As Christians, when we see someone hurting, we all want to help. That’s good, we should. The problem is, many of us have never been trained how to really help someone who’s hurting. We don’t know how, or even what to do. Often, unfortunately, well-meaning Christians do more harm than good. As the church stands […]
What does living in freedom look like? We are, sons and daughters of our Father, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We are princes and princesses, destined to be kings and queens ourselves. In fact, we are kings and queens now in our spheres of influence. Do we act like it? Do we […]
Are you ready to go deep today? Because in this post, I’m going to talk about what we all want and desperately need, but we’re all terribly afraid of. Deep down, sometimes way down there, we all want intimacy. But how can we embrace the intimacy we’re simultaneously longing for and terrified of? Intimacy == […]
Anything involving humans can always be improved, and relationships are no different. But before we can improve one, we need to understand what makes the quality of a relationship better or worse. The quality of any relationship is measured by the depth of the connection between the people involved. The best relationships are a safe […]
We have a nasty habit of blaming trauma survivors for the trauma they endured. In the church, outside the church, it makes no difference. We wrongly blame trauma survivors for the trauma perpetrated upon them through no fault of their own. Yes, unwise choices can put you in a situation where trauma is more likely […]
When Jesus encountered a paralytic lying on a mat at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, he asked possibly the stupidest question ever, on the surface at least. Really, though, this question, more than any other, reveals our heart. Do you want to get well? So here’s the deal with this pool. From time […]
Often the biggest problems in our lives aren’t the ones we know about. They aren’t the problems we’re dealing with. In fact, often what we think are the problems in our lives are really just symptoms. So often the real problem is something we’ve become so comfortable with that we think it’s normal. Janet and […]
How do we keep from sabotaging ourselves? I’m old friends with self-sabotage. We go way back. When I was 8 or 10 or so, my friends and I rode bikes (bicycles, not motorcycles). Constantly. All the time. On road and off-road. Especially in the fields and canyons around our housing track in Southern California, in […]
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., changed the world. Pure and simple. MLK is an American hero on par with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In his 1958 book Stride for Freedom, MLK outlines 6 key principles of nonviolence. These are all Christian principles found in scripture. This post is based on a summary of this […]
The most common malady in the human experience is loss. We have all experienced it in the past. We will all experience it in the future. It is a sad fact in this fallen world. By far though, the greatest loss is ourselves. That is trauma’s worst consequence—the loss of our identity. The good news […]