Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It's the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects.
— John Ortberg
Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.
I have always heard that you need to give yourself a long time to unplug when you do a sabbatical. I unplugged so fast I was a little concerned that I was losing brain capacity.
Tithing is considerably less popular than words like generosity or sharing.
To have my mind racing and my heart beating fast over glorious possibilities is very close to the summit of life experience for me.
There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text.
There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God's counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.
Sometimes, an inability to believe in Satan reflects a larger inability to believe in a spiritual plane at all.
Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion.
Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin.
Politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into 'us' vs. 'them.'
Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.
Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel.
The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.
In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison.
'Who Is This Man?' is about the impact of Jesus on human history. Most people - including most Christians - simply have no idea of the extent to which we live in a Jesus-impacted world.
Sin is very important to the soul because sin is what disintegrates the soul; it's what attacks the soul. Sin kind of is to the soul what cancer is to the body.
Prudence is not hesitation, procrastination, or moderation. It is not driving in the middle of the road. It is not the way of ambivalence, indecision, or safety.
My main job is to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in my everyday experience of life with God. Everything else is job number two.
Tithing is a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.
The only true and lasting inspiration for life is genuine love for God, and submitted gratitude that I get to be a part of the redemptive quest.
People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller.
When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate.
I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.
In the context of worship, amusement is a waste of time and a waste of life, and therefore a form of sin.
Sin is protean. It is a cancer that keeps mutating, and just when you think you have killed off one form, it turns out a deadlier strain yet is threatening your heart.
Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war.
It strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.
The church is in the hope business. We, of all people, ought to be known most for our hope because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking.
When the soul is understood and attended to, we can be liberated from hurry, preoccupation, unsatisfied desires, and chronic discontent.
Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.
What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.
The single dynamic that helps people be most aware of God and most experiencing the fruit of the Spirit is gratitude.
From ancient times, the core idea of the soul is the soul is the capacity to integrate different functions into a single being or into a single person. The soul is what holds us all together: what connects our will and our minds and our bodies and connects us to God.
Prudence is not the same thing as caution. Caution is a helpful strategy when you're crossing a minefield; it's a disaster when you're in a gold rush.
Learning something new is a fabulous way to be refreshed. When work can grind you down, something about learning a new activity thrills the soul. It reminds you that the world is bigger than your desk and your to-do list.
Tithing is like training wheels when it comes to giving. It's intended to help you get started, but not recommended for the Tour de France.
I need an inspiration that is grounded in reality while thoroughly transcendent.
When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.
Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly.
Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.'
'Amusement' is appealing because we don't have to think; it spares us the fear and anxiety that might otherwise prey on our thoughts.
The irony is that 'looking down on everybody else' is a violation of the law of love, which, according to Jesus, is the absolute essence of righteousness.
We all want to feel spiritually vigorous, and we hurt when we don't. This pain is intensified for people who lead church ministries.
I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up.
The soul is both the most fragile and most resilient thing about you; a healthy soul is what holds you together when your world falls apart. Since you will carry your soul into eternity, it's worth checking up on it at least as often as your teeth.
I wrote 'Soul Keeping' because we are taught more about how to care for our cars than how to steward our souls. But you cannot have an impactful life with an impoverished soul.
I am struck by how quickly I am prone to judgmentalism.
There are no clear boundary lines between what is physiological, what is psychological, and what is spiritual. Those are language domains that make sense and have integrity but overlap significantly.
A healthy soul is whole and integrated. It is connected to God. A person with a healthy soul is at peace with God, with himself, and with other people.
