Looking for Purpose? Start with your Identity in Christ

You have a good and beautiful purpose. Part of the adventure of your life is to discover it. Instead of pinning on a broken identity you’ve pieced together from scraps, you can discover an identity that will fit you perfectly because it comes from the Master Artist who made you. This sense of purpose will […]

Wandering Lost? Finding your Purpose will change that.

I was heading to a lunch meeting with another car following me. We were headed to a restaurant a few miles away. While driving, I was thinking about a heavy conversation I had upcoming. Then I got a text message. While I was multi-tasking, (don’t judge me!) a semi truck merged into my lane. It […]

You are a Hand-made Piece of Art

Several years back, my wife and I spent a painfully large number of hours hunting for a new house.  After the 19th house, they all start to blend, and you can’t remember which one had the great deck, and which one had the kicked in sheetrock. Very quickly, though, you become an expert on neighborhoods […]

Feeling Insecure? Try Standing in a New Position

I showed up at Walla Walla University, a small Christian school in the southeast corner of Washington, as a transfer student. I was moving geographically from Ohio to Washington and conceptually from architecture to theology. You can bet not many credits transferred.  I was behind my peers.  I was far away from home.  I only […]

Praying for Open Eyes: See Yourself as God Sees You

How do you see yourself today?  I’d like you to see yourself as God sees you.  Let me hold up a mirror. The Homeless Princess One upon a time there was a princess. As you know, a princess is a daughter of the king. She’s a member of the royal family with position, authority, and […]

You Delight the Father. Be Free.

I’ve been carrying a heaviness in my gut for the past few of weeks. So much busyness, yet I’m making hardly any headway in the projects I care about. I’m not living up to my own expectations in my relationships. Just feeling out of sorts. This morning I went back to the Gospel of Mark, […]

Why Your New Year’s Resolution Will Fail (Part 1)

Here we are in the first week of 2013.  This is the season for self-evaluation and reflection. For some of us, it’s the time to make New Year’s Resolutions. A recent study done at the University of Scranton[note A quick summary of this very interesting study, including the top New Year’s resolutions made in 2012. […]

Newtown’s Impact for Me

A Dismal Week It was December 14th, 2012. Friday at the end of a long week. On Monday there was a brutal murder just a few houses down the street from my office.  That put me in a thoughtful frame of mind about life.  Then Tuesday happened.  A solitary gunman entered the Clackamas Town Center, […]

The 210 Framework: A Way to see your Identity and Purpose

The Big Questions Who am I really? Why am I here? What purpose does my life serve? These are the fundamental questions that shape our lives. Some of us have thought long and deep about these things; others not so much. Either way, you have answers to these questions deep in your heart. The answers […]

You Are God’s Poem (That’s your Identity & Purpose.)

My daughter, Emerson, was sitting in her carseat in the back row of the van as we drove home from dinner one evening.  She was four at the time.  Discipline was not her strong suit that day, and as evening came she got more and more out of control.  She was angry with me because […]

Negative Core Values & How You Can Change Them

There are two kinds of core values.   Aspirational core values are the ones you wish you had, those idealized qualities you hope to develop one day.  Authentic core values are the ones that you really have, the ones that already drive your decisions. (More on the distinction here.)  Aspirational core values are inspiring.  But […]

How to Use Your Core Values

Whether we’re talking about the corporate world or your personal life, lists of core values all suffer from the same weakness.  They’re just words on a page. You may spend hours reflecting and carefully crafting your core values statement.  But what happens once the words are chosen and sentences crafted? Do the words get stuck […]

How To Identify Your Real Core Values

You are who you are. If there’s a better you out there to become, it’s going to be found by traveling from where you are now to where you could be. That means knowing who you are now matters. This is the purpose of identifying your authentic core values. (Authentic core values? Yep. There are […]

Are Your Core Values Real or Aspirational?

You live according to your core values. I’m not saying you should live by your core values or that you need to dream up a list of core values to live by. I’m telling you one of the most painful truths about life: You already live according to your core values. Already. Every day.  Show […]