WITH GOD DAILY - "Gifts vs. Giver"

When I seek contentment in God’s blessings my wants only subside temporarily, and they soon return stronger than ever. When I learn to seek my satisfaction in God himself, however, the pleasures offered by the things of this world grow dim in comparison.

Consider our fixation on megachurches over the last 30 years. I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with megachurches, but have we been naive about their fragility? Like Goliath, their size and influence project an image of enduring strength, and yet a sad number of megachurches have been brought low in recent years by often small, for

Ask yourself, what is my ultimate concern today? What occupies my imagination? What do I daydream about, and what motivates my actions? The first commandment is a warning to not give this precious, life-defining position to anything or anyone unworthy of it. It belongs to your Creator alone.

We might assume that the opposite of a fragile system is a robust one; an organization that is designed to withstand any single threat. But Taleb disagrees and says that the best systems don’t merely resist threats, but actually grow stronger when challenged. He calls such systems anti-fragile. Consider muscles. When put under stress, our muscles d

The Church of Jesus is without question the most anti-fragile system in world history.

The question for those of us in the West, and particularly in America, is this—Why have we chosen to construct such fragile church systems? Why do we build ministries that rely upon a single fallible leader, one dynamic speaker, or that require massive and unsustainable amounts of money? Our devotion to fragile systems means as the pace of cultural

The theologian Paul Tillich declared that faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” He argued that because each person has something of ultimate concern that defines their life and identity, all people are religious—even the atheist. Every person has something in their life that functions as their god. For some, this god-function is occup

Rather than a fearful huddle of believers worried about what Herod, the Romans, or those pesky liberal Sadducees might do, the early Christians appeared to actually believe Jesus when he said the gates of hell, nevermind the IRS, would not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18).

“I shall not want,” he says. It is sometimes translated, “I lack nothing.” Dallas Willard, who used to raise sheep, noted that the verses that follow reinforce the message of contentment. Sheep typically do not lie down in green pastures, they eat green pastures. Likewise, sheep are expected to drink from quiet waters, not walk beside them. The ima

The same goes for gods. Some gods, like a chair, are clearly recognized for their god-ness. The word “god” brings to mind deities like Ra in Egypt, Zeus in Greece, and Ganesh in India. But there are many other things that are not gods but may nonetheless function as gods just as a box may function as a chair. Strictly speaking, power, wealth, fame,