Emotions get a bad rap in many of our Christian circles today. They’re vulnerable and get broken. They’re messy and don’t look right. We prefer thinking, analysis, doctrine, and three steps to a better life. “Believe and do what’s right,” is the typical message for how to follow Jesus and grow spiritually. “Emotions are the…
The warmth of God’s presence can be elusive. In his secret journal Henri Nouwen is vulnerable about a dark season in which he couldn’t feel God’s love. He’d helped millions of other people around the world into a more tender and intimate experience with God, but he was in a Dark Night of the Soul.…
We all have times we don’t feel thankful. Maybe we’re depleted, detached, despairing. Maybe God feels far away. What do you do then? A pastor friend of mine is one of the wisest, most compassionate, and successful leaders I know. He has a large church of people who are so thankful for him, how he…
If I could have anyone lead me on a spiritual retreat with Jesus it’d be Brennan Manning. I wish I could do that and invite you to join me, but he died in 2013. But we can imagine what it’d be like to have Brennan guide us on retreat. That’s what we’ll do in this…
In Henri Nouwen’s Dark Night he received pastoral counseling and kept a secret journal. Shortly before he died this was published as “The Inner Voice of Love.” Here are some quotes and insights for pastors and ministry leaders.
The nurse hit a nerve in my hand! I screamed in pain and now my hand is withered. Will I view God by my bad circumstances or my circumstances by God’s love? I went to the cross of Christ.
Holy Week is a special opportunity to draw on Jesus’ empathy in new ways. You know that the last seven days of Christ’s life changed the world, but you may not have thought of them as filled with empathy for your pain and brokenness. Empathy is tuning into what someone else feels, validating the bigness of it,…
We all want to experience more joy in life. Jesus prays this for us, asking the Father for us to have the fullness of his joy (John 15:11, 17:13). Fullness of joy! His joy! That’s a lot of joy! What can we do if we’re experiencing a lack of joy? How do we experience a…
I thought I really trusted God’s goodness and love. I could tell you God was loving and good, I could even teach a Bible study on it. But God wanted to grow me and so he showed me the true state of my soul, that actually I didn’t fully trust in his goodness and love.…
In the 16th Century in Spain there was a very poor and little man (just four feet and eleven inches tall!) who became a spiritual giant with incomparable heavenly riches. His name was John of the Cross. John of the Cross had an insatiable longing for Jesus, his Bridegroom and the Lover of his soul.…