strength on True Self

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...

Leader: O Holy Love, food of our souls, living spring of the water of life, we worship you. All: Our souls thirst for your presence; and we hunger for your grace. O Christ, Bread of Life, sown...

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...

Gracious God, you are omnipotent, reigning over the universe, and ruling over us. You make a way where there seems to be no way. You expand possibilities beyond our dreams. Yet our challenges shrink ...

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...

Every weakness contains within itself a strength.

You can only build an effective Christian life when you have a “settled core”: an inner self “hidden with Christ” (Colossians 3:3). When you go to the gym or a Pilates class, your instructor might enc...

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

I was listening to a show on the National Geographic channel. Two deep-sea diving experts were discussing the physics of a submarine. I found it fascinating that every square inch of a submarine’s hul...

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

Dear Heavenly Father, we lower our heads before you and we confess that we have too often forgotten that we are yours. Sometimes we carry on our lives as if there was no God and we fall short of being...

Prayer of Confession All: Certainly God is good to his people, to those pure in heart, but as for me, I nearly stumbled; I nearly lost my sure footing. I struggle with envy as I look at the those in ...

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the gre...

Quod vitae sectabor iter. Translation: Who do I want to be? And: What path will I take?

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson provides a wonderful analogy of what happens when we cultivate the virtues in our lives: W...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

Dan B. Allender, in his book Leading Character , notes that the Greek word “charaktér" was “used in connection with tools designed for engraving.” Greek philosophers noted that our past actions ...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

The strongest people in my life are the ones who know how to win battles behind closed doors that no one knows about. They know how to rise above the hard and pursue the holy. And they know bad days d...

Lord Jesus, your life shows us how you want us to live. So often we know exactly what it would take for us to become more like you, and yet we sit back, rather than taking a step toward your holiness....

Father, we confess to boasting in success and security. We have denied you rather that desire you. We have cowered when we needed to be courageous. Jesus, we long to be people who follow you, no...

Recently a professor shared with me a college student’s reflections in response to my earlier writings on solitude and silence:  I was not born into a world relatively unaffected by technology lik...

Most of us live with the false narrative that strength is found in domination and control. But these are not the highest forms of power. God’s power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). The powe...

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible—not to have run away.

When we live our lives by the story of unlimitedness, we believe small equals powerless.

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.

Prayer of Adoration Lord, our Lord – How excellent is your name in all the earth. Because of who you are – we praise You. Because of what you’ve done – we thank You. You are a Father to the fathe...

I have a photo of one of my children: on a day of pure sunshine, he is running down the hillside, leading with his chest, his smile and stride wide as his speed picks up. Running is pure delight. Agai...

Lord Jesus – You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your coming every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumbl...

If someone is criticizing you and the criticism is mostly mistaken, identify the 20 percent of the indictment that is fair. Without excuse be willing to take it to heart. The strongest Christians are ...