Here’s Part 2: “Whatever you do, don’t make an emotional decision!” How many times have you heard that advice? It sounds wise. After all, how many stories do we know of people who followed their emotions right off a cliff? We know of people who lost everything following anger or lust or greed. In a […]
Myth #1: God’s Not Emotional.
I remember seeing a Jesus movie as a kid, sometime in the middle seventies. The Jesus in that film was haunting. His long, blond hair hung limp down the sides of his gaunt face, framing piercing blue eyes that could see, I imagined, right into your heart. He spoke quietly. His words were delivered in […]
5 Things You Learned About Emotion in Church That Aren’t True.
Have you ever experienced a paradigm shift? This isn’t just learning new information. This is when you discover something that changes the way you see everything. It’s the difference between thinking that the earth might revolve around the sun, instead of the other way around. I’m in the middle of a paradigm shift right now. […]
No Emotional Growth? No Spiritual Growth.
There is no spiritual growth without emotional growth. Does that seem like an overstatement? Perhaps it’s taking things too far, but the more I think about this, the more it seems accurate. I have known people that on the outside seemed to have been pursuing spiritual growth for years, decades even. Yet they aren’t […]
Emotions Always Tell The Truth.
You’ve heard it somewhere. A decision has to be made. It’s complicated and there are different opinions and disagreement. At one point someone speaks up, “We just need to make a rational decision. We can’t let emotions cloud our judgement.” Our parents, our churches, our culture have all trained us deeply with the idea […]
Rich Mullins on what Christianity is Not.
Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved […]
A Worship Short-Circuit.
I was preaching from the book of Jonah once and came across an interesting thought about worship. Most people know the set-up to the story, of course. Jonah gets tapped by God to go “cry out” against the wickedness of the city of Nineveh. But Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire, and […]