The pull to quit is very natural. Everyone of us has had to learn not to give up when the task before us becomes difficult or dangerous or just plain pointless. We’d rather just walk away and just do something else more productive… or maybe just pain-free! It’s parents… teachers… coaches… and mentors… that stick their nose in our faces… and tell us… “DON’T quit!” “DON’T give up!” “KEEP going!”. This December… in the throws of the hardest, most intensely painful parts of full-blown labor… my wife locked eyes just inches from my face and confessed… “Jeff, I just can’t DO this anymore!” At that point… it’s hard to find the words to say… “Honey, despite everything in you WANTING to quit… You just can’t!” » Read The Rest

Scripture:  Matthew 6:25-34

Although you might not verbalize it, I’m sure the thought goes through your mind… “What if…?”  What if he loses his job?  What if it’s… cancer?  What if I’m not good enough for them anymore?  What if they grow up and quit God?  What if my parents find out?  What if I fail?  What if they say “No?”  What if we never get back on top of these bills?  What if he doesn’t love me anymore?  What if I’m not accepted?  What if I’m… pregnant?  What if I never get pregnant?  What if we lose the house?  What if I’ve reached the top and this is as good as it gets?  What if I end up alone?  What if?… » Read The Rest

Trouble has a way of narrowing our focus… not necessarily in a good way.  You know, you hit your thumb with a hammer and pretty much all you can think about is the throbbing of your thumb.  It narrows your focus.  You let somebody ridicule you, and all you can hear in your head is the echo of their words.  Fail miserably and what will haunt you are all the things you should have done differently – only AFTER you can’t do anything about it.  “I WISHED I would have done this… IF I ONLY would have done that.”  And it tends to FREEZE our brains in place.

When trouble comes into our lives… it has a way of distorting our gaze.  And we find it difficult to see much else.  At times in my life… when more things are going wrong than right… the first thing to go… is the wide-angle view… because I’m riveted on the close-up!  Using a magnifying glass on our problems… even a harmless spider can look like a hairy, horrifying monster!  Yet, in reality, in keeping the wide-angle view through our problems… instead of looking at Goliath with the close-up view and cowering, saying, “He’s so big!  We could never kill him!”  With the wide-angle view, young David looked at the SAME giant and said, “He’s so big!  I can’t MISS!”… » Read The Rest

So… can we TALK?  Last week we learned the reasons it isn’t as easy as we might think.  But what we learned last week is that the problem in communication isn’t with our mouths… but with our hearts.  Sometimes the problem isn’t our WORDS… or even our SKILLS…  the problem is with our HEARTS.  Because, out of the overflow of the HEART… the mouth speaks! Secondly, we find it difficult to talk because we don’t realize that all talking is an act of trusting.  What we want to say we’re afraid to say… because we’re not really certain that the person listening… will turn around and use it against us.  And after repeated painful attempts… We find ourselves weighing carefully the explosive topics… and permanently steer clear of them… and communication… clams-up.  Third, we fail to recognize the presence of distortions in our talking.  We looked at a number of those distortions last week.  And, finally, we mistakenly think that our ways of communicating will work.  We speak for effect… to force responses… and it’s not talking at all… it’s just two people manipulating each other with actions and words.

Today we want to focus on how to improve... » Read The Rest

We’ve taken a look at the following aspects of marriage: That it was God’s idea in the first place. We’ve asked the question, “Why not have sex with anyone?” We’ve asked the question from both sides, “Can I respect You?” And we’ve realized, with God’s power… and two people surrendered in a relationship with Jesus… it’s possible! And now I want to get back and do a couple of bonus messages. I want to ask and answer the question, “Can we talk?” See this Gary Larson cartoon? It says, “After many years of marital bliss tension enters the Kent household.” You see what she’s embroidering after the big red “S”? “’S’tupid’”! I’d say that there was a communication breakdown in the Kent household right there.

No marriage is bulletproof! … » Read The Rest