We Christians are the salt of the earth according to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, which I take to mean seasoning, not the main course. The desire for power like God's is the desire to be more important than we are.
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit, and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to...
We all die eventually; we have no choice in the matter. But there are degrees of death before the final physical one. If we are honest, we acknowledge that we are dying throughout our life, and this is what we learn if we are attentive: grace is found at the depths...
The signs are all around us. We can see them springing up like wildflowers after the prairie rain. People who had fallen asleep are waking up. People who had been content to watch are wanting to join. People who never said a word are speaking out. The tipping point of...
God puts us in churches so that we will learn to love others; so that our rough edges will be worn off. When you feel like fleeing to another or different church, know you are moving close to spiritual growth. One purpose of church is to place us in covenant...
If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
If you desire intimate union with God, you must be willing to pay the price for it. The price is small enough. In fact, it is not even a price at all; it only seems to be so with us. We find it difficult to give up our desire for things that can never satisfy us in...
Riches, both material and spiritual, can choke you if you do not use them fairly. For not even God can put anything in a heart that is already full. One day there springs up the desire for money and for all that money can provide--the superfluous, luxury in eating,...
Repentance isn't about blame, or avoiding the cost of being blamed. It's about putting on a new mind, that is, seeing the familiar with fresh eyes, changing one's opinions and behaviors in order to come closer to God's desire. Repentance seeks change, not blame....