Spiritual Formation: Theology & Spiritual Issues
New Downloadable Resources
The Search for Simplicity
A simplicity retreat experience from GiftedforLeadership.comSort By:
A Christmas to Remember
This December my family and I are preparing not for Christmas, but for major surgery. Again. It's the third year in a row. It changes everything about our December … and our winter. Last year the Christmas tree went up in November and it didn't come down until March!
Moving into the third "December surgery," it's easy for fear to override the festivities and heartache to replace the holiday ...
Related Topics: Christmas, Gratitude, Healing, Hope, Perspective, Prayer, Rest, Trust
Who We Are . . . Really
Carolyn Custis James is passionate about women. This powerhouse leader and speaker is known for her biblical and affirming message for women. Author of numerous books including Lost Women of the Bible and The Gospel of Ruth (both published by Zondervan), Carolyn has devoted her life to helping women discover their uniqueness, purpose, and significance in the body of Christ.
Her claim to fame as the ...
Related Topics: Abilities, Acceptance, Accepting God's Blessings, Approval, Gender Roles
Worship Service Blues
Brenda* loved her church in Phoenix with its high-energy, contemporary worship services. Electric guitars and the beat of the drums lifted her spirits and made her want to sing at the top of her lungs. She loved the dynamic, relevant preaching that had a lot of life application. She liked the large size of the church because it offered so many programs for a single woman like her.
But a few years ago, ...
Related Topics: Church, Church involvement, Conflict, Worship
Community Never Dies
Dear Linda*,
I remember your image of the "sticky sticky mud" you talked about in your first e-mail to our moms' group. With that e-mail, you announced that Julie,* the daughter you'd named and would carry full-term, couldn't live outside your womb.
As members of one body, Christ's body, we all sit around a table of community, of communion. And in that first e-mail, you invited us, your sisters, to ...
Related Topics: Church, Comfort, Commitment, Community, Friendships, Grief, Relationships
Celebrate Even in Pain?
"Look at the female cardinal, Mom!"
Mom followed the direction of my finger as we marveled at the bird's appearance. The cardinal sat perched on her only leg—just like Dad.
My parents had been living with our family for five months when we noticed a small blood blister on Dad's big toe of his right foot. This was a serious concern as Dad was an insulin-dependent diabetic. Eventually, that tiny ...
Related Topics: Blessings, Fathers, Joy, pain, Reflection, Rejoicing
The Day God Told Me What to Pray
It was late Friday afternoon, and I was worried. Bob, my youngest child at 22 months, was sick. Earlier that day I noticed little spots all over his body. I thought they might be measles. I'd seen all of this before, since I had two older children. They'd had all the ordinary diseases, but even when they were sickest, they were livelier than Bob was that day. My other children still managed to play ...
Related Topics: Healing, Obedience, parenting, Prayer, Trust
Our Father's House
Several years ago, just before 9/11 and after the death of two precious people in my life, my father, Billy Graham, urged me to write the book Heaven: My Father's House. He'd been so encouraged by a message I'd given on Revelation 21, which contains the apostle John's eyewitness glimpse of our heavenly home, that he felt I should share it with others in written form. So I did.
But I never dreamed that ...
Results Not Typical
"Results not typical." I heard those words at the end of my first meeting at Weight Watchers. I prayed they weren't true. I wanted to have the results of others, and I wanted to do it only one more time, after a lifetime of diets and clothing sizes.
It took about 18 months to lose 60 pounds. It's taken much longer to lose old ways of thinking. Somewhere in this last year, though, as my goal weight ...
Related Topics: Celebration, Community, Hurts, Joy, Loss
The Beauty of Weakness
...
I was foolish. I spent my early life trying to protect myself from predators.
I was weak. I couldn't fend off those abusers, particularly when they outnumbered me when I was five years old. Two brothers and their friends took their turns with me my kindergarten year.
I was base. What they did to me confirmed what I felt was unworthiness.
I was despised. In my chaotic, unsafe home, though I know my ...
Related Topics: Abuse, Appearances, Joy, Recovery, Redemption, Self-Worth, submission
The Great Beyond
Randy Alcorn is the bestselling author of Heaven (Tyndale) and founder/director of nonprofit Eternal Perspective Ministries. So who better to address seven questions from our readers on heaven. Here's what you asked—and how Randy answers.
1. When a believer dies, when does she go to heaven?
At death, the human spirit goes either to heaven or hell. Christ depicted Lazarus the beggar and the rich ...
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