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I have a confession to make. I am one of the cheapest people I know. I’m just so darn practical. I love coupons and sales and the thrill of getting a deal on something. If I can buy something that will work for a low price, I have a hard time splurging on something more expensive. I don’t like spending …

Some of the most candid prayers I’ve ever prayed were laced with profanity. I was in my early twenties and my life had not played out the way I thought it would or should. I didn’t have a clear career path. I didn’t even know what I would have wanted to do if money were no object. I was still …

We are most free to be ourselves when we know we are loved. We can find evidence of that in children. They are free to be themselves. I know I was. As a kid, I sang for anybody who would listen when I was a child. I would sing in my Sunday School class, while listening to Amy Grant on …

We all have things that we are ashamed of. Some are stupid things we did: a bad haircut, an unwise relationship, a terrible date, a speech gone wrong, a text sent to the wrong person. Others are things that were done to us: a harsh word of criticism given in front of your peers, a rumor started by someone else, …

The older I get, the more I see that I’m just like my parents. I use the same weird sayings, have some of the same idiosyncrasies, and behave a lot like them. I turn everything into a song, something I get from my mom. I nerd out about the Bible, something I get from my dad. Because of this, if …

Honestly, I find John chapter 7 a little weird. There aren’t any fun stories or miracles. There’s just a lot of people misunderstanding Jesus. His brothers think he wants to be famous. Some in the crowd think he’s demon-possessed. Others think he can’t be the Messiah because they know his hometown. The religious leaders want to arrest him. Throughout all …

There comes a point in all of our lives when following Jesus gets hard. It could be that we’ve done all the right things, and despite this, tragedy has found us. We might recognize that Jesus is asking us to change something about ourselves, something that we feel is core to who we are. Maybe it’s just that we get …

I am a Bible nerd. In my defense, I come by it naturally. My dad was a pastor for several years. Not surprisingly, I grew up in the church. I knew the books of the Bible by the time I was four. As a child, I participated in Bible trivia, Bible Bowls, who can find the passage first competitions, all …

In J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic works The Lord of the Rings, the heroes of the tale are the most unlikeliest of creatures. There are kings and elves and brave men who play a big role in the story. However, the biggest heroes of the story are Frodo and Sam, two hobbits. If you haven’t read the series or watched the movies, …

Imagine you have a wonderful grandfather. One Christmas, out of the blue for no reason at all he gives you and all of our cousins an amazing gift: a once in a lifetime trip around the world. He’s paid all the expenses, made all the arrangements, and even touched base with your bosses and negotiated paid vacations for all of …