Created to Play: How Taking Hobbies Seriously Grows Us Spiritually
Play is more than a way to pass the time — it is one of the ways God draws us toward one another. Whether around a game board, a radio or a shared pastime, ordinary hobbies can quietly remind us that we were created for connection, not isolation. Sometimes the simplest moments of play awaken us to the deeper fellowship we were made to enjoy.
Purple-Stained Fingers: Communion with My Mother in My Father’s Gymnasium Church
Communion is more than a ritual — it is a table where broken people discover they belong. In a humble school gym, stained fingers, plastic chairs and quiet faith become reminders that Christ still meets his people in ordinary places. His body is never exhausted, his grace never diminished, and even our deepest weakness becomes a place where his presence gently restores us.
The Friendlier Enemy: What Persecution Couldn’t Take, Comfort Can
The greatest threat to your faith may not be hostility but comfort. Long after persecution fades, the quiet pull of approval, success and worldly admiration can still steal your heart. Discover why following Jesus has always meant swimming against the current — and how true freedom begins when the world's applause no longer defines your worth.
The Night Is Not Silent: Dreams, Discernment, and Divine Conversation
What fills your mind shapes far more than your thoughts — it shapes your life. God still speaks, even in the quiet of the night, bringing clarity, direction and hope to hearts willing to listen. As you learn to discern his voice from every other influence, even your dreams can become invitations to know him more deeply and walk more confidently in his purpose.
Most of Us Are Agnostics — Even Pastors
Faith is not the absence of questions. Sometimes the deepest disciples are the ones who keep following Jesus even when certainty feels out of reach. If you've ever wrestled with doubt, discover why honest questions need not weaken your faith — and why surrender, not perfect certainty, has always been the truest mark of trust.
I Live Where the Machines Are Made
When every shortcut promises ease, discover the quiet invitation to think deeply, feel honestly and stay rooted in the voice of God.
The Sweet, Poisonous Berry: How Idolatry Works and Dies
We all worship something. But can what holds our hearts hold us? Idols disguise themselves as good but quietly demand what only God deserves.
Look and Live: The Only Cure for the Poison Within
Some wounds cannot be healed by trying harder. The poison runs too deep, and only God can provide the cure. In the wilderness, a strange command revealed an eternal truth: those who simply looked in faith were given life. Discover how an ancient bronze serpent points beyond itself to the cross — and why the same invitation still stands today: look and live.
God’s Two Books: The False War Between Science and Scripture
A rainbow can be explained by physics and still inspire wonder. The supposed conflict between science and Scripture is often overstated, as if understanding how something works somehow eliminates the One who made it possible. Yet many of history’s greatest scientists saw no contradiction. Nature and Scripture are not rival stories but two ways of encountering truth — each pointing beyond itself to the mystery, beauty and meaning woven into creation.
What If I Don’t Fit in a Box?
Trying to fit someone else’s mold causes us to miss the beauty of becoming ourselves. But God isn’t asking us to become anyone else.
Kierkegaard Against Comfort: The Brutal Demands Of Faith In An Age Of Easy Belief
Kierkegaard had little patience for comfortable Christianity. Faith, to him, was not a social identity or moral polish, but the hardest work of becoming oneself before God. Pleasure could distract. Duty could impress. Neither could save. True faith required surrender beyond what society could validate or reason could neatly explain. It was costly, daily and unfinished — a leap toward God that had to be made again and again.
Why Not Say It Aloud? Learning Honest Prayer From the Psalms
The Psalms assume something many of us forget: if God already knows our hearts, why hide them? Their prayers are startlingly honest — full of praise, doubt, gratitude, grief, confession and longing. The psalmists speak freely because they trust they are fully known and still welcomed. In teaching us to bring our whole selves before God, the Psalms reveal that honest prayer is not irreverence. It is intimacy.
Miracles, Order, and the Hand That Holds Both
The parting of the Red Sea is unforgettable, but Moses’ deeper question lingers: Why are we astonished when God interrupts nature yet indifferent to the order that sustains it every day? The same God who parts the waters also holds the tides in place, orders the stars and gives structure to reality itself. Miracles matter, but they point beyond themselves to the One whose wisdom upholds all things.
Still Enrolled: God Is Always Teaching You
Some lessons arrive through books, mentors and workshops. Others arrive disguised as disappointment, success or the realization that a milestone wasn't the finish line you imagined. Scripture describes wisdom as a lifelong pursuit, one that grows through humility rather than certainty. God’s work in us rarely ends where we expect it to. As long as we’re breathing, there is still something left to learn.
From Miracles To Mystery: How Faith Survived My Unanswered Prayers
A miraculous healing convinced him that God still works miracles. Years later, unanswered prayers forced him to wrestle with a harder question: Why does God intervene in some stories and remain silent in others? After witnessing both wonders and heartbreak, he discovered that faith isn't the absence of mystery. It's learning to trust God in the middle of it.
Maewyn's Mountain: Learning to Pray with Your Whole Life
A slave alone on Irish mountainsides, Saint Patrick learned to meet God in every moment and circumstance — wind, rain, work, fear, silence.
Old Books: Water from Deep Wells
At sixteen, Augustine wanted God — eventually. In the meantime, he chased pleasure, ambition, recognition and every excuse he could find to postpone surrender. His story endures because it is so familiar. We know what it is like to hunger for something deeper while settling for less. The voices of believers from other centuries remind us that our struggles are not unique, and that God still meets restless hearts with grace.
The Architecture of Hope: Finding Beauty in the Blurred
Hope rarely arrives all at once. More often, it appears in fragments — in birdsong through open windows, sunlight on garden leaves, burnt cookies cooling on the counter, the quiet breathing of someone you love beside you in bed. We spend much of life straining for clarity while God keeps teaching us to notice beauty in the blurred edges of ordinary days. Perhaps faith is less about possessing certainty and more about learning, again and again, to believe that even fragile things still carry the architecture of hope.
Gods, Creatures, and the One Who Simply Is
Most gods are just creatures with better costumes — stronger, stranger, louder versions of us. But the God who meets Moses in the burning bush is not one more being among beings. He is Being itself: the great I AM. The plagues are not party tricks, but judgments against lesser powers. Egypt worships creatures. Moses encounters the Creator — the One from whom all existence comes.
Last Link: Your Family’s Pain Can Stop With You
Jim Burns learned the hard truth early: if you don’t heal, you will repeat. How one honest person can change a family’s direction.