Stumbling Over the Truth

. . .the story of my life is that I am not that great, not that special, and I have messed up way more than I really would like anyone to know.  But today, that's okay because of the fact that God loves me. . .       Secrets, everybody has them.  For most of us, we want to make sure those secrets remain secrets.  That is unless you are Tony Starke and you are just dying to tell everyone, "I am Iron Man."  For everyone else, we like a little mystery about who we are and what we do (or have done).  The other night my wife and I left a restaurant and were approached by a young man who was searching for something to eat.  The first words out of his mouth were "I just got out of prison and I am starving. . . "  We obliged him with some food, but I really wanted to tell him that he may want to change his approach line.  Telling someone that you just got out of prison may not be ideal before you ask them for help.   ...

     Have you ever had one of those days where you wished you had never gotten out of bed?  Those days come for everyone (like that is encouraging), but how we make it through those days is totally up to each of us.  John Maxwell tells us in his book, The Winning Attitude , that "our attitude determines our altitude."  You know he is right, but sometimes you want to ask guys like him, "Have you been through a day like mine?".  I can't really answer that question, but a guy named David helps us with our struggles.        David wasn't always king and things weren't always easy for him.  Sure we all know about his Goliath situation, but if you looked into David's life it would seem like a mess.  He was anointed to be king in his teen years, but had to wait for God to remove Saul.  In the mean time, Saul made David's life difficult to say the least.  He was the most wanted man in his home country, as wel...

I can remember my father telling me that boys are easier to rear than girls. Perhaps for the first ten to twelve years of my son's life I would have agreed. My son is 16, nearing 17 years of age. Lately, I find myself wondering what happened? Mark Twain, I believe, said that when a boy reaches his teen years you should put him in a barrel and feed him through a hole in it, and when he turns 16 you should plug up the hole. There are times that I wonder if I shouldn't have followed Mr. Twain's idea. In retrospect, the issues that I have in dealing with my son come from inadequacies on my parenting. That is what is so frustrating about teens! Young children lull us into believing that everything is wonderful, so all we have to do is sit back and watch them grow. Then, as if out of some horror story, that sweet, fun loving child turns into a teen laden with all kinds of issues. What is hard for parents to face is the responsibility in the shaping of our children when t...