The words were just a passing line, an impromptu cue from my yoga teacher, but they clanged and reverberated in my mind. I shifted into autopilot, moving through the forms. For the rest of the hour, as my body moved, my mind couldn’t stop turning these words over and over. “Do not lust for results.”
Read to Grow / Radically Normal (or Are you suffering from Spiritual Accomplishment Urgency Syndrome?)
There’s a particular sickness you might have if you grew up in Church World (Andy Stanley’s name for the deep sub-culture of evangelical Christianity) The sickness? Spiritual Accomplishment Urgency Syndrome. The symptoms often include: Do you notice a theme? Are you feeling a little guilty about it? There’s another way this illness manifests itself. For […]
Are you afraid of growing?
I was sitting in a booth at Panera with a friend, talking through the branding for an online course I’m developing. In fact, it was the same booth I’m sitting in now as I write this, months later. We were discussing the tag line of the course. He was hung up on one of the […]
Is your religion feeding you or is it just knife skills?
I was juggling the preparations for a Bar-B-Que. Onions and mushrooms were caramelizing on the stove top. On the grill, Burgers were starting to cook. I was bouncing between setting out the sides, rooting out long forgotten condiments from the back corners of the fridge, and cutting tomatoes. Just then, my ever-hungry 6 year-old walked […]
In which a perfectionist admits that perfectionism is his problem.
That particular Sunday was terrible, but it was also wonderful. When a nice motorcycle instructor named Kandice asked me, “Do you have test anxiety?” she had no idea that she was touching on a central spiritual issue for me. For more than a year I had been slowly working on getting my motorcycle endorsement. So, […]
Time to stop trying too hard.
I’m A Tryer. Trying too hard. You could use that phrase as a banner for much of my life. Trying hard to do well. Trying hard to be accepted. Trying hard to be strong, to be a good husband, to be a good pastor, to be a good dad, to be more emotional and relational. […]