Origins matter to humans. The Antiques Roadshow has held the interest of its viewers for over thirty-five years with a simple formula of determining the origins of items people have not properly...
Pop psychology is wrong when it tells you to look inside yourself and find your value. The magazines are wrong when they suggest you are only as good as you are thin, muscular, pimple-free, or perfume...
Our selves are fashioned; we are adorned with histories that incline us to saunter, swagger, or shuffle. Given our histories, some of us move through the world with a cape; some of us don baggy sweate...
If you sense fear in yourself, the best way to face those fears is with a healthier sense of self. You turn up the volume of what is true about you, and you listen to what God says about you. As you d...
A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...
My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me.
When Ministry Burnout Leaves You Empty I imagine that some of you feel like you have nothing left to give. Perhaps you’re in a period in which motivation has morphed into varying degrees of desponde...
Leader: Friends, Paul reminds us that we are "called to be saints.” But we know that our lives often do not reflect this high calling. We forget who we are. We forget whose we are. But the invit...
Ephesians 2:20, Isaiah 28:16, 1 Peter 2:6-8, 1 Corinthians 3:11, Hebrews 12:27-28, Psalm 118:22, Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10-11, Luke 20:17
The cornerstone was a critical element of ancient architecture, the anchor that the rest of the building relied on. The cornerstone was the stone that set the alignment of the entire building. Every o...
Speaking on the essential element of gratitude as part of our faith, the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once said, “We need only to know who and what we really are to break into spontaneous p...
Leader: Hear the good news: Paul writes that Jesus Christ "will sustain us to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." Our identity is not based on our best days or our wors...
Isaiah 26:3, 2 Corinthians 5:17, John 15:5, Colossians 3:3-4, Luke 9:23, Philippians 2:3-5, Romans 12:1-2
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 ...
IDENTITY AND SUFFERING The key to understanding today’s readings lies in the first half of 1 Peter. Two themes dominate Peter’s encouragement to these early Christians: identity and suffering. Knowi...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Broader Context of Philippians Paul is concerned that Judaizers (those that require Christians to follow the Torah) are going to corrup...
Today I understand vocation quite differently—not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accept...
The twentieth-century writer A. W. Tozer made a stunning claim: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Really? The most important thing? M...
I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God’s counsels, in God’s world, which no one else has; . . . God knows me and calls me by my name.
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...
Romans 12:1, Matthew 5:44, Proverbs 15:1, 1 Peter 3:9, Luke 6:31, Galatians 6:9, Colossians 3:12-13, 1 Corinthians 13:4-5, Genesis 50:20, Philippians 2:3-4, James 1:19-20, 1 Samuel 24:17
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...
David Seamands (1922-2006) was an author, scholar, evangelical renewal leader and counselor. In an article for Christianity Today , he shares his earnest experience of many of his patients who we...
A Note of Understanding The Lectionary and the Liturgical Calendar Preaching from the lectionary isn’t always easy. When the assigned texts align with major moments in the liturgical calendar—Christ...
Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i...
We cannot be true Christians without being original. Nothing gives us personality like prayer. Nothing makes man so original. To be creative, we must live with the Creator. Prayer places man in direct...
Every person in Scripture lived out a personal story incarnated by an even greater story about God, life, and the world. That story came from the politics, theology, and culture ingrained in their mem...
As Christians, we wake each morning as those who are baptized. We are united with Christ and the approval of the Father is spoken over us. We are marked from our first waking moment by an identity tha...
Matthew 6:33, Colossians 3:23, Psalm 39:6, Luke 12:15, Acts 15:29, Matthew 5:14-16, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:62, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, James 1:12, Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 2:20
The true story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, two British sprinters who qualified for the 1924 Olympic Games, illustrates two contrasting approaches to life and identity. Abrahams was driven by ...
Mark 6:14-29, Mark 6:6b-13, Mark 6:30, John 1:14, Mark 6:30, Mark 8:29, Mark 6:4, Mark 8:27-28, 1 Kings 19:1-10, 1 Kings 21:17-26, Mark 9:13, Romans 7:18-25, Mark 14:1-12
Between the Sending and Return of the Twelve The fate of John the Baptist appears in a Markan ‘sandwich,’ where the story is told almost as a detour between the sending (ἀποστέλλω) of the Twelve (6...