Not long ago I suffered a tremendous loss. The circumstances were complicated and relationships were broken. In the midst of all the pain, I noticed my heart felt like it was stuck full of pins and needles. It was a physical sensation in my chest. My heart felt small, tight, and hard like a pincushion.

I am not someone who spends much time noticing how my body feels—let alone ...

After many lessons learned from teaching the Bible for 10 years and having successfully launched a women's small group ministry at our former church, I wanted to take time to pray and research before launching a women's mentoring ministry. After reading a few articles and researching online, I read Regi Campbell's book Mentor Like Jesus, in which he presents Jesus as the world's ...

At some point we are faced with a decision that requires us to make a choice in which we are aware of our desire to discern the will of God in the matter. Now we discover that discernment is also a spiritual practice that does what all spiritual disciplines do: it offers us a concrete way of opening to the activity of God beyond what we can do for ourselves.

While it is beyond ...

After teaching Bible study for more than 10 years, I noticed that the Christian women who attended often did not live any differently than the women who never cracked open a Bible. I struggled while trying to figure out the disconnection between what the women claimed to know in contrast with their daily life choices. After careful study of Scripture, observations within the ...

When I go into Starbucks, I want my order to be just right. I prefer that my latte be made with one percent milk, two shots of espresso, and two shots of vanilla. I like it low foam and extra hot. But that's a little what you might call high maintenance, so I restrain myself from asking for all five at once!

The same invisible force that nudges me to test the barista's memory—and ...

Do you think of yourself as a theologian? When we hear the word theologian, we often we picture some older intellectual man—a professional academic sitting behind a desk piled with thick books in ancient languages. And there certainly are professional theologians who fit this description, busily teaching at seminaries and writing books. But theologian is a label that belongs ...

Maybe you've heard the common expression, "church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints." If you got into ministry thinking that the church is a utopia inhabited by "good Christian people" and free of inappropriate sexual relationships, addictions, and embezzlement, we hate to be the ones to tell you, but it's not. If we take sin seriously, we know that the church ...

To God Be the Olympic Glory

It's July, which means we now have less than a month until the 2012 Olympic Games begin in London. The quadrennial celebration of sport and global goodwill kicks off three weeks of swimming, track and field, gymnastics, and team handball on July 27th with an opening ceremony directed by Danny Boyle (of Slumdog Millionaire fame).

Among the female ...