How many times have you done what you genuinely believed was best for your kids or spouse—your entire motivation was their well-being—and they responded with, “Why do you hate me?” It’s excruciating to exhibit love and have the person you love respond with charges of hate. You do something for your spouse, or say something […]
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Your spouse may not realize what he or she needs most, but if you want a sacred marriage, you have to focus on what he or she will profit from the most. Jesus didn’t always give people what they wanted or asked for. He gave them what they needed. If we want to love like […]
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After a Sacred Search conference in which I had laid out essential character traits to look for in a future spouse, a group of six men asked a question. Five of them were convinced by what I had said; one wasn’t, and he’s the one who asked the question in the form of several statements: […]
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Jason (not his real name) is one of the over fifty-percent of men who struggle mightily with pornography. It was causing him to miss out on life and regularly be angry with his wife (an often-ignored “secret” is that porn is cultivating an entire generation of angry husbands). One time, after an hours-long binge in […]
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One of the most common questions I get about my book for singles, The Sacred Search, which gives a lot of advice about what to look for and what to avoid when choosing someone to marry, is “What if you can’t find a person like the one you describe?” Singles who ask this question, and […]
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Perhaps you feel crushed with the burden of providing for a family. Maybe you feel exhausted trying to please a persistently disappointed mate. It might be that you feel buried in duty, unglamorous tasks, anonymity, and the terrifying reality that when you look ahead, you don’t see anything changing for a long time. You pray […]
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Throughout the nine months of our engagement, Lisa and I made many plans, as any engaged couple does. We talked about missions, family, serving God—you name it. It was an intense time, and we often prayed, “Lord, wherever you want to take us, however you want to use us, we’re all yours.” Of course, we […]
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I don’t know if anything has ever touched me as much as when my oldest daughter returned from her first year of college and explained how she got through some lonely moments. She told me she’d go into the bookstore (it was a Christian college), find one of my books, look at my picture on […]
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At first, I thought I had sprained my little finger. It hurt when I used it for anything, but I couldn’t remember the point of injury. And then I eventually realized that both little fingers felt the same way. “What a coincidence,” I thought, “but time will make them feel better.” And then they started […]
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“Taylor” met her boyfriend her freshman year in college. They started dating that fall and never broke up, so when Christmas break of her senior year rolled around and graduation was looming, she was hoping for and kind of expecting an engagement ring for Christmas. When she didn’t get one, and her boyfriend didn’t even […]
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