Paul commands us to have nothing to do with anxiety and everything to do with prayer. Sadly, many of us reverse this and worry about everything, praying only as a last resort! It’s easier to worry, fret, get heartburn, lose sleep..
Our English word prayer derives from the Latin precarious. We pray because life is precarious. We pray because life is marvelous. We pray because we find ourselves at a loss for many things, but not for the simplest words like…
This is part of an ongoing series during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. To engage further in the #QuarantineSoulCare series, click here. When storms come, trees strike their roots deeper into the soil. In a hurricane we retreat to the safest, …
I have a pastor friend who was almost killed in a horrible car accident a few years ago. As he tells it, he was fortunate to be alive but was sadly paralyzed from the neck down.
In the hospital, the doctors place him in one of those sandwich type contraptions that…
God is both good-hearted and strong-handed. We don’t have to be afraid. We really can trust. Fear sabotages all that trust by contracting both the internal and the external. Fear is the language of scarcity; of cramped, compressed living. All our attempts to “seize the moment” play off our anxiety that we…
When the world around us insists we be normal and behave like everyone else, what countermands those signals toward normality? Paul insists that the mind is the battlefield in the fight to resist being…
In English, we slur words and, over time, create new ones. You all became y’all and Christ’s Mass became Christmas. The same thing happened with the Old English phrase Godes sonde. It was a way of…
A high view of contentment was a consistent pattern across the ages. This, of course, does not mean that existence was easy and the streets filled with smiling citizens. Quite the opposite. Throughout most of history, life has been marked by…
For almost a month, I sat with Jeremiah, who sat with God. I let him do the talking. I read the same passage out of the third chapter of Lamentations every morning, until I almost knew it by heart…
Relationship in the body of Christ is where we grow best. Of course, we must pursue our relationship with God day in and day out as well: having a quiet time in the morning, an intentional time with God, and participating in regular worship. But community is vital for…