Emotionally Healthy Preaching eBook

Unlock New Depth in Your Preaching & Teaching

Preaching

Personal Assessment

How Emotionally Healthy Are You?
Take a free 15 minute personal assessment now!

*We respect your privacy by not sharing or selling your email address.

Personal Assessment

Close

Tag Archives: pause

Daily Offices for Me

I am often asked what I do for my Daily Offices.  The answer is not too complex. I generally pause 3-4x a day – morning for a longer period, midday, evening and compline (right before going to bed). I have been meditation on and praying the psalms now for over 3 and a half years, using the schedule found in the end of the Book of Common Prayer. (I have also made it available as a download from our resources at the EHS and NLF website).  I don’t keep to the daily schedule with dates but just keep moving along day by day. I think it works out to praying through the Psalter every 5-6 weeks. This is my bread and butter. I generally will take 2 ten to twenty minutes blocks of silence somewhere in my offices (almost always in the morning). I almost always have a devotional handy (like the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Read more.

Rule of Life NLF Part 4 (with commentary)

In this final and fourth section of the Rule of Life we are piloting at our local church, you will notice that I have intentionally kept this section short (It contains only 3 of the Rule’s 16 points!)  I will conclude with a little example of how this is working out in my own life. Work/Activity • Savor the sacred in all I do — at work, rest or play. Psalm 104; Eph. 6:5-8; I Tim. 4:3-4. All of life is a gift from God.  The word savor carries the notion of pausing to taste the deliciousness of our work, rest and play.  It is the God-like celebration of delighting over His creation, exclaiming that it is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). • Remember the poor and marginalized.  Exodus 2:23-25; Matthew 25:31-46; James 1:27.This is about a heart that carries the poor and marginalized, that remembers them like God. We are referring to a passion, not so. Read more.

Resurrection Without Crucifixion

I believe the central message of Christianity remains Good Friday, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost.  Death is God’s way to transformation and new life. I know it intellectually and dislike very much how it lives! My journey with Christ into what we now call “emotionally healthy spirituality” has three distinct, but overlapping, phases to it: 1994-96 – Emotional health and Spiritual maturity inseparable 2003-04  Contemplative spirituality integration 2007-08  Personal integrity/Differentiation.  I don’t really understand this one very well since I am only now in its beginning, but I do know that it has involved, for me thus far, really grasping the crucifixion and death.  As Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernal of truth falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (Jn. 12:24).  Jesus is telling it like it is. If the seed does not die, there will be no fruit or grain.. Read more.