Your Glass Of Water

I challenge you this year to find a "glass of water" task in which you too will be spectacularly faithful. [Click title to read more.]

Why Fellowship Is Valuable When It Works

At its best, and as an ideal, Christian fellowship is (or should be) a place where we can drop pretenses, get comfortable, stretch our toes, look for and find and provide support, and enjoy the feeling of being somewhere that we're understood, loved, and supported. It's a community where the love of God is, at least theoretically, being made manifest constantly in surprising and wonderful ways. [Click title to read more.]

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.]

Make The Small Sacrifices

Sometimes as believers we think of Jesus' sacrifice and it's so easy to become overwhelmed because it was so big. And it was. But on our end? We can start with little things. [Click title to read more.]

Don’t Be Afraid of Collateral Kindness

Let us not start policing our kindness, or being afraid that someone undeserving might receive it if we aim it in the wrong direction. [Click title to read more.]

Twitchy Christianity

The response of the believer in the circumstance is a calm and steely-eyed one. Aware that God does not change, the believer accepts even the catastrophic with a calm certainty. [Click title to read more.]

This Holiday Season, You Have A Chance To Redefine Your Giving

May I suggest that you redefine your giving this year? Find a person, a family, a relationship that you can serve yourself, not just with material goods. Find a service that you can provide, yourself, to some people who might benefit from it. Get into the emotional and spiritual muck of serving, as well as the financial aspect. [Click title to read more.]

Empathy Is Not A Dirty Word

When we engage in empathy we get closer to a real understanding of someone; we get a peek into who they are and what their soul is like. And it is from that beginning that we can build a relationship with someone, and also - perhaps most importantly - understand how it is that we can serve them and show them the love of Christ. [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.]

Failing Before God

In our not-perfection, in our inability to display any real righteousness but what we have in Christ, the effort that we make out of love for God becomes the greatest gift that we can give Him. [Click title to read more.]