Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...
The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say...
Countless mistakes in marriage, parenting, ministry, and other relationships are failures to balance grace and truth. Sometimes we neglect both. Often we choose one over the other.
John's Only Question While Peter sucks up all the oxygen in the room with loads of questions, John only gets one direct question to Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In the passage immediately pre...
John's Only Question While Peter sucks up all the oxygen in the room with loads of questions, John only gets one direct question to Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In the passage immediately pre...
There is a lovely disarray that comes with attraction. When you find yourself deeply attracted to someone, you gradually begin to lose your grip on the frames that order your life. Indeed, much of you...
It takes time to build and sustain healthy relationships. Time pressures can erode the quality of relationships and create fragmentation and isolation.
Summary of the Text As a child, I was attracted to the dark recesses of my neighborhood. I was drawn to the dim lit woods that were away from the din of the suburbia in which I was raised. I even rem...
Matthew 7:3-5, Luke 10:38-42, Psalm 139:23-24, Proverbs 12:15, Genesis 4:6-7
Lucy says to Charlie Brown: ‘You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?’ ‘No; and I don’t want to know! Leave me alone!’ ‘The whole trouble with you is you won’t listen to w...
Generous One You entrust us with the goodness Of your faith and field Yet We grasp We scheme Deliver us from wickedness We reject We harm Deliver us from wickedness We murder We seize what ...
Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...
Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...
Context I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God ch...
Romans 12:10, Revelation 3:20, Matthew 25:40, Luke 8:43-48, Song of Solomon 2:14, Psalm 42:7
In I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me , John Ortberg uses an interesting analogy for an aspect of our relationships. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner announced the Starshot Initiati...
The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profoun...
I sit in a bright-lit June meadow at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. It is early afternoon, and I have been here since morning in what can only be described as an uneasy sol...
If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...
Context I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God ch...
An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...
Maleness and femaleness is the fundamental way we carry our relational design. Interestingly, the English word sexuality comes from the Latin word sexus, which means “being divided, cut off, separated...
James 3:5-10, Matthew 12:34-37, Psalm 141:3, Proverbs 15:1, Genesis 3:12-13, Isaiah 6:5
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...
One of the ways we punish ourselves for not being more or better or thinner or stronger is by trying to squeeze ourselves—force ourselves, even—into all kinds of ill-fitting relationships. With other ...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...