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We want the transactional Jesus
One of my favorite gospel passages is John 6. Over the years, the depth of Jesus’s words sinks a little more into my heart. This is a place Jesus gets to the heart of what it means to follow him. This is one of those places where Jesus works intentionally to shrink the crowd. He has chased almost all of…
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Freeing ourselves of the confirmation bias
Catherine Meeks in her book, The Night is Long but Light Comes in the Morning, has a meditation on the “shadow” in our lives. It’s that unseen force in our lives that will fill in the gaps between fact and our perception. We have a way of seeing something, or someone, and it is quickly “confirmed” by this “shadow” if…
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The loss of a true “churchman”
Jack Hayford was an incredible example of a pastor, a Pentecostal, a great leader, and so much more. I was able to hear him a couple of times in my life in person. One was in a stadium in Denver. His ability to communicate was so powerful there was a sense that what he was saying was directly to me.…
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Do we want to be healed?
I was gifted a marvelous book for my birthday: The Night is Long but Light Comes in the Morning by Catherine Meeks. It is a book of meditations in thinking about racial healing. What a way to begin the new year in my life!
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Three key verses to identify my life
The more I read through the Bible, the more I want to strip down all the periphery we have made Christianity and come to its essentials. I have loved Paul and his writing more and more over the decades of walking with Christ. There is a vision he truly saw beyond his time that I have found compelling. There have…
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Missing the first birthday
This will be the first birthday for my dad since his death. He would have been 84. We’ve gone through other firsts. First Father’s Day. First Christmas. The firsts are awful. There isn’t a guarantee they get better. This just first.
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Helpful habits for our lives
It’s not just about the new year and “resolutions.” It’s about building good habits that create deep change over time. Tish Harrison Warren offered some wonderful tips for life change in this column. Some things that stood out to me:
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The deepest connection
My reading is currently in Galatians. The reading in Galatians 2 again highlights what I’ve been drawn to in my overall Scripture reading: what IS and what is NOT included in “being a follower of Christ.”
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Is the point of reading to retain?
A particular article I read recently in Christianity Today isn’t available on the web yet, but it caught my attention. Two pastors were having coffee and one was talking about his reading passion. The other pastor listened, but then said with a lot of frustration he just couldn’t read. He did very little because he didn’t retain it. He felt…
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Apathy and our current spiritual malaise
So, I ran across this book on overcoming apathy and thought it might be a good read, but I just didn’t care enough to buy it. Actually, I came across an article about a book on apathy, suppressed a yawn, and began reading. Before long I was introduced to an old term I had studied years ago: acedia.
