What’s Your Mission for 2021?
The future seems to outsmart the best of us. No one could have foreseen what 2020 would be like. So I refuse any temptation to prognosticate about this year. But I can speak to how we can face it. Let’s start with a question: What’s your mission for 2021? To have a mission means you […]
The Two Choices of Love
After a much needed hiatus from writing, I am now resuming my weekly blogs. Each month will focus on a certain theme. The December theme will be a fitting Christmas one: the love of God. Here we go… In my work with men over the years, and now especially as a spiritual director, there is […]
Expressing Love in Brotherhood
This is the fourth and last in a series of posts on brotherhood. As a general rule, men struggle with expressing love in brotherhood. The awkwardness occurs for any number of reasons. There can be family origin issues where love was poorly expressed or not at all. Then there is the difficulty men have in […]
The Brotherhood of the Quest
This post continues the blog series on brotherhood. The first one dealt with the initial step in all true brotherhood, a deep sharing of hearts. In the second post, we moved into the foundation of brotherhood, experiencing Jesus as our Brother. In this third post, I want to explore the brotherhood of the quest. What […]
The Brotherhood of Jesus
This is the second in a series of posts on brotherhood. In the first post, I outlined the first step toward true brotherhood, a sharing of stories that allows a bonding of hearts. In this post, I want to take a second step and explore the foundation of true brotherhood — Jesus Himself. The brotherhood […]
The Brotherhood of the Broken
This post begins a new series on the topic of brotherhood. By the word brotherhood, I mean how a man binds himself to other men and so experiences a bond between them. It does not come easy. Women easily create community. But men tend to isolate. Underneath all the cultural and personal reasons for staying […]
Imaginative Prayer: Experiencing God
Our journey into imaginative prayer has taken us through objections and answers, entering a gospel scene, Jesus’ presence with us, and inner healing. For this last post, I want to offer some suggestions on experiencing God in imaginative prayer through Bible reading. I have touched on this in previous posts, but now I want to […]
Imaginative Prayer: Inner Healing
In the last post, I tried to explain how using our imaginations could help us experience Jesus in the present and future. In this post, I want to go the opposite direction: experiencing His presence in our past. This form of imaginative prayer is called inner healing. But what possible benefit could there be in […]
Imaginative Prayer: Jesus With You
In the last post on imaginative prayer, I described a type of praying in which you imagine a gospel scene. Here you enter the story of Jesus and meet Him there. For this post, I want to go in the opposite direction. What would it be like for Jesus to enter your story and […]
Imaginative Prayer: Entering A Gospel Scene
In the last post, I argued for the validity of using our imagination in prayer. But accepting its validity is only a first step. Experiencing its transformative power provides its own self-validation. So for the next few posts, I want to offer various types of imaginative prayer with the hope that you will try these […]