Living Fully, Living Gratefully: More Than Feeling Thankful
Scripture would urge us to choose to be grateful, first of all, by acknowledging God’s grace as we pray. We don’t just feel thankful. We actually thank God in prayer no matter what we’re feeling. We tell God what he has done, recognizing his grace at work in our lives and acknowledging our dependence on him.
Read Post
Living Fully, Living Gratefully: Why Giving Thanks Matters
Thanking God highlights God’s sovereignty, presence, and care. Thanking God frames all of human life in the context of God’s will and activity. Thanking God points to God’s grace and goodness. Thanking God is foundational to the Christian life.
Read Post
Living Fully, Living Gratefully: An Invitation
Do you ever feel as if there’s more to life than what you’re experiencing? Perhaps you’re feeling unfulfilled at work or in your primary relationships. It seems like things ought to be better. Or, even if you’re thriving most of the time, you have a sense that your life could be richer and fuller . . . somehow.
Read Post
Leadership Prayers – Psalm 144
God has called us to the work of leadership and is engaged with us as we do it, but to what end? What is the purpose of our being leaders in the first place? In contrast to seeing the leader as being the exclusive beneficiary of God’s attention and deliverance, the psalmist shifts the focus onto the people and places under the leader’s care.
Read Post
Leadership Prayers – Psalm 143
How then do we deal with the consequences of our own moral failures in leadership? How can we pray when our circumstances implicate us in our sin?
Read Post
Prayers for Workers: When Fear Rises Up in Your Heart
As you work today, God is indeed your refuge and strength. Don’t be afraid!
Read Post
God Can Do More Than You Imagine! (Part 2)
Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard from many of you about the things God has been doing in your lives. You’ve testified to the reality of God’s indwelling power. I wish we could somehow gather all Life for Leaders readers together so we could share all that God has done. But it would be hard to sit down with 7,500 people at a time. And listening to everyone share would take a long time. So we don’t get to hear how God has been at work in each other’s lives. We have to take it on faith.
Read Post
Grace and Love that Never Go Away
This letter began with God choosing us before the foundation of the world (1:4). It ends with the hope of an endless, undying, incorruptible future, one that is indeed filled with God’s grace for us and our love for Christ.
Read Post
Grace to You!
Grace, as you may recall, is God’s unmerited kindness. It is undeserved favor. We don’t earn God’s grace by anything we do, say, or feel. What we do in this life in service to God and others is a response to grace, not the cause of grace. We who have been saved by God’s grace in Christ live each day by grace as we do the good works God has planned for us (2:10).
Read Post
Peace and Love
The words “peace” and “love” are so overused that it would be easy to miss the significance of Paul’s concluding prayer in Ephesians. But if we remember what we have read earlier, we recognize that peace and love are absolutely central to God’s character and work. Moreover, we understand that genuine peace and genuine love are essential to our character and work.
Read Post
Legacy of Love – Part II
In honor of Black History Month, and every other month, may we sit under the teachers and leaders of African-American history—which is American history.
Read Post
If I Don’t Have Love – Part I
If leadership speaks in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but does not have love, leadership is a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if leadership has prophetic powers, and understands all mysteries and all knowledge, and if leadership has all faith, so as to remove mountains, but does not have love, leadership is nothing. If leadership gives away all their possessions, and hands over their body so that leadership may boast, but does not have love, leadership gains nothing.
Read Post
Prayers for Workers: How to Pray for Your Leadership
As you lead today, let your leadership be characterized by truthfulness, humility, and a commitment to justice.
Read Post
Ministry and Relationship: The Example of Paul
Paul’s letters reveal the personal nature of his relationships with his churches. He often describes his work and freely recounts his challenges and troubles (see, for example, 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 and 10:1-12:21). He talks about how much he misses the people in his churches when he is not with them (1 Thessalonians 3:1-13). Moreover, he expects that they will miss him and be eager to receive news of his life and ministry. Thus, Paul sends Tychicus, not only to deliver the mail, but also to share news of how Paul is doing. Tychicus will, in fact, tell them “everything” (Ephesians 6:21).
Read Post
How to Pray in the Trenches: Pray for What You Really Need
Paul’s example encourages us to pray for what we really need, even if it’s something we’ve received many times before.
Read Post