CLA+

Connect with Donald Miller on social media: https://www.instagram.com/donaldmiller/ https://www.facebook.com/donaldmillerwords http://StoryBrand.com

Building a StoryBrand 2.0 is now available! https://buildingastorybrand.com/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=&utm_term=cb&utm_content=SB_Framework

Make your marketing and messaging work with the StoryBrand framework—and you can do that with the updated version of the book, Building a StoryBrand 2.0, now available!

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Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Have you ever wondered why God gives us so much? We could exist on far less. God could have left the world flat and gray—we wouldn’t have known the difference—but he didn’t. Why give the flower a fragrance? Why give food its taste? Jesus asked, “If you hardhearted, sinful men know how to give good gifts to your children, won’t your Father in heaven even more certainly give good gifts to those who ask him for them?” (Matthew 7:11).

Every gift reveals God’s love, but no gift reveals his love more than the gifts of the cross. They came, not wrapped in paper, but in passion.  Not covered with ribbons, but sprinkled with blood. The gifts of the cross!  Have you taken time to open these gifts? If you do, perhaps you will hear him whisper, “I did it just for you.”

Read more He Chose the Nails: What God Did to Win Your Heart

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

An auditorium full of medical students at Albert Einstein College of Medicine listened intently as ninety-year-old Ruth Gottesman spoke. As she concluded, Ruth announced—to the students’ gasps, cheers, and pandemonium—that she was donating $1 billion so that they could finish their education tuition free. This is the largest donation ever given to a medical school. Yet in the interviews that followed, you would have thought that Gottesman was the one receiving the gift. She expressed joy, delight, and honor to be able to give her money away.

Proverbs tells us that this is how generosity works. The one who “gives freely,” far from being left diminished or bereft, finds blessings they hadn’t anticipated (11:24). When we freely open our hands to others, we’re somehow left with something more—not less. “Whoever refreshes,” Scripture says, “will be refreshed” (v. 25). We’re tempted to tightly grip whatever we have, fearful that we’ll be taken advantage of or left with nothing. God’s economy works differently, however. Jesus went a step further, stating that it’s “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

We can be generous with our lives and our resources, offering what we have to others in need. And then, in return we’ll find that we end up receiving too. There’s plenty for everyone in God’s kingdom.    

As our bus traveled higher and higher on the narrow road along the Andes Mountains, my teammates were busy laughing and singing. I was staring out my window—aghast that there weren’t any guardrails between us and the abyss to our right. As we kept going up and up and up, feeling a bit fearful and anxious, I started to wonder why our short-term mission team had come to this remote part of Ecuador. Then it dawned on me: God must really love these people if He would send His own Son to die for them. Surely, I could get through a scary bus ride to express that love with them.

It ended up being such a joy to do short Bible lessons, share our testimonies and pray with the people who welcomed us in the various towns we visited each day.

The apostle Paul was committed to telling others about Jesus so they too could put their trust in Him. In Romans 10:13 he says that all who call on Jesus “will be saved.” But, “how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14-15).

There are people all around us who don’t know Christ. Let’s ask God for the courage to share the Good News of Jesus with others, to pray with them and invite them to a church service or activity.

Attending a conference, a woman noticed that her friend—the day’s presenter—didn’t look well. She approached the presenter, who replied, “I’m going to get through this presentation. If I don’t feel better in the morning, I’ll go to the doctor.” The woman didn’t forget about the presenter’s promise. And although she had to leave the conference early, she asked another friend to check on her.

In the morning, there was a knock at the presenter’s hotel door. The second friend had come to drive her to the hospital. There was no backing out and—fortunately—she was given life-saving treatments in time. The persistence of friends apparently helped to save her life.

Persistent friends can be a blessing, just like the men in Mark 2. They’d apparently heard about the healing power of Jesus and that He’d come to their town (v. 1). The people clamored to Christ and there was “no room left” for the men to get their paralyzed friend to Him (v. 2). They didn’t let a crowd stop them from getting their friend the help he needed, however: “They made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered . . . the man” (v. 4) to Christ who healed him (vv. 11-12).

Let’s bring the needs of others to Jesus through persistent prayer. And as He provides what we need, let’s strive to help and love them well.

What happens when a poet and a theologian decide to write letters to each other about faith? In this episode, I sit down with Christian Wiman and Miroslav Volf to discuss their book Glimmerings and talk about the language we use for God and why it so often falls short, the tension between God's presence and absence, what the Book of Job has to say about suffering, and whether faith can survive, even deepen, without easy answers. It's a conversation about holding paradox, paying attention, and what it looks like to keep believing in the middle of real life.

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. His books include Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, winner of the 2002 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. His Gifford Lectures (2025) are titled Amor Mundi: God and the Character of Our Relation to the World.

Christian Wiman is the Clement-Muehl Professor of the Arts at Yale Divinity School. He is the author, editor, or translator of fifteen books, including Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair and Hammer Is the Prayer: Selected Poems. His work appears regularly in Harper’s, The New Yorker, and Commonweal.

Miroslav & Chris' Book:

Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian

Chris' Recommendations:

The Banquet Years

Miroslav's Recommendation:

The Cost of Discipleship

Connect with Joshua: [email protected]

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Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Life comes with surprises.  On our list of fears, the fear of what’s next demands a prominent position.

In John 14:27, on the eve of his death, Jesus promised his followers, “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart.  And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.  So don’t be troubled or afraid.”

Heaven’s message is clear. When everything else changes, God’s presence never does.  As Jesus sends you into new seasons, you journey in the company of the Holy Spirit. So make friends with whatever’s next.  Embrace it. Change is not only a part of life; change is a necessary part of God’s strategy. To use us to change the world, God makes reassignments.

Read more Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

I was stuck. I’d written half of a devotional article when my thoughts dried up. “God, what should I do?” I prayed. Remembering research that found that our creative output is boosted by an average of sixty percent when we walk, I headed out to the trail behind my house and continued my conversation with God. Thirty minutes later I was refreshed. I returned to my keyboard and finished the entry.

In the book of 2 Kings 4:20-35, we read that Elisha and his servant, Gehazi, responded to a Shunammite woman’s plea to help her dead son. At Elisha’s instruction, Gehazi laid his staff on the child (v. 31). They prayed. Then Elisha laid on top of the boy. At last, “Elisha walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and then stretched out on him once more . . . and the boy opened his eyes” (v. 35).

Scripture doesn’t tell us why Elisha “walked back and forth,” nor does it say what he was thinking. What we do know is that when Elisha’s prayers weren’t answered, he didn’t give up. It’s not difficult to picture him talking to God in this urgent situation.

What do you do when you’re stuck at a dead-end and don’t know what to do? Perhaps a “prayer walk” is in order. Whether we head out to a trail for a walk or pace back and forth in our home, connecting to God when we’re in need brings answers that address our circumstances.