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Interestingly, as I was wandering around in the dimly lit world of psychoanalysis, a pressing question continued to nag at me until I finally decided . . .
Three out of every four people have, to varying degrees, some sort of dysfunctional experiential/emotional relationship with God. In September of 2006, Baylor University published . . .
There is only one way to grow a loving relationship with someone and that is to spend time with that person. We can think about . . .
In the first two articles in this series, we discussed how experiencing God’s loving presence changes our attitudes, values, thoughts, feelings, desires, and behaviors because . . .
I heard my whole life that the Grand Canyon was magnificent and awe-inspiring, and in my head I believed that to be true. Then, one . . .
I’ve always been fascinated by the way John begins the first of his short letters: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, . . .
The Church is Christ’s body, his beloved bride, and chosen instrument for ministering to the world. Local churches are supposed to be “kingdom outposts” intended . . .
My earliest memories of God centered around a small Methodist church located in a tiny north Mississippi town my mother’s family had faithfully attended since . . .
A few years ago a friend of mine was at a crossroads and reached out for help. His formative years were spent in an insecure . . .
Several years ago, I received a phone call from my niece, Madison: “Uncle Phil, I prayed to receive Jesus into my heart tonight. I know . . .
I have been addressing people’s questions about the Bible for decades now. That doesn’t mean I have all the answers; however, it does mean that, . . .
In Jesus’s commission to make disciples of all nations, he includes “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matt 28:20). Notice that Jesus . . .
“Fake joy.” Those words hung in the room as the young man sat quietly, working through the realization that he had been conditioned over time . . .
In Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald shares a beautiful story of a grandmother who deeply loves her granddaughter. Wishing her granddaughter to walk in . . .
As exemplified in the Hadad-Yithʿi bilingual inscription discussed in part one of this series, it is difficult to grasp how the image of god would . . .
Our world is captivated by success. The cult of celebrity. Reality TV. The pursuit of wealth, status, and power. Materialism. Ladder climbing. Most kids now . . .
How many of us could confidently answer the question, “What does it mean to be made in the image of God?” If you’re not raising . . .
“A giant statue of a king on his throne . . . sort of like Zeus.” I walked down to a small lake and found . . .
The theology of weakness is threaded from Genesis to Revelation.2 It is found in its most developed form in the Pauline epistles and peaks in . . .
Human beings have an innate attraction to strength and corresponding prejudice against weakness. Though our views of what constitutes strength or weakness are culturally bound, . . .
In the spring of 2004 during my freshman year of college, I sat on the bottom bunk inside a friend’s dorm room scratching my head. . . .
A few years ago, my roommate and I decided we wanted to road trip with the greatest dog in all of God’s creation—Corrie the German . . .
As we bring this series to a close, it is imperative we address what is for many the elephant in the room, so to speak. . . .
As we’ve seen in this series, love as the controlling center of theology traditionally has either been neglected or ignored.1 But it hasn’t always been . . .
Generally speaking, the Reformation of the sixteenth century stirred up quite a bit of religious vigor that went far in reshaping the religious (and political) . . .
I have had twelve years of formal theological training. For the vast majority of those years, I considered the love of God as a moral . . .
“Emotion.” For some, even saying or hearing the word activates . . . emotion. But what is it? Or perhaps the question is, “What are . . .
As we saw in part one of this series, not every theologian begins from the same theological starting point.1 Different historical and cultural contexts have . . .
In May of 1999, a historic F5 tornado ripped through my neighborhood destroying homes and disrupting lives. Just hours before the storm turned my hometown . . .
Because we are loved by God, we cultivate environments conducive to deep and meaningful relationships.
“Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”
We have been created as embodied beings with an innate capacity for relationship. Because emotion is the language of relationship, we champion the courage required to examine our emotion and the honesty and vulnerability necessary to admit what is true about ourselves in the presence of God and others. As our emotional quotient grows, our capacity for relationship deepens and enables us to create spacious environments for others to experience deeper relationships themselves. The more we have of ourselves, the more we are able to give to others, and vice versa. This relational flourishing bears witness of the reality of the kingdom of God in a relationally fractured, isolated world. We reject any desire or attempt to live out of an artificial, false self, and work hard to maintain and grow authentic environments with meaningful relationships.
Because we are loved by God, we sit in unresolved tension with others, curious about how God is at work for our good in his time and his way.
“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Because we are settled in the joy that comes from experiencing an identity as God’s beloved with an integrous life, we are naturally able to sit with others in the unresolved tensions of their lives. We reject any attempt to fix others apart from the leading and empowerment of the Spirit. Rather, we patiently wait with others, continually pointing them to the presence and work of God in their lives. This allows us to be relationally present, instead of pushing an agenda on God and others to behave in ways we assume is right. We reject any attempt to coerce transformation or “hurry” someone along in their journey toward maturity, instead holding a posture of dependence on God in the lives of others.
