faith at age twelve, were baptized, come from a Christian family, vote Republican, or live in America. Just as the prophets...
Proverbs 16:18, Proverbs 11:2, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5-6, Philippians 2:3-4, Luke 18:9-14, Matthew 23:1-12
In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...
Matthew 7:7-8, Proverbs 27:17, Luke 15:4-7, Luke 19:10
The second lesson this group of new believers has shown us is that the postmodern path to faith is organic. Lostness, of course, looks different depending upon your perspective and personality. It is ...
These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in cons...
To be nice means to silence ourselves in some way, and in doing so, we compromise our authenticity and give up freedom to act and speak. On the other hand, niceness may facilitate the shedding of resp...
Lord Jesus, you send us out into the world in your name, but we prefer to stay safely behind. We are nervous, and unmotivated, and uncertain. We love to think about how you love us, but we are much mo...
During the interview, Simon mentions that only 10% of Navy Seals make it through the initial training process and he gives some insights as to who gets through. It’s not the big, muscle-bound guys. T...
Proverbs 16:18–19, 2 Chronicles 26:16–21 , Daniel 4:28–37, Luke 14:7–11, Philippians 2:3–8, Psalm 25:8–9
At eighteen, a self-assured Benjamin Franklin returned to Boston, the city he had fled just seven months earlier. Dressed in a fine new suit, with a watch on his wrist and a pocket full of coins, he p...
Matthew 7:7-9, Luke 15:8-10, Matthew 18:10-14, Luke 15:1-7
A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland’s Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party. The group was travelling through Iceland on a tour bus...
Many of us don’t have to board international flights to reach people from other religions and cultures. We just need to open our eyes, look around, and engage the nations in our own cites and towns….8...
Every year when I was in school, we were required to go to “athletics,” better known as gym class. I always hated it because there was a possibility we’d play kickball or dodgeball or pretty much anyt...
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...
In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ...
As I was talking with my friend Robin one day, she told me of a good deed she had done, but then she stopped and said, “Of course, I know I’m just a sinner” I then asked Robin, who has a young-adult d...
We all have blind spots. We all have flaws in our personalities, behavior, or work habits that we can’t see, and they block our performance and growth. But others can see them. If we permit them to gi...
[Describing many of his friends] Something that doesn’t have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It’s more like stomach...
Heavenly Father We confess before you and before one another that we do not always trust your goodness. We are worried about losing control of our lives, and we are scared of what taking up our cros...
Studies show we actually get a dopamine hit when we think we’re proven right. We can literally become addicted to the sensation of our rightness. “Your body does not discriminate against pleasure,” wr...
Genesis 21:14–19, Luke 15:1–7 , John 10:1–16, Psalm 139:7–12, Exodus 3:1–12 , 1 Kings 19:1–13, Psalm 91:14-15, 2 Peter 2:9, John 10:27, Romans 10:17, John 5:37, John 8:47
On May 1, 2023, a small aircraft carrying seven passengers crashed deep in the Amazon rainforest, one of the most remote regions on Earth. The Cessna had been flying between two villages in southern C...