The (in)courage Podcast

We must trust, and we can trust Him because He is love. We like to talk about how God is in control and how He has plans for our lives, and these truths help us to stand steady. But we also have a Go…

God desires our wholeness more than our work. The great task of adult faith is receiving that God desires our wholeness more than our work, and our presence more than our performance.

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When we refuse to embrace that we each must do our own grieving, we end up desperately trying to make each other feel better. We start spouting off spiritual cliches, becoming rescuers in unhealthy w…

"It's a miracle when we see our heartache turn to hospitality."

What would you do if you lost all your children within two weeks? Melissa tells the incredible story of a family who dared to rebuild ag…

Seek to understand before needing to be understood. Seek to understand before needing to be understood. This has become one of my guiding life principles, and I’ve found it especially important in ma…

We need consistent hydration. We need the living water that only Jesus offers. The very same water that He offered the Samaritan woman at the well has the power to transform us from the inside out. H…

"I miss not being anxious about relational stress.

I scrolled through nasty comments and messages about our neighborhood, our race, our demographic, all the unimportant and untrue things being assume…

Rediscovering common ground and choosing to plant ourselves there has saved our relationship. It’s true that some people grow apart and some relationships end. But for the ones that still have common…

In our new book, Come Sit with Me: How to Delight in Differences, Love through Disagreements, and Live with Discomfort, 26 (in)courage writers get fully vulnerable as they share about the real, the h…

I have accepted the fact that I can not and will never fully understand God’s ways. While I grasp for explanations, God already knows the ‘why.’ While I live and think within a frame of time, God kno…

The glory of the regular is all mixed up with the holy. We can live in the extraordinary joy that the festivities and bustle Q4 brings, and we can experience glory in the regular tasks that make up o…

We live in a culture that would rather cancel a person or a group of people than have a hard conversation. Conversations can actually change people, cancelling simply condemns them.

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"Grace rises to become the best possible gift to offer a loved one, especially when the two of you don’t see eye to eye. I reasoned that if every 'but God' in the Bible is true, it had to be true in …

Instead of falling for the idea that I need to muster up enough faith, or grit my teeth to make my way through my fear, could I instead accept Jesus’ kind and gentle invitation to trust Him with it?

L…

In the new book From Where I Stand: 30 Days in the Life of Paul, by Shanna Noel and Sherri Gragg, you are invited to trace the footsteps of a man who went from relentlessly persecuting Christians to …

Curiosity keeps us tender to each other’s humanity. When we don’t know someone, it’s easy to dehumanize them and treat them as if they’re an object made for our judgment. We can make assumptions abou…

I’m weary of the message that making margin for quiet space is selfish. I’m frustrated by the cookie-cutter promises that say following these five steps will free you from being alone as if community…

The truth is that friendships — like the leaves of trees within seasons — change and grow, or change and fade. If your own friendship landscape looks too barren for your liking — whether that be in y…

No one really knows me fully and deeply. Our deep desire to know and be fully known by God and the Body of Christ is God-given! Showing up with vulnerability is how we walk as followers of Christ and…

When we get face-to-face with God, He shows us the big picture, what we can’t see when we are wounded, beaten down, and weary. Sometimes we must stop the merry-go-round of life and intentionally seek…