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What do you want to achieve? Greater riches? Cheaper chicken? A happier life, a longer life? Is it power over your neighbors that you are after? Are you only running away from your death? Or are you s... -
illustration
Any social science study will tell you
Any social science study will tell you relationships are key to happiness and well-being. But there’s more. Friendship isn’t just an elective in the course of life, it’s required. In my line of work I... -
illustration
The Necessity of Friendship
We would do well to keep in mind that Solomon’s words on the necessity of friendship were written toward the end of his life, well after he scaled his own Mount Significance. His accomplishments were ... -
Quote
Learning to be satisfied with what we have rather than desiring more, more, more— this is the essence of joy. -
illustration
What Would You Do Differently?
I preached my first sermon at National Community Church on January 14, 1996. The only thing I remember about that message is my opening illustration. I can’t remember the original source, but I think ... -
illustration
The Value of Patience
A 2007 study conducted at Fuller Theological Seminary found patient people were less likely to suffer from depression. Patient people were found to be more grateful and expressed they felt more connec... -
illustration
Climbing the Stairs of Quality in Art
[Speaking about art] As you climb the stairs of quality, you’ll meet individual works that you’ll need for the rest of your life, works that will thrill you, energize you, lift your soul, soothe you, ... -
Quote
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather have these because we have acted rightly; these virtues are formed in man by d... -
lectionary
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Preaching Commentary A Revelation and a Prophecy The Revelation of Jesus Christ can be overwhelming to read and difficult to understand due to its heavy use of imagery and symbolism. However, the o... -
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Living with Pain in a World Governed by Technique
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... -
illustration
Holding on to the Awe
Awesome stuff never satisfies. Nothing in the entire physical, created world can give rest, peace, identity, meaning, purpose, or lasting contentment to your awe-craving heart. Looking to stuff to sat... -
illustration
Life is Vulnerable, Like a bird
Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird. To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, ... -
Quote
Solitude is an opportunity to interrupt this cycle by turning off the noise and stimulation of our lives so that we can hear our loneliness and our longing calling us deeper into the only relationship... -
illustration
The Search for Satisfaction
In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide Revelation 21:1-6a
A Revelation and a Prophecy The Revelation of Jesus Christ can be overwhelming to read and difficult to understand due to its heavy use of imagery and symbolism. However, the opening chapter introduc... -
liturgy
Loving Father, You receive all who come
Loving Father, You receive all who come humbly before You. Yet we approach You far too often with much satisfaction and inappropriate pride. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. W... -
Quote
We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough? -
liturgy
Inspired by Psalm 42:1
As the deer pants for the water, so we need you, O God. However, we don’t always turn toward to you as we need. Instead of seeking you, we turn to cheap and easy solutions. Please show us that you alo... -
Quote
Joy’s trick is to supply Dry lips with what can cool and slake, Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache Nothing can satisfy. -
liturgy
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit
Pastor: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: For great is His steadfast love toward us, People: and the faithfulness of the L... -
Quote
It works like this: we hunger spiritually and are then filled and become supremely satisfied. The satisfaction then makes way for a deeper spiritual hunger, a further filling and blessed satisfaction.... -
illustration
It’s been said home is the place where
It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res... -
illustration
A World That Cannot Satisfy
Gregg Easterbrook wrote about this in a 2003 book called The Progress Paradox. Easterbrook’s subtitle was How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. He describes how affluent we have become—bett... -
Quote
Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. -
Quote
Friends are individuals who are relational assets and not liabilities. Friends are those whom God escorts into our environments because there is something they need to be for us in order to help us be... -
Quote
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his o... -
illustration
Subtraction Stew and Fulfillment: The Phantom Tollbooth
In The Phantom Tollbooth , there is a special kind of food called “subtraction stew.” Produced by a mathemagician, this stew makes you hungrier after you’ve eaten it. Our three main characters don’t ... -
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Pursuing a Version of Something
There is a lovely book of advice for writers called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield, which talks about how much easier it is to pursue a version of something than the real thing. Pressfield say... -
illustration
Read any study on human satisfaction
Read any study on human satisfaction and you will see the paramount role of relationships with others. And yet, so many of us readily exchange friendship and community for success and achievement, onl... -
Quote
There is an invisible pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens it. And the more heightened the desire, the greater our satisfaction will ultimately be. It ...
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