I’m learning more and more that in the same way I love to feel helpful and needed in other people’s lives, other people love to feel helpful and needed too—and sometimes that means in mine.

We’re told we all have them, and we’re told to use them—but how can we use them if we don’t even know what they are?

We all want to know our purpose.  We yearn to know that our lives count for something, and we long to discover just what that something is.  The question is how.  How do you know what your calling is?

It’s all too easy to give fear the wheel, but when we do, it ends up driving us right into a life that’s much smaller than the one God intended for us to live.

According to Dr. John Gottman, a guy known in his career as a counselor for being able to predict with 98% accuracy whether a couple would divorce.

God created community to be a place where brokenness is shared, pain is held, vulnerability is rediscovered, life is spoken, chains are broken, and belonging is found.  But that will only happen if we slow down and show up.

The irony is that when we hold happiness as the standard for relationships, we’re left empty.  But when we view holiness as the ultimate goal, we gain as a byproduct more than happiness; we gain a deep joy that abides independent of our circumstances.

When you get past the exchange of information and the need-to-knows, and you get down into the things that matter, into the hopes and fears and worries and excitements.  That’s when you get down into the heart places.