life on Adversity

The dangers and hardships for the faithful are real indeed. Truth is tested and faith is confirmed not in idle speculation but in the crucible of adversity. Those who wish to find a more vibrant relig...

Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.

David Letterman’s old late-night segment “Will It Float?” once inspired our staff to fill a huge water tank, place it at the front of an auditorium, and ask three thousand people to vote which of a se...

Out of the depths, we cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear our voice. Let your ears be attentive to our cries for mercy. Living in frailty and weakness with adversity in our path, we too often buckle in despa...

Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...

Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...

Pastor: Heavenly Father, You have commanded us to love You above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. By Your Holy Spirit, mold and shape us into the image of Your Son, for we desire to look, ...

Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

We probably got a bit too cocky about how well our lives were going. But after disability showed up in our family, we learned that life is not tame. It’s not here to align with our desires and plans. ...

But after disability showed up in our family, we learned that life is not tame. It’s not here to align with our desires and plans. No one is immune to things that tend to happen to “other people.” We ...

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging an...

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'

On days when life is difficult and I feel overwhelmed, as I do fairly often, it helps to remember in my prayers that all God requires of me is to trust Him and be His friend. I find I can do that.

Where there’s humility there is majesty; where there’s weakness, there’s might; where there is death, there’s life. If you want to get these things don’t disdain those.

When I teach on the dynamics of real change and maturation, I often describe a “furnace of transformation” each of us must pass through for the sake of growth and refinement. I’ve never seen real grow...

Hard seasons can cause us to look at God in an unhealthy way. Instead of asking God what He needs us to see in these seasons, we may constantly find ourselves asking Him if He really knows what He is ...

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.

For a long time it seemed to me that real life was about to begin, but there was always some obstacle in the way. Something had to be got through first, some unfinished business; time still to be serv...

Charles Spurgeon related a trip through the Lake District, when a dense fog descended on him and his fellow travelers, “we felt ourselves to be transported into a world of mystery where everything was...

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control o...

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

As Europe plunged ever deeper into a second world war, the British poet W.H. Auden composed a poem (“September 1, 1939”) that peels back our human tendency to cover up all fear and uncertainty with se...

Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won th...

Persecution is one of the natural consequences of living the Christian life. It is to the Christian what “growing pains” are to the growing child. No pain, no development. No suffering, no glory. No s...

*it is possible this story is apocryphal, we were unable to find the original source of the story. Admiral Nelson of the British Navy was renowned for his mastery of naval strategy, a genius fro...

At their core, transitions are the internal adjustments by which we reorient ourselves to new environments, new experiences, and new seasons of life.

We bring before you, O Lord, the troubles and perils of people and nations, the sighing of prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of strangers, the helplessness of the we...