Articles
Work With Your Hands: How to Make Meaning in Your Work
Why We Need to Work With Our Hands A sweaty summertime rain falls on the corrugated tin roof of my father’s workshop as I position one end of a ten-foot, mill-cut cypress board near the mouth of a tool called a planer. I push the wood into the planer, and the...
Lead Your Pack: Why Children Need Loving Authority
What Loving Authority Looks Like for New Moms I would give two pieces of advice to new moms. The first piece is this. Take a photo every day and print your photo book every year. If you don’t follow this advice, it is very possible that your oldest child will be...
Do We Have a Guardian Angel? A Look at the Evidence
Understanding the Idea of a Guardian Angel Beliefs about angels are typically an amalgam of what people pick up from popular culture, what they remember from childhood cartoons, and what they have culled from casual Bible reading. Consequently, there are a lot of...
Your Body Is a Temple, Not a Remodeling Project: Love Your Body as God’s Temple
Imagine yourself in the following scenario. Over a period of three or four months, you begin to experience mysterious symptoms—a marked decrease in energy, intermittent insomnia, sudden cravings for sweets, and irritability. You feel like something isn’t right, so you...
Your Journey from Broken to Blessed: Breaking Generational Curses
You may have missed the Blessing like I did, perhaps in even more dramatic or difficult ways. But all our paths lead to a turning point. To a choice. The choice I made at seventeen, the choice you may need to make, isn’t something new. We can see an amazing picture of...
How a Comic-Book Style Bible Could Inspire Bible Engagement Beyond Sundays
On Sunday mornings, between 8 and 11 a.m., you may have somewhat of a captive audience as you stand at the pulpit, leading your congregation through a worship service. But after the service, once church members are finished mingling over coffee and cookies outside of...
Resisting Manipulation: Biblical Guidance for Leaders
How to Identify and Resist Manipulation A counseling professor once told a woman in one of my husband’s lab groups, “Your tears don’t move me.” His words stunned the group, but the woman stopped crying. “Those are tears of frustration not brokenness.” We may question...
Songs about Heaven
Oh, the wonder and glories of Heaven! Do you long to go there? The Bible often speaks of the place where God dwells. Jesus told His disciples that He was going to prepare a “place” for them (John 14:3). We know as Christians that we are promised an eternity dwelling...
Science and the Bible: God’s Truth in Creation and Scripture
Science and the Bible: Understanding Truth Through the Ages The Bible is the divine Word of God, but I think we are justified in believing that God expected every generation to interpret the Word according to the age in which they live. Those who dispute this put a...
Choose Joy Daily in Every Season
Who is the most joyful person you know? Stop—don’t keep on reading. I want you to think about the most joyful person you know. How do you feel when you’re around them? Why We Must Choose Joy Daily In the providence of God, I was to teach Philippians 1 with the title...
Faith and Unity Can Turn Things Around
What I’ve learned about the power of faith to repair what’s broken in our confused and divided nation. “How do we turn things around in this country?” That’s a question I hear quite often, coming from folks of all ages and points of view. You may have muttered the...
Five Key Concepts for Trauma-Informed Ministry
Trauma, while not universal, is quite common. In The Trauma Tree: Going Beyond Survival, Growing Toward Wholeness, we look at the difference between big T Trauma and little t trauma. Big T Trauma is what comes to mind when we think of PTSD. Post-traumatic stress...
The Power of Story: Remembering with God
You and I have a story that began long before we were born. In Psalm 139:15-16, the psalmist writes, “You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was...
Forgetting the Past: Embracing the God of the Future
The God of the Future: Moving Beyond the Past I wonder if sometimes we continue to worship the God of the past and don’t recognize the God of the future. Because God exists in the future—he was in our yesterday, but he’s also in tomorrow. It makes sense that God...
Making Jesus’s Geography Meaningful
Jesus was not only a master teacher but also a gifted outdoor instructor. He often put his nature-filled classroom to work leaning into its physical geography, human geography, and natural history. But Jesus used geography in another way as well. He taught in...
Fresh Bible Engagement Ideas for Every Day of the Week
Why Bible Engagement Ideas Matter Outside Sunday Service On Sunday mornings, between 8 and 11 a.m., you may have somewhat of a captive audience as you stand at the pulpit, leading your congregation through a worship service. But after the service, once church members...
What Is the Bible?
Why “What Is the Bible” Still Matters Today Did you know the Bible has sold the most copies of any book ever? According to the Guinness World Records, an organization dedicated to recording record-breaking achievements, the Christian Bible has sold more than five...
What Diving the Maze Taught Me About God’s Presence in Darkness
Life can feel like diving in the Maze, a site full of shadows. Murky bluegray abysses lie beyond the cliff edges, swirling through sheer canyons, darkening the underside of every ledge and crack. The twisting walls and cliffs of the Maze are filled with caves and...
Distracted in the Desert: What the Wilderness Teaches Us
Do you like road trips? The truth of the matter is, I do not. That’s because I would like to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible! We live in South Carolina, but our families are in Miami. Every time we plan a trip to visit our beloved hometown, I beg my...
6 Ways to Offer Alzheimer’s Church Support
People in faith communities often respond to their members’ needs with action. Cold in the winter? Hold a coat drive. Students in need of school supplies? Fill their backpacks. Natural disaster in the community? Fundraise to help bring relief. But Alzheimer’s isn’t a...
