Odds are, what we perceive as "intimacy" with God...isn't. We have a way of watering down our relationship with Him, reducing our interaction with the divine into something passive or self-serving. [Click title to read more.]
Category: spirituality
Honoring The Past Without Idolizing It
If we value the past more than the present - if we perceive the best part of our lives as having come and gone - we run the risk of always trying to return to it rather than growing and living and being. [Click title to read more.]
You Are A Story You’ve Never Dreamed Of
God also knows all of our possibilities and strengths and what we have the capacity to do. More than we do, God has the vision of who exactly we are meant to be, what we might be like when we're everything He created us for. [Click title to read more.]
Merry Christmases
Despite what television tells us, Christmas needn't look any one particular way. The only thing that Christmases need share is a recognition of the glory in Luke 2:14, the miracle about which angels sang. [Click title to read more.]
Weekly Round-Up
Let's catch up, pray, and rest together. [Click title to read more.]
Christmas Is A Beginning
Christians--instinctively, I think--tend to divide up our understanding of Jesus-as-baby versus Jesus-as-savior. The cosmic moment, the violent sacrifice, the grand and undying love: we save our contemplation of those things for Easter. But they started in the manger. [Click title to read more.]
The Burden of the Teacher
I'm writing this because every now and then I'm struck by how easy it is for believers to become teachers. At some churches all you have to do is volunteer. And because of that, I think we can often come to view teaching casually, as though it's just another duty to fulfill or just another activity to take on. But it isn't. [Click title to read more.]
Redefining Our Understanding of Strength
Peacefulness, the refusal to depend on the self or on physical strength, the healing of those who would harm us, the deliberate avoidance of indulging one's "right" to retribution: if we interpret those things as weakness, we miss the point of the Gospel. [Click title to read more.]
Giving Up Our Right To Retribution
I'm struck by how anti-entitlement God's Word seems to be. Been wronged? Been hurt? Been harmed? Have a justifiable case to make against a person/group/corporation who's causing you trouble? If so, the Bible tells you to give up your right to vengeance. [Click title to read more.]
Fruit Inspectors
For all of us, I'm sure, there is a collective set of identity markers and clues that scream to us "fellow believer." But the Bible tells us that's not how you identify Christians. [Click title to read more.]
