I didn’t used to get out much. For twenty years I learned grace in a pretty sheltered environment. Now, go figure, I go out and speak about it. I have run into a huge tent of people from all strains of this faith in Jesus, deeply wanting to believe this life in grace. Beautiful people. [...]
Late afternoon, on “Black Friday” my daughter Carly was dropping off Stacey and Amy in front of a Scottsdale mall. Each had armloads of gifts and boxes to retrieve. Stacey couldn’t get out of the car until Amy had gathered all her packages. This did not go over well with the couple in the car [...]
Several weeks ago, my wife Stacey and I got into a fight. It was over nearly nothing. But that we would get so sideways revealed much deeper sadness and disappointment had been lingering around for awhile. It was one of those ugly fights, flooding far beyond the banks of the stated issue. Blame is eventually [...]
Maybe it’s just me. (I’m told it often is)…But I witnessed something wonderful and maybe even historic at our TrueFaced 12 Intensive Conference, held last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. When we started inviting others, back in the early-90s, to partner with us in these truths of identity and environments of grace-it was often kind of [...]
I spoke last week at a wonderful Arts Conference at Woodmen Valley Church in Colorado. I quoted a snippet by the 14th century philosopher Machiavelli from his work “The Prince”. Bruce McNicol handed me the quote long ago. It has rocked my world since then. He says,
“…there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, [...]
This weekend John was down at Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs. He had done their men’s retreat (with 300 guys) and was asked to speak at the weekend’s worship services. So Joanne and the girls and I drove down Saturday night. First off, it was great to see John. He is such an amazing [...]
Someone posed this question to me the other day: is grace your worldview or is it your calling? I thought it was an interesting question and I have wrestled with it for the past couple of days. To me, what it implies is that it’s one thing to have grace as a worldview–that’s an internal, [...]
One of my favorite axioms is: In times of stress you go with what you know. What does that mean? It means that when pressure builds sometimes what we know to be true is overridden by what we have experienced in our past, or by what we used to believe. We revert to a way [...]
Lately I have been thinking about what I do with this message of grace that I carry around inside me. I mean, here is a thing that shapes my theology and it is part and parcel of my everyday faith journey. But not everyone knows about it. I mean people that I am friends with, [...]
I had a realization last night as I was going to bed. This doesn’t usually happen because my brain moves very, very slowly in the evenings. But last night it hit me: I am to imitate Christ (no duh). Christ stands with me, his arm around me, as I try to make it through this [...]