What is the most important part of the worship service? Our architecture often shows our answer. Most pastors would excitedly assert that the answer must be the preaching of God’s Word. After all, they labor for hours every week over a message that often lasts barely longer than 30 minutes. That much investment, maybe twenty...
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On the treadmill last week, at an hour when only werewolves and swim parents are awake, I listened to Pete Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast and heard him say, discussing the temptations of Jesus, the phrase “up and to the right.” And I realized, listening to the discussion: there’s Hinduism, Islam, Christianity… but do you...
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Imagine your kids and grandkids “need” to move away, such that you no longer get to see them regularly, that you miss seeing them grow up. This is never easy, but at least there is payoff. Often such a move is because of a career choice, making the medicine go down. Grandparents can bear some...
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There is theory, and then there is practice. And more often than not, the distance between them–the concentrated effort it takes to get from theory to practice–is profound. To be human is to know this in your bones. Take this for example. Theory: we ought to love and selflessly serve our community with a cheerful...
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Bible readers often imagine Matthew as the most ‘get-out-there-and-tell-people-about-Jesus’ gospel of the four gospels. Why? For one very good reason. Matthew’s gospel climaxes with the famous Great Commission: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted....
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For my whole adult life, I have wrestled with having creative talents. Some artists know with certainty, early on, what they were made to do. They delight in the joy of creating just as surely as their creative Heavenly Father delighted in creating them. But that certainty has not been my story. My soul comes...
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