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God Changed My View of Prayer

Peggy Reynoso June 23, 2025

Peggy Reynoso Train – Develop – Care I had a love-hate relationship with prayer. For most of my life, God spoke to me sporadically, usually in times of great need…

Practical Prayer

David Erickson June 23, 2025

David Erickson World Missions Spending the past twenty-two years in a pioneering Muslim context has grown my prayer life. Reading the Word? Now, that’s easy and enjoyable. But praying? That’s…

How Spiritual Direction Has Changed Me and My Ministry

Jin Rood April 29, 2025

By Jin Rood, World Missions - As my husband, Mark, and I were completing our final year overseas, discerning where God was leading us next, I felt drawn toward a…

Mile Markers of Spiritual Formation

Glenn Balsis April 29, 2025

By Glenn Balsis, TDC - Often I gauge my highway travel by mile markers to help me understand where I am as I drive. For my spiritual journey, I’ve realized…

Dangit, Jo!

Lyndi Lee Markus April 29, 2025

By Lyndi Lee Markus, TDC - “Dangit, Jo!” I exclaimed to my spiritual director. Except I did not use the word dangit. I had come to our session discouraged to…

Safe Spaces of Silence in Spiritual Direction

Luke Kleveland April 29, 2025

By Luke Kleveland, TDC - Before COVID, I would not have imagined doing spiritual direction with anyone. In fact, if you had asked me about this five years ago, I…

Building Below the Waterline

Howard Baker September 23, 2024

When surveying the landscape and mining the data around what is happening to people in positions of mission and ministry leadership, several trends become apparent. Among them are: While social…

Black and White to Color: Rewiring My Brain for Intimacy

Dave Mead September 23, 2024

“I just wish you could connect with me better, and relate to me at a deeper level,” my wife said. It didn’t sound mad this time—but it was with heartbreaking…

The Beauty of the Gospel in the Matters of the Heart

Laura Johnson September 23, 2024

We see evidence all throughout Scripture that Jesus was deeply concerned with the matters of the heart. When we take a look at the life and ministry of Christ, we…

Riding the Waves of Transition

Serene Chua July 22, 2024

Transitions can be hard, especially those that aren’t expected. But even for the ones we long for, there are still lessons to learn, emotions to sort out and most of…

An Empty Place

Mark Rood July 22, 2024

With our belongings loaded onto a ship for the journey back to the U.S., I find myself sitting among the dust bunnies on the floor of our vacant Tokyo home,…

Transitions and Thresholds

Elizabeth Davies July 22, 2024

As soon as you hear the word transition or change, I’m sure a range of images, experiences, life stages, and emotions occur. As they signal the end of one thing…

When Differences Pull Us Apart

February 6, 2024

I can’t help but notice that a spirit of argument and polarization seems to have taken over our world. Maybe it feels collectively harder to handle conflict because we’re tired…

Embracing Gray Spaces

Lyndi Lee Markus February 6, 2024

“Did you know you have permission to be wrong?” my friend asked me gently. I was in the middle of a discernment process, and heaven seemed silent while anxiety tightened…

Position Mixtapes

Lyndi Lee Markus July 24, 2023

How do we know what we know? How do we determine our position, or what we believe, on various issues? We all combine different sources of knowledge in different ways,…

What I Said and How I Said It

Kenneth Robertson July 24, 2023

“Pastor, I don’t know what to think. A loving God can’t possibly think this about me, can He?” The voice on the recording belonged to a young woman who described…

Flipping the Map

Sheri Underwood January 13, 2023

“If you flip the map over, you’ll get a bigger picture of where we are,” I suggested to my teammate. His response? “I actually like to only look at the…

Anxiety