Tag Archives: spiritual formation

Become Your True Self (Pt. 3: Put on a New Self)

Posted on November 19, 2025 by salooper57

Humans were designed this way. They were made with the capacity to transform into something the Marvel Cinematic Universe never imagined, something that can be astonishingly good and beautiful or hideously bad and ugly. Continue reading →

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The 3-D Marriage

Posted on November 8, 2025 by salooper57

Finding Mr. or Ms. Right does not guarantee a successful marriage, but when each member of the couple becomes the person God intends them to be, it does. Continue reading →

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Become Your True Self

Posted on November 5, 2025 by salooper57

The fulfilled you, the forever you, beckons you on. People mistake that beckoning for hunger, boredom, sexual desire, ambition, but it is more enduring than any of these. To use the theological term, your soul’s deep longing is to be glorified. Continue reading →

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Going Out of Business: St. Paul and “the Body of Sin”

Posted on September 13, 2025 by salooper57

The new owner has given each of us the responsibility of closing down the business of sin that has been operating in our bodies. Continue reading →

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The Power of Community to Shape Us

Posted on October 12, 2024 by salooper57

Into this mess, Jesus comes to save us. Instead of trying to hurdle into God’s place, as the first Adam did, the second Adam hurtles into the depths, like a skydiver trying to catch someone whose chute has failed. Continue reading →

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Straightening Bent Souls: A Study in Transformation

Posted on June 22, 2024 by salooper57

Be sure to read the brief addendum. The timing – and the irony – was perfect. I recently bought a hand-held shower head and hose from a big box home improvement store. The shower head and five-foot PVC hose were … Continue reading →

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Becoming a Person Who Can Pray the Lord’s Prayer

Posted on September 18, 2022 by salooper57

When I was a boy, I wanted to be just like Mickey Mantle. In 1961, he had 514 at bats and he hit 54 homeruns. That means he hit a homerun one out of every 9 or so at bats. … Continue reading →

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Formed and Deformed: the Spiritual Formation of David

Posted on July 27, 2021 by salooper57
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Don’t Overlook The Importance of Desire in the Spiritual Life

Posted on July 10, 2021 by salooper57

Desire plays a critical and often overlooked role in life, including the spiritual life. Desire forges a person’s future and chooses the path they follow. Humans cannot live without desire. Were a drug to be disseminated in our atmosphere that … Continue reading →

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Anger: Part of an Integrated Package

Posted on May 13, 2021 by salooper57

So, here is one thing we need to understand. Anger is integrated into the system – your system. You can’t go and pull it out while leaving everything else in place. When I was a kid, TVs had vacuum tubes. On Thursday, when your TV stopped working, you took off the back, pulled the tubes, went down to the drug store (where they had a tube tester), found the bad one, replaced it, and were watching My Three Sons that evening.

We might think that we can do the same thing with anger: just pull it out of our lives like one of those tubes. We want to stop being angry but we don’t want anything else to change. But that won’t work. Here’s why
Continue reading →

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