Sermon Illustrations on momentum

Martin Luther, whose actions sparked the Protestant Reformation, recommended a very manageable start to the day. He wrote: In the morning when you get up, make the sign of the holy cross and say: I...

When we hear the word retreat many of us think of the military use of the word, which refers to the tactic troops use when they are losing too much ground, when they are tired and ineffective, a...

In the mid-2000s, a Trans-Atlantic movement emerged, characterized by a rejection of organized religion and the ascent of what came to be known as the “New Atheism.” This trend gained notable traction...

Years ago I heard a motivational speaker encourage his audience to “eat that frog.” … it makes sense in its own way: Stop procrastinating and just do the thing you fear. Once you do that, everything e...

In her book Invitation to Retreat , Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking intentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own des...

In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenl...

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

I started flying small Cessna planes when I was in high school, and I vividly remember one flight between McGregor, TX and Austin. We had an incredibly strong tail wind down to Austin, so we got there...

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

In physics, power is defined as the transfer of energy. In a light bulb, for example, electricity is transferred into light and heat. A 100-watt light bulb is more powerful than a 60-watt light bulb b...

It is nothing short of remarkable that the Spirit clearly embraces and in no respect resents the fact that he has, eternally, what might be called “the background position” in the Trinity. It would be...

The word resilience derives from the Latin term resilire , which means “to recoil or rebound,” and made its debut in the English language in 1627. The first entry in the Oxford English Dictionary...

The animal behavior scientist Temple Grandin, who achieved significant success while struggling with autism, has this to say on the subject of progress: People are always looking for the single ma...

Recently I heard a lecture by an English Methodist who is both a scientist and a Christian theologian. He was talking about the scientific debate over the Big Bang, and he used an image that I found q...

The Double Helix, James Watson’s 1968 memoir about discovering the structure of DNA, describes the roller coaster of emotions he and Francis Crick experienced through the progress and setbacks of the ...

My mentor is José Rojas. He was a spiritual adviser for two US presidents. On one of our first phone conversations, he said to me, “What if you’ll actually get to where you want to be quicker by slowi...

I recently heard a story about a race in which one runner had a significant lead over the rest of the field. As the man rounded the final turn, the crowd roared as he inched closer and closer to the f...

Keeping time with the Spirit is less a regimental march—left, right, left, right! ad infinitum—and more like a subtle dance, a responsive feel for what comes next. Lionel Salter offers a parallel in h...

Identity drives motivation, motivation drives action, and action drives results. For example, if someone speeds past me at ninety miles per hour on the highway, odds are I won’t chase them down and is...

Of course, speed has a role in the workplace. A deadline can focus the mind and spur us on to perform remarkable feats. The trouble is that many of us are permanently stuck in deadline mode, leaving l...

Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-ma...

The world is full of presence. Every moment of life is crammed full of potential encounters with people and things that are present to us even though we may not be present to them: the presence of a c...

There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless an...

In the Bible, this [The Mystery of Christ] concept is referred to not only as the mystery of Christ, but also as the mystery of God (or of God’s will), the mystery of the kingdom, and the mystery of t...

In the last class I taught at Regent, an obviously irritated young woman came up to me and said, “Dr. Peterson, three times during your lecture you did not say anything for twenty seconds. I know beca...

It is interesting that in Scripture, in both the original Hebrew and Greek languages, the word used in speaking of the Spirit is the word that can also mean “wind.” In like manner, the Holy Spirit wor...

The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma...

I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini...

‘Space’ means an area of freedom, without coercion or accountability, free of pressures and void of authority. Space may be imagined as week-end, holiday, a vacation, and is characterised by a kind of...

Meekness is a defining grace, produced by the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian, which characterizes that person’s response towards God and man. Meekness towards God is a spirit of submission t...