Anxiety is a miserable feeling, as anyone who suffers from it well knows. The inability to get control of anxiety and get your life back is what causes the anxiety to often flip into depression. In trying to help clients suffering with anxiety, one goal is to give them tools that help them cure or at least better manage it. An excellent tool often recommended is The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques, by Margaret Wehrenberg. The subtitle, Understanding How Your Brain Makes You Anxious and What You Can Do About It, describes why the book is so helpful. Your Brain […]

Once upon a time, there was a loving Parent who walked with his children in peace and security—Paradise. But then something terrible happened: separation. The children were disconnected from their Caregiver. The relationship was severed because of rebellion, because of sin. Now, to this day, those children wander the Earth seeking to fill the void that was created in the loss. But, as they desperately attempt to connect with the world around them, only emptiness is found. Nothing can replace what once was. Nothing can make the children whole again except a reconnection to their life source. This phenomenon of […]

By: Dr. Michael Allen Sometimes pastors point out that a person’s checkbook says quite a lot about them: their priorities, their loves, their values. That’s surely true. Perhaps not so frequently mentioned is that our prayers serve as a barometer of sorts regarding our loves and passions. What do we pray about? What things do we praise God regarding? What experiences summon forth our thanks? And what leads us to cry out in desperate need and longing? The psalmist prayed for many things. In fact one of the endearing qualities of the Psalms is that they do serve as what one […]

Never! . . . Right? The Bible is an amazing book, written by forty people over thousands of years; yet, it has only one author: God. If we were to invite forty people to dinner and asked them to tell us about their experience, we would likely get a wide variety of reports. Those who loved the filet mignon would focus on how it was cooked to perfection, seasoned just right, and served with butter sizzling on top. Others at our imaginary dinner party may have given slight mention to the steak because they were overwhelmed with the novelty of […]

By: Dr. Sam Lamerson Whether you have been in church your entire life or are brand new to the faith, you will undoubtedly, at times, encounter Bible passages that are difficult to understand. The scriptures themselves speak of this, as the Apostle Peter says, “. . . just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as […]

(Scroll down to leave a comment on why love needs no legislation) Back in August I had the privilege of marrying Mark and Kaitlin, the young couple who head up our Young Adults ministry at Cross Community Church. Starting with pre-engagement coaching, we spent a considerable amount of time over the past year talking together about the stuff of marriage. I remember discussing the all-too-common prenuptials that many bring into their marriages today, even Christian marriages. A prenuptial is defined as: “A contract entered into prior to marriage which commonly includes provisions for the division of property and spousal support […]

How do you live the good life? What do you need to know or do in order to really live life as it’s meant to be lived? Jesus taught that, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). This means that there are two ways to pursue this sense of life to the full. There’s one approach that works and one that doesn’t. What you can’t live on What does Jesus mean by “live” and “bread”? The Greek word he uses for live is zoe, and it means […]