One of the most liberating truths I’ve learned in my life is this: If someone finds their relationship with God to be burdensome or anxiety-inducing, their picture of God is likely inaccurate. Trygve is a young man from Norway who recently came to this realization. He went from being a...

I was sitting in the Helsinki airport, bags packed, heart full, and body tired in the good way that comes after two weeks of teaching at ARISE Finland. I was headed home, but before I left, Mikael reached out. I told him I had a couple of hours before my...

I need to tell you about Donald and his fellow Bible worker, ​​Juan Moisés, who recently experienced something incredible. They were hiking through the pouring rain in the Cordillera Mountains of Costa Rica, heading toward a village inhabited by Cabécar people, the largest indigenous group in Costa Rica. Juan and...

I have to tell you about a young man named Patrick, a law student at the University of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has recently encountered the good news of the gospel in the most profound way. Patrick is the kind of person who burns hot for...

My youngest son enjoys cooking. He tells me that there are two kinds of cooks: those who follow recipes and those who don’t. He’s the latter. And I can enthusiastically report that the food he prepares, like the from-scratch egg ramen he made yesterday, is delicious. Recipe-following cooks aim for...

For a number of years, my mother was in an abusive marriage. That was a really bad thing. Eventually, after being brought to the brink of death, she escaped that relationship. That was a good thing. But raising four kids alone in Los Angeles? That was brutal. So, she moved...

Stomach acid burned Mikael’s throat as he vomited. How many people had noticed he had come to church hungover? Mikael just wanted to belong. So, he began partying and drinking with friends. If you could’ve met him back then and somehow seen his future, you’d be surprised to learn that...

“Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’” (Luke 23:34). These words have often unsettled me. I understand the first part, “Father, forgive them.” But then comes, “They don’t know what they’re doing”? Really, Jesus? Jesus sees not only their actions but also their...

What do you call a person who demands that all attention be centered on them? A toddler? A teenager? God? There’s a theological picture of God that frames Him as essentially the biggest egomaniac in the universe. And if you’ve ever wondered if that might actually be true, you're not...

When my brother Nick was around six years old, he had a problem with saying things he didn’t mean. And he would go hard. For example, one time he told me, “I wish you weren’t my sister.” She marched me, suitcase in hand, into Nick’s room and announced that his...

Deconstruction is a scary term for some believers. I think it’s because they equate it with deconversion. According to Barna research,1 though, roughly one-third of practicing Christians relate to the idea of deconstructing their faith. That means, roughly a third of faithful, church-going Christians have, to some degree, realized some...

The morning air is cool, still heavy with the hush of dawn. The desert stretches in every direction, dry and rugged, its dormant sands waiting for the heat of the day to rise. Inside the tent, the silence is different — thicker, heavier. You take a breath. The lamb shifts...