Five years (and two weeks) ago today, I was trapped in a week-long string of horrifying panic attacks. This followed over ten years of sleeplessness, anxiety, and irrational fears; as well as physical symptoms that were both a cause and response to all those anxieties. Ultimately, God rescued me through the teaching of several ministers who shared principles and promises in Scripture that I (very imperfectly) put into action, relying...
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Reviewing Moving Mountains, a study on prayer from John Eldredge for small groups.
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There’s no way around it. This book is fantastic.
Read More“Goliath Must Fall” – a powerful, compelling title. But does the message hold up?
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Last week I returned home from an extraordinary Christian conference: simply titled, Convergence Conference. Speakers like Sam Storms, Matt Chandler, Francis Chan, Jack Deere, and Andrew Wilson taught through the supernatural gifts of 1 Corinthians 12-14 with a refreshing blend of self-awareness, honesty, and commitment. As with most Christian practices, it’s one thing to talk about a topic theoretically–particularly one...
Read MoreOne of the best things to come out of my decision to attend the Convergence Conference was being introduced to Andrew Wilson. His fifth session of the conference was simply the best message on the (oft controversial) topic of healing that I have ever heard. I look forward to writing more on it later.
After hearing the message, I picked up the only book of his available at the conference bookstore, and here we are. The book was obviously written for a very different purpose than the topics of his talks at the conference, but there were still undertones that I appreciated that were present in both places.
Read MoreMere Christianity by C.S. Lewis is typically regarded as one of the top apologetic/philosophical Christian works of the 20th century. Timothy Keller’s “The Reason for God” is a similar book written to a new generation, a book I very much enjoyed reading. When our small group was recently choosing our next study to do together, I was happy to find that there was also a video series with an accompanying study guide.
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I’m about a year and nearly 25,000 words into fleshing out a book based on my story of overcoming anxiety and debilitating panic attacks–very briefly told in my previous two personal blog posts. I just re-read these posts–written over two and a half years ago–and I still affirm what they say, though I would now probably describe certain points in a different way. I will not be editing those posts; instead I...
Read MoreSession 11, spanning Philippians 4:10-14 and Paul’s life through Acts, had just concluded, a brief reprieve from the ten challenging sessions before it. After a thoughtful pause, “He’s a great storyteller.”
All of us nodded in agreement. Yes. Understatement.
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Among many other ideas, Hillsong: Let Hope Rise brings a behind-the-scenes look at how these tracks are created, and how seriously they take the lyric-writing process (insert Australian accent here, PRO-cess). Joel Houston, co-pastor of Hillsong NYC and one of several lead singers in the group, makes it clear that Hillsong is not a band in the traditional sense, but is first and foremost a worship group: “For us, you’re putting words into the mouths of people. These songs are written for people to sing, not just to listen to.”
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