Guidelines For Living Devotional

What Is The Best Way To Save A Toxic Marriage?

In 1944 Frank Capra, the celebrated director, produced a comedy film called Arsenic and Old Lace. It’s about two sweet but murderous aunts who put poison in the elderberry tea that was served to a succession of male residents in their boarding house, and then stored their corpses in the basement. The film climaxes when the aunts’ newly wedded nephew and his bride come to visit. Elaine, the bride, can handle the chaos no longer and finally storms out of the house, hysterically crying, “You can take your honeymoon, your wedding ring, your taxi, your window seat, and put ‘em in a barrel and push ‘em all over Niagara Falls.” Obviously something has gone tragically wrong.  She’s out of there, too.

How Do I Handle Toxic People In A Toxic World?

On November 1, 2006 Alexander Litvinenko, a former lieutenant colonel of Russia’s Federal Security Service, suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. Three weeks later, he was dead, a victim of a toxic substance identified as polonium-210, a radio isotope that caused a painful death. He had been poisoned, and it wasn’t by fast food he had eaten on a London street corner. He had become a victim of a toxic substance, a poison, given to him by someone who obviously wanted him dead.

Learn How To Recognize The Symptoms Of A Toxic Life

The entire family seemed to be sick all of the time. They coughed, felt something in their chests, were lethargic and losing strength week by week. Fearing that something was terribly wrong, the family, then living in the Philippines where doctors are very much on top of tropical diseases, packed up and returned to the U.S. Doctors there were just as puzzled.

Where Is God In Your Future?

Wise is the person who thinks ahead and plans for the future, right?  But at what point does planning become presumption?  Suppose you are a businessperson, and business has been brisk. Your warehouses are overflowing.  Would it not make sense to enlarge?  

5 Truths To Remember In The Dark

You think you have problems?  I suspect you would not trade your challenges for those confronting the Apostle Paul.  Of the 13 books that he wrote, none is more intimate or personal that his second letter to the Corinthians.  In this he wrote, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8).  What Paul faced would have sent the average person either into deep depression or flight, but Paul not only took it in stride, he actually seemed to grow with it.

What’s The Difference Between Self-Love And Love Of Self?

"If I could write a prescription for the women of the world," wrote psychologist Dr. James Dobson, "it would provide each of them with a healthy dose of self-esteem and personal worth.  I have no doubt that this is their greatest need."  But is the same need present for men?  I, for one, believe it is.  What most people need today is a good dose of self-esteem that is a great deal different from ego or pride.

Are You Quitting Too Soon?

Adam Bischoff, 15, was riding his bicycle with a friend when he was swept into a flood channel which had been swollen to overflowing by rains.  When the alarm was sounded, rescuers frantically tried to save the lad, who was holding onto a log, screaming, "Help me!  Help me!" 

Stop Cheating In Your Marriage Before It Starts

Do you remember those words, "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until God by death shall separate us?"  They are part of the Episcopal wedding ceremony--the one that you hear at traditional weddings.  Are they just well-meaning sayings that are impossible to keep? Or is such commitment--until death--a possibility even today?

The Only Way To Peace

Peace on earth is a theme that we seem to revisit every December.  And the 7th day of this month will always be remembered in infamy as the dark day in 1941 when a squadron of 360 Japanese warplanes descended with bombs on the American Pacific fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  But for Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese commander who led the attack, April 14, 1950--nearly nine years later—stands out in a strange way which only the hand of God could have arranged.  And what is the story behind the story?

How Good Must You Be For God To Love You?

"How good must you be for God to love you?"  Ever have that question come to your mind?  It came to the mind of a friend of Guidelines who wrote and asked if God performs plastic surgery of the heart to take away the scars of childhood.  The listener told of being born to parents who didn't love her, so they gave her up for adoption.  The adopting parents told her, "If you are good, we will love you."  As a teenager she went to church and seemed to hear the message, "If you are good, God will love you and take you to heaven when you die."  She told of the time when she invited Christ to be her Savior, but she knew she could never be good enough for God to love her.