In an interview about his book The Folly of Prayer (IVP, 2009), author and pastor Matt Woodley shared a story about his friend Theresa. Theresa was experiencing what St. John of the Cross calls a dark night of the soul—a period of spiritual loneliness and despair. Over the course of describing her story, listen to how Woodley discovered that what seemed most helpless in his ministry was actually ...

In The Story of Christian Theology, theologian Roger Olsen writes:

A popular misconception—perhaps a Christian urban legend—is that the United States Secret Service never shows bank tellers counterfeit money when teaching them to identify it. The agents who do the training, so the legend goes, show bank tellers only examples of genuine money so that when the phony money appears before them ...

On April 18, 1942, Army Corporal Jacob DeShazer boarded a bomber plane with his pilot, Lieutenant William Farrow, and a co-pilot, navigator, and rear gunner. Their mission was to bomb Tokyo and its surrounding cities. When the mission was accomplished, they were to land on the shores of enemy territory and elude the opposing forces as they awaited further instructions. The bombing was a success, but ...

Flash of Genius is inspired by the true story of Dr. Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear). After creating the intermittent windshield wiper, Kearns pitches his idea to General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. All three companies turn him down, only to steal his idea and add them to all their automobiles. Dr. Kearns decides to take on the Ford Motor Company in a legal battle that no one believes he can win. (He ...

Most people are afraid of the unknown. Those things we have never seen or experienced can seem overwhelming.

On the old maps, back before the world was understood in modern terms, cartographers, map makers, would put down what they knew, but at the edges of the map, beyond which they had no knowledge or understanding, they would often write, "Beyond here, there be dragons."

Some years ago, a 14-foot bronze crucifix was stolen from Calvary Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas. It had stood at the entrance to that cemetery for more than 50 years. The cross was put there in 1930 by a Catholic bishop and had been valued at the time at $10,000. The thieves apparently cut it off at its base and hauled it off in a pick-up. Police speculate that they cut it into small pieces and ...

Not long after we moved [into our first house in California], my wife, Janie, and I picked up on the tension between a couple of neighbors. One was a very outspoken churchgoer, while the other was an unbeliever. I knew I was in the hot seat when the unchurched man struck up a conversation with me as we were both working in our yards.

"Say, Steve, aren't you a pastor?" It seems implicit in the public's ...

While working his way through seminary, pastor and author Ed Rowell took a job driving a school bus for kindergartners. Ed shares a story about a valuable lesson he learned from that experience—a lesson about the power of presence and a willingness to say the things God whispers into our hearts. The story begins with Ed meeting a memorable little boy named Ryan:

Several of the kids came from ...

In his book Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding, author and professor Robert A. Guelich writes of the role Christ-followers play as peacemakers:

The peace intended is not merely that of political and economic stability, as in the Greco-Roman world, but peace in the Old Testament inclusive sense of wholeness, all that constitutes well-being…

The "peacemakers," therefore, are not ...

Because the fear of going to the dentist is so pervasive, Japanese scientists have created a special robot that enables dentists in training to learn how to be more sensitive to the pain of their patients. If the dental trainee tugs too hard on a tooth or hits a nerve, the robot actually reacts to the pain. In fact the five-foot-three robot has been programmed to say "It hurts" and to frown when it ...