Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.
When I finished the first chapter of this book, I was ready to move on to the hopeful part. My editor sent it back with a hard word: "Pete, you can't get to the cure until you've told the truth about the disease." I didn't want to climb back down into that pain. I had already lived it. But I did, and it became the hardest chapter in the book to write.
In this episode, I look at what happens when we hand our scorecard to everyone around us: boards, peers, congregants, social media. The damage runs in three directions. We do violence to ourselves, abandoning the person God made us to be. We do violence to those closest to us, the spouses, children, and teams who absorb our hurry. And we do violence to God's work, rushing ahead of him and blocking the slow formation he wants to do in us and in others.
You cannot rebuild until you reckon with the damage. If you've been bent over under a weight you've carried so long you've forgotten how to stand up straight, this one is for you.
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Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET. Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.
Most of us were trained to read the Bible the way we were trained to lead — move fast, cover ground, extract what's useful, and get back to work. But what if that approach, by itself, is keeping you from the very transformation you're trying to produce in others?
In this episode, I want to share a practice that has shaped my life for almost thirty years. A practice I cannot live without. It's called Lectio Divina — holy reading — and I believe it may be the single most important shift a Christian leader can make in their relationship with Scripture and with God.
I'll take you through the history of this practice, the ancient monastic stream of reading that treated the Bible not as a text to be mastered but as a sacrament — a place of encounter with the living God. I'll share the four movements that structure it, and exactly what it looked like in my own devotional life this past week.
This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent reading the Bible the way I approached leadership: achieve, produce, get it done. What that approach cost me — in my prayer life, my preaching, my soul — is something I wish someone had told me at 30.
Lectio Divina interrupts the cycle of leading from information rather than formation. It doesn't just inform your sermons — it transforms the person preaching them. And it begins with something shockingly simple: slowing down long enough to let the Word read you.
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Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET. Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.
Most of us were trained to look for God in the big moments — the breakthrough, the open door, the dramatic call. But what if God is most consistently present in the ordinary moments we rush past every day?
In this episode, I want to share a 500-year-old practice that has quietly transformed my leadership, my marriage, and my relationship with God. It's called the Examen — and I believe it may be the single most underused tool in the modern pastor's spiritual formation toolkit.
I'll take you through the history of this practice, born out of the life of Ignatius of Loyola — a soldier brought low by a cannonball who discovered that God speaks through our interior movements. I'll share the 2-question version you can start today, and the fuller 4-movement practice the Jesuits have done twice a day for five centuries.
This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent pushing past the heaviness in my chest — misreading desolation as something to overcome rather than something to hear. What I missed cost me. You don't have to miss it too.
The Examen interrupts the cycle of leading from wounds and repeating old patterns. It teaches discernment, not just decision-making. And it begins with just two questions.
Join Us for a Free Webinar
Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET. Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.
