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...
4 Lesser-Known Leadership Tips
Four tips for leaders concerned with helping those who most need their leadership.
When Experience Isn’t a Good Thing
Nothing on earth has the authority to define you. Your identity—your true identity—is who God created you to be. And yet, what you experience regularly informs your sense of who you are. In other words, your experiences—your circumstances, interactions, feelings, temptations, actions, etc.—all give you their opinion about who you are. And as you might guess, their opinion frequently doesn’t align...
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...
Ashamed and Shameless
Without a sense of how to become free from shame, we’re living in a culture settling for shamelessness instead. It’s a poor substitute. To be shame-free means shame no longer has any hold on you—it doesn’t interfere with how you hear others, doesn’t muddy your relationships, doesn’t challenge the decisions you need to make, doesn’t shape the way you perceive yourself, and doesn’t influence how...