It happens all the time. My wife and I hear things about our marriage that makes us smile. Things like: “You look so happy!” “You act like newlyweds!” “You can’t relate with what I’m going through because your marriage is so good.” “You two never fight.” We don’t smile because these things make us happy…we smile because very few people know our story. And everyone has one – even us. It wasn’t that long ago that Consuela and I were at the point of divorce. Things were not good and our marriage was in crisis. I don’t type or say...
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
One of my favorite Bible verses is found at 2 Corinthians 10. Paul is writing to a church in ancient times and he tells them, among other things, to "take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ." Here we see him addressing one of the biggest battles that we all must face - the battle of the mind. You see, we tell ourselves all kinds of stories. Stories about ourselves. Stories about our spouses or children or family. Stories about our friends, our church, or even our pastor. And stories that we tell about complete strangers that we...
Guest Post on CatalystConference.com
Last week, I was honored to have a guest post published on CatalystConference.com. If you're not familiar with the Catalyst Conference, here is a description of their history and current mission (from catalystconference.com/about-us): "Catalyst was conceived as a Next Generation Leaders Conference in 1999 by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, John Maxwell, Lanny Donoho and several young leaders. Catalyst was created to meet the felt need that existed within the church leader space for a leadership event that was focused on a new generation of church leaders. Everything within this space seemed built around a forty to sixty year old mindset...