The Art of Holding Back

Many believers see themselves as truth-tellers, and well we should. The Bible demands that we speak in truth and in honesty and authenticity at all times, concealing nothing and without dissembling; that is, by the way, precisely why it's wrong for me to tell those white lies. But many believers also believe that truth-telling means "saying how you feel about everything at all times, no matter how hurtful or cruel, whether asked or unasked." And that is not what Biblical truth-telling is. [Click title to read more.]

Be Open To Correction From Unexpected Places

In our Christian lives, we tend to develop hierarchies: hierarchies of age, of authority. The problem is that as we ascend those hierarchies, as we grow in power, in age, or in knowledge, we often tend to entrench ourselves in our positions and ideas. We assume we are almost always right - or, at the very least, righter than those "beneath" us. [Click title to read more.]

Don’t Deify The Process. Deify God.

The amount of time and energy we put into something says a lot about where our hearts are, and where they ought to be. [Click title to read more.]

A Meditation On Summer’s End

Slow down. Enjoy everything the coming season has to offer. Fall is short, but winter is long. Take each day as it comes, and give the Lord His crown as the king of your day. [Click title to read more.]

Vague Spiritual Goals Will Ruin You

The grand idea is one of Satan's greatest temptations to failure; you become so enraptured by the vision of what you want to do that you never actually think about how it is you're going to get there. [Click title to read more.]

Stop Caring So Much About Results

Sometimes you give your all and the results are nothing great. Nothing special. Sometimes actively awful. That doesn't always mean you're doing it wrong. [Click title to read more.]

The Transformation Is Not Because Of You

You are not responsible for your own goodness. The person you are "after" Christ has everything to do with God, and very little to do with you at all. [Click title to read more.]

The Best Gift You Can Give Yourself Is Restraint

We assume often that our "holding back" benefits others: that it shields them from our scathing comments, our backbiting snark, our meanness, our deceptiveness. And it does. But restraint benefits us, too. [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.]