The other day I was encouraging a friend who was struggling to be even moderately respectful to a certain person. Normally, this friend is cheerful, warm, gracious, and friendly—even to annoying people. (In fact, she was the person who taught me the phrase, ‘Don’t let stupid people make you stupid.’ That is—let it go. Don’t even burn any minutes off of your life by hyper-adrenalating your heart with the emotions of anger or frustration.) But this ONE person REALLY BUGGED HER. I am a LOT. So there I was reminding her of the very things SHE had taught me over the years—but she was still stuck. And then she said…

In his book, ‘The Life of a God-Made Man,’ Dr. Dan Doriani says this: ‘Discipline is the process in which bigger sinners attempt to convince little sinners to mend their wicked ways.’ I’m thinking about this quote a lot now as I read over the surveys that continue to come in and I learn how most churches do not practice church discipline; and how those that do are all-too-often quite harsh and condemning (rather than redemptive) in their discipline. I also think about Dr. Doriani’s teaching as I discipline Sophia (my two and a half year old). I always THOUGHT that I would ‘never’ say anything like, ‘WHY did you…

Yesterday at the gym, I saw a young man working out incredibly hard. He had muscles upon muscles but not in that (I think sort of strange) way that ‘body builders’ do … he was just INCREDIBLY strong. Normally, I would assume that he is just really into fitness; or maybe he is (sadly) caught up in the worldliness of trying to attract women merely for sexual conquests. But this guy was different. Why? Because he was wearing a USMC t-shirt. (That’s United States Marine Corps in case you are unaware.) And although I could be wrong, I made the assumption that he was working out so amazingly hard because…

In a recent issue of World Magazine (do you subscribe yet? It’s fantastic!), Joel Belz had a fantastic column on ‘Tender Toughness: It’s the kind of authority you’ve wanted ever since you were a kid.’ I was blessed by the entire column, but consider just a few excerpts/summary statements from the article: – (Quoting an editorial in the Wall Street Journal from fifteen years ago) ‘People want to be lightly governed by strong governments.’ – ‘Yes, that’s exactly what people want. We want our dad to be big and strong and able to do anything we can think of—except that when he deals with us, it has to be with…