The shattering [of shalom] moves us from a place of shalom to a place that is harsh and unrelenting. The shattering brings us a keen awareness that we are alone and in danger. We are on our own.
Tragedy always moves our story forward in a way shalom could never accomplish.
A denouement is not a complete or fully resolved ending but a satisfying closure to a story. [in French translates 'an untying, a relaxing of a knot of complexity']Denouement is the rest that comes wh...
Desire lies at the heart of who God made us to be, who we are at our core. Desire is both our greatest frailty and the mark of our highest beauty. Our desire completes us as we become One with our Lov...
Our ideal self is revealed in what we value (passion), how we understand the world (belief), and what we do to reach our ideal (behavior). Our passion, belief, and behavior fit together so intimately...
But the part of ourselves we hate the most is our longing to be wanted and enjoyed.
God is not bound by time, nor is our story. We desperately want our situation to be solved. We want resolution. But, God unfolds the plot in His own time. It is in our months or years of waiting that...
One of our greatest failures in our busy, driven culture is that we don't celebrate the temporary untying of a complex narrative...What is your style of celebrating an ending? Do you only throw large...
Fasting from any nourishment, activity, involvement or pursuit—for any season—sets the stage for God to appear. Fasting is not a tool to pry wisdom out of God's hands or to force needed insight about...
But if we honestly name the passionate desires of our heart, and if we risk seeing those desires come to be, the plot of our life story will begin to move with greater intentionality. Yet the only way...
Hope refuses to believe that the inevitable is so. What has always been and can’t change is an illusion; if anything is true, it is that change is inevitable, not that the inevitable will not change....
Because of the way God has made us, it is impossible finally and completely to deaden the soul. The soul will resurrect, in spite of the cruelty used to destroy it. It will pop up and then be slain ag...
We're in the presence of a good story when the flaw that shatters shalom is also the doorway to redemption... Whether it be our own flaw or the sin of others, God uses the raw material of sin to creat...
Tendency
The absence of tumult, more than its presence, is an enemy of the soul. God meets you in your weakness, not in your strength. He comforts those who mourn, not those who live above desperation. He reve...
If we enter our story in heartache, we will hear the whisper of the name that will one day be ours.
Repentance is an internal shift
We are to free the slaves because we were once slaves. Sabbath is a remembrance of the stale bondage of Egypt and the fresh air of our new garden given to us because of the faithfulness of God's coven...
To admit we are foolish, weak, and in need of repentance gives the vindictive and self-righteous camp plenty of ammunition to turn against us and to turn others against our leadership. But the alterna...
So take seriously the story that God has given you to live. It’s time to read your own life, because your story is the one that could set us all ablaze.
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