Exodus 3:13-14, Genesis 27:18-19, John 14:8-9, Luke 15:11-24 , Psalm 139:1-3
Ralph Fiennes (1962–) is a renowned British film actor, with a long-list of film credits to his name, including The Constant Gardner, Schindler’s List, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He also starred i...
A man was dying and he called his wife to his bedside. He affectionately told her he loved her but he also had to confess something to her. “I haven’t been 100% faithful to you in our marriage. I’m so...
Psalm 8:, Proverbs 31:30, 1 Peter 3:3-4, 1 Samuel 16:7, Proverbs 31:30, 1 Samuel 16:7
Performance-enhancing drugs are a major problem in the sporting world. Cycling, baseball, weightlifting, football—athletes at the highest levels need something to put them over the top or keep them in...
As a committed Southern Baptist, president Jimmy Carter was often questioned by reporters on a variety of moral issues. One day, a reporter asked, “How would you feel if you were told that your daught...
If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...
Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...
To gossip means to betray a confidence or to discuss unfavorable personal facts about another person with someone who is not part of the problem or its solution. Even if the information you discuss is...
Writer Wendy Plump wrote a candid, vulnerable article in the NY Times called “A Roomful of Yearning and Regret” (Dec. 9, 2010). In the article she disclosed that both her & her husband had affair...
Romans 6:1-2, 1 John 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6:18, James 1:14-15, Matthew 5:27-28, Hebrews 13:4, Proverbs 6:32
Some years ago I had a pastoral relationship with a couple of people who were deeply in love with each other. They believed that God wanted them to get married so they could consummate their love. The...
Evading self-acknowledgment of our faults enables us to avoid painful moral emotions: guilt and remorse for harming others; shame for betraying your own ideals; self-contempt for not meeting even our ...
Genesis 3:9-13 , Exodus 32:21-24 , Proverbs 16:2, Luke 18:9-14 , Psalm 94:11, Matthew 25:24-30
Some time ago, when gambling was still illegal in the state of Massachusetts, four old friends were sitting in the back of a small New England general store, quietly playing poker, when the sheriff su...
One of life’s enduring mysteries is that you don’t have to do anything wrong for your life to go horribly wrong. When we are abused, rejected, hurt, betrayed, or manipulated, we search our hearts and ...
Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if...
Jeremiah 17:9, Psalm 41:9, Proverbs 14:12, Matthew 23:27-28, Luke 12:2-3
To me one of the most terrifying scenes in all of literature is in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman . Willy Loman is a traveling salesman who feels that he is largely a failure. His self-pity...
Years ago, a friend gave me this counsel: “Make a list of all the lives you would affect by your sexual immorality.” I did. Every so often I reread it. “Denalyn. My three daughters. My son-in-law. My ...
Colossians 3:13, Psalm 37:8-9, Galatians 5:22-23, James 1:20, Matthew 5:44, Proverbs 3:5-6
A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked right up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, "I would like to buy some cyanide." The pharmacist asked...
One of the ways we punish ourselves for not being more or better or thinner or stronger is by trying to squeeze ourselves—force ourselves, even—into all kinds of ill-fitting relationships. With other ...
Pastor: “Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the la...
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
The tension between autonomy and intimacy is most clearly evidenced in the trend toward cohabitation. Today, between 50 and 70 percent of American couples are cohabiting before or instead of marrying....
It happens sooner or later in every relationship: someone will let you down. We have a term for the earliest stages of a relationship: the “honeymoon phase”—that rosy time period when everything but d...
There’s a somewhat naïve belief among some that, in general, most people are inherently good. While many Christians may not fully embrace John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (which I believe is ...
Revelation 3:11, Hebrews 10:23, Proverbs 4:23, Romans 7:15, Matthew 26:75
Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. Af...
Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. “I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce hi...
Romans 12:20-21, James 5:16, Mark 11:25, Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:31-32
The ultimate proof of total forgiveness takes place when we sincerely petition the Father to let those who have hurt us off the hook-even if they have hurt not only us, but also those close to us.