Living as a Grace-Focused Optimist is as crucial to living for God as oxygen is to your lungs. When you’re optimistic that God’s always up to your good you’re like a spiritual Navy Seal who’s fully prepared for whatever you face. In dependence on him, Grace-Focused Optimists glorify and enjoy God. The Grace SWAT Team […]
He calls it his “thorn in the flesh.” “He” being the Apostle Paul; “it” being a problem that was a rock in his shoe he couldn’t shake out. He leaves his thorn as nameless as Arlington’s unknown soldier. He simply calls it a “weakness.” But he insists that, for a while at least, it blistered […]
I read my Bible every day. I miss a day about as seldom as a teenager goes a day without texting. Not often. I read my Bible because I am a Grace-Focused Optimist and it’s the Operating Manual for Grace-Focused Optimism. Living as a Grace-Focused Optimist is living with The Christian Attitude toward life. It’s […]
Since its been several weeks since our last post in the series “How You Can Help Your Church Be a Force for God” we thought a brief review might keep you from feeling like you’re coming into the movie twenty minutes late. We saw in part one of this four-part series that it’s by super-sizing […]
How do you become someone who helps your church become the force for God he wants it to be? You begin super-sizing your prayers. How do you begin super-sizing your prayers? By making the Apostle Paul’s prayers for the church your prayers for your church. Paul prays super-sized prayers. Meaning what? Meaning he didn’t pray […]
God wants your church to be such a force for him that it infuriates the devil. And God wants you to help your church become a force Satan has to reckon with the way Goliath had to reckon with David. Don’t you want that too? Don’t you want to be someone who helps your church […]
I had to. The only thing I can compare it to is holding your firstborn for the first time. It’s not as significant as that. But it is almost as moving. What comes close to cradling your own flesh and blood? Standing in a bookstore and seeing your literary firstborn on a shelf. That happened […]
“He is really well off.” Who comes to mind when you hear that? Bill Gates, the man who’s Fort Knox rich? Tom Cruise, the charismatic star who’s still as bankable as anyone in Hollywood and as recognizable as anyone in the world? Or maybe Paul Finebaum’s pal Laura Rutledge, the woman who’s making waves in […]
Roger Kahn is one of America’s greatest sportswriters. Some might say the greatest. Robert Frost was one of American’s greatest poets. Some might say the greatest. Since poetry is more important than sports, Frost was literary royalty. So it was special when the poet invited the sportswriter to visit him. After the visit, as Kahn […]
Life’s a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A mixture of good and bad. Of treats and terrors; happiness and horror; pleasure and pain. We call the bad “evil.” Sometimes it’s particularly bad. Think, for example, of victims of terrorism, pedophilia, or a drunk driver. When particularly bad evil happens a question rises, demanding an answer […]
