Category: Spiritual Formation
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How Long Must We Wait?
Sometimes life can feel very much like this picture. We carry a burden, and slowly the long years take their toll on us, until the weight seems normal. This is how we were meant to live. And it is. For a time. One day the burden will be lifted. One day we will walk free…
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Easy Street
I’ve always loved this painting. I found it in a magazine about Azerbaijan 20 years ago when I was teaching high school art, and it immediately captured my imagination. It was painted in 1957 and depicts oil workers at the end of what must have been a hard day’s work on the world’s first offshore…
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Just Right
See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it. Deuteronomy 12:32 (NIV) In my walk with God, I find this to be one of the most difficult commands to obey in all of the Bible. We are given similar commands in Proverbs and Revelation. While each…
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The Broken Heart of God
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that, as a Christian, all of us have had to come to terms with how we’ve fallen short of the glory of God. It’s kind of required. We have to, as redeemed children of God, accept our need for forgiveness before we can be forgiven. I think,…
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Start on Empty
The more I study the Bible, the more convinced I am that the culture we live in today is completely antithetical to the gospel of Christ. I would think that most of us sharing this perspective consider this an active plot of the enemy to disrupt the plans of God. Perhaps. But I wonder sometimes…
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I want my weakness
White supremacists have dominated the news cycles lately. I’ve never really understood the concept of racial superiority. When I read about how African slaves were treated in colonial America, how they were considered less than human, it makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder what series of events caused an entire culture to consider…
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I want my pain
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Westley, The Princess Bride Why is that line so funny? I’ve always loved this movie, and this is, I think, an insightful look into a broken heart that dares to consider one of the most difficult questions life can offer us. What is the purpose…
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Love and Kindness
Last week I talked about who the church is, and one of the defining characteristics I discussed was a love for the church. Today I want to dive deeper into what that means, and more specifically, what it doesn’t mean. C. S. Lewis differentiated between love and kindness in The Problem of Pain: By Love, most…
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Stained Glass Prisons
Do you tend to romanticize the past? It seems to be a very common practice – looking back with nostalgia on days gone by, seeing them as simple, pure, golden. I’m sure there are a number of valid psychological motivations for looking positively at the past. Perhaps it’s a survival mechanism, or perhaps it’s a…
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Simple or Easy
Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. But the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13-14 (NET) Simple and easy are…
Adam desmond 