Most of us are probably still laboring under the impression that freedom comes first in our circumstances, and then we can experience love, joy, peace, patience, and all the other wonderful fruits of the Spirit. Not so. God usually begins first...
READ MORESome prayers just happen; they are “the Cry of the Heart.” No training is needed when it comes to this kind of prayer. I’ve uttered it thousands of times; I’m confident you have too. Like when the phone rings and the bad news starts to spill and...
READ MOREWe were meant to remember together, in community. We need to tell our stories to others and to hear their stories told. We need to help each other with the interpretation of the Larger Story and our own. Our regular times of coming together to...
READ MOREOf course, small groups have become a part of the programming most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are disappointing and short-lived — by the very admission of those who try them. There are two reasons. One, you can't just...
READ MOREI shudder at how easily my heart can be divided. I do love God, I really do. I know you do too. The double-mindedness is revealed when we only sort of want God. Our longing for life to be good again becomes the test we hold up against...
READ MOREAbiding in the love of God is our only hope, the only true home for our hearts. It's not that we mentally acknowledge that God loves us. It's that we let our hearts come home to him, and stay in his love. MacDonald says it this way:
...
READ MOREWe do need more of God, much more. Little sips between long droughts will not sustain us. We need more of God in our bodies, our souls, our relationships, our work, everywhere in our lives. But when you live in a culture of the incessant...
READ MOREStasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be.
Freedom is good; freedom is what you are made for.
It is for freedom that Christ has set...
READ MOREIn our own times of severe testing, we want to be made “holy in every way,” our entire “spirit and soul and body ... kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT). Let me be quick to add, I think much of the testing and the Falling Away takes place...
READ MOREDo we form no friendships because our friends might be taken from us? Do we refuse to love because we may be hurt? Do we forsake our dreams because hope has been deferred? To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain; to shut down...
READ MOREThe most essential gift you have to give is yourself. When you aren’t entirely true about that, you aren’t true. But we’ve all grown accustomed to committing dozens of little white lies about ourselves every day.
Except this man. He is...
READ MOREMost Americans (80 percent) say they don’t have any dreams, and we can imagine why. Life can suck the dreaming right out of you. The living God wants to pour those dreams back in. Sixteen percent of Americans say they do have dreams, but they don...
READ MOREStasi Eldredge's book "Free to Be Me" helps teen girls become the young women God created them to be.
I was driving last summer with some gals, all of whom are really pretty and slender and smart and have a lot...
READ MOREThe desire to be beautiful is an ageless longing. Beauty has been extolled and worshiped and kept just out of reach for most of us. (Do you like having your picture taken? Do you like seeing those pictures later? How do you feel when...
READ MOREOne of the best ways to help us remember who our God is and who we are to him is to worship him. In worship, when we turn the gaze of our hearts away from ourselves and our needs and onto Jesus, a divine shift happens that brings a great good to...
READ MOREWe begin our journey into sonship by looking backward, to what our lives as boys were like, and, more important, what they were meant to be. For so much of the way we now approach life as men was set in motion in our youth — some of it for good,...
READ MOREHeaven is the beginning of an adventure in intimacy, "a world of love," as Jonathan Edwards wrote, "where God is the fountain." The Holy Spirit, through the human authors of Scripture, chose the imagery of a wedding feast for a reason. It's not...
READ MOREThis is the point of encountering those things in your life you cannot handle — you are forced to turn to Christ. Did you really think you could be kind for the rest of your life without the inner help of Jesus? One day of kindness is a miracle....
READ MOREAs I was praying about my disappointments the other day, I noticed something lingering beneath the surface. I realized that somewhere along the way, I’d come to an agreement of sorts — I need this. Not that I want it, and very much. But that ...
READ MOREThe book of Hebrews describes the prayer life of Jesus in the following way: “While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could deliver him” (5:7 NLT). That doesn’t sound like the way...
READ MORE