Desires

The word for today is – desire.  The Bible begins with a cautionary tale – before Adam ate the fruit, the fruit had eaten Adam. He was eaten up with desire.  Psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Neel Burton says the problem with desires is perception. We desire more things (including sex) when we perceive we don’t…

Planting Gardens

“Plant gardens and eat what they produce” (Jeremiah 29:5). Let me translate that for you. If you want to enjoy a good recovery tomorrow, you need to do good recovery work today. If long-term sobriety sounds like a worthy goal, you need to plant a good garden today. Here are a few of the plants…

Bad News

I’ll admit it. My spiritual gift is worry. My team is ahead, but they’ll probably blow it. The stock market was up yesterday, but today it will probably crash. The tests said there was nothing wrong with me – yet. I’m like the guy who thinks that every time the football team goes into a…

New Glasses

I recently got a new pair of glasses. I can see clearly now. For those of you who have to squint to read this, you probably didn’t know that trees have leaves and those leaves change colors. But sometimes we see too much. I would argue that there might actually be too much news on…

Learning Pyramid

The Learning Pyramid offers some great wisdom for how to do successful recovery. Developed by educational theorist Edgar Dale, the conclusion is that people learn more effectively when they participate in the learning process. The first four layers of the pyramid are passive learning. In order from least effective to most effective, they are: lecture,…

Honus Wagner Card

Did you collect baseball cards as a kid? Are those cards boxed up in the attic? After reading this, you might want to take another look at those cards. One particular card could change your life. The T206 Honus Wagner card is considered the most valuable card ever produced, drawing as much as $10 million…

Real vs Rule

The Three Mile Island event took place 45 years ago today. On March 28, 1979, a pressure valve in the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania failed to close, triggering the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry. Although the accident at Three Mile Island had minuscule health…

There Really Was a Dracula

Dracula was a real dude. He lived from 1431 to 1476, when he died at the age of 45. Dracula was a prince of a small country called Wallachia, in what is now southern Romania. He was famous for resisting Ottoman Turkish invasions and for his incredible cruelty. However, there is no evidence that Dracula…

GW + GT = GF

I hear these questions quite often: Let me offer a simple formula: GW + GT = GF. Start with God’s will. There are several ways you can know God’s will – through his Word, the counsel of others, the Holy Spirit, and the wisdom God promises. Then seek God’s timing. When we started There’s Still…

Incomplete Truth

There is a fascinating verse in the Book of Acts, which describes one of the early church leaders, an eloquent communicator named Apollos. The passage says, “He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John”…