I think that everyone who has made it through middle school has faced some form of rejection. The feelings of not fitting in and the constant pressure to conform to some undefined standard are difficult to navigate, especially if one does not have an adult to walk beside him to assure him that those feelings […]

When we, who identify as Christians. vent our anger and hurt others, we are misrepresenting the one we claim to worship since He commanded us against it. This is a clear violation of the Second of the Ten Commandments.

But grace is a hard concept for many of us. Or, at least, this is the conclusion I draw both from self-examination and observation of how others live.

We all fail to live up to the standard we have set for ourselves. We are all inconsistent in having our actions match what we claim to believe.

It was not until I was pretty far into adulthood that I really began to understand that perfect obedience is not the standard. Jesus came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

“When we read scripture, we have to think about whether the people who wrote it might actually have meant something by it. They did! They are talking about the reality of the kingdom of the heavens—the stone that was cut out without hands and is going to wipe out all the nations of the earth […]