Don’t Believe Your Own Headlines
In ninth grade, my brother Andy’s locker partner (the school drug supplier) had a bad trip on LSD. The bad trip continued in a small series of scary flashbacks, and Kevin asked Andy if God had anything to say about it. My brother had just had a Sunday school lesson about the Four Spiritual Laws. He even had a copy of the tract. Together Andy and Kevin read the pamphlet, and Kevin prayed...
Read MoreWhat About That GTO?
When I grew up in Detroit, the population was over 1,200,000 people. I spent the next forty years living in Ann Arbor, population of about 120,000. Last summer, my wife and I moved to Brooklyn MI, population 1,188. Which is 25% smaller than my high school graduating class. A few weeks ago we ordered takeout from Harold’s Place, a restaurant near our house. As I sat at the bar waiting...
Read MoreShould Christians Fear Thinking?
Four years ago, I met with a pastor who talked about problems in his church. I asked him what he thought he should do. He said, “Watch it! ‘Thinking’ puts you into the devil’s territory.” (He really said that; I kid you not.) His answer hinted at one of his church’s problems. I figured he was an anomaly, like when you phone Comcast, and a real person answers the phone. But a...
Read MoreTrusting Doubt
My friend was recently fired from a job when he was blamed him for a mistake the boss had made. He said to me, “All is good.” The next week his wife totaled one of their two cars. My friend said, “I trust God that everything will work out for the good.” When we met for coffee, I asked how he was doing, and he snapped, “Of course I’m okay. I’m keeping a positive attitude. I...
Read MoreDoes Prayer Work?
Someone recently asked me to write an endorsement for his upcoming book on intercessory prayer. He read my book on Hearing God in Conversation and wrote a positive review on Amazon. His manuscript was easy to read, witty, and personal, with terrific stories. What’s not to like? The book said that most Christians think the essence of prayer is petitionary, asking God for stuff....
Read MoreEaster and the Death of a Son
Twenty-three years ago, my sister Becky lost her son in an accident as he walked home from school. Is there any greater sadness for any parent than the early death of a child? I think not. This is what Easter holds for us, in the words of my sister. ***** When my ten-year-old son, Robert, was struck by a truck and killed, I saw and experienced, for the first time in my life, the power and...
Read MoreDo We Know What We Worship?
In 1930, legendary economist John Maynard Keyes wrote an essay about our future lifestyle in the twenty-first century. He predicted that industrial progress would reduce our workload to 15 hours a week. Keyes may have been a brilliant economist, but he was a pathetic prophet. In fact, for many, the workweek over the last thirty years has increased. In 1980, the highest earners worked the...
Read MoreTorches of Freedom
Four score and eleven years ago—in 1928—George Washington Hill had a problem: he wanted more women to smoke cigarettes. But smoking was scorned as a crutch for “fallen women and prostitutes.” He was president of the American Tobacco Company, and he thought that if he could get women to smoke, it would be “like opening a gold mine right in our front yard.” Hill hired public...
Read MoreYour Lovers Will Despise You
During its first fifteen years, my software company only worked with domestic clients. In the late nineties, we landed Oxford University Press (a terrific feather in our cap), and a few years later, a French company approached us. Actually, they approached two U.S. software companies. For the next six months, both companies passionately courted the French company, but in the end, they...
Read MoreRewiring My Fears
After four years of trying to sell our old house, we finally moving into our new house last August. To prepare it for retreats, I’ve been immersed in chores: creating a new kitchen, installing new cabinets, making a desk, and rewiring about twenty light switches to link them to Alexa. All things I’ve done before: plumbing, carpentry, and wiring. Now that the house-updates are done, I...
Read MoreGifts and Gods
When I fly, I never talk to the person next to me. I sit quietly and read a book while they sit quietly and watch a video, just as God ordained airline passengers to behave. But every once in a while, I accidentally slip into a conversation that causes me to question my silent-flying philosophy. Last week I flew home from a Hearing God Conference in Colorado. The man next to me asked me if I...
Read MoreIntimate Theology
Two years ago I met with a man who had left his job to pursue mission work. He had devoted his remaining years to helping other people create a legacy of their lives: to end well and to leave behind bushels of fruit. Yet he was frustrated by the seeming fruitlessness of his own mission. When he talked with friends, they were more concerned with careers, finances, children, and marriages. He...
Read MoreMeeting Jesus in Mystery
I recently read an article in which the author rejects any kind of fear of God. He especially hates the beavers’ descriptions of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: “I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion” [says Susan]. “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs Beaver. “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking,...
Read MoreShut Down by a Sneer
Six weeks ago, I flew back from a Hearing God retreat in Seattle. I sat next to a young man—thirty-ish—who was returning home from a job interview. He scoffed at the interview process, saying he was interrogated by a bunch of “suits.” “Suits?” I asked, “Surely no one actually wore a coat and tie.” “Naw, they were just puffed up buffoons, hot air balloons, all show and no...
Read MoreOur Biggest Problem Is Our Heroism
On my twelfth birthday, I received four birthday cards, each with a personal message. My grandfather, my parents, my oldest brother, and an elder at church each took time to pray for me, and each of them wrote something remarkably similar. They said, “When I prayed for you, I sensed God say, ‘You are to listen to God’s people and to speak to God’s people.’” I immediately...
Read MoreInvaded
Growing up, I had two close friends: one came from a devout, Christian family, and the other came from a devout, atheist family. One family went to church Sunday mornings and prayer meetings Wednesday night. The other played golf on Sundays and watched TV on Wednesdays. Apart from Sundays and Wednesdays (and perhaps personal prayer times), the lives of my friends’ parents looked identical....
Read MoreThe Deceptive Danger of Natural Gifting
I attended the University of Michigan in the 1970’s (like, before indoor plumbing). I joined a campus ministry that emphasized community, worship, and outreach. It was a great group. About one hundred and fifty of us sacrificed to live in the dorms all four years for the sake of outreach—and believe me, living in those dorms was a sacrifice. We roomed with, did laundry with, and...
Read MoreVandalizing God
I attended a magnet high school in Detroit, Michigan. Cass Tech was a university preparatory school that emphasized science and the arts. One night before an art showing, a vandal broke in, defaced multiple paintings, and took a hammer to dozens of sculptures. Imagine the angry anguish of the victims: the lost hours of creativity, the shattered dreams of masterpieces. But the hours and...
Read MoreHearing God in the Abundance of His Methods
Most believers long for—desperately long for—God’s voice, but most of us experience silence. Scripture says, “God speaks in many and diverse ways, but nobody notices” (Job 33:14). We miss his voice because he’s not a paint-by-number God. He speaks in ways we don’t expect. Well-meaning people often mislead us when they describe their conversations with God. Their...
Read MoreBetrayed
Last week I woke up in a nightmare. The dream seemed real, like an IMAX theater with heart-throbbing surround-sound and mountain-shaking sub-woofers. I dreamt of a friend’s betrayal from years ago, and I felt the naked fury, pain, and shame wash over me yet again. Sooner or later—and most likely sooner—we will all experience a betrayal. I don’t mean a stab in the back: I mean a...
Read MoreI Was Ashamed of Myself
I was small for my age. When I graduated from high school, I was 5 feet 7 inches and 120 pounds. (I added 2 inches and 25 pounds in the first two years of college.) In middle school, I was even smaller. When I was twelve, my younger (but taller) sister and a friend of hers began to chant, “Sam is short, shorty-pants, skinny-pants, dinky Sam!” And I slugged her. My dad witnessed it. He...
Read MoreWhat A Fool I Was!
Shortly after graduating from university, I took a trip with my new boss to a conference. He was about to give an important presentation, but over dinner he remarked that he hadn’t had a haircut for a long time. He wished he looked more presentable. I offered to cut his hair for him. He asked how good I was. I replied, “I’ve never had a complaint.” I had never had a complaint...
Read MoreLiving a 4th Quarter Life
One hundred and twenty-two months ago today, I sat at my desk with no appointments, no tasks to perform, no clients to serve, and no employees to pacify. My desk was empty. So was my mind. I had absolutely no clue what I should do for the next ten minutes of my life. Much less the next ten days or their following ten years. Until that purposeless day, years ago, my entire life had been...
Read MoreFear for a Son
Lisa and I bore fruitless until late in life, Wondering were we physically broken Or spiritually barren? A pastor, son, and grandson of pastors, I felt I was losing faith. In prayer one day, as luck would have it, I heard the voice of God, As clear as crystal and large as Imax, “I am real,” he convicted, “You don’t understand.” When she announced her expectations Most were...
Read MoreSpiritual but Not Religious
Fifteen years ago, I was dining alone in New York City when I overheard a Christian woman ask a friend for dating advice. She had met two men on eHarmony. One said he goes to church and the other said he was “spiritual but not religious.” I thought his line was clever. Clever turns of phrase thrill me. I collect them the way my sister-in-law collects stamps: It’s not the size of the...
Read MoreMission Idolatry
Last summer I met with a pastor who serves a church near a large campus. As the university grew in prestige, it attracted thousands of international students, many of whom had little exposure to Christianity. So the church began to reach out to them with language classes, tutoring, and members who “adopt” students into their homes. The church also changed their Sunday morning worship...
Read MoreWe Buried the Hatchet
Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I moved into a lovely farmhouse in the country. But in our hunt for that house, we made huge blunders in understanding (or misunderstanding) each other, and those communication errors stressed our marriage. Within a few years, those growing tensions contributed to significant marriage difficulties. We saw a Christian counselor, and after an extended time...
Read MoreOld-fashioned Pharisees with a Modern-day Makeover
You and I are just normal folk: we struggle to make lasting friendships. But we also know people who casually stroll into a room of strangers, and leave with a dozen new friends, three lunch dates, and a personal introduction to someone’s dear old grandmother. We wish we were more like them: delightful and enchanting. Last summer I read a BBC article entitled, Tricks to Make Yourself...
Read MoreMeasuring Fruit
My father pastored five different churches between 1949 and 1994. His first four churches averaged 200 members, and his last church grew from 250 to 750 during his ten years of care. A few years before dad retired from that last, rapidly growing church, I came home for Christmas. We went out for coffee, and he shared with me some reflections on church growth. When he pastored his first four...
Read MoreAn Unearthly Delight
Sometimes I hear God best in surprises. Seemingly unrelated circumstances suddenly unite, and their merger stirs something in my heart. Like a succession of waves on a beach, one last surge dissolves my sandcastles. This last month I talked with: A despairing man whose ministry seems stagnant, and all his work seem fruitless; Another man who keeps a tally in the front of his Bible of all...
Read MoreWhen Trusting in the Lord Doesn’t Work
A college friend of mine watched every episode of Marcus Welby, M. D. (the TV series about a small town, family doctor), and my friend wanted nothing more than to be a like-minded, caring, personal physician. My friend aggressively pursued his pre-med studies, but he also countered the competitive culture of his program by tutoring other pre-med students. His life verse was, “Blessed is...
Read MoreWhy Won’t We Admit the Evil of Our Deeds?
When I began Beliefs of the Heart, a friend suggested I adopt a Comment Policy. His site already had one, and I copied his almost word for word. The short version is: Keep comments short and sweet. In the last seven years, about five thousand comments have been posted. Out of those five thousand comments, I have only deleted five, from four different people. I deleted one comment because...
Read MoreSharing Our Victories or Our Struggles?
Many years ago, I met with a Christian leader who had influenced me in my youth. As we talked, he offered to give me input on a recent sermon series I had preached. A month later, he shared a few positive comments, and then he added this critique: “I think you share your weaknesses too much. People need to hear our victories more than our struggles.” I think he is mistaken. The...
Read MoreShifting Gears
My parents moved from Detroit to Philadelphia in September 1975. I started university the same month, and I paid my tuition, room, and board by continuing my high school janitor job in Detroit, about a half-hour drive from Ann Arbor. That October—forty-two years ago this month—I drove my white, 1967 VW Beetle to visit my parents in their new house for the weekend. It was a...
Read MoreCall Me Ishmael
I need to sacrifice something to God, and I don’t want to. After months of trying to sell our house, we signed the closing documents a few weeks ago. My wife and I have painstakingly pursued our hunt for a new home. For me, it’s been more of a frantic, obsessive, compulsive quest. We’ve exhaustively examined hundreds of homes, but only one fit our unique criteria for layout and...
Read MoreBringing God Our Emptiness
My leadership at my church feels fruitless and my last few sermons stank; in the first 34 weeks of this year, I published only 25 “weekly” articles; and all my service to a partner charity feels last minute, like I’m doing everything in the nick of time. Recently, I spend less time with my wife than I want; my brother (who lives in Australia) is visiting for two months and I’ve...
Read MoreSelf-Deception
I once visited an executive at a Christian publishing house. He wondered aloud how he should counsel an employee of his who was pregnant out of wedlock. While he was “wondering,” the woman herself burst into his office in tears. She had shared her situation in confidence with the executive, and then she discovered he had asked several people for their “wisdom” in counseling her...
Read MoreHearing God When Seeking Guidance
My wife and I spent the last two and a half years selling our house. Now we have a buyer who will let us stay in our house a few extra months, so we have time to continue our search for a new home. Which is not going well. Before even looking for our next house, my wife and I prayed, brainstormed our ideas onto a whiteboard, and we easily, and mutually, agreed on three priorities: layout,...
Read MoreUnpleasant Grace
One evening years ago, I babysat my three sons, which meant I read a book upstairs as they wrestled each other downstairs. A shriek rang out and I raced down to find David, my son five-year-old son, holding his head as blood gushed through his fingers. One of his brothers had pushed him off the sofa, and he hit his head against the corner of an end table. It opened an inch-long gash on...
Read MoreThe Humility of Our Mysterious Purpose
Two and a half years ago, my wife and I decided to sell our house. We followed commonsense wisdom: we decluttered closets, upgraded appliances, and replaced old wallpaper with fresh paint. Then we put our beloved house on the market. And nada. Well, not quite nothing. We had multiple almost-buyers, couples who claimed they would make an offer by the weekend. But an obstacle always cropped...
Read MoreSurprised by Ignorance
During my sophomore year at university, I met a freshman new to college life. His dad was a business-exec in a wealthy suburban neighborhood; my dad was the pastor of a poor church in a dodgy Detroit neighborhood. He studied performance violin; I studied physics. His dad frequently traveled; my dad never missed family dinner. His older sisters taught him boys were naughty, and to flee...
Read MoreIt’s Only Stupid If
I recently heard a popular Christian speaker tell of a “rich spiritual exercise” he began practicing in secret. A friend of his encouraged him for years to try it, and for years he resisted. Finally, he gave it a shot. And he loves it. The friend who introduced him to the spiritual practice is an Eastern Guru, and the exercises themselves are born out of Eastern Mysticism. At first,...
Read MoreChristian Meditation
In February 1978, I sensed God call me to spend a summer volunteering on a kibbutz in Israel (a communal farm that provides room and board for six days of work). I asked friends to help me discern if I heard God correctly. Some were pretty sure it was from God, and others were certain it wasn’t. After deliberation, I decided to go, but not until April. The deadline to register as a...
Read MoreBulldozing Friendships
A couple years ago, I experienced a growing concern for a friend of mine. Something in his ministry approach seemed discordant with its purpose. I waited a few months before talking with him. (Who knows? Maybe my observations were wrong.) When a perfect example finally arose, I shared my unease. But to say I “shared it” exaggerates my graciousness. Instead, I bluntly confronted him....
Read MoreThe Pig in London and the Lamb in Israel
When I was twenty years old, I wanted to spend a summer abroad, but as a college student I could barely afford ramen noodles. I found work on a communal farm in Israel. For a bit of manual labor, they provided me food, a room, ten dollars a month, and a pack of cigarettes a day. (It was the cigarettes that sold me.) The weekend before I departed, I heard my first talk ever on being a...
Read MoreWe Are Strangers in a Strange Land
“My wife’s ninety-year-old mother died last Thursday and we mourn. Someone reminded me that when we grieve, “we do not grieve like those who have no hope.” I grew up in a family that camped. My father was a pastor who got four weeks of vacation. We took all four weeks at once, camping the whole month of July, mostly in wooded campsites next to windy lakes. We hauled a small Sunfish...
Read MoreDo We Practice Godless Faith?
I recently met an elder who was whose faith brought him great distress. Three years ago, his small but growing church received tithes that exceeded two hundred thousand dollars, for the first time ever. But this is the rest of the story. After seeking God, the pastor, elders, and deacons collectively felt led to invest in their youth. In faith, they unanimously decided to increase their...
Read MoreThe History of the World is a Long Story of Bad Answers
My wife’s and my first home was a trilevel, with only two of the floors completed. We decided to finish the third floor ourselves, creating a family room, office, and second bathroom. I had done lots of carpentry, wiring, and plumbing before. But I had never mudded drywall. I figured the drywall mud would sand down easily, so after hanging the drywall, I caked on mud like a teenage boy piles...
Read MoreGazing on Beauty
Most of my life I failed to appreciate beauty. Oh, I loved the look of sails on the sea and snow on the mountains, but mostly I liked sailing those sailboats and skiing those slopes. Fifteen years ago, I learned to scuba dive. On our first dive, my sons and I wobbled our way to the sea in unwieldly gear, inserted our mouthpieces, lowered our heads beneath the waves, and dived. In fifteen...
Read MoreWhat’s So Bad About Works Righteousness?
The week before Christmas I heard the best argument against Christianity I’ve heard in years. I met with a professional woman who had worked seven years for near minimum wage in the administration of a Christian ministry. When they decided to move their headquarters, they abruptly dismissed her with two weeks’ severance. She felt used and discarded. And she felt anger: How...
Read MoreWhen “Good” Christians Do Bad Things
I hate the presidential election season, the rhetoric, emotional responses, hushed conversations, and mud-slinging candidates. I especially hate those damned, political phone polls! Don’t worry, this is not about the election. It’s about when good Christians do bad things. And yet, weeks after the elections, the rhetoric is still meteoric and the mudslinging has not abated. Friends of...
Read MoreLiving a Staged Life
A year ago, my wife and I decided to sell the farmhouse we’ve lived in for twenty-five years. While we were excited about moving into the next chapter of our life, the grown kids were less enthusiastic: our daughter’s next blog was entitled, Don’t Buy This House. Nevertheless, we followed all the commonsense guidelines for home-sales: We decluttered our closets, removed beds and...
Read MoreCircumstantial Evidence
A pastor-friend of mine once went through a series of disappointments. His favor with his followers faltered, his once fruitful ministry began to fail, and many of his former friends became his biggest opponents. And that was before events really got bad. My friend was well known. If I told you his name, you’d probably recognize it. And his meteoric fall from favor was not due to any...
Read MoreTwin Motivations
I once had a client whose business-gifting outshined the stars of the Harvard Business Review. Yet she scorched everything she touched. Relationships went rancid, projects were poisoned by punitive criticism, and her management style left associates embittered. We met for lunch a couple times a year for much of the 90’s. Over time, my opinion of her zigzagged from initial awe, to...
Read MoreThe Starving Lion
A business owner I barely knew once phoned to see if we could meet. He was an aggressive entrepreneur, a roaring lion among his peers. Yet on the phone, he seemed different, hesitant, a bit humbler, perhaps broken. He certainly choked up a few times in our short conversation. We met the following Friday, which happened to be his fortieth birthday. He appeared vulnerable and exhausted, and...
Read MoreRelationship or Religion?
My best friend in the world, from ages eight to eighteen (except for three long months), was Mark Maxam. Inseparable companions, we walked to school together, slept over on weekends, jumped off church roofs together, and shared every conceivable secret. We also wrestled. One day, when I was ten, Mark put me in a scissor-lock that I couldn’t break. So, I bit him. He released me with the...
Read MoreI Wonder if Our Agendas Crucify the Life of God Within Us
Seven years ago I met a mother in anguish because her smart, capable son was living in an abandoned house, playing reggae music on the streets, and panhandling when the busking money fell short. He bathed irregularly and communicated inconsistently. After he graduated from high school, his mom enrolled him at Stanford while he took the summer off to hitchhike around America. He called...
Read MoreThe Riddle of the Psalms
For the last forty years, my prayer time has started with the Psalms. And for forty years they have alternately given me hope and then pulled that rug of hope from beneath me. They make great promises, but when I pray them with honest self-reflection, the promises fade away. Look at the hopeful assurances offered: Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. (Ps. 27:3) The...
Read MoreBeware of Smiling Crocodiles
I recently met with a three friends to discuss a Saturday event we were hosting. I thought a previous decision was a spiritual mistake, and I pleaded that we reconsider. Not only did I plead, I urged and pushed, and then I rammed my point home with a metaphorical baseball bat. My counsel, intensity, and insistence backed them into a corner. And it all backfired. I’ve always pictured my...
Read MoreThe First Time I Ever Heard God
I was ten years old the first time I heard God speak. It was autumn, a new school year had just begun, and a new fad was spreading among my adolescent classmates. Cussing. I was raised in a conservative Christian church where Sunday school teachers taught us the Ten Commandments. The teachers were vague about adultery, and I wasn’t concerned. They were also unclear about coveting, and I...
Read MoreOur Plans, God’s Plans
Last week’s ideal plan didn’t translate itself into reality. Instead, life happened. While on an errand, I met a man and we talked for two hours; a friend called to say her father is dying and I went to visit him; and our water main sprung a leak, drenching the basement. I’m traveling west for a retreat, so last week was filled with dozens of tasks to get ready. I use a planning app...
Read MoreThree Keys to The Seven Steps that Reveal The Five Secrets of Success
I recently feel a need for action, practically (selling our house, helping a ministry I support, promoting my book) and humanly (a friend in divorce proceedings and other friends with health or financial woes). A season of doing has descended on me. But where should I best invest myself? There is no shortage of advice. Recently, resources I used to like for their insights have transformed...
Read MoreHow To Be IN But Not OF — That Is The Question
My grandfather was a missionary in China from 1917 to 1936. He once told me of some early Pentecostal missionaries to China. They decided it was unnecessary to study Chinese before traveling because they “spoke in tongues.” But when they disembarked in Hong Kong, their abysmal language skills made them a laughing stock. My grandfather (who was also a Pentecostal missionary) said to...
Read MoreWhy Don’t We Hear God’s Voice?
Humanity was designed to hear God. It’s in our DNA. So why is his voice so rare? Scripture says, “God speaks in many and diverse ways, but nobody notices (Job 33:14). We miss his voice because he’s not a paint-by-number God. He speaks in ways we don’t expect. We often hear well-meaning people describe conversations with God in ways that mislead. Their exchanges with God sound like...
Read MoreThe Fires of Waiting
I’ve always disliked waiting. As a kid, Christmas Eve was torture. Being on hold with Comcast feels endless (the same sappy song repeating every ninety seconds). Last August Kregel Publications offered to publish my book on Hearing God, but their schedule meant it’s release would be delayed ten interminable months. I think God is teaching me to wait. On him. Of all God’s lessons,...
Read MoreHearing God in Our Suffering
Most of my high school friends were obsessed with college-prep, extra-curricular activities, and jobs. Except for one friend. Like a lion, he could sniff out a wounded schoolmate from a thousand yards. And like a lamb, he sat with them in their grief. One day we heard a lecture on handling pain. Much of the class was indifferent, but this one friend listened with fixed attention. My...
Read MoreWhat’s So Important About Hearing God?
“For God does speak–now one way, now another–though man may not perceive it” (Job 33:14). Humanity was created to be in a relationship with God; not God as a simple supplement, nor God as mere miracle worker. God created us to know him personally, as a father with a child, friend to friend, and even (breathtakingly intimate) as a husband with a wife. At the beginning of time, Adam and...
Read MoreWhen God Seems Silent
Of all the ways God speaks, the one I like least (and fear most) is his silence. The absence of his voice seems to come at the moments I most desperately long for a word. In those moments, his silence feels like God at his cruelest. We cry out to God, we promise to do exactly as he says, and we get silence. It hardly seems fair. Paradoxically, God often speaks the loudest in his silence....
Read MoreHearing God: Learning to Recognize His Voice in Meditation
God speaks time and again—in various ways—but nobody notices” (Job 33:14). Central to the nature of the human race is a desire to hear God. Well, more than mere desire. We crave a connection with the divine, somehow to see the face of God, to touch and be touched. It’s an inborn, inherent ingredient of our humanity. Scripture says God is always speaking, but we miss it. It’s...
Read MoreHearing God: Conversation Is the Point
When I was growing up, my dad taught me to sail our small Sunfish sailboat. We took month-long summer vacations, and we always camped on lakes, so we could challenge the wind every day. I probably sailed with my dad for a hundred hours before I took the boat out on my own. My dad would have me handle either the sail or the rudder. Of our many hours sailing together, I’ll bet his actual...
Read MoreCourage and Cowardice
The worst riot in Detroit’s history broke out the summer of 1967: forty-three people were killed and over eleven hundred injured. As the violence escalated, my father packed us kids into the station wagon and drove us in to the center of the action (every other car was headed out). Police tried to wave us away while we witnessed looting, fights, arrests, and arson. My father was...
Read MoreWhen Success Turns Sour
Fifteen years ago, a client of mine became president of his company. It all came about through a fluke (he was a mid-level manager), good luck, and a couple coincidences. He was very humble about his promotion, “It was just God’s grace. I hadn’t wanted it, I didn’t deserve it, and I never tried for it. God just dropped it on my lap.” Within a couple years he began to attribute...
Read MoreWhen Obedience Doesn’t Make Sense
When my family moved to Detroit, the summer between my first and second grade, Tommy was the first friend I made. He too was the son of a pastor—so we had that in common—but his mother hated the idea of punishment. Tommy’s mother caught us smoking cigarette butts behind their church which was right next door to their house. (How could we have been so stupid?) She explained that the...
Read MoreAs Long as We Both Shall Live
Last weekend my wife and I attended two weddings. Both couples used traditional vows: To have and to hold, from this day forward, For better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, Forsaking all others, as long as we both shall live. My wife and I got married thirty-three years ago, but our church met in the YMCA, so we asked another...
Read MoreWait For It
Eight years ago, my niece Amy married Nathan, a great guy. They moved into a starter home in the country. Over time, and with the addition of a son and daughter, the small house felt smaller. With a third child on the way, they decided to sell their house and find a larger home, a place closer to town with neighbors for the kids and a garage for the cars. They put their house on the...
Read More
My father died sixteen years ago last Friday, April Fool’s Day, 1996. (I often wonder if he planned that day.) A week before his death, knowing his death was imminent, my father made a suggestion. Deathbed advice has power other suggestions can’t match. My dad told me that many of the people he counseled lived their adult lives being controlled by their parents. Most parental-control...
Read MoreWhy Do Our Kids Reject Christianity?
Why do so many people—people with incredible conversion stories—parent children who abandon Christianity? History overflows with great saints whose offspring lose faith: Samuel was a mighty prophet of God. His sons were a mess. David was a man after God’s own heart. His children were a disaster. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were founded on the gospel. Now they lead the...
Read MoreWho is Your Hero?
Sometimes God speaks through a careful choreography of life events: conversations, readings, observations, and even the occasional media clip. Suddenly, all the pieces snap together, and we sigh (internally so no one hears us), “Aha!” This morning, I had one of those moments of clarity. Over the past couple weeks: With friends, I pondered why some people and ministries are wildly...
Read MoreSpiritual Judo
I reached my fitness high water mark at the age of twenty-four. I ran thirty miles a week, sweated three hundred pushups a day, and I brawled each week in the local boxing club. In the midst of my peak physical prowess (never mind its short duration), I met a man with a black belt in Judo. He was forty-ish, chubby, and he wheezed as he walked. I think his exercise routine consisted of lifting...
Read MoreThe Nonsense of S.M.A.R.T. Sense
Is modern business wisdom destroying Christian spirituality? Oswald Chambers once asked, “[Do we consider ourselves] so amazingly important that we really wonder what God Almighty does before we wake up in the morning?” Contemporary sages tell us to apply business models to our spiritual work. They admonish us to make S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and...
Read MoreNavigating The Mountain of Biblical Authority
My daughter’s boyfriend, Matt, works in the High-Tech Performance Apparel industry. (I always thought the height of high-tech apparel was the Converse high-top.) He’s an avid sportsman and a NOLS leader trained in Alaskan sea kayaking, mountaineering, and glacier-navigation. Matt recently described two kinds of people who buy performance gear and apparel. Some buy because they use...
Read MoreThe Hope of Our Suffering
As a college student, I wanted to spend a summer abroad, but money was so tight that Raman noodles were my Sunday treat. I found a communal farm in Israel (sort of like modern WWOOFING) that provided room and board plus ten dollars a month (and a daily pack of cigarettes!) for simple, manual labor. I signed up. I talked with a few people who had “volunteered” in the past. They said...
Read MoreHearing God in Scripture
When I was twelve, my parents taught me to read a chapter of Proverbs a day. Proverbs has thirty-one chapters, so the day of the month determined which chapter to read. (Some months, of course, have fewer than thirty-one days, and I just skipped those last chapters without guilt.) After ten months of Proverbs, I finally—dare I say it?—got bored. So on a whim, I decided to read...
Read MoreReady to role up your sleeves and do this?
No matter how well put-together our life is, we still wonder if there is more: more purpose, more passion, and a more vibrant relationship with God. We wonder, “Does God speaks to someone like me? Does he give a significant purpose for someone like me? Is there more?” The answer to these questions is, absolutely yes! As writers, speakers, and personal advisors, we have helped thousands of...
Read MoreLearning to Doubt our Doubts
My natural inclination is to believe life will turn out just fine; I lean towards the positive. It’s not that I think every day will be sunshine and daisies (my home is in Michigan, the birthplace of gray skies), it’s just that I believe the sun will come out eventually. Last month my outlook on life was normal: optimistic. I had reasonably high hopes that my next book will sell well...
Read MoreWhat’s Wrong with this Picture?
I’m in the middle of another bout with bronchitis (I think I’m losing), so I planned to skip my blog this week. But last Sunday, a TV advertisement for a Christian dating site changed my mind. I’ve never used an online dating site (I found my wife before Al Gore invented the internet), but I know many believers who found like-minded spouses online. The concept makes sense. Last...
Read MoreIt’s Time for an Execution
When I was a teenager, family and friends used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. (Now they just ask me when I will grow up). I always wanted to be a missionary. Immediately after college I began mission work in Europe. But one day, during a “normal” (that is, non-exciting) prayer time, I heard God speak two words: “Not now.” I sensed him say that if I did mission work...
Read MoreHearing God in our Emptiness
The angriest emails I’ve ever received were responses to my articles about self-love and self-esteem. And yet . . . yet I remain convinced that the greatest obstacle to hearing God lies in precisely our self-love and self-esteem. Most of us unconsciously believe that God speaks only to those who are mature and pure. To cover our inadequacies, we jury-rig our hearts with positive...
Read MoreSeeing God Through His Metaphors
A friend once told me of a dark moment in his life, a time when he felt alone, frightened, and falling apart. He described his interior life like this: “I was an engine without oil.” My friend instinctively took a common but abstract experience—loneliness—and brought it to life by painting a picture of his pain. He imagined his life as a movie screen and he projected onto himself...
Read MoreWhat is the Sound of God’s Voice When We Sin?
I once told a friend of a recurring temptation of mine. Over the next month, he shared my secret with a dozen other friends, spicing up the tale with the fib that I had yielded to the temptation—even though I hadn’t. His betrayal shocked me. I skipped several lunch and dinner appointments, unsure who had heard and what they thought. His disclosure also angered me. I obsessed over his...
Read MoreHearing God in Suffering: How to Live a Dying Life
I had a high school friend whose life overflowed with compassion. The rest of us were obsessed with college-prep, extra-curricular activities, and jobs. But he, like a lion, could sniff out a wounded schoolmate from a thousand yards. And like a lamb, he sat with them in their grief. One day we heard a lecture on handling pain. Most of the class was indifferent—bored even—but my friend...
Read MoreHearing God to See Him
Thirty-three years ago I took a woman to a Gilbert and Sullivan play as a first date. Before the evening of our get-together, I had a collection of facts about her: she was a farmer’s daughter, she was a Social Worker, and she was cute. After the evening of our get-together, I told my parents that I had just met the woman I would marry. What happened during those few, short hours? I had...
Read MoreSqueezing Bad News from the Good News
Last spring I attended a wedding and heard an impressive pastor preach a stirring sermon on a powerful passage called The Kenosis (or The Emptying). It’s my favorite passage on humility: Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form,...
Read MoreLet’s Rethink the Way We Think
Circumstances, commitments, and surprises (the unpleasant kind) overwhelmed me the past six weeks. I had too much to do and too little time to do it. Forces from competing goals pulled me in opposite directions. Two weeks ago I arrived home from a retreat in Colorado, physically and emotionally drained. But I woke up the next morning in an adrenalin-induced frenzy, desperate to prepare...
Read MoreThe Heart of Spiritual Warfare
Plato urges us: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” If you are breathing, you are under a spiritual assault. The question we face is not, “Are we under attack?” but, “What is the heart of the attack?” Let me tell a recent story of mine. See if you can recognize the field of battle for the spiritual warfare. Two friends and I host a weekly podcast on...
Read MoreCommon Sense or Nonsense?
The speaker was persuasive and moving. He asked us to hug a friend, stomp on the floor, and even pinch our own forearms. It didn’t hurt that he could have been a GQ model: six foot three, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and funny. When he looked each of us in the eye, we felt his personal care. The conference theme was Knowing God. Its most popular presenter was this man with passion for feeling...
Read MoreFashions and Outfits, Fads and Beliefs
When I was ten years old, bell-bottoms flooded the fashion world like a tsunami. They were everywhere, but my mother wouldn’t let me wear them. (Her lame excuse was something like, “You shouldn’t be a slave to fads.” I think she just disliked them.) Children always tell their parents that they are the only kid at school without an “X”: a cell phone, an iPad, or a personal...
Read MoreThe Hard Edge of the Good News
Last week, a delay by God disappointed me. It also shocked me awake like smelling salts. For ten years, I’ve wanted (and waited) to write a book on hearing God. Last month, I finally finished it. And I’ve paid a professional to edit it, commissioned an artist to design it, and found a proofreader to fine-tune it and a marketing expert to promote it. I originally planned to publish...
Read MoreWhy Don’t We Think First? For a Change
A couple years ago I had an awful day in the middle of a horrible week in the midst of a bad month. A sniffle turned into post-nasal drip which turned into bronchitis—for the third time in five months. When I inhaled, it felt like shards of glass shredding my lungs. I canceled everything so I could have some recovery time. But, later, that same day, I ended up with six hours of...
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