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Christian Parenting Mistakes: #3 Giving Stuff Versus Giving Myself?
What does love look like? How do we teach it to our children? For some families, it is expressed through encouraging words or the giving of lots of stuff. For other families, it looks like a vacation in amusement parks or exotic places. The Bible teaches that love is not about giving stuff or even just spending time together, it is about giving self. Little in this world is satisfying long term. Words can be empty and time together isn’t always productive. Quoting Isaiah’s message from God, Jesus said, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” Time without investing our heart will never…
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Are You a Spiritual Hoarder? Three Ways We Withhold Ourselves—and Our Stuff—from Others
Hoarder: “A word that describes anyone that feels the need to find, collect, keep, [or] pack any and everything because they do not know how to throw things away” (Urban Dictionary). Several years ago there was an entire TV series about hoarders. There are entire companies devoted to helping hoarders clean up. And there are even medical disorders related to hoarding. Innate within each of us—to varying degrees—is a desire to hold on to something. Hoarding is more than just stowing away our stuff in some dark closet. Sometimes it means we keep our deepest selves locked tightly within us. Here are three ways we withhold ourselves from others and…
