brokenness on Coldness of Heart

In her memoir, Confessions of a Good Christian Girl, Tammy describes the internal turmoil she experienced trying to be a good, rule-following Christian who had unexpectedly built an entire life arou...

“A heart can be broken, but it keeps beating just the same." ,

In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer describes a surprising dynamic that sometimes occurs in the life of a Christian: believing so strongly in a loving God that one cannot fathom th...

Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be like wool. Rend your heart, and not...

Jesus, we receive your blessings and pray for the Holy Spirit to make them real in our lives. Renew a right spirit within us, a poor spirit, a spirit that knows our deep need of your grace and deliver...

The Broken Heart Bonus Content: Video prep session with Jin Cho on Psalm 51 . Password:  Bn*=61p! Introduction Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent: a time of p...

Truth is harder than a lie, The dark seems safer than the light, And everyone has a heart that loves to hide, I’m a mess and so are you, We’ve built walls nobody can get through, Yeah, it may be hard,...

In a letter to his son, J. R. R. Tolkien famously wrote, “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is...

Stop!!!  Do not read further until you have ordered and read Tim Keller’s brief yet very significant book, The Prodigal God: Rediscovering the Heart of the Christian Faith .  Hopefully you are alre...

Sometimes, it only seems that the hurt wins.

The very thing we are afraid of, our brokenness, is the door to our Father’s heart.

Preaching Commentary Stop!!!  Do not read further until you have ordered and read Tim Keller’s brief yet very significant book, The Prodigal God: Rediscovering the Heart of the Christian Faith . ...

Merciful God, we turn away from the pains and cries of our world. Overwhelmed by its brokenness, we ignore the call to engage and love those who are hurting. Father, forgive us, strengthen us, and hel...

If we all acted the way we really felt, four out of eight people at a dinner table would be sitting there sobbing.

Introduction Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent: a time of penitence, fasting, and prayer, in preparation for the great feast of resurrection. The season of Len...

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration The Broken Heart Bonus Content: Video prep session with Jin Cho on Psalm 51 . Password:  Bn*=61p! AIM Commentary Introduction Ash Wednesday Ash Wednes...

Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts re...

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They...

This [brokenness] is what needs to be accepted. Unfortunately, this is what we tend to reject. Here the seeds of a corrosive self-hatred take root. This painful vulnerability is the characteristic fea...

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...

No matter how much the world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons us.

Preaching Commentary Straight Talk from Jesus Jesus Christ did not mince words.  He seems to have always spoken the unvarnished truth, but, I think, with a smile on his face and compassion in his a...

May God bless you with tears of lament that mourn over the injustice of our world.  May you be blessed with a holy discontent over the way the world is.  May the Spirit of Jesus shake you out of com...

When Napoleon was bombing Vienna in 1805, his shells rained down across the city, striking buildings at random. One cannonball crashed into a schoolroom, shattering walls and windows. Inside, an eight...

The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high pri...

This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore…. Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack here and pitches his ragged tent.

Almighty God, too often we settle for brokenness in our lives. Rather than offering forgiveness, we hold onto offense. Rather than pursuing justice, we turn away . Rather than offering mercy, we c...

Too many Christians are broken in a destructive way—so badly broken that they cannot carry out the great commandment of loving God and neighbor. Their inner turmoil prevents them from carrying out God...

Preaching Commentary The teachings contained in this passage are, for my money, as difficult to preach as any lectionary text. Not only is each teaching difficult in its own right, but each has also...