If writers don’t show me their struggles. I can’t trust their advice. I don’t want theories that smell like a library. I want advice to smell like it has some real life in it. I want to know that what they are writing about has worked on their own issues. So I can believe it might work on mine. Take away the struggle, and you take away my trust.
Transparency
Kris Vallotton
Independence, fear, and pride all keep us from the deep relationships that we need with God and His people. It is so important that we have people in our lives that we trust more than we trust ourselves. Do you have a relationship with someone you would trust with your life? If that person told you that you have a problem, and you were blind to it, would you believe that person even though it didn’t feel true? We need to build these kinds of relationships to keep us safe so we can live on the radical edge.
Hayley Braun
David Jeremiah
Admit your mistakes. Your primary instinct will be to downplay the failure, but instead, choose to be honest about who you are. Failing to admit your mistakes will create false illusions for yourself and those who know you. If people are going to recognize God’s work in your life, they have to see the work of Christ in you in both the ups and the downs.
Pete Scazzero
When we deny our pain, losses, and feelings year after year, we become less and less human. We transform slowly into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them. Sad to say, that is the fruit of much of our discipleship in our churches. But when I began to allow myself to feel a wider range of emotions, including sadness, depression, fear, and anger, a revolution in my spirituality was unleashed. I soon realized that a failure to appreciate the biblical place of feelings within our larger Christian lives has done extensive damage, keeping free people in Christ in slavery.
Darlene Cunningham
Integrity means that we behave in ways that are consistent with the beliefs, values and principles we claim to hold dear. The quality of the person you are is determined by how well you live up to the values that you say are most important to you. Live your life in such a way that when people think about integrity, they think of you – someone who doesn’t take shortcuts or sweep things under the carpet.
Katherine Walden
Phillip James Bailey
January 30, 2020
Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.
Gayle Erwin
Dec 14, 2019
The body of Christ, especially in well-functioning, small, intimate groups, is the most healing body in the world; yet we do not treat it as such. We wouldn’t think of relating to a medical doctor with the same reserve as we have in the healing body of Christ. Would we say to a doctor, “I have this unspoken illness?” Of course not! But we often use this term, unspoken request, in sharing our needs with the body. Would we try to deceive a doctor into thinking our hurt is nonexistent or in a different place than it actually is? Of course not! Would we say, “I am here for a friend – examine me and diagnose him?” Of course not! Yet we treat the church with such distrust and fear. We choose to hide.
Mark Chironna
The longer I endeavor to walk with Jesus the more I am increasingly aware that he is attracted to my confessed weaknesses and not my perceived strengths.