How Do I Know God’s Will?

Want to know God’s will for your life? Let me ask you to stop, look, and listen. God makes His desires known to those who stop at His Word, look in with a sensitive spirit, and listen to others.

Read More

Contradictory Truths, Part One

Tom Landry, the late head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, was once quoted as saying something like this: “I have a job to do that is not very complicated, but it is often difficult: to get a group of men to do what they don’t want to do so they can achieve the one thing they have wanted all their lives.” Coach Landry, in that seemingly contradictory statement, described what discipline is all about . . .

Read More

The Shores of Lake Contentment, Part Two

What a beautiful scene in the soul is Lake Contentment! Undisturbed by outside noises brought on by the jackhammers of exaggeration, those who enjoy the lake know what relaxation is all about. They know nothing of any winter of discontent—or spring or fall or summer, for that matter. Such an existence breeds security and happiness.

Read More

The Turning Point, Part Two

Yesterday I told you about my days in a Marine Corps Quonset hut in Okinawa in 1958. It was an intense time living among those whose lifestyle I found nauseating and empty. I can trace the acceptance of my circumstance and the shift of my focus to a single verse of Scripture. When I happened upon it, it seemed to leap from the page.

Read More

Someday

SOMEDAY WHEN THE KIDS ARE GROWN, things are going to be a lot different. The garage won’t be full of bikes, electric train tracks on plywood, sawhorses surrounded by chunks of two-by-fours, nails, a hammer and saw, unfinished “experimental projects,” and the rabbit cage. I’ll be able to park both cars neatly in just the right places, and never again stumble over skateboards,

Read More

A Better Foreman

A person is a product of his or her own thoughts. Thoughts form the thermostat which regulates what we accomplish in life. My body responds and reacts to the input from my mind. If I feed it with doubt, worry, and discouragement, that is precisely the kind of day I will experience. If I adjust my thermostat forward—to thoughts filled with vision, hope, and victory—I can count on that kind of day. You and I become what we think about.

Read More

Envy, Part Two

Shakespeare called it “the green sickness.” Bacon admitted “it has no holidays.” Horace declared that “tyrants never invented a greater torment.” Barrie said envy “is the most corroding of the vices.” Sheridan referred to it in his play The Critic when he wrote, “There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as this.” Philip Bailey, the eloquent English poet of yesteryear, vividly described it as “a coal [that] comes hissing hot from hell.”

Read More

Balance, Part One

Two extreme tests exist that disturb our balance in life. Each has its own set of problems. On one side is adversity. Solomon realized this when he wrote: If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! (Proverbs 24:10 NIV) The Message paraphrases that verse: If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you in the first place. Adversity is a good test of our resiliency, our ability to cope, to stand back up, and to recover from misfortune. Adversity is a painful pedagogue.

Read More

Bigness

It was a cold, blustery January night in 1973. Senator John Stennis, the venerable hawkish Democrat from Mississippi, drove from Capitol Hill to his northwest Washington home. Although older (71), he was still the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. At precisely 7:40 p.m., Stennis parked his car and started toward his house 50 feet away.

Read More

Think with Discernment, Part Two

Discernment is essential. Undiscerning love spawns and invites more heresy than any of us are ready to believe. One of the tactics of survival when facing “the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Ephesians 6:16) is to make certain we have cinched up the belt of truth rather tightly around ourselves. And what helps us do battle with the enemy also strengthens us in relationships with friends.

Read More