Know Your Limitations

We learn it as little children. We boast about our ability way beyond the truth. It may be cute to watch little children pretend to lift an entire sofa. It isn’t so cute when adults think they can ‘handle’ more than they really can handle, especially when sin and temptation are involved. Today the Church…

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Saints for the Lost of America

Just look around and you will see them. There are many Orthodox Christians that walk through your neighborhoods, lost. I don’t mean they don’t know where they are walking. I mean they are spiritually lost, surrounded by false teachers and myriad temptations. More and more every day, the lost faithful disappear into the fabric of…

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Great Expectations

We all wonder what God expects of us. We also wonder if we can ever meet His expectations. As Orthodox Christians we struggle to live a life that we believe God desires, or at least that He expects. To eliminate any doubt, He has proven to us that He doesn’t expect anything more than He…

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WWMD

Black WWMD text on a red background

I’m sure you remember the fad in the 90’s when just about everyone was asking, “WWJD – What Would Jesus Do?” We wore the four letters on bracelets, around our neck, even had them printed on t-shirts. It was supposed to inspire us to live like Christ. Like so many fads, it faded. I have…

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For the Sake of the Elect

It is a common line of thought on this blog that the world is against the Christ and His Church. We often talk about how we are called to endure to the end. We often talk about persecution being a real thing not only in the lives of the martyrs, but in the lives of…

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Why Do You Believe?

Pieces of paper with the word Why

It always intrigued me to hear what people believed and what they chose not to believe. Belief isn’t about physical proof. We believe things every day we have proof of. They say ‘seeing is believing’ but we believe things every day we do not see. As I wrote the other day, we also choose not…

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Spiritual Glasses

A man handing eyeglasses

The past couple of days I have been focusing on the choice between the world and the Church. For some people, it can be difficult to distinguish between the world and the Church. Temptation is experienced. It is not imagined. What the world uses to tempt us can be so convincing, we are blinded to…

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The Saints are Working

I am often asked why we Orthodox pray to dead people. Besides thinking we should only pray directly to God, the implication is that a dead person do nothing for us. Yet, for Orthodox Christians the Saints are still working. They are still praying for us. They are still interacting with us. Why? Because the…

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American Saints for Tomorrow

As Orthodox Christians we read the daily calendar and learn about the great saints of old. Martyrs and confessors by the thousands inspire us to live courageous lives for Christ. These names can feel ‘far off’ when we read them in the daily synaxarion. Some don’t even know we have American Saints that can inspire…

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Never Give Up

Never Give Up

It is easier said than done. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about secular or spiritual matters. One reason for this is that we witness so many ‘doing it wrong’ that we forget there is a right way to do something. What makes things worse is when the wrong way ‘seems’ to be rewarded…

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