Restoring Rapport

We've all heard the phrase, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." That phrase holds true for many situations in life. However, God has been revealing to me that there are also many situations where that saying does not apply and, in fact, can cause harm. You see, when it comes to financial investment and business schemes, "Having your fingers in a lot of pies" is a good idea! Equally distributed investment is a good idea when it comes to money. However, since people are not money, I've really begun to question equally distributed investment when it comes to relationships. Let me explain what I mean: Communicating Value: As most people would agree, 100% of your time, money, and energy is being invested into something 100% of the time. In that sense, nobody ever "wastes" their time. We're always investing into something, even if that something is the wrong thing. It's impossible for humans to cease investing for even one millisecon...

"The ONE" We've all had history lessons. We all know of the not-so-distant time in human history (especially among royalty) when young people married apart from their choice (and often against their inclination) simply in order to gain something. From British Television shows to Jane Austen novels, we've all seen the supposedly outdated tradition of arranged marriages. The entire christian population of today's world would unanimously shout with a unified voice that arranged marriages are quite barbaric and that no man or woman should be forced or spurred to marry someone outside of his or her wish, no matter what was to be gained. Yet what if I told you that we inadvertently accuse God of being a fixer of arranged marriages without even knowing it? I'm currently watching a Masterpiece Theatre PBS show called "Victoria." What I am shocked to find is that, in the show, at the time of her singleness, not a single person in the life of...

Today, I'm going to give you a viewpoint on video games that probably hasn't ever occurred to you, and just might change the way you view video games and those that play them. In this post, I'm not declaring video games as either good or bad or addressing the affects they have on people. I know that video games have vast amounts of pros and cons, and there's probably 3 million articles out there about their affects on the human mind. I'm not going to tell you video games are either beneficial or detrimental. Today, I'm simply going to share some ideas and statistics with you that will hopefully spark some sympathy and understanding in you regarding boy's (often excessive) use of video games. I've grown up watching a lot of Moms become concerned for their teenage sons because of the amount of appeal that an interactive screen has for their precious child. My greatest hope for this post is that it will fill all the Moms out there with an overflowing ...

The Wrong Criteria: So often in our culture, young people are inadvertently taught to engage in courtships and marriages, without having the proper preparation and knowledge. Somewhere along the way, society has unintentionally begun to under-emphasize marriage and courtship preparation. While we have a plethora of requirements for young people to meet before they get married, I'd like to suggest to you that we're not only creating the wrong criteria for marriage, but we're under-preparing young people for what marriage really is. Today's society determines whether or not a young person is "ready for marriage" based on his or her social status, job outlook, age, education, and financial standing. It might shock you to learn that NONE of those things directly prepare young people for marriage. Society says, "Look at these fine marriage-ready specimens we've produced! According to the standards of their Facebook and church friends, they're li...