If you’ve seen an alleyway lined with blankets and cardboard boxes or an underpass flickering with the light of empty oil drum fires, you’ve had a glimpse of a vagabond fellowship. It’s a place where the beat down and broken find an accepting community, but one where they remain broken.
Better
I’ve been noticing a crazy idea floating around in my head and heart. It’s one of those ideas that’s gone on undetected and unchallenged, like background noise that’s so familiar you don’t notice it until someone points it out to you. It goes something like this: The better you are, the less you need others. Once you’ve earned your diploma, you stop going to classes. The stronger you are, the...
Spark
The internal struggle against sin is itself reason to hope. It’s evidence of the Master’s work in your heart, a spark of goodness within that wants to grow. But for many who struggle, however hard they try, the spark of good remains just a spark, seemingly ineffective amidst the familiar dark waters of temptation. Can you relate? You want to stop yelling at your kids, but you lost your temper...
How to Keep Relief from Ruining You
We live in a culture addicted to relief. Whether aspirin, TV, workaholism, gossip, food, or porn, we run to relief at every turn. Why not? If we can experience relief now, why would we not take it? Because it’s ruining us. Why? Because individually and collectively we’ve elevated relief over restoration. Relief is a lessening or removal of suffering. Restoration is when something is brought...
If You Struggle to Pray
If you struggle to pray, instead of trying to drum up more discipline, there's a better place to start.
Jesus Isn’t Scared
Anxiety is a breeding ground for sin. So when an area of sin in your life or in a loved one’s creates anxiety in you, it doesn’t help. In fact, it can make things worse. Have you experienced this? In stark and beautiful contrast, Jesus is not anxious: He talks alone with a scandalously sinful woman as though she were his next-door neighbor (John 4:5 – 26). He invites himself to lunch at a corrupt...