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| Introduction: A Different Path | |
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| The Purposes and Goals of this Book | |
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| Why the New Testament was written in the street language of the marketplace | |
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| How our zeal to honor God can mess up everything | |
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| Why we keep raising the bar-and why it needs to be lowered | |
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| Genuine Spirituality | |
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| Spirituality for the Rest of Us | |
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| What Does It Mean to Know God? | |
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| Why do most of the books on spirituality and the inner life make us feel so inadequate? | |
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| Does God prefer smart people who read well? | |
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| What little children teach us about Bible scholars? And what exactly does contrarian mean? | |
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| Religion or Relationship? | |
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| The Difference Between Religion and Relationship | |
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| The tell-tale marks of religion | |
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| The one and only thing all relationships have in common | |
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| What Matt's second wife taught me about God | |
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| How an old hippie, a cop, and their father reveal the essence of a great relationship with God | |
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| Jesus or John? | |
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| How Two Utterly Different People can Both Please God | |
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| The problem with the Blank Slate Theory, and why the kids prefer Disneyland | |
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| Why John had his doubts about Jesus? | |
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| Why Jesus had no doubts about John | |
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| The one thing that matters most | |
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| Is It a Sin to Be Average? | |
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| Why Leadership Should Never be Confused with Spirituality | |
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| Why most churches and most pastors treat low-drive Christians as losers | |
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| Why it's okay to be spiritually average-or below average | |
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| The cobbler in Corinth? | |
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| The problem with drive-by guiltings? | |
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| The ultimate goal of spirituality | |
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| How Does Spiritual Growth Happen? | |
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| The Case for Meandering | |
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| The Way Most People Grow | |
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| Why linear and sequential discipleship programs so often miss the boat | |
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| How the need to grow and the need to know accelerate spiritual growth | |
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| How most people learn-what we remember and why | |
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| The stickiness factor | |
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| Velcroed for Growth | |
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| How Small Groups Change Everything | |
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| Why the primary reason to be in a small group is not what most people think it is | |
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| Velcroed for growth: What does that mean and how does it work? | |
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| The upside of peer pressure? | |
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| Three reasons why small groups make everyone more honest | |
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| The Dimmer Switch Principle | |
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| Why It's so Essential to Obey the Light We Have | |
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| The Three Strike Rule | |
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| What happens when God becomes a cosmic consultant | |
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| The Dimmer Switch Principle | |
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| How I almost stepped on a bear, and what it taught me about spiritual enlightenment | |
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| Why the amount of light we have isn't nearly as important as what we do with it | |
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| Inside Out | |
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| How the Holy Spirit Does Exactly What Jesus Said He Would Do | |
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| What the disciples didn't understand the first time | |
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| Why it's a good thing Jesus isn't here anymore | |
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| From "with us" to "in us," and why that's so important | |
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| Static on the line-and how to get rid of it | |
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| The Prayer of Permission | |
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| What Does God Want? | |
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| The High Place Principle: Blind Spots-Yours, Mine, and Theirs | |
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| Why God so Often Blesses and Uses the Wrong People | |
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| What a chronic deceiver, a horn-dog judge, and a never-believe-God-the-first-time warrior had in common | |
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| Why your blinds spots don't look like a blind spots to me, and why I think my blind spots are no big deal | |
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| Solomon's big day, and why God shouldn't have shown up-but showed up anyway | |
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| The Mustard Seed Principle: Is Faith Overrated? | |
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| Why You Probably Don't Need More Faith | |
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| Can faith and doubt coexist? | |
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| Is knowledge a detriment to faith? | |
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| Why most of our definitions of faith have nothing to do with how the Bible defines it | |
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| Two examples of pretty lame faith | |
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| Mustard seeds | |
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| What getting on an airplane can teach us about faith and God | |
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| What's Zeal Got to Do with It?: First Love Lost | |
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| Why Spiritual Zeal Isn't Nearly as Important as We've Been Led to Believe | |
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| Why intensity doesn't last, and why that's not a bad thing | |
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| The church that lost that lovin' feeling | |
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| The truth about David's passion and zeal | |
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| Two words that most English-speaking Christians tend to misunderstand | |
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| The kind of love God wants to see | |
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| Fences: Helping God Out? | |
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| Why Extra Rules and Regulations Undercut Genuine Spirituality | |
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| Gold-package Christians and the three things they usually share in common | |
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| Helping God out-and why the Apostle Paul thought it was such a bad idea | |
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| How a blustering parent's empty threats are a lot like our extra rules | |
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| A story about electric fences | |
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| A rushed baptism | |
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| Didn't God get it right the first time? | |
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| Best Practices Overload: Comparison's Curse | |
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| Why Too Many Spiritual Heroes can Mess You Up | |
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| What happens when we try to incorporate all the best traits of all the best Christians? | |
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| A stroll down Madison Avenue | |
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| How Mother Teresa gave me a nervous twitch | |
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| What Michael Jordan's struggle to hit a curve ball can teach us about God's gifts and calling | |
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| Why it's no big deal if our eyes don't hear too well | |
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| Gift Projection: Chocolate-Covered Arrogance | |
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| Why Projecting Our Calling Onto Everyone Else Ticks God Off | |
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| Why we see some needs so clearly | |
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| Why others blow right past us | |
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| How did a struggle with spiritual pride ever become a badge of honor? | |
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| Why missionaries, evangelists, and Bible teachers are the worst gift projectors | |
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| Why those with gifts of helps, mercy and administration seldom make us feel guilty | |
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| The one thing you should never feel inadequate about | |
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| Seeking Balance: Does God Give a Rip? | |
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| Why the Quest for Balance is a Goofy Idea | |
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| A friend's surprising suggestion | |
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| Wasn't Moses a little out of whack? | |
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| What about David, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul? | |
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| What if you're about to fall over? | |
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| Three important questions | |
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| The one thing God won't ask us when we stand before him-and the one thing he will | |
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| Why Results Don't Matter: Inner Peace, Success, and Failure | |
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| Why Inner Peace, Success, and Failure can't be Trusted | |
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| Why prisons are full of people who followed their conscience | |
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| What Job's run of bad luck and Samson's run of good luck reveal about the true meaning of results | |
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| Uzziah's terrible miscalculation | |
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| Failure's biggest lie | |
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| Do valleys always mean a wrong turn? | |
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| Preparing the Horse: Lessons from the Unseen Realm | |
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| If We can't Control Outcomes, What Should We Focus on? | |
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| My three Dark Years and what they taught me about pride | |
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| The one thing no one can control; the one thing everyone can control | |
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| The unseen realm and Joshua's peek behind the curtain | |
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| Tools or Rules?: Finding What Works for You | |
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| Why Tools for Growth Should Never be Turned into Rules for Growth | |
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| The key difference between a tool and a rule | |
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| How tools become rules | |
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| What happens when we confuse descriptions with prescriptions? | |
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| Why your church might not want to be a New Testament church after all | |
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| Why the right tool for me is probably the wrong tool for you | |
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| The Potential Trap: Why Being All We Can Be Might Be a Dumb Idea | |
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| The Truth About Unfulfilled Potential | |
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| How a great commercial ended up giving terrible advice | |
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| Why the Parable of the Talents isn't really about our talents | |
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| The compass called potential; where and what it usually points to | |
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| Why happy talk stinks | |
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| Why I stopped writing and why I'm back at it | |
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| A touching love story | |
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| Glass House Living: Why Accountability Groups Don't Work | |
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| The Best Tool for Staying on the Straight and Narrow | |
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| Why accountability groups are overrated | |
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| The one thing they do well | |
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| Why they're not very good at preventing sin | |
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| The truth about shame | |
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| Our culture's love affair with the right to privacy | |
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| The power of clear windows and an open door | |
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| Why everyone lives better when mom's watching | |
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| Priority Number One?: Why Putting God First Might Be a Bad Idea | |
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| Putting God Where He Belongs | |
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| What does it mean to "put God first"? Why it's a bad idea | |
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| "In Jesus name"-it's way more than the "send" button for prayer | |
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| How God got stuffed into a box | |
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| Why the enemy loves the spiritual/secular dichotomy | |
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| The truth about full-time Christian ministry | |
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| Epilogue: A Final Word: Keeping It Simple | |
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| What I Hope You've Gotten from this Book | |
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| How Christianity is a lot like a regulated profession | |
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| What most non-Christians don't know, and most Christians no longer seem to believe | |
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| Micah's simple advice | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Notes | |