“The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude.” So wrote Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, living through the deprivation and horrors of both Auschwitz and Dachau. Consider the background for his writing...
I received a lot of positive feedback on last week's post about a pastor who admitted his need for physical rest, spiritual renewal and relational retooling. One of the most insightful responses came from a different pastor's wife, who described how both she and her...
It takes a great deal of humility, wisdom and courage for a popular pastor to admit that he is a “bruised reed” in desperate need of physical rest, spiritual renewal and relational retooling. That’s exactly what my friend Rankin Wilbourne did last Sunday … which...
Churches and ministries (as well as married couples) could learn a vital lesson from the U.S. State Department. Chip Zimmer, our ministry’s Vice President, worked for the State Department from 1990-2001, serving in diplomatic posts in Africa and Latin America. In...
Adversity tends to pull us down. It hurts when others sin against us, take us for granted, fail to stand up for us, or break their commitments to us. Such treatment can easily cause us to feel discouraged, bitter or depressed. But there is a way to convert these kinds...
I almost shot my car after one of our Montana blizzards. A foot of wet snow had fallen in just a few hours and the roads were impossible. I’d been out earlier in the day in my son’s Honda, and had struggled to make it up the long hill leading to our street. It took...
Many of our habits are spiritually neutral, such as the way we brush our teeth or the route we drive to work. Other life patterns clearly violate spiritual values, such as being addicted to drugs, alcohol or pornography, or reacting to correction with automatic anger...
My wife seemed to be testing my resolve. A month ago I decided that it was time to do battle with my love for candy. That meant not slipping into the pantry two or three times a day to raid the jar of M&M’s we keep for our grandson. I was doing great for three...
I was sitting on the patio of an expensive restaurant in Beirut. Six young Lebanese were sitting at the table next to us, glued to their smart phones. Not a word of conversation between them for minutes on end, a shared agreement that people elsewhere were more...
A five year-old child was sitting alone in a room with a marshmallow placed a few inches in front of her. She was told that she could eat it immediately, but if she waited just fifteen minutes, she would be rewarded with an additional marshmallow. Six hundred other...