Category Archives: Spiritual life

Living Backwards: 1 Peter and the Believer’s Hope

Posted on January 23, 2025 by salooper57

Do you see what was happening? The future was altering my present. Rather than living out of past hurts and losses, I was choosing to live into my future. You could say I was living backwards. That’s a skill that every believer needs to master. Continue reading →

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Decisions, Decisions (The Role of Choice in Spiritual Formation)

Posted on January 18, 2025 by salooper57

There is no spiritual growth apart from choice. That’s the way God designed it. He has endowed us with astonishing dignity: our decisions mean something; they make a real difference. As does our failure to decide. Continue reading →

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The Path to Spiritual Growth: Insight, Decision, and Implementation

Posted on January 11, 2025 by salooper57

The thing about running from God is that he’s everywhere. When you think you’re running from him, you’re really running to him. Continue reading →

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The World Is Too Much in Us

Posted on January 4, 2025 by salooper57

How can we hear God speak in “a still, small voice” when our ears are being assaulted by the washing machine, the baby’s cries, and the incessant dinging of text alerts? Continue reading →

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Hope! I Need Somebody (Hope! Not Just Anybody)

Posted on December 28, 2024 by salooper57

I looked at him in wonder. Here was a man from whom everything had been taken. His former life was gone. His world was a bed. His body was a prison. And the last two months had been the best two months of his life? Continue reading →

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Searching for the Gate of Heaven

Posted on December 7, 2024 by salooper57

In language intended to evoke Jacob’s experience at the “gate of heaven,” Jesus told the disciple Nathaniel, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Continue reading →

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What Are We Doing When We Worship?

Posted on December 5, 2024 by salooper57

Some people think of church as if it were a spiritual or emotional filling station. I’m running low, so I’d better go to church, or I won’t make it through the week. But that makes it all about me, which makes worship impossible. Continue reading →

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Grateful People Know These Two Things About God

Posted on November 30, 2024 by salooper57

You may think: “I already know that. God is strong. God is loving. Everybody knows that.” But our worry and our ingratitude testify that it has not gone from doctrine to practice, from head to heart. Continue reading →

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Created to Worship

Posted on November 28, 2024 by salooper57

The Fall of Adam shattered us. It broke our relationship with God and with each other. It damaged our ability to think. Our mind and will and emotions are all out of order. Humanity suffers a kind of spiritual PTSD to this day. If you think there might be something wrong with you, you are not mistaken. You are suffering from “The Fall.” Continue reading →

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Jesus, Don’t You Care?

Posted on November 9, 2024 by salooper57

Again, those telltale words: “Don’t you care?” There is something in us that is not quite sure that he does. Continue reading →

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