Blog

Can you Hear Me? The Skill of Listening

Can you Hear Me? The Skill of Listening
Learning to listen well has been a life long challenge for me, and maybe for some of you. Many of us can get caught in defensive listening. Defensive listening is the temptation to listen looking for an error, or to formulate a response or a rebuttal before the person has finished speaking. Sometimes we listen through…
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Excavating Your True Self

Excavating Your True Self
There’s a lot of mystery and often a lot of confusion when we start to speak about one's “True Self.” Depending upon your religious background, this can be relatively normal, completely bizarre and for some quite dubious. However, in the sense of healthy Christian faith, the pursuit of the authentic self is simply discovering and…
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10 Powerful (But Simple) Ways to Experience Life

For many, a relationship with God is a powerful connection to real life.  Healthy spirituality can connect us in healthy ways to reality.  Healthy faith can help ground our entire lives.  It can take the ordinary and seemingly mundane things of life and fill them with significance.  Likewise, it can produce a sense of hope,…
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Pastors: Stop the Cloning! – Discipleship

Pastors: Stop the Cloning! – Discipleship
Have you ever experienced a situation where someone, in the name of Jesus, tried to fashion you into their own image of Jesus? As well-meaning leaders we want to help others mature in faith, help them grow in Christ-likeness. Unfortunately, we can sometimes have a narrow idea of what this Christ-likeness looks like, and often…
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We ARE Chosen

We ARE Chosen
How many of us remember the ad-hoc choosing of teams in the school yard? "I'll take Jimmy."  "I'll take Jane" and so forth until there is a lone person left and chosen by default.  There were times when I was growing up that I found myself the last to be chosen.  It is an awkward feeling to not…
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Light at the End of the Dark Night

Light at the End of the Dark Night
St. John of the Cross, a Carmelite priest from Spain coined the phrase the “Dark Night of the Soul”. It is a poignant metaphor used to describe a phase in a person’s spiritual journey which is marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation. Desolation can simply be defined as a lack of the felt…
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Black Holes, Jesus and the Victory of God

Black Holes, Jesus and the Victory of God
I am a bit of a sci-fi geek. I grew up watching Star Trek, Star Wars and just about anything with aliens and outer space.   One of the coolest phenomena which provided great plots and excitement was the mysterious Black Hole! A Black Hole is a phenomenon in outer space that has a gravitational…
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My God, my God why have you forsaken me?

My God, my God why have you forsaken me?
I have been reflecting the Gospel accounts of our Lord hanging on the Roman tree, and I am gripped by the sheer terror of the event. As Jesus hung there in great anguish, He cried out “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) (Mt.27:46) For a long time, I…
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Easter: Good News for Zombies!

Easter: Good News for Zombies!
A few years ago, we were visiting a Church in the States on Easter Sunday. The Pastor, a friend of mine, was tremendously creative with sharing the Gospel through pop culture and his Easter Sunday message was no exception. He was presenting the Easter story using various media and was at the part in Matthew…
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Inspiring Motivation

Inspiring Motivation
Many of the folks I speak with on a daily basis are struggling to find the motivation to do the things they have to, start something new and to see it through!  I confess I have seasons like this in my life and have to be deliberate about tending to my heart and mind to…
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