CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

When Scripture Reads Like Ink Instead of Fire

If you’re like me, there are times in your life when Scripture felt like it leapt from the page straight into my soul, prayers felt immediately heard, and worship stirred my heart, emotions, and mind. But let’s be honest. There are days when Scripture feels like ink instead of fire, when God feels silent and distant.

When Discouragement Creeps In

Usually, I hear or read words that discourage rather than comfort or console:

  • “If you don’t hear God’s voice, guess who isn’t listening?”
  • “If you don’t sense God’s touch this day, whose fault is that?”
  • “If God doesn’t seem to feel close, guess who moved?”

Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

Is this the new normal?

A Pastoral Reflection on Violence in Our Society
By Keith Anderson

 

Every time another shooting erupts—in schools, in sanctuaries, on neighborhood streets—we ask the same anguished question: “Is this the new normal?”

 

It happened again. Families are grieving loved ones whose lives were cut short. Children are left shaken, carrying fears that no child should carry. Parents drop their kids off at school, wondering if they will be safe, and too many of us have begun rehearsing worst-case scenarios when we enter public spaces. Some buy weapons. Others send children with bulletproof backpacks. Schools practice lockdown drills. Many quietly avoid large gatherings. We are learning to live with fear, to anticipate trauma, to prepare for violence.

Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

How to Read the Bible

How to Read the Bible Differently

Growing up, I became convinced I knew how to read the Bible: as content to ‘master.’ Its purpose seemed to be information, instruction, and data. I took an Old Testament class in college. Our exams primarily focused on recitation of the chronology of kings and prophets as if the primary purpose was to memorize a historical timeline.

 

Two people messed with that view and gave me a different understanding of the interaction between the Bible and faith: Jesus and Grandma McJunkin. Read More

CategoriesMentoring Matters, Spiritual Conversation by

Great questions for spiritual friendship

Mentors ask great questions.  We don’t always know the impact our questions will have until they are heard by the mentee.  Often, these great questions emerge from a pool of mentors, perhaps as starters or simply as something to introduce at the right moment.  

 

These questions can also serve you well as you journal—simply writing thoughts, prayers, experiences, questions, memories, in a carefully kept notebook for you to read again. Journaling is a spiritual practice that takes you deep into your inner landscape.  Many find it a valuable way to explore fears, dreams, aspirations, and convictions through regular writing.

 

We’d love for you to keep these questions for spiritual friendship close at hand. That’s why we’ve created a printable PDF of spiritual mentoring questions—a free resource that includes all 25 questions and the first practice prompt. Print it, tuck it into your journal, or bring it to your next mentoring conversation. Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

The Door Is Open: A Blueprint for Prayer from Psalm 5

Skeptical About ‘Steps’ to Prayer?

When I read or hear someone tell me there are five steps or three steps to prayer, spiritual formation, or knowing God, I become skeptical. I once took a 10-booklet course on steps to Christian maturity. I filled in all the blanks, read, and prayed, but two months later, I still wasn’t mature. Did I miss a step, or did it just not take? Was it the course—or was it the student?

Psalm 5: A Blueprint for Prayer

When I read Psalm 5 the other day, the image of a blueprint came to mind. I wrote in my journal: “Psalm 5 is a blueprint for prayer.” Or even better—what if it invites us to imagine what might be in the mind of an architect who draws up such a blueprint? It’s a visual representation of the architect’s craft, artistry, and imagination. Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation, The Art of Dialogue by

Three Old Friends Living Under the Blessing

Three Old Friends, Weathered by Time

Three old friends. Once college roommates. Now, silver-haired sages with weathered faces and tender hearts. We gathered with spouses on a Zoom call, decades of life behind us, some days heavy with loss.  Yet even in the ache of aging and memory, there was a quiet sense that we are still living under the blessing. What do old friends talk about?

 

We reminisce about life “back in the day” Read More

CategoriesMentoring Matters, Spiritual Conversation by

Tables, altars, and presence

Jesus was a carpenter, but as an artisan, not simply a builder.  My “office” table was built by the Boos company and was intended to be a cutting board in a kitchen.  It sits in the corner of what I sentimentally call my “cabin,” a room with knotty pine walls and ceilings, a space of intimacy, warmth, and windows. Twelve windows in all that let me see the sun coming from the east in the morning and the shadows as they move to the west in the evening. It’s sturdy, as cutting boards should be. It’s the perfect height to give me a view of the horizon—with its sunlight, trees, clouds, and the morning marine layer of fog. After all, I live on an island in the Pacific Northwest.

 

This table has become, for me, my altar in the world; it is more than just furniture.

  Read More

CategoriesMentoring Matters, Spiritual Conversation by

The biography of one’s life

Tell me your story

Whether you read novels or prefer Netflix movies, the story is the center of both genres. We could call them the curriculum for those writers. As a good novel unfolds with unexpected twists and surprising turns of a plot, so the biography of one’s life unfolds. Where it will lead is not always clear until more of the story develops.

 

The deepest truth of spirituality is always autobiographical. It is incarnational, lived in the grit of life on Monday and Tuesday, and all the days of the week. “My drifting is consecrated in pilgrimage.”[1] The gentle and probing questions of a mentor draw us to the central action of spirituality: to pay attention for the presence of God in everything.

  Read More

CategoriesSpiritual Conversation by

On the Emmaus Road

A Journey of Revelation

On the other side of Easter, we find ourselves on the Emmaus Road. We get to walk the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus with two disciples who are anything but joyful. Rather, they are downcast, defeated, discouraged, perhaps even feeling betrayed in the midst of their confusion, sorrow, and grief. Jesus is dead. Jesus was crucified. Jesus will never be present again to speak, teach, console, heal, and love them. Hope was shattered for these two who had pinned their hope on Jesus as the Messiah. The long-awaited one they believed was sent from God to redeem Israel and set the world right once again.

 

I’ve never walked that dusty road, but I know Emmaus—the experience of disappointment and unanswered questions. Like you, I have lived in the darkness of what feels like the absence of the living God. I have lived focused, not on hope or Jesus’ declaration about the future, but focused instead on my own emotional sense of loss and disappointment.   Read More

CategoriesMentoring Matters, Spiritual Conversation by

The voice we long for

“I want to hear Jesus’ voice.”  Many years ago, Richard Foster, founder of Renovare’ told us three things prevent us from hearing that voice we long for: noise, hurry, and crowds. In Luke 10, we find a case study of both sides of that dilemma. Martha is a busy host who opens her home to Jesus and never sits down because of her compulsion to be busy. She must have felt obligated to provide a high level of care for her Lord. Mary, on the other hand, remains seated as an attentive student, opening her mind and heart to Jesus’ teaching. “Martha, you are distracted by many things…only one thing is needed.” Read More