character on Comfort Zone

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel (1629–1719) was a legendary Scottish Highland chieftain, famously reputed to have killed the last wolf in Scotland. Known for his fierce leadership and rugged Highland spir...

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life: the nudges and disciplines that will shape all our other choices. This is especially tr...

What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable.

The Christian who cares only for God’s approval lives free of the tyranny of conformist pressures, relaxed under the steady direction of the God who loves us and gives himself for us. Those who try to...

Compared to our personality traits, character traits are more malleable. Our personalities can only be managed (or tamed, some might say). Our characters can be shaped, although this isn’t easy and ha...

The road to character often involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery. When they were in a crucible moment, they suddenly had a greater ability to see their own nature. The everyda...

Some years ago, the syndicated newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris shared an interesting anecdote from one of his friends. Each evening, this friend would stop at the same newsstand to buy a newspape...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when ...

In the Critically acclaimed 2018 horror film A Quiet Place , Earth faces an alien invasion unlike any other. In the movie, the aliens behave like merciless monsters, using their lightning-fast sp...

If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I?

We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...

Success is a shining city, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We dream of it as children, we strive for it through our adult lives, and we suffer melancholy in old age if we have not reached it....

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

A Tough Way to Start Ministry In this captivating passage Jesus’ new followers discovered early on this was not going to be a ‘pleasure cruise.’  Jesus’ inaugural ‘sermon event’ back home in Nazareth...

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living...

Introduction Our Gospel reading for today, the well-known “Parable of the Talents,” is one of a series of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel of Matthew that focuses on what Davies and Allison rightly lab...

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

One saint used to say that she was the type of woman who advances more rapidly when she is drawn by love than when driven by fear. She was perceptive enough to know that we are all that type of person...

Attitude is an accurate monitor of where we fall on the spectrum of pride and humility.

Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i...

I’m more of an aboveground type of girl, as in, I like the stuff you can see. Flowers, trees, and vegetation symbolize life, growth, and transformation. The problem with focusing on external manifesta...

One of my favorite movies is Hoosiers (1986). It tells the story of a small-town basketball team from Hickory, Indiana, that finds greatness under the leadership of their coach, Norman Dale. The...

Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.... When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making ...

Current research indicates that personality traits are hardwired; they’re largely hereditary and remain relatively constant throughout our lives.1 If we’re outgoing or reserved, energetic or subdued, ...

God's ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to grow up spiritually and become like Christ.