If you’re an educated thinker, love to gather more knowledge, or thrive on multi-tasking, you might feel left out when Jesus says, “Blessed are the simple…” We’re more familiar with the beatitude as, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8) But that’s come to mean, “Be like the nice…
I don’t like to be meek. I like to be in control. I like to be right, independent, strong, organized, able to handle whatever happens to me, viewed positively by people and on top of my emotions. I am a “Gut” personality on the Enneagram. That includes Perfectionist 1’s (like me), Challenger 8’s, and Peacemaker 9’s.…
Following Dallas Willard’s line of thinking in The Divine Conspiracy, we don’t believe Jesus is saying, “Be merciful and you will be blessed.” Rather, his idea is, “As a tender-hearted person you get stepped on and burdened by people’s pain, yet the Father of mercies is always delighting in you.” (Matthew 5:7, paraphrase) That is really good news!…
We may (mis)use Jesus’ beatitude to be a people-pleaser, conflict-avoider, referee for other people’s conflicts, or fixer of problems. But in Matthew 5:8 Jesus is not saying, “Be a peacemaker and God will bless you.” As I explain in my booklet Jesus’ Greatest Teaching, in his beatitudes the divine Rabbi has something much better for…
The Enneagram is the rage, but most people don’t know how to use it. We coach pastors, leaders, and church groups in their personal growth and ministry effectiveness and the Enneagram is the best personality assessment tool we’ve seen. That’s why we’re doing a whole series of podcasts and blogs on its spiritual and psychological benefits. Here…
Your desire is to grow in trust in the Lord. That’s why the top article on Soul Shepherding’s website this year was Fear Not! 365 Days a Year with over 53,000 views. We had 975,000 page views in 2018! We are grateful to hear from pastors and leaders that our content is helping them grow in apprenticeship…
The Christmas gospel shows us how very fun God is. Appreciating the Lord’s fun-natured personality can have a huge positive impact on our life and ministry to others. We expect God to be a judge, holy, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, eternal, and totally loving. But is God really fun? That sounds nice, but it seems…
When we tell Mary’s part in the Christmas story it’s easy to idealize her. It’s as if she had such great faith in the word of the Lord, even as a young woman, that all she needed was God. It was Mary and God, alone in a world of people who scorned her — even…
Christmas isn’t all happy. Trying to make it that way actually diminishes our enjoyment and meaning of this sacred season. Consider the first Christmas. The backdrop is that God’s people go four centuries without hearing a word from God. When God finally speaks, Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) refuses to believe it and is struck…
To become like Jesus we need to befriend his emotions. It’s important to appreciate that Jesus is a feeler who experiences and expresses deep and vivid emotions about many things in life. Jesus is a feeler? You may disagree with us. Most Christian leaders today seem to. Early in my (Bill) life and ministry, I…