Jonathan Puddle's Blog

In the last 10 years, the Enneagram has become an extremely popular tool for understanding your personality and your hidden motivations, especially in Christian circles. Today you can find everything from mugs and t-shirts with silly Enneagram quips on them, to deeply esoteric books on the subject. The Enneagram has been powerfully transformative in my own life: 

it has helped me fall more in love with Jesus

it has helped me move towards emotional wholeness by revealing the hidden motivations in m...

There’s never been an easier or better time to publish your book. In fact, with the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 saw the book industry growing in ways it hasn’t grown for years. With the tools available today you can get your manuscript from draft to published paperback and ebook in literally a handful of clicks.

I’m a successful self-published author (plus I used to run a publishing house) and I want you to have the benefits of my knowledge and research. Why? Because I believe in the power of words ...

I’ve grown up with the mentality that every problem is solvable and that I am welcome in every space to bring my knowledge and my help. But I’m learning right now that neither of those are true. The fact is, there are problems that I cannot solve and there are spaces I am simply not welcome in.

Do either of those statements offend you? I can promise you it’s been offensive to me! I’ll unpack the notion of not being welcome another day, today is all about the problems we can’t solve and to do...

A reader recently asked me, “How do I draw closer to God, if I have a fear of him?” I was touched by the bravery and vulnerability it took to pose the question. I suspect that many of us have felt this way, or feel this way still, and often struggle to admit it to ourselves.

There are countless reasons why we are afraid of God. Here are a few that readily come to mind for me:

We’ve been told that we have to fear God. That the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The God that we’ve been...

Every other month, our church celebrates a Family Sunday where we keep the kids, youth and adults together all morning. If you’re from a liturgical/sacramental church, such as the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran churches, etc. then this may sound very normal to you. The rest of us are more accustomed to running separate programs for different age groups: “main church” for the adults, “kids church” or “Sunday School” for the kids, and youth for… youth. There are some benefits to this ap...

My book study group is currently reading Fearless in 21 Days: A Survivor’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety, by Sarah E. Ball. One reading stood out to me particularly last week, in fact, it brought me to tears.

The journey of life is convoluted and often confusing. Whether you face mental health challenges or not, life doesn’t go the way we expect it to. Sometimes we can see our desired destination right in front of us but the road we’re on takes us through deserts and the valleys before we get t...

Some men are pigs. Some women are manipulators. I’ve witnessed plenty of displays of ugly masculine and feminine power. As a person who doesn’t naturally like conflict and who doesn’t consider himself a physically imposing alpha male, while also being compassionate and tender-hearted, I often end up torn by indecision when I witness ugly uses of power. It’s all too common to see ugly power being used by men over women, but it also happens from women to men, and from men to men and women to w...

The gift of prophecy is a helpful, edifying tool for the church. When we hear God’s heart for us, expressed through another flesh & blood person, it can encourage us, inspire us, sharpen our focus and help us course-correct when necessary. We can all—or should learn to—hear God for ourselves but this doesn’t negate the benefit of prophecy shared within a community.

Tragically, the prophetic ministry is often abused. I know people who have experienced their private sins being called out in pub...

Over the last 32 years I have lived at more than 20 addresses. I’ve lived in houses, townhouses / row-houses, and apartment buildings. In all these years, I have never had to live through construction or remodelling, which I’m very thankful for. Right now we’re building a sauna but it’s in a room that we can easily isolate and close off from the rest of the house. No dust, no construction debris, no worries. My wife’s cousin bought an old home and renovated it while living in it with their 2...

We recently entertained six 9-10 year old boys for my eldest son’s birthday party. We had planned to take them all to a virtual reality arcade and as we were loading everyone into our SUV I ran into a dilemma: one of the parents had dropped off a booster seat for their son. 

Only one of them.

The problem was not that the other boys needed booster seats but that only one did. I was worried he would be singled out. How was I to get that booster seat installed without drawing attention to the fac...