Editor’s note: Today we are sharing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the March on Washington in 1963. The speech is published in its entirety in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. While the events surrounding the speech and the nature of…
The One Thing Jesus Couldn’t Stop Talking About
What Matters Most Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.1 The key to life is finding out what matters most and building your life around it. In an age of distraction, however, focusing on what matters most feels impossible. Everything is grabbing at our…
Turn Your Season Around: Receive God’s Grace
By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8-9 I had everything but I had nothing. As the 1983 National League Rookie of the Year and a perennial All-Star throughout…
Should You Give Up on Goal-Setting?
The term goals was virtually nonexistent before 1920. On a graph, looking at any mention of the word in all of literature across the board, it’s pretty much a flat line — until 1920, when it started to uptick and has continued to shoot up and to the right for the past ninety to one…
Jesus, Born a Servant
Editor’s note: As we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas, enjoy these two short but powerful devotions on the beauty of the Incarnation from Eugene Peterson, beloved pastor and translator of the Message Bible. The 365-day devotional God’s Message for Each Day gathers Peterson’s best-loved, most powerful writing into a daily invitation to…
Why Your Prayers Need to Be Dangerous
Hey, Craig, do you believe God still does miracles?” “Of course,” I said. “Good — because your prayers are so lame.” I tried to laugh with him, but my friend’s joke stung — mostly because he was right. We had just left a prayer service together, back when I started working in ministry. My buddy…
God Walk: Moving at the Speed of Your Soul
“God walks “slowly” because He is love. If He is not love He would move much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is “slow” and yet it is lord…
“Not Good Enough” Jesus
Jesus would rather not even go to Jerusalem. It was chaos. He much preferred more normal places with more normal people. He left more of His grace in those places than He did in the bigger cities. Actually, other than fulfilling the cultural necessity of attending Jewish festivals and events, Jesus largely ignored Jerusalem. He…
Flyover: The Stories We’ve Missed
Thanksgiving offers us an annual pause from the pace of life to return to places we do not often visit and gather with people we do not often see. Indeed, I live in what some call a “flyover state” — Minnesota — a placed that many visitors fly over while hopping coast to coast.…
Advent: Everlasting Father
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. — John 1:1-3 For to us a Child is born, to us a son is…