WILLFUL NEGLIGENCE It’s far too easy to live a non-challenging life. Let me be clear about what I mean by this. As humans created in the image of God, we have a responsibility to make use of every gift and skill set we’ve been blessed with to nourish, enhance, and uplift the lives of others… Read More The Challenged Life: Where Joy Coexists With Consequences
REBORN BY A PRIVATE CHOICE By itself, being raised going to church doesn’t make any person a Christian. A Christian isn’t defined by church attendance. A Christ-follower is any person whose heart has been reborn by choosing Jesus as Lord, through faith; a private choice they make in their heart, which becomes the choice they… Read More Candid & Necessary: What Does It Really Mean to Be Raised in the Church?
A NEW REALITY Have you ever been so sure of something about your life or yourself that you didn’t even have to think about it, where the “knowing” was just a part of your reality? Or, have you ever connected with something so deeply, such as with knowledge or relationship itself, that it felt like… Read More This Is How We Die to Ourselves
ONE DIRECTION OR THE OTHER At its roots, Christianity isn’t about feelings or thoughts, it’s all about the heart. In the same way Christianity is all about the heart at its roots, disbelief is all about the self. When we say no to God, we’re saying yes to ourselves, and vice versa; when we deny… Read More Beneath All the Minutia: The Only Right Way to Choose God
CHRISTIAN AT MIND BUT NOT AT HEART There are those of us who consider ourselves Christians simply because we agree there is a God, and we believe in our mind that Jesus rose from the dead. And while the mind may like the idea of Christianity and find it interesting, the heart doesn’t always follow… Read More Repentance, Hope & Fire: The Marks of a Changed Heart
Someone I’ve been listening to a lot lately, and whose ministry I truly believe has been blessed by God, is Nate Sala of Wise Disciple on YouTube. Nate used to be a debate coach, and the pastor of a church in Las Vegas, Arizona. The skills he brings to the table in his videos are… Read More The Root Issue Is the Brokenness of the Human Heart
PROVOCATIVE, ENLIGHTENING, OR DEMONIC Imagery is powerful. Whether through still art or motion pictures, they’re designed to tell the brain and heart something. It’s data, and it’s influential—whether for good or bad. It can be provocative or evocative; enlightening or galvanizing. It can also be just plain tempting or demonic. MAINTAINING OUR INNOCENCE AND MENTAL… Read More Cinematic Introspection: Beyond the Scope of the Eye
ORGANIZATION OF MANIPULATORS There are people today who believe the deity of Jesus is a myth designed to keep people morally disciplined in a corrupt world, and that the church itself is just an organization of manipulators aiming to make money off people with broken or damaged consciences. I sense this skepticism was generated by… Read More Confronting Church Wounds: The Judgment of a Seat Warmer
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT PERFECT FAITH Christianity isn’t about perfection. Lots of us hold onto the fallacy that faith means we’re supposed to reflect perfection in some way by means of our belief in God. There’s a reason that’s fallacious—spoiler alert: we never achieve perfection here in this life. The goal is to strive to draw nearer… Read More The Fallacy of Perfection: Growing In Faith, Not Self-Deprecation
THE STOMACHACHE For those of us who’ve spent a large portion of our lives eating unhealthy food on a regular basis, we’ve learned to expect a stomachache; the intestinal discomfort of the gut’s rejection of ingredients our body finds little to no nutritious value in at all. We expect to spend a longer time in… Read More Learning to Deprive Our Soul of What It Doesn’t Need
