And so it comes down to this: the only way to truly overcome our fear of death is to live life in such a way that its meaning cannot be taken away by death. This sounds grandiose, but it is really very simple. It means fighting the impulse to live for ourselves,...
Kingdom people are history makers. They break through the small kingdoms of this world to an alternative and much larger world, God’s full creation. People who are still living in the false self are history stoppers. They use God and religion to protect their own...
God’s love squeezes in through the tiniest of openings, refracts throughout your entire inner self, and drives out the fear and anxieties that prevent you from becoming who you are.
God loves you—we’ve heard it so much we barely even notice it, and yet…in the part of us that still needs to improve ourselves, have we heard it? In the part of us that stings with shameful memories or…just knows we don’t measure up, have we heard it? In the part of...
It is my experience that in modern times the care of children, particularly those in crisis, has been abandoned by the pastor. My concern for ministry to children has been growing for a long time. My first experience in clinical pastoral education was at a children’s...
As we participated in protest after protest, sit-in after sit-in, where crowds of uncontrollable angry people swarmed around us yelling and jeering, where we were beaten with billy clubs, lead pipes, trampled by horses, and attacked by dogs, our faith was not...
Think about your greatest fear. Consider how you would feel if your life required you to face what you fear the most every day. Ultimately, if you survived the test, you would discover that what you feared actually had no power over you, no power to harm you at all....
You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. …And you refuse to do it because you want to live longer… You’re afraid that you...
Singing is a spiritual activity best experienced in community. The documented benefits are as significant as those in yoga, a healthy diet, and prayer. Our culture, however, has commodified singing and turned it into a perfected idol that is performed by the few and...
By the mercies of God, this new covenant community has been released from the darkness and foolishness of illicit worship to serve the living God in spirit and truth. In a very real sense this is the goal of the process of redemption, just as it was in the Old...