Sometimes social norms make sense, other times they don’t. Don’t chew with your mouth open makes total sense. Which side of the plate the fork and knife belong on, not so much. Holding a door open for someone makes sense. Everyone facing the same way on an elevator, not so much. You get the idea. In this week’s session,...

The encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3 can be challenging, at least the middle part of it. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, one of the few who seemed to be open-minded about who Jesus was. So early in Jesus’ ministry, Nicodemus went to Jesus at night, likely because he did not want to be seen with the teacher...

Have you ever been confronted with the fact that you aren’t as special as you might think you are? Perhaps you got a Christmas gift from a boss, only to discover everyone else got that gift too. Perhaps you purchased what you thought were rare, premium tickets to an event, only to discover that about 2,000 other people thought...

Has anyone ever asked you if you were hungry? Chances are, they asked not purely because they cared about your well-being, but because they were hungry too. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course—it’s not like we should take offense to such a question—but the point is that motivations can be more complicated than meets the eye. That’s important...

I haven’t had a good relationship with riding lawnmowers. One of the times when we lived in Florida, I had an old riding mower that I used on my acre+ property. But it seems like every single time I went out to mow, there would be something wrong with it such as a flat tire or it wouldn’t start....

They say that the best baseball umpire in the one who goes unnoticed. I am a terrible umpire. Years ago, I was part of a baseball ministry called Athletes in Action. We would take college baseball players on mission trips over the summer to play ball and share the gospel. Each summer began with a brief training camp where...