• Grace in Daily Life,  Hope in Suffering

    God’s Provision re: My Fear of Inadvertent Heresy – Prof. Dennis Johnson

    Nancy Guthrie and Prof. Dennis Johnson have a wonderful episode of “How to Teach the Bible” that I encourage you to listen to: Teaching Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King What wonderful reminders of specific ways that Jesus truly does answer our biggest questions and our greatest fears. If you are not familiar with Nancy Guthrie, I encourage you to visit her website and learn more about her extensive teaching materials and her ministry of Respite Retreats for those grieving the loss of children, too: Nancy Guthrie And if you aren’t already benefiting from the rich, biblical teaching of Prof. Dennis Johnson, I urge you to read and study his materials, too:…

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  • Uncategorized

    HUGE Sale on all books and videos: $10/ea for 10 Days (with FREE Shipping to the USA)

    In honor of the TENTH anniversary of my first video series: Living the Gospel in Relationships, and to try to get the word out a big on my second (ASL Translated) video series: Becoming Who You Already Are, Fred and I are offering a HUGE sale on all of my books and video series: $10 for any book or video series for 10 days (with FREE shipping to the USA)! Quantities are limited–especially for the Spanish version of Peacemaking Women and for Peacemaking Women itself. But we want to bless as many people as possible, so please consider helping to get the word out. Oh. And if you use ASL or you have…

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  • Redeeming Church Conflicts,  Redemptive Relationships,  Relationships & Peacemaking

    Loving Those Who Have Failed

    “A love for those who are worthy and who come up to our standards is not the thing which Jesus refers to in John 13:34 as characterizing the Christian community and distinguishing it from other social groups.  It is agape, the love which stoops to others as Christ stooped to us at the cross, which is to be the expression and mark of the disciple community … it is when the love which we express begins to stoop; when we really begin to love those who are unworthy, those who have failed, those who reject our standards, those to whom we are not naturally attracted, it is then that the…

  • Relationships & Peacemaking

    Christians in Conflict—Frozen Hopelessness? Vacuum of Faith? Or A Kingdom Point of View?

    More (striking!) wisdom for Christians in conflict from The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller. This one was written to a man who was in conflict with his church leaders and then, after another pastor was brought into the conflict to try to help (“Rob”), the man became conflicted with the new (trying-to-help-with-the-conflict) pastor too. Please note: this excerpt is after a long, kind, gentle affirmation and assurance of deep love for the recipient of the letter. If Pastor Jack Miller was anything in life, he was an encourager. But this excerpt is such an insightful confrontation that I really wanted to share it with you (the…

  • Relationships & Peacemaking

    Wisdom re: Confrontation from Pastor Jack Miller

    I’m really enjoying The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller. Consider just a brief excerpt from a letter encouraging an elder who was needing to confront a member of the church regarding a sensitive topic: ‘In circumstances of high emotional intensity, I assume almost automatically that there have been some miscommunications and misapprehensions which need to be taken seriously. So I pray for wisdom to see what things may be heating up the situation unnecessarily and confusing communication.   One of the things that almost always turns up is a feeling of rejection in the person being counseled in a conflict situation. The presence of this feeling…

  • Eulogy for a Bad Mother,  How to Love a Mentally Ill Addict,  Redemptive Relationships,  Surviving a Childhood of Neglect and Abuse

    Back When I Really Didn’t Care if My Mother Went to Hell

    I usually share bits and pieces of my testimony whenever I speak at women’s retreats and conferences. (If you’re curious, you can hear my testimony, a Christmas keynote on “Peace at the Holidays,” and a bunch of other teachings for free on this “FREE AUDIO DOWNLOADS” page of my website.) And afterwards, I am almost always asked the same question: How did you ever START to build a real relationship with your (mentally ill, addict/drunk) mother who (sometimes intentionally but more often than not inadvertently) treated you so neglectfully / abusively / just downright terribly for so many years?  I have thought and prayed for YEARS about a blog series on this…

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  • Trauma Recovery

    #MeToo Recent Survivors of Assault? It Gets Better.

    Even on a normal day, I am not very active on social media, so “viral” things usually pass right by me, unnoticed. On Mondays, however? I am even LESS likely to notice something “out there” in the land of memes and hashtags, etc. because my Mondays are spent with a classroom full of teenagers discussing the topics that I assume you all know are easily the most favorites for teens: Philosophy of Theology, Epistemology, Worldview, and Apologetics. (If you think I’m kidding about how much teenagers love these topics, you are mistaken. Teenagers are natural philosophers! But back to my goal with this article …) Today I could not help but notice all of the…

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  • Redeeming Church Conflicts,  Relationships & Peacemaking

    God is the party wronged, and yet he sues for peace with us.

    I’m not feeling very peacemake-y these days. If I feel anything at all re: certain relationships, it’s pretty much just anger and disappointment. But honestly, I’m so tired and sick of things, that mostly, I don’t feel anything at all. (Not good. I know. Very not good.) But there is hope! Even for weary people like me. Listen to how Thomas Brooks describes it: “Ah! How does the God of peace, by his Spirit and messengers, pursue after peace with poor creatures! God first makes offer of peace to us: ‘We pray you in Christ’s stead, be you reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5:20). God’s grace first kneels to us!  God…

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  • Redeeming Church Conflicts

    FREE Checklist to Help You Select a Third-Party Church Conflict Consultant

    One of the most common questions that Dave Edling and I receive about church conflict has to do with how to evaluate a third-party church conflict consultant. This is such an important topic that we have an entire Appendix on it in our book. And today, we want to give it away for free to you: Redeeming Church Conflict Conclusion and Appendices  We hope that it is an encouragement and help to you as you seek to redeem your church or other organizational conflicts. God bless! Dave & Tara 

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  • Hope in Suffering

    Ajith Fernando on Responding to Personal Attacks

      A THREE-PRONGED RESPONSE TO ATTACKS by Ajith Fernando How should Christians who are a minority in their land respond when fellow Christians and churches are attacked? I have thought about it a lot because churches are often attacked in Sri Lanka too. One thing is certain—never should our motivation be one of tit-for-tat or revenge. I want to suggest a three-pronged response. LOVING OUR ENEMIES We live in a region where the understanding of the concept of honour requires that if someone hits us we must ht back. In some countries the so called ‘honour killings’ are even sometimes ignored by the authorities. This is totally different to the…