TTWMN 230: Blessed Are The Peacemakers
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Category: Conflict resolution
TTWMN 223: 10 Things I Hate About You
Relationships are tricky things, and maintaining balance in them between each other’s needs and desires can sometimes be like tip-toeing through a minefield. But it doesn’t have to be that way… all you have to do is ignore everything the world and political correctness says is right and just, everything it says you deserve, and you’ll have no problems at all! Well… that’s not exactly right, but it is a pretty good start. If you want a wonderful, perfect marriage, your only hope is to embrace the S word… submission. But before we get there, let’s clear the air about the things that really sabotage marriages, involving the ten things we do to each other that really undermine the intimacy you were hoping to have.
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TTWMN 220: Peace On Earth
One of my favorite things to do this time of year is watch all those great holiday shows and Christmas movies. “Miracle on 34th Street” (UN-colorized), Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” (with George C. Scott as Scrooge please), “A Christmas Story” about a kid wanting a Red Ryder B-B Gun, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” narrated by Burl Ives, the original Seuss classic “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, “Holiday Inn” with Bing and Fred, and the Waltons prequel “The Homecoming”, about the Christmas joy found all around despite the Great Depression—all of these take me away to a simpler time, often to my childhood, giving me a warm feeling inside like a hot cup of cocoa. Then I turn on the news, and am instantly reminded of the 3rd verse in “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”: “And in despair I bowed my head: “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men”. Yup. But the very next verse tells us why that’s not really true: “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep, The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.” Well that’s encouraging, but we’re still surrounded by unrelenting anger, hate, discontentment and offense. So to get back to the peace we’re supposed to have, let’s remember one more classic, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”…
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TTWMN 206: What I Meant To Say
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and they react to something you said in a way that surprised you? Maybe they were offended by something you said when you meant no offense at all. Or maybe they arrived at a conclusion based on something you said that is contrary to what you believe or meant to say. Why is that? Communication is both a science and an art. Effective communication only occurs when both parties understand one another’s views and opinions and can either have productive dialogue to resolve a difference or simply agree to disagree without raising the tension to a dangerous level. The Bible has a lot to say about the words we speak and how we speak them, giving us examples of how godly people should communicate with one another. Today’s show is titled “What I Meant to Say” as we look to God’s Word to give us advice on how we effectively communicate with each other as spouses, families and fellow believers.
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TTWMN 200: Problem of Pain
We don’t like pain. Nobody does. We go to great lengths to avoid it for ourselves, and if we can’t avoid it, we try to ignore it. And if we can’t ignore it, we try to numb it with alcohol, drugs, food or some other indulgence of the flesh to take our minds off of it. If that weren’t bad enough, we also try everything to shield our kids from experiencing pain. We haven’t done them any favors—we’ve actually handicapped them from experiencing the fullness of life, robbed them of the best tool they could have to become responsible, productive, fully-functioning adults. Yes, we need our pain, and our kids do too.
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TTWMN 199: What’s Tearing Us Apart
Here’s a vocabulary word for today: “strife”, defined as “angry or bitter disagreement over fundamental issues; conflict.” Merriam Webster includes the idea of a “struggle for superiority” in strife. While you don’t need to look too far today to see examples of strife in the news, between political parties, interest groups and even generations, Christians are now experiencing increasing strife in places that maybe we never thought we would. And if we don’t first check ourselves and our motives before engaging in it with those closest to us, this strife can have devastating consequences.
Read MoreTTWMN 191: Perspectives
Have you ever tried to go up or down a flight of stairs and misjudged how many steps there were? How about walking down the sidewalk when you step off a curb that you didn’t know was there? Hopefully those stumbles caused you no greater physical damage than embarrassment at the potential snickers from onlookers. But walking through this world without watching carefully where you’re going can be vastly more hazardous to your health, your spiritual health, than simply taking a careless misstep down the stairs. And one of the most needed tools in developing the wisdom and vision to take the right steps, seems to be sadly lacking in our reactionary society – perspective.
Read MoreTTWMN 176: The Heart Speaks
Face it: it’s getting more and more difficult to keep your cool these days. Between the increasing rudeness, aggressiveness and selfishness on full display out there, it doesn’t take much to rattle us, or even push us over the edge. Add to that the political rancor and decline of any kind of morality, kindness and values in society, and we all may want to just curl up in the fetal position until Jesus comes. But remember, we live in a fallen world, and we’ve been warned that it would be like this as the clock ticks down to the Last Day. We are supposed to better. We are supposed to be the lifeline to this dying world. We are supposed to be the example of love, grace and humility—we’re supposed to be like Jesus. So here to test how well we’re doing is teacher and author of the book “Broken yet Blessed,” Kathi McCarty.
Read MoreTTWMN 172: Minds Without God
There’s no shortage of examples today of irrational, contradictory and nonsensical thinking—just turn on the news, read the feeds in facebook, or just go to your local college campus. And this sort of thinking frequently leads to violent, even “rabid” behavior, with a level of obsession and compulsion that in years not so distant in the past would have landed the perpetrator somewhere they could get “mental help”. Even Christian parents are stunned and at a loss to understand what happened to their child, who seemed so solid in the Lord, but who, after a semester or so at college, has become a sexually confused, socialistic anarchist. The reason is easy to discern, but difficult to accept: we are watching the world-takeover of minds without God.
Read MoreTTWMN 167: Defining Greatness
Do you ever think about sharing the gospel and break out in a nervous sweat, knowing you’ll just mess it up? Do you read where Jesus said “you will do even greater works” than he did, and feel totally inadequate? Do you ever think about all things you should be doing for the Kingdom and feel like a total failure?
Well today, we’re going to encourage you with a study of someone who maybe felt the same, and he was often messing up. But because he loved the Lord, God was able to use him mightily. After all, it really is true that “God doesn’t call the qualified – He qualifies the called.” So here today with a lesson called “Defining Greatness: A Model Found in the Life of Peter” is teacher and author of the author of the book, Broken Yet Blessed, Kathi McCarty.
Read MoreTTWMN 157: To Judge or Not To Judge
We all know the verse, “Judge not lest ye be judged”—it’s brought up, many times by fellow Christians, to silence us from commenting on sin and evil in society today. But is that really what Jesus intended for us to take from that verse? As with everything in the bible, the key is context, context, context!
We’ll also look at the difference between examining and judging a person’s fruit, and what we are NEVER to do: pronouncing judgment on someone’s soul!
Read MoreTTWMN 155: Effective & Uplifting Communication in Marriage
Every word we speak should be carefully thought out.
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