Category: Christian Life
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Anger Road is a Toll Road
Anyone who has driven one of the newer toll roads knows how it works. There is no attendant waving you through, no booth where you hand over a few coins and go on your way. There is just a camera overhead, and the charges keep adding up the farther you drive, whether you are watching…
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Decisions Seem Easy When They’re Not Yours to Make
By John W. Crowder Difficult decisions always seem easy to those who have no responsibility for them. There is a certain kind of confidence that comes from standing outside a decision. You can see it in the coworker who knows exactly what he’d do if he were the boss, the fan who knows exactly which…
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Why Peace Feels Impossible
We live in a culture that honors fighting, respects confrontation, and encourages arguing. It seems like everyone is always mad! Peace seems impossible because it is not something that comes naturally to us. And that is exactly the problem Paul is naming in Romans 12. Beginning at verse 14, he gives a list of hard…
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Full Books, Heavy Hearts
When we collect our hurts like emotional trading stamps. If you grew up in this part of Texas before 1980, you probably remember S&H Green Stamps. Every time you checked out at the grocery store the cashier would count out a strip of little green stamps based on how much you spent. You’d take them…
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When You Get Mad at Your Pastor
It happens more often than we like to admit. The pastor says something in a sermon that rubs us the wrong way, makes a decision we don’t like, or makes a comment in casual conversation that comes across as less than pastoral. How do we respond? Too often, people get angry and react in unhelpful…
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Do Not Journey Alone
The question worth wrestling with is not whether you need someone like this in your life. You do.
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It’s Just a Tie Unless You Know the Story
I wore a tie to church recently, which is rare for me. I usually save a tie for the Sundays when we share the Lord’s Supper. This one was white, and to anyone looking at it from the pew, it was nothing special. But I knew the story behind it, and that changed everything. When…
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A Light for the Ones We Can’t See Yet
A lighthouse is a strange thing when you stop to think about it. Nobody builds one for the people who are already safe in the harbor. The folks standing on the shore with their feet on dry ground do not need a beam of light sweeping across the water. The lighthouse exists for the boat…
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Room for One More
There is an empty chair sitting on our platform at church right now. The first Sunday people saw it, I’m sure they were wondering why a single chair was parked up front with nobody in it. It was there to remind us about the building we are planning. We do need the reminder, because we…
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