One myth among people who follow Jesus is that God just wants us to be ourselves. We rise, we fall, we succeed, we fail, but as long as we can emerge from it all having “stayed true to ourselves”, we win. We call it authenticity, but might it actually be a kind of idolatry?
All posts tagged “essay”
To the Parched Soul: Living Water is Waiting for You
If you and I can train our spiritual senses to sniff out the presence of God in the midst of soul-deep dehydration, our lives will be restored. Like a new seedling. Ready to truly live again.
Letting Pressure Fulfill Its Purpose
Like the natural process that requires intense heat and extreme pressure to transform carbon into diamonds, I began to see beauty emerge from this trying season when I let the pressure fulfill its purpose.
Three Life-Changing Ways to Ring in the New Year
Things don’t change just because a new year begins. Things change because we begin. We begin to take God at his word and live like his promises are true for our lives.
Advent: God’s Love is Not a Metaphor A simple reflection
When Jesus was born, love broke into the human realm for the first time. A true love. A radical love. An “I will give my life for you” love that we had never known. A love we didn’t (and still don’t) deserve.
Advent: You Have Permission to Be Happy Four Keys to Unlocking Joy at Christmas
Somehow, Christmas seems to dredge up all the unChristmasness in the world. All the sadness. All the angst. All the heartache. Christmas season is a melancholy magnet. Over the past month, I’ve seen more articles floating around about depression and anxiety than any other time […]
Advent: The Problem With “Peace on Earth”
Jesus didn’t come to establish world peace.
This may come as a surprise, but Jesus never promised this. Any claim that he did is a misleading overreach that does no one any good.
Advent: Dealing With the Dilemma of Hope
It’s the first week of Advent, a season of anticipation as we look forward to Christmas. Each week highlights a different virtue that Christmas should instill in our hearts: hope, peace, love, and joy. But there is a dilemma here. One that I feel acutely […]
Four Things You Should Regift This Christmas Trading gift-giving for self-giving
Christmas isn’t about gift-giving, it’s about self-giving. That’s what God did for us. He gave us himself.
So why do we fall into the trap of spending money on impersonal commodities instead of spending ourselves on personal connection?
Idols: The High Cost of Chasing Cheap Things
We are grasping for tiny false gods to meet the God-sized needs in our souls. In my experience, the human soul’s deep yearning for God boils down to three needs: LOVE, DIRECTION, APPROVAL.
3 Generational Curses We Don’t Talk About
Eight generations of people were already on the earth before anyone began to seek God. Eight generations. That’s you, your great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, and everyone in between. The furthest I can reach is to my maternal great-great-grandmother before our history is violently interrupted by slavery and the […]
Forsaking Fig Leaves — On Sin and Creativity
There is no question that we were created to create. To reflect God’s creative power and wisdom. Speaking life and justice and truth into the world through our words. Expressing love and beauty through the work of our hands. We are engineers. We are medical […]