In this broken world, bad stuff often happens to us in isolation, just us and the perpetrator. No one knows our secret. We were designed by God to heal in community. Not a big, giant community. I’m not talking about telling our hurtful secrets to the whole world or publicly in front of our whole […]
The concepts in this post come from an amazing little book, The Power of TED: The Empowerment Dynamic by David Emerald. You can pick up your copy here. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in the last 12 months. I highly recommend it. (BTW, this is not an affiliate link. I receive no commission […]
Sometimes, the hardest thing about our calling is explaining it to others, especially our family or people we’re close to. Sometimes even our church family can be difficult. Often, fear of man is at the root of it. Even Moses struggled with fear of man. When God was talking with him from the burning bush, […]
The Bible is full of people making excuses to get out of what God’s calling them to do, including Jonah, Gideon, Saul, Moses, even Ananias in the New Testament (Acts 9), and many others. We do it too. I think it’s usually out of fear. God always calls us to something we can’t do without […]
Nobody wants to be confused. Or do we? It turns out a lot of our confusion is intentional. We all say we want clarity. But, all too often, we actually choose confusion over clarity because confusion gives us these 3 benefits. (1) Confusion Lets Us Avoid Conflict I heard a podcast where a business owner […]
God has a unique calling on each one of us, our unique contribution to the world. The powers of darkness are terribly afraid of it, because when you walk in your calling, they lose real estate. The enemy’s strategy is to so grievously wound us, as early in life as possible, that we don’t ever […]
Our neighborhood’s polling place is the local elementary school. When I voted in the last election, I saw a huge banner hanging in the school cafeteria that read, “You Are Defined by Your Actions.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I get it. The school is trying to instill good behavior. That’s a good, […]
Can we be honest without being mean? Our churches have taught us to be “good” people. To be nice. To be kind. And that’s good – kindness is a fruit of the spirit, after all (Galatians 5:22-23). The problem is, with too many churches, it stops right there. Be nice. Be affirming. Don’t rock the […]
With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, our culture is in an emotionally volatile season right now. It can be scary, difficult, and even dangerous to jump into the conversation. But we must. We have the life-giving truth that sets people free. God has called us to such a time as this (Esther 4:14). We […]
I have a friend who had a dream. People were standing in lines waiting to go somewhere, or get into something. Many lines, straight and orderly. Very polite, very systematic. But then some people came along who created quite a disturbance by pulling people out of the lines. They were very adamant about convincing people […]