Pete Gall is a Christian author, speaker and brand consultant who specializes in giving God back to people. More →
I’ve been thinking about how often I get trapped in false dichotomies, and how often I feel like I can’t make a clean and good choice, but am instead left with having to choose the lesser of two evils.
And then I saw the Jerry Garcia quote on a bumper sticker today. Bumper stickers, fortune [...]
Rat shit is small.
Dog shit is medium.
Horse shit is big.
The same is true with the challenges and frustrations of life.
The friend from whom I first learned this phrase likes to talk about his tendency to “pole vault over rat shit,” meaning his tendency to over-react to small challenges as though they are great challenges.
Life is [...]
Could it be that the greatest purpose in life – the true secret to life – is staying present with life?
All anxieties, all escapes, all temptations, seem to be tied to drawing energy away from living – away from living in the moment.
All comforts, all rewards, all meaningful challenges – whichever of these I can [...]
We make our own choices, and very often those choices lead to tragedies.
This is a hard truth, but a phrase worth bearing in mind.
It doesn’t mean adopting a posture of apathy, cruelty, or selfishness. (Is there something in the way you’ve had faith taught to you that does make it seem incorrect?)
In the end, we [...]
This is one of those phrases that sounds so churchy at first that it’s hard to even engage.
And then it’s so big that it feels like there’s not much to do with it other than let it be true.
God is either everything, or nothing.
All-powerful, all-knowing, all-present…and the reason to capitalize a whole bunch of other [...]
I love when people share fears I recognize. What a brilliant tension for a person to feel. All sin and all honesty has a certain “but this is too far — this is farm animal territory” lie to it, doesn’t it.
And then you put light on it, and good or bad it becomes matter of [...]
True?
Sometimes?
Always?
Where are you with language? Is it a tool, an art, a bridge, a sign?
Where are you with coarse language? Are there times where a hard word matches where you find yourself? Are there times where the vigor of a hard word gives you room enough to feel what’s happening?
Do you need profanity? Do you [...]
I just heard that phrase in A Soldier of the Great War, which I’m listening to during my workouts.
I’m having a period of that sort of rising, and the experience is breathtaking. My marriage is in a great place. My posture with God. The work He’s doing in me. My career (I just took a [...]
The idea – in discipleship or recovery or in life – is to draw close to the people who have grown in ways that I, too, would hope to grow.
The winners won’t mind me hanging around. But I won’t become one of them until I do the work.
My spirit is the given. My humanity is where the work and the development of my relationship takes place.
The two parts point to the same place. My spirit needs forgiveness. My humanity needs healing. Neither forgiveness nor healing are the destination. The destination is communion with God. In spirit and in flesh.
We live in a world that belongs to a God who has already set his gaze and his pursuit upon us.
When we seek him, we are merely responding. All we can ever do is respond to him…we will never be the initiators.
Therefore, the course of our relationship with life and with God is not ours [...]
The phrase was heard in a bar, by an alcoholic (who knows why she was there).
Is there a parallel to be found with sin, sinners, and Christians who are walking out the contradictions of being sinners called saints?
Is there any freedom for you from the burdensome word “hypocrite” in this phrase? Is there a difference [...]
Do you know anybody who has ever kept a fortune cookie fortune as some sort of evidence or reminder about how they want their life to go?
Fortune cookies are the ultimate in pulp theology. Most of the time we throw them away immediately (Usually we remember what was on the fortune – even if we [...]
