Under the power of the Holy Spirit, shy people have been known to step up onto platforms and say audacious things. Cautious people have become daredevils, frugal people have become philanthropists and people who used to be as sour as dill pickles have become rich with...
Sometimes those who have been in the church for a long time can adopt a joyless spirit… These people…become blind to the good things around them. …Instead, they obsess over bad things and want everyone else to…obsess with them. This kind of complaining, joyless spirit...
I think quality time is just a way of deluding ourselves into shortchanging our children. Children need vast amounts of parental time and attention. It’s an illusion to think they’re going to be on your timetable, and that you can say, “OK, w’eve got half an hour;...
In short, our congregations are marked by a warped spirituality. We have been formed spiritually in ways that bracket the realities of violence and poverty and oppression, ignoring them (at worst) or confining them (at best) to the margins of our attention. We have...
The amazing thing about love and attention and encouragement and grace and success and joy is that these things are infinite. We get a new supply every single morning and so we can give it away all day. We never, ever have to monitor the supply of others or grab or...
As long as Christians are breaking the bread and pouring the wine, as long as we are anointing the sick and baptizing sinners, as long as we are preaching the Word and paying attention, the church lives, and Jesus says the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
Notice what happens in Luke 11 when the woman in the crowd starts praising Jesus as the object of adoration and his mother as blessed: Being made the focus of attention and adoration makes him nervous, perhaps even belligerent. He is the signpost, not the Sign, and so...