Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that’s life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the...

Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn’t promised. It’s possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to...

The pain of aloneness and pointlessness is piercing. It demands relief. That single fact — that the pain of living apart from God is unbearable — exposes our sinfulness as horribly grotesque and foolish. We...

A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.

Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he...

The central truth that serves as the platform for Christian marriage — and for all Christian relationships — is that in Christ we are at every moment eternally loved and genuinely significant.

We don’t like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through...

We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It’s extremely hard work. It makes Bible...

We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word...

Certainly we struggle as victims of other people’s unkindness. We have been sinned against. But we cannot excuse our sinful responses to others on the grounds of their mistreatment of us. We are responsible for...

When spiritual friends share their stories, the others listen without working. They rest. There’s nothing to fix, nothing to improve. A spiritual community feels undisturbed quiet as they listen, certainly burdened . . . but...

Modern Christianity, in dramatic reversal of its biblical form, promises to relieve the pain of living in a fallen world. Then message, whether it’s from fundamentalists requiring us to live by a favored set of...