Every day of your life, you can find reasons to complain. After all, you exist in a broken world, and life doesn't operate the way it was meant to. Family and friends will wrong you, good health will elude you, authority will exploit you, and so on and so forth. I'm not giving you a license to complain, not at all. I'm just saying that it's not very difficult for people to come up with a laundry list of reasons to complain. Simply listen to the conversations around you; there's a lot of... Read More

Today is my birthday. Why am I writing a post about it? Well, not because I hope you log on to Amazon.com and rush me a gift (although Amazon's delivery system is quite efficient, if you're so inclined). No, today I simply want to share three things I'm reminded of with every passing birthday. 1. Count My Blessings I have walked with the Lord and studied his Word for many, many years, longer than I would like to admit. Over these years, I have gained a high level of biblical literacy and... Read More

I've been uploading some sermons from 1st Peter to my website, and I wanted to use this Article as an opportunity to reflect upon one verse that I find incredibly challenging. For me, 1 Peter 1:22 may be one of the most difficult commands not only in this letter, but in the entirety of Scripture. Here's what Peter says: "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart." (ESV) Wow. That's a lot to... Read More

It was a wintry Tuesday night. I had counseled clients all day and then taught a seminar for three hours in the evening. Needless to say, I was exhausted - physically, mentally and spiritually. As I drove home around 10pm, my heart focused on one thing: relaxation. After all, wasn't I entitled to it? I reasoned with myself that I had served God and served people faithfully all day, so surely the Lord would agree that I had the right to clock out from life! I began to envision, with... Read More

God must have a special redemptive plan for my life that involves parking lots. Last week I wrote about two things God taught me in the parking lot of a supermarket, and today I have a different story from the parking lot of an amusement park. Luella and I had planned a special day for our family. We loved our children and wanted to give them fun experiences they would remember. Being the naive father that I was, I assumed that my kids would recognize our generosity and return the favor... Read More

It was 11:00pm on a Sunday night and I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot, exhausted and overwhelmed. After we put our four children to bed much later than we wanted to, my wife Luella discovered that we didn't have anything in the house to pack for the kids' lunches the next day. So, with an attitude that couldn't be described as joyful, I got in the car and did a late night food run. As I waited for the light to change, it hit me. It seemed as if my mission was impossible: ... Read More

I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what your experience with marriage has been like. Maybe you grew up in a healthy home with parents who lived in a healthy marriage. Maybe your experience was the opposite - maybe your parents’ marriage was plagued by selfish decisions, and you suffered the consequences. Or, maybe you never had two parents and didn’t experience what a marriage was like at all. Maybe you’re single, engaged, happily married, angrily married, divorced, widowed, or... Read More

I recently wrote an Article entitled, "What Makes A Man." Many readers e-mailed me questions about what I had written, so I sat down in front a camera to respond. Leadership Gender Manning Up Man Skills Homosexuality / Transgender Sex Read More

I'm sure you've heard this idiom before: "talk is cheap." Whoever came up with that saying was onto something, just like the person who came up with the phrase "actions speak louder than words" - it's much easier to talk about something than it is to actually follow through with it. While these expressions may hold weight in the real world, I don't particularly appreciate them, and here's why: they're fundamentally unbiblical because they devalue the significance of our words. Here's... Read More