Matthew Tanner

I recently watched a movie called Bao, Artist at War. It's about Yosef Bao, a Jewish artist and master forger caught in the horrors of concentration camps. What struck me most wasn’t just his story of survival, but what happened afterward. Bao's wife, a nurse turned esthetician in the camp, found healing in sharing her story with others who had endured similar trauma. That closing scene lingered with me. Bao’s wife never went back to nursing. Instead, she dedicated her life to inviting the...

Everyone of us have gone through a desert period in our lives where we are seeking to hear from the Lord yet no matter how much we pray, we hear silence. Has God forgotten us? Why does He seem silent when we are desperate and crying out to Him. When I am personally in this time of my life I am reminded how many times David cried out, “God have you forgotten me?” We know that He has not but we struggle in times of silence. Everyone of us have gone through a desert period in our lives where...

Jeremiah Burroughs defined contentment in one of the great classics of 17th century Puritan literature, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, as the following: “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” One of the greatest struggles of a wounded pastor is to find contentment. The anxiety, the fear, reliving the past, the economic struggle to simply make ends...