Woman Chooses Painful Route to Gain Respect

Hajnal Ban decided she was tired of being what she considered short. The five-foot-one Australian woman had been made fun of most of her life, and she ...

Pastor Discovers Meaningful Way to Help Others in Pain

In an interview about his book The Folly of Prayer (IVP, 2009), author and pastor Matt Woodley shared a story about his friend Theresa. Theresa was experiencing ...

The Limits of the Human Will

Many of us act as if repentance is a matter of the will. [But] we can't "will" ourselves into change. We can't "will" ourselves ...

Wanting the Cure Without the Care

What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care: the participation in the pain, the solidarity ...

Praying Against the Consequences of Sin

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

—Fred Allen, U.S. ...

Broken Globe Symbolic of Broken World

In a sermon Pastor Matt Woodley shared the following story:

When I was about ten years old, my dad, a medical doctor, received a special gift from one ...

Organization Doesn't Help the Wounded

A soldier was wounded in a battle and ordered to the nearest military hospital. Arriving at the entrance, he saw two doors: one marked "For Minor ...

Fred Smith: Church Is for Broken People

Fred Smith loves to ask people this question: "If you were caught for drunken driving, and the headlines in your local newspaper that Sunday morning said, ...

Abraham Lincoln's Life Raft

Abraham Lincoln went into a severe period of grief in February 1862 when his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

He found comfort in the words of Presbyterian ...

Broken Bottle Demonstrates Extravagance for God

Text: "'Leave her alone,' said Jesus. 'Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.'" (Mark 14:3–11). ...