Willpower
In 1975, three friends and I participated in a 200-mile bicycle marathon on Belle Isle, an island-park owned by the city of Detroit. The course was a …
Cultural Creep
The Curse of Conformity
In 1983 I landed my first job in the computer industry. I applied for an open position, sent in my resume, endured a few interviews, and attended one …
The History of the World is a Long Story of Bad Answers
My wife’s and my first home was a trilevel, with only two of the floors completed. We decided to finish the third floor ourselves, creating a family …
Twin Motivations
I once had a client whose business-gifting outshined the stars of the Harvard Business Review. Yet she scorched everything she touched. Relationships …
Relationship or Religion?
My best friend in the world, from ages eight to eighteen (except for three long months), was Mark Maxam. Inseparable companions, we walked to school …
How To Be IN But Not OF — That Is The Question
My grandfather was a missionary in China from 1917 to 1936. He once told me of some early Pentecostal missionaries to China. They decided it was …
Spiritual Insanity
A few years ago, a twenty-eight-year-old woman shared with me what she called her “unseemly struggle:” she was dissatisfied … with most everything. …
When Obedience Doesn’t Make Sense
When my family moved to Detroit, the summer between my first and second grade, Tommy was the first friend I made. He too was the son of a pastor—so we …
Why Do Our Kids Reject Christianity?
Why do so many people—people with incredible conversion stories—parent children who abandon Christianity? History overflows with great saints whose …
Who is Your Hero?
Sometime God speaks through a careful choreography of life events: conversations, readings, observations, and even the occasional media clip. …
Spiritual Judo
I reached my fitness high water mark at the age of twenty-four. I ran thirty miles a week, sweated three hundred pushups a day, and I brawled each …
The Nonsense of S.M.A.R.T. Sense
Is modern business wisdom destroying Christian spirituality? Oswald Chambers once asked, “[Do we consider ourselves] so amazingly important that we …