God wants to bless you. This phrase may make you cringe due to how it has often been narrowly interpreted and selfishly misused in our culture. However, we shouldn’t allow a mishandling of the concept to motivate us to throw it out altogether. Scripture is clear on the matter. God does want to bless us because He loves us, […]
One of my greatest blessings was being raised in a healthy family. Of course, every family has some dysfunction, but my parents’ prioritization of our home truly made a lasting impact on me. The older I got, though, the more I realized that the strong family structure I’d grown accustomed to was becoming rather rare. Once I became […]
You might’ve heard the saying, “As the family goes, so goes the nation.” Looking at the state of our nation today, that’s hard to deny. The enemy has done his best to diminish our family structure, and it has wreaked havoc upon our country. As alarming as this can feel, God doesn’t want us to […]
We all know what the word coach means, but do you know where it originated? It came from a small town in Hungary. A long time ago, the people in this town built carriages to make carrying mail easier. The carriages they built were so well-made that they ended up selling them all over Europe. The name […]
In between college semesters, I spent a summer working in the sheriff’s office in New Orleans. It may seem like an odd job, but it was the perfect setup for me. The sheriff’s office had a solid softball team, and my brother coached at the University of Tulane. So, I worked during the day, then […]
South Texas is my home. I’ve been here 37 years now, and I love it. When I first got here, though, I’ll admit I needed help to fit in. Tamara, a South Texan all her life, had to teach me some things (like how to add an extra syllable to Ji-im and how to take […]
We all yearn to live a life of significance—to “become somebody.” But not just anybody. We want to become someone people admire and respect. The problem is—there’s a step we all must take on the road to significance, and many times, we don’t like it. It’s called failure. That’s because when we fail, it’s easy to […]
At the end of World War II, much of Europe lay in ruins. Pieces of buildings sat devastated by bombings and burnings. Streets overflowed with rubble and dust. Orphaned children lined the street—kids left suddenly without care, food, and shelter. One morning during this terribly dark time, an American soldier was driving his jeep through […]
Problems are like belly buttons. Everyone has them! But how we handle them determines how our stories end up. Resilience turns our stress into a God-story, while letting stress overtake us keeps us stuck in negative emotion, which leads to nowhere significant. Jesus comments on the inevitability of problems in John 16:33: “In this world […]
Abraham Lincoln once said, “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” Complacency amid failure keeps us stuck, but learning from our mistakes pushes us into eventual success. This get-back-up, teachable attitude is called resilience. Resilience is vital for all success in every area of life. We […]