Reflections

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~ Roy T. Bennett

We need to cultivate the courage to be uncomfortable and to teach the people around us how to accept discomfort as a part of growth.
~ Brené Brown, Professor/author/Speaker

---

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. ~ Elie Wiesel, 1928-2016

Friendship is an invitation to explore more deeply what you believe about God and learn how to express it. How is friendship molding you to become who you are meant to be in the kingdom of God? Friendships are meant to draw us more deeply into our callings as we learn how to love and serve one another. The best friendships are not built just on the basis of love, and not just on the basis of history, but on the basis of the kingdom of God and the intersecting of the gifts that God has given each. It is one of the few places that shows us what it means to love someone and to learn how to play together.
~ Dan Allender, Psychologist/Author

It is not a good sign when a person recognizes no difference between sucking sweets and eating a square meal. Equally, it is not a good sign when Christians recognize no difference between social activities in Christian company and fellowship… Thus, Christian fellowship is an expression of both love and humility. It springs from a desire to bring benefit to others, coupled with a sense of personal weakness and need. It has a double motive—the wish to help, and to be helped; to edify, and to be edified. It has a double aim—to do, and to receive, good. It is a corporate seeking by Christian people to know God better through sharing with each other what, individually, they have learned of Him already.
~ J.I. Packer (1926-2020), Author/Theologian

This Sunday’s readings: Acts 20:36-21:14

Reflections

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~ Roy T. Bennett

---

Jack Taylor put it this way: “an idol is something you have to check with before you say yes to God”.
~ Kris Vallotton, Heavy Rain: Renew the Church, Transform the World

The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver’s watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
~ Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
~ Anne Lamott, 1954-, Author

Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives.
~ Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you’ve been holding on to more dearly than Him.
~ Tullian Tchividjian

When people say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God’s.
~ Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods

This Sunday’s readings: Acts 19:23-41