All tagged fear
And for those of us who are tempted in these ways, let me offer a gentle reminder: You don’t have to force your way into God’s kingdom. You don’t have to compete for Jesus’ attention. You don’t have to prove that you belong. Your task is simply this: to accept that God accepts you.
What is the problem with the wicked? Well, they have no fear of God! The lack of fear for God is reflected in a concomitant lack of restraint. Fear, at its best, can teach us how to control ourselves.
Perhaps God’s miraculous rescues, when and if they happen, aren’t easily verifiable. Maybe they depend on faith to see these divine interventions.
The goal in effective leadership is not to eliminate fear but to make it a worthy partner. Fear is designed to be your friend until you make it your boss.
No one should ever have to stand alone in their suffering or their shame. Instead, we need to become a safe harbor for those who are floundering; this is our sacred calling.
You live and breathe, so you matter, which means you have every right to speak up. Period.
Unity with God means moving through the world in constant communion: every bit of news, each conversation, every gaze met, offered up in prayer.
The doctrine of the Trinity is what the church represents as she bends knee to the other who is giving a hand up while standing on the shoulders of a third, infinitely in sync and completely acrobatic!
As the created world hosts humanity, we have much to learn from the soil, from the seeds. Stretching toward the light, cultivated hearts propagate God’s mission.
A follow-up piece reporting data and takeaways from an October 2020 survey of churchgoers about how the pandemic has impacted them and their congregations.
These four fears stifle creativity and appear so commonly in congregations that I want to share them with you and offer a theological response.
The pandemic has given Christians a great opportunity to share their faith. But if I were Satan, here are five things I would do to be sure the church fumbles this opportunity.
How do we carry on when we do not know whether or not today is simply a preface to a harder tomorrow?
If Holy Thursday teaches us anything, it’s that Jesus is in the business of putting souls back together that have been torn apart by grief and fear.
What’s a congregation to do? In these days of sheltering in place and quarantine and physical distancing, who is going to show up and celebrate an empty tomb?
Fear is not the most reliable of counselors. Yet in the face of darkness we all have to come to the terrible truth that monsters are real.
From my experience, resistance to gender inclusion was far more about fear, conflict, and change than anything else.
Anxious leaderships do allow cranky souls to disturb the peace for those in ministry; too often those leaders are themselves the agitators.
All of us are conditioned to see the world in certain ways. We are taught to see some things, and not others.
The hope of Christianity embraces a world of hopelessness. Ours is the most real hope of all, because death sits at its center.
