Recently I was amazed at our persecuted brothers and sisters in Egypt who were praying for the evildoers that sought to murder them. These Christians understood that evildoers can take their life but not their living hope in Christ Jesus (Matthew 10:28, 1 Peter 1:3-9). One persecuted leader, Fr. Boules George, explained that his prayer for his enemies was in faithful… Read More »
In the Christian life, we are often called to the business of waiting on the Lord. Some waits are shorter, like waiting for a child to recover from a cold. Other waits can last decades, like waiting for a spouse to change. Learning to wait well is an important discipline of grace that we should strive to… Read More »
This is the essence of marriage, a husband and wife, clinging together. Aaron Sironi delivered his general session at the CCEF conference entitled: For Better or For Worse: Emotions in Marriage. He challenged us to approach marriage counseling from the perspective of encouraging Biblical clinging. Aaron explained that emotions in marriage are powerful. They can tear a couple… Read More »
As those closest to me already know, my story has been marked with suffering as I faced the death of my marriage. Yet, through it all, I found myself being held and sustained by my Lord. His grace has been sufficient for me. As Joni Eareckson Tada expressed through her own suffering, “There is nothing more sweet than finding Jesus right… Read More »
“Emotions help us to enter into the lives of and connect with others.” Winston Smith presented on the topic of emotions and relationships. He explained that emotions are like a passport into the lives of others. “Emotions help us to enter into the lives of and connect with others.” So we don’t just know about them,… Read More »
“There is nothing you can feel that you can not take to God.” Following up on yesterday’s session, “Why Do I Feel How I Feel?“, Alasdair Groves discusses what we do next with those feelings. How do we engage our emotions? How do we respond to all this stuff going on inside of us? Alasdair explained… Read More »
Our life is to be a life of worship. And our emotions are perfectly situated to drive us into fruitful obedience, to drive us into worship in action. Alasdair Groves explains that emotions are a hard thing to define. “How do I understand what is going inside myself?” Alasdair helped us to consider what emotions… Read More »
“There is nothing more sweet than finding Jesus right with you in the middle of your splashes of hell.” Joni Eareckson Tada is well acquainted with suffering. She has suffered 49 years with paraplegia. She has battled breast cancer. And recently, she has experienced unbearable chronic pain. Yet in her suffering she has learned that there is a… Read More »
Our negative emotions are designed to deepen our relationship with Christ and to each other. Winston Smith opened the 2016 CCEF conference by focusing our attention on so called “negative” emotions. Consider anger, sadness, grief, anxiety, or stress. Winston asked us if we ever felt bad about feeling bad. “Do you ever feel bad about… Read More »
For those of you who missed #CCEF16, or this year’s Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation Conference, below are summaries of the main sessions. This year’s theme was “Emotions: Engaging the Expressions of the Heart.” I hope these concise summaries will be a blessing to you. You may purchase the conference audio directly from CCEF here. Winston Smith – General Session… Read More »