Guidelines For Living Devotional

Why Do People End Up Marrying Jerks?

Do you ever ask yourself, "Why do people end up marrying jerks?"  I'm talking about a situation where a person has married someone who is totally undeserving of the other, someone who treats the other person disrespectfully, or is in no way an equal.  It happens.  Marry in haste and repent in leisure, goes the old saying.

The One Skill We All Need

In spite of the fact that he lived with an unhappy marriage himself, the English author Charles Dickens understood the importance of communication.  He wrote, "Never close your lips to him to whom you have opened your heart!" Dickens realized that communication is the key to real love, but is that the only reason to learn communication skills? Not at all. 

Where to Go When You Fail

He cheated his brother out of his inheritance.  He deceived his father into giving him the inheritance which, by right of birth, should have gone to his brother Esau.  He lied to his father-in-law about the size of his flocks, yet he is venerated as the third of the patriarchs--remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?  And the writers of Scripture in several places refer to God as "the God of Jacob."  God, however, saw beyond the character defects which I've just mentioned.  He saw his heart. 

Why Some People Won't Like You

Certain smells can have powerful effects on us and there’s a billion-dollar global aromatherapy market to prove it.  Smells trigger memories, no matter how many years have passed since that fragrance first made contact with your nose—a perfume that makes you think of an old romance or a stale, musty smell that reminds you of your first apartment. Certain odors trigger emotional responses, both positive and negative. 

Is God Still Running the World?

A lot of intelligent, well‑meaning folks have been asking themselves just what part God plays in the affairs of life today. When they see what is happening in the Middle East, Moscow, Beijing or Washington, they wonder who is really running the world.  At first glance, they are prone to think that God may have created the world and then left it to mortals to run.

How to Hear God's Voice in the Midst of Life

Jim Warren, like thousands of other people, believed in God. In fact, he went to church--not every Sunday, but most Sundays.  He was good man.  He worked hard to support his family.  He was faithful to his wife, Ruth, and occasionally took his boys fishing. Jim really didn't need God. He had too many other good things going for him.

How Far Away is God?

How far away is God?  Tough question, right?  Even pondering an answer brings us a host of other questions.  How do you measure distance between us and God--miles or kilometers as we measure distance?  Or should we measure distance in terms of light years as scientists measure the distance between us and the heavenly bodies?

6 Ingredients of a Happy Marriage

One of my memories of growing up was the trip to my grandmother's house, two doors down from Mrs. Schuler's house, where I took piano lessons.  Among the pool of memories I will always treasure is the platter of oatmeal cookies which Grandma always had available.  After I married, I asked Grandma for the recipe. "Well," she said, "you take about a cup of oatmeal and a couple tablespoons of this, and a pinch of that” and so forth. 
 

4 Questions to Ask When Your Child Needs Correcting

Divide and conquer is not only the modus operandiof warfare, but it is also the strategy of kids who know that if they can play parents against each other, or pit weariness against the single parent, they have won the battle.  Our English word disciplinecomes from a Latin word, discere,which means to know, or, in the broader sense, to discern.
 

3 Things You Can Do About Worry

"Do you know the difference between a lawyer and God?" asks a comedian, and when someone says, "No, what?" he responds, "God knows he's not a lawyer."  While most folks (excluding you, who are attorneys) may smile at that, a great many people today tend to play god.  Struggling over the issue of control, we think that we have to make things happen, and when we can't, we worry.  And when we can't change things that we dislike, we become afraid of losing control so we worry all the more and live as though there were no God in the universe, no one to whom we can turn when we have reached our human limits.