• Featured

    How Language Changed Our Relationship with God

    The power of life and death is in the tongue says Proverbs 18:21 but the sentiment does not translate well into our modern language. The reason why is because the ancients had quite a different relationship with language than we do. For them, words were power. In the first couple thousand years of known history, language had the ability to change the minds of the gods. In fact, one could hold them in one’s power if only the right spell or incantation was spoken. I am not arguing with the Bible verse, just our contemporary interaction with it. No separation…

  • Featured - Orphan Heart

    How to Heal Your Orphan Heart

    Most definitions of orphan begin and end with the idea of having no parents.  But one can have two parents and still bear deep orphan wounds.  Emotional abandonment in the form of critical parents, neglectful parents, or just very immature ones can leave a child scrambling to supply his or her own needs. Life in an orphanage is one of deprivation and competition, but sometimes life in a family can echo the same familiar themes. So many Christians today live in a state of insecurity, fighting for what is theirs, and working hard to earn approval from God and from…

  • Featured - Self-Acceptance - Spiritual Rebellion

    The Painful Truth about Spiritual Rebellion

    Spiritual rebellion is not a popular topic for the sermon of the week. I think that is because even pastors can be somewhat unclear as to what it really is. The word, rebellion, summons up pouty teenagers staying out past curfew or military coups somewhere overseas. Most people I ask believe that spiritual rebellion is disobeying God.  I suppose it is in a very vague sense, though occasionally I do disobey God, and I am no longer in spiritual rebellion. Spiritual rebellion is an incredibly painful rejection of the life that God has given you. Do you wish you had…