What’s So Great About A Balanced Life?

by Jennifer Bradbury

If you ask me, living a balanced life is overrated.

Don’t get me wrong. Balance is something that we in our 21st-century American culture emphasize a lot. Yet I can’t help but wonder if we’re overemphasize the importance of balance in our lives. Should we, as individuals and as churches, really be as obsessed over living a balanced life as we are? Should we measure the success of our careers, our lives, and our holiness according to whether or not we achieve balance in our lives?

I don’t think so.

After all, a word search of the entire NIV translation of the Bible….
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Discovering Jesus on the Lower East Side

by Jeremy Del Rio

The knots in my stomach tightened. As the distance between us grew, I could feel the color leave my face. You hypocrite, I thought. So busy with ministry that you pretend not to notice?

Truthfully I had noticed. In fact I saw her so vividly that I crossed the street so she wouldn’t see me ignoring her. Not that it would’ve really made a difference. She didn’t know me from the thousands of others who ignore her every day, and we’d never even seen each other previous to that moment, as far as I knew.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was….
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The Paradox of Phariseeism

by David R. Smith

“Luke” was a youth pastor at the largest and most influential church in his community. He had a huge budget, exciting programs, and tons of students who genuinely loved him.

Luke was married to a beautiful, talented, godly woman. Their church loved and appreciated both of them for investing their lives into ministry leadership.

But Luke was also an addict—a sex addict. He knew his secret cravings weren’t congruent with the holiness God had called him to, and in his mind, marital infidelity was the worst-case scenario.

Unfortunately for Luke, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

He implemented several strategies to avoid sexual immorality…..
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