One of the surprisingly beautiful things about Second Journey’s is that they remind us that we can’t make life right simply by our own efforts and achievements. The harder we try to do life on our own and be perfect, the more entangled and entrapped we become in a rat race we will never win. If we base our worthiness on performance, we will find judgment comes to us ever so easily and that we will have little capacity for grace and compassion. The perfectionist race is a se

“For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.” ~ Romans 11:32 Throughout history almost all cultures have believed and operated under the premise that sin and wrong doing are primarily to be punished...a price is to be paid, a pound of flesh to be extracted. This has been the privy of courtrooms and lawyers, policing and prisons, conflicts and wars, and even most churches. The confounding revelation of the cross; however, is that sin a

I don’t know of anyone I’ve met, myself included, who at first blush desires to search out their shortcomings and failures. In fact, quite the contrary is true. We spend a good majority of our time managing our persona and projecting an image that presents us in a good light both to ourselves and to others. The problem of course is that you cannot heal what you cannot acknowledge, and what you can’t acknowledge will control you. Our unaddressed “shadow sides” will play the

Neither your life or mine is a random series of events we collect throughout our lifetime. Our lives are a well-developed story, perhaps the truest we can know. Our story is the one thing that most influences and shapes our outlook and interactions in this world. It filters how we see and engage in relationships; how we understand our identity and make conclusions about who we are; how we hope, dream, and believe; and how we navigate and interpret times of trial. The prob