As a million miler frequent flyer, I really thought I had seen everything possible on commercial air flights. But today’s flight topped them all … Just moments after the flight attendant moved past row 3 on a (TINY, 2×2 configuration, NO personal space at all) CRJ200, a woman stood up in the aisle, removed her shoes, wrapped her barefeet TOES around the center armrest, and began to do a series of yoga moves. Barefeet toes! Armpits going over other travelers! I was completely shocked. But my sister and her Fred were unimpressed when I told them the story later this evening. “That was your flight to Berkeley/San Francisco, right? Yeah. Totally normal.…

STRICKEN, SMITTEN AND AFFLICTED Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, See Him dying on the tree! ‘Tis the Christ by man rejected; Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He! ‘Tis the long expected prophet, David’s Son, yet David’s Lord; Proofs I see sufficient of it: ‘Tis a true and faithful Word. Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning, Was there ever grief like His? Friends through fear His cause disowning, Foes insulting his distress: Many hands were raised to wound Him, None would interpose to save; But the deepest stroke that pierced Him Was the stroke that Justice gave.   Ye who think of sin but lightly, Nor suppose the evil great,…

The first session of my new “Titus 2 in a 21st Century World” retreat is entitled, ““But I thought I was the only one …” We discuss many things in that session, including guilty pleasures, shame, and envy. So I was particularly blessed to discover that Tim Challies is writing an in-depth series on the topic of envy. I encourage you to check it out! Here are links to the first two installments: 1. The Lost Sin of Envy 2. How Envy Behaves And just to remind those of you who were at our retreat last weekend in Texas, I was sorely convicted of an envious heart after reading C.…

It sure is easy to say the wrong thing to someone who is struggling. It’s even (temporarily) easy to say nothing at all and just avoid the person. But to say an apt word? An apple of gold in a vessel of beaten silver (Prov. 25:11)? How difficult! How (seemingly) impossible. But this article (that references one of my favorite books—How People Change by Lane and Tripp) provides some tangible, practical, grace-based help: Encouragement (by Jamie Dunlop)    

I. Am. SHOCKED. At how extraordinarily EXCELLENT this book is. Tempted and Tried: The Temptation of Christ (by Russell D. Moore) Granted, I’m not through the entire book yet (but I have jmpted to the end to read that first—does anyone else read the end of books first?), but so far, it is the best contemporary book I have ever read on temptation. With brilliant, decisive turns of phrases and strong exegeting of Scripture, Pastor Moore has already helped me to prepare for this weekend’s celebration of the Incarnation more than anything else this year. That Jesus would come into THIS WORLD? To battle the “wild out there” (Satan) and…

I’ve had two rough nights of insomnia—so of course I’m completely fried. But my coauthor on Redeeming Church Conflicts (Dave Edling) is obviously not. He keeps writing these challenging, thoughtful blog posts that truly show why we started with hundreds of thousands of words for our book when I “interviewed” Dave on the topic and we began piecing together the manuscript—Man! That guy has a lot of experience on this topic (!). This is a sobering read, but encouraging too because (as always) Dave not only diagnoses the heart of many of our church conflicts, he also points us to our only hope in all of our conflicts: Mercy and…

Tim Challies’ post today is a must-read, especially if you are a blogger or avid Facebook user: A Holy Moment As a real person who also has some level of a public persona life because of my book, video series, blog, and speaking events, I was particularly struck by this excerpt: “In that moment I felt a strange flush of shame and conviction. In that moment I realized that this author was a real person. I guess I should have known that, but somehow it hadn’t really occurred to me. It was so easy for me to read a book and post a review on the Internet without thinking of…

I still think that the old CCEF booklet, “Pleasure” by Dr. David Powlison is one of the best things he has ever written. I review its content often and this morning I thought I’d share just a snippet with you: So how can you tell when a pleasure is a stained pleasure? 1. The pleasure is plain wrong: sinful in and of itself (drunkenness, lust, outbursts of anger, gossip) 2. The pleasure captures you: you become preoccupied with it; obsess and fantasize about it; can’t wait to do it or have it (coke) … soon don’t just take up mental space, they require action—you become compulsive about it (every time…

From The Joy of Fearing God: The Fear of the Lord is a Life-Giving Fountain by Jerry Bridges: “Nothing produces humility in a Christian as much as an abiding sense of one’s own sinfulness … As we seriously pursue holiness we’ll grow in humility, for we discover, as Calvin said, that ‘our nature, wicked and deformed, is always opposing his uprightness; and our capacity, weak and feeble to do good, lies far from his perfection.'” ‘It is not enough to appreciate God’s love only in terms of our initial salvation. We should be growing each year in our awareness of the depth of His love for us in Christ—as we…

‘To the degree that we feel we are on a legal or performance relationship with God, to that degree our progress in sanctification is impeded. A legal mode of thinking gives indwelling sin an advantage, because nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary,  nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truths that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.’ Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace: God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of…