Blogs
When Depression Makes Church So Hard
“Having struggled with severe depressive illness for over twelve years, I can tell you that I never (never!) want to go to church on a Sunday morning. It is an exhausting battle every single time, and I don’t always make it.”
Why CEOs Devote So Much Time to Their Hobbies
“In public and in private, CEOs state that their leisure interests help them cope with the ever-increasing demands of the top job. They typically invest considerable time in their leisure, and even block off time far in advance to protect it from “life taking over,” as one interviewee said. A few common themes stood out about how their passion helps them:”
The Most Powerful Lesson My Cancer Taught Me About Life and Work
“Cancer changed my life by encouraging me to reexamine the stories I’d been telling myself, and to re-craft them with higher levels of construal. My advice is don’t wait until you get cancer to improve your story of why you’re doing what you’re doing.”
How perfectionism became a hidden epidemic among young people
“Broadly speaking, perfectionism is an irrational desire for flawlessness, combined with harsh self-criticism. But on a deeper level, what sets a perfectionist apart from someone who is simply diligent or hard-working is a single-minded need to correct their own imperfections.”
Obey God with Your Creativity
“The other reason I say that imagination is a Christian duty is that when a person speaks or writes or sings or paints about breathtaking truth in a boring way, it is probably a sin. The supremacy of God in the life of the mind is not honored when God and his amazing world are observed truly, analyzed duly, organized clearly, and communicated boringly.”
Encouragement for Bible Reading from Puritan Women
“These women found themselves in different situations but each one made the Bible central to their lives because, despite the hard passages and personal doubts they had, they knew its basic message could be understood and that by reading it, they communed with God himself”
Counseling Together: Ten Benefits to Co-Counseling with Your Spouse
“I love team counseling. Whenever I counsel a woman, I involve a female co-counselor or trainee. She might be my wife Lauren, or she might be another godly sister in Christ. Perhaps I want to give that woman added training and experience. Or she might bring valuable experience or expertise. Or maybe she has a positive relationship with the counselee, or better fits her demographic, etc.”
Tips on Preaching Narratives
“Since we move by and large towards the Reformed spectrum of the Christian church our tendency inherently is to be most comfortable when we are preaching Paul–and as a consequence, to be least comfortable when we are preaching from things that are very different from the Pauline style–with the result that we tend to preach the whole of the Bible as if Paul had written it. We take historical narrative or poetic narrative and there is really no difference in the style of our exposition whether we are preaching from one part of Scripture or from another.”
Kindle Books
Reset: Living a Grace-Paced Life in a Burnout Culture by David Murray $2.99.
Refresh: Embracing a Grace-Paced Life in a World of Endless Demands by Shona and David Murray $2.99.
Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age by Bob Cutillo MD $3.99.