What is shame?The Son of God, while on a rescue mission of love, was misunderstood insulted betrayed denied ...
Shamed people rarely take stands against injustice. Such a stand would mean they would have to go public, which would only double the shame. Instead, once we are shamed, most of us try to make sense o...
You would think that anyone would jump at the chance to escape shame. But that isn’t the way it happens. Though shamed people are happy to guide others out of their dark prisons, they are always sure...
You don’t really know who you are until you have gone through suffering.
Yes, genuine pain and loss coexisted with the deliverance, but it did not have the last word. Its power to hurt him was weakened because he could see the bigger things God was doing in, for, and throu...
Worry’s magnetic attraction can only be broken by a stronger attraction, and David is saying [in Psalm 27] we can only find that attraction in God Himself.
With our touch, Jesus becomes our scapegoat. In his touch, Jesus takes our sin and absorbs our shame (Psalm 69:9; Romans 15:3), and we receive his righteousness. If you prefer symmetry in your relatio...
When the fear of the Lord matures in you, Christ becomes irresistible.
When in doubt, look at the Lord. Lift up your eyes (Numbers 21:4–9). That will be something it will take all your life to master, but what better time to start than now? Still, you can’t imagine being...
What does your worship look like? Anxiety, despair, shopping, primping, acting like someone you aren’t, acting stupid when you are smart, or acting like you don’t care when you do? Why do you do it? Y...
We crave autonomy. Autonomy is closely linked to arrogance. They are both expressions of human pride, but autonomy suggests that we want to be separate from more than over. We want to establish the ru...
We are more concerned about looking stupid (a fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (a fear of God).
To look to Christ to meet our perceived psychological needs is to Christianize our lusts. We are asking God to give us what we want, or so we can have more happiness, not holiness, in our lives.
Think about the nature of depression. Life is turned inward. You already have a sense that, for all practical purposes, God is not present. Add to that your relentless condemnation and pervasive self-...
The rule of thumb is that if someone is able to be verbally or physically abusive, he or she is able to understand that the behavior is wrong.
The important thing was the shedding of blood. Sounds barbaric, but the Old Testament was reminding us that there was a significant cost involved in moving from unclean to clean. You didn’t have to pa...
The feeling of emptiness is usually a sign that we have put our trust in something that can’t sustain us. It reminds us that we were created to trust in our heavenly Father and nothing else. We were c...
The fastest way to bring a wrecking ball to our skewed interpretations is through confession.
The details of how faith works in spiritual warfare are well known but easily forgotten.
The character of God is the basis for our connection to him, not our intrinsic worth. Self-worth, or anything we think would make us acceptable to God, would suit our pride but it has the disturbing s...