A few weeks ago I spoke to college students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I love speaking to and working with college students. It’s such an amazing time of life…so many opportunities and roads to journey down, but also lots of fear and anxiety over which possibility to choose and which road to journey on. It’s a perfect collision of feeling excited and scared at the same time. I think that’s why I loved being the college pastor for seven years at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience to work with students at UCLA, USC, LMU and a number of other schools…as well as the large number of college-aged people in the entertainment industry.

“In many circumstances, as we experience anxiety, we may be tempted not to face it. We may be tempted to turn the other way and not acknowledge that it is there. But if God uses anxiety in our lives as a way to help us grow, then we must not turn away from it. Instead, […]

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” — Soren Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety When I first read those words from the existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard my heart literally leapt out of my chest. Finally a statement that resonated a lot with what I had been feeling. Most of my struggles with anxiety appeared when […]

“According to recent brain studies, we are literally stuck in a rut: As a result, we choose our most instinctual coping behavior when certain feelings arise. We often choose this path because it is also the direction that confronts us with the least anxiety.”(The Anxious Christian, pp. 61 — the source in the book is […]

“One of the reasons we experience anxiety is that God is persistently trying to move us through the wilderness, because it is in the wilderness that we are most dependent up on Him.” (The Anxious Christian, pp. 45). About 15 years while I was reading through the book of Exodus I came across a passage […]

“Anxiety has been a part of our human condition from the earliest beginnings. When we experience anxiety we are in that space where a world of freedom and possibility is opened up before us by God. And in that space we have the choice to run and hide, covering up in shame, or we can […]

Every anxiety has a story attached to it. There are many stories to my anxiety, but The Story that I tell and that has most often come to define my struggle with anxiety is a story about “The Day I Became a Stutterer.” I write about this story in the introduction to my book, The […]

While away on Spring Break this week with my family I received a text from a good friend telling me that the latest data from The Barna Group suggests that 60% of Americans struggle with anxiety. In their latest research, New Research Explores the Changing Shape of Temptation, they state the following: While most people […]

“Most of the things in life you truly care about are likely to be very ambiguous, and if you can’t foster some ability to make a place for ambiguity, you’re likely to be doomed to an act in the service of its elimination–which is really a fancy and roundabout way of saying that you’ll feel […]

Eric Chinski at the Paris Review, has a great interview with Brian Christian, author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive. The article is a fascinating look at the interaction between humans, computers and AI (artificial intelligence)…and a probing look at what makes us […]

The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?. I thought that writing the book was the long and tough part, and that when I handed my manuscript in…I was sort of done. Wrong. There is so much more work to do, and I’m excited about all the conversations that I’m already having around […]

This has been an exciting month for me as I have been wrapping up some details on the soon to be publication of The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?. The book will be released by Moody Publishers on March 1. I’m very thankful for the amazing group of people who have […]

[image by Phil Schatz] The ability to live in the question long enough for genius to emerge is a touchstone of creative success. In fact, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Creative Behavior revealed tolerance for ambiguity to be “significantly and positively related” to creativity. Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Alchemy of Fear These […]