Vulnerable Love
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Let’s start with a simple question: When do we not feel loved?
Some answers come quickly:
- When we’re ridiculed or belittled
- When we’re taken advantage of or used
- When we’re dismissed, overlooked, or not taken into account
- When we’re neglected—noticed, maybe, but not truly cared for
But there are other, less obvious ways we can miss love:
- When someone cares for us, but never really connects with us
- When we’re served, but not allowed to give anything in return
- When we’re known, but not invited to know the other person
At its core, real love is vulnerable.
It doesn’t hold back. It doesn’t hide behind self-protection. It moves toward connection—and in that connection, something new and shared begins to grow.
This is the kind of love we see in Jesus.
He became fully human and fully engaged with people. He allowed Himself to be misunderstood, rejected, and hurt—and yet He kept loving. How? Because He lived rooted in the love of His Father. His wounds were met with hea...
How To Attend To Attenuated Faith
How would you describe the quality of your faith? I am not talking about the content or the focus of your faith, but rather the condition or characteristics of your faith. Maybe you would use words like meaningful, or possibly central; or you might choose words like relational, personal or vibrant.
Unfortunately, too many people seem to have an “Attenuated Faith.” Their faith is stretched thin; it’s shallow and over-extended. This is a kind of stunted immature faith. It’s marked by a limited understanding of God, His Kingdom and His Word. It is expressed with a restricted spiritual vocabulary. Often the same prayer and/or language is repeated by rote, without much thought or creativity.
Though the circumstances and challenges of life change constantly, an attenuated faith is lazily inflexible – unable to keep up with the seasons and stages of our lives.
The fruit of an attenuated faith is a dry, lack-luster spiritual life. There is no sense of adventure, journey or pilgrimage. Such ...
How to Connect with God
When you hear the words, “Spiritual Disciplines,” what comes to your mind? For many, feelings of religious striving start to envelope their thinking. They may have difficulty listing many of the disciplines, but they don’t have trouble experiencing guilt, boredom, dryness or tiredness that the enemy wants to associate with these practices. Maybe it's just the word “Discipline” that sounds odious.
In reality, spiritual disciplines can be an incredible means of accessing God and experiencing His grace. Maybe it is more comfortable for us to call them practices. They are like maps that point us in the direction of God. They help direct our attention toward Him, and they can bring us a sense of closer proximity. Some of the practices that many find helpful relate to the Bible (reading, study and/or meditation); Prayer (silence, stillness, solitude, listening, dialog); Reflection (personal awareness, examination of conscience); Fasting (abstaining from food for spiritual purposes; part...
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