Posts tagged Darkness
Weekly Once-Over (6.26.2014)

Four Things To Do When Bringing Home A Child From A Hard Place: My biggest advice when you bring your kids home is to know that this is a journey. Two steps forward and three steps back is how I look at it. It’s a long and hard journey and if you thought that your wait for your child was grueling, you have no idea what the next few months/years have in store for you.

Confessing Our Sins Together: When we bring our sins to another Christian, they become concrete and their ugliness cannot be hid from view.

Darkness Is My Closest Friend: One of my biggest frustrations with western Christianity is our tendency to fake spiritual maturity. We use theological words and phrases that sound impressive – like kingdom, worship, and die to self – but they have little meaning in our daily lives.

A Different Kind Of Millennial Problem: But the most shocking part? 90% of our church is under 30 years old. We have the exact opposite problem of most churches. When someone who looks older walks through our door, we pray they are solid and that they’ll stick around to pour into the mass of youth we have.

What To Do When You Don't Like The Bible: So what should we do when we come up against those passages and parts of the Bible that just seem to be hard for us to embrace? Here are a few things I talked with my friend about.

On Daughters and Dating: How To Intimidate Suitors: So let’s talk frankly about what you need to do to guard her(Daughters) interests when it comes to dating. Instead of brandishing a shotgun or breaking out an application, you need to build a wall.


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Weekly Once-Over (5.15.2014)

The Practice of Repentance: Most of us don’t naturally enjoy repenting when we’re wrong, but for leaders especially, repentance is a powerful, essential, and liberating practice.

9 Ways To Battle The Darkness: I love Jesus and he loves me. But I have struggled with fear, anxiety, condemnation, and even depression my whole Christian life. I actually struggled so much with these issues that I had to resign from my first pastorate. I wasn’t eating, I couldn’t get out of bed, I was having demonic nightmares, and I was thinking about suicide. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I have learned a few things in going through these struggles about God’s grace despite our failures to trust him. Though each of us faces unique circumstances, here are a few lessons I have learned that I pray will help as you, too, battle depression, condemnation and anxiety.

How Jesus Changes Motherhood: Trying to be the perfect mom can be a crushing weight, and sometimes Mother’s Day only makes it worse. We hope these stories from regular moms relying on Jesus in the midst of failure and imperfection will encourage you.

Offer Advice Very Carefully: Giving advice goes poorly so often, it is worth more careful thought about how we give it. We all need advice. We seek it every day. That is a wise and natural part of being a creature rather than the Creator. But we also know that advice can run from helpful to horrible, and it can bless a relationship or hurt it. 

What Kind of Church Should You Belong To?: Being in a healthy local church is critical to the spiritual health of men. But how do you know if you’re in a healthy church?

Miracles In a Modern Age: Anyone familiar with Jesus knows he spent a lot of time healing people. Those healings seem so foreign to modern disciples, as if from a far away land, the stuff of mythology or fiction. Yet, his healing ministry didn’t stick with him; Jesus spread his power to heal into the lives of his followers. Does this mean that we too, as modern disciples, should practice healing? What should we expect when praying for it? Let’s take a quick look at the 1st century to get our bearings. Then, we can turn to our response in the 21st century.

 "How should the Great Commission affect marriage?" 

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