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3 Reasons Why You Should Not Fast in January

Every January, without fail, we see leaders all over the Body of Christ calling for fasts, abstaining from food or some activity to focus on God. There’s the perennial Daniel Fast, based on the prophet of the same name refusing the king’s delicacies and living on...
Finding an alternative to the anxious pursuit of happiness parading as American Christianity

Finding an alternative to the anxious pursuit of happiness parading as American Christianity

In My Bright Abyss, poet and Yale professor Christian Wiman wrote, “There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us.”

I’m a psychotherapist who used to be a Baptist pastor in the Southeast. For much of my life I have believed that anxiety is not only an unfortunate byproduct of pursuing excellence in my life and work (sort of like off-gassing for the human soul) but a deeply integral component of that which secures my success. Somehow I picked up along the way that my anxiety was a reliable way of measuring how hard I was working and how seriously I was taking the next assignment, job, prayer, paper, relationship or client.

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How to Attain Emotional Stability

How to Attain Emotional Stability

God created us with emotions, and it’s wrong to try to become emotionless, to withdraw to a state in which nothing ever bothers us—a state where we are just numb. That is certainly not what God wants. On the other hand, some folks let their emotions take them on a...

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Palm Sunday and the Gift of Disillusionment

Palm Sunday and the Gift of Disillusionment

The December sky was low and gray on the morning I woke up and could not feel my hands. I wrung out my arms, hoping the sensation would return. I shook them violently to no avail. Rushing to the bathroom, I held them under hot water. Then frigid water. Neither helped....

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