Between interaction with the culture, media and their peers, this year your teenagers will be exposed to one hundred thousand messages about sex. How many of these will come from you?

That’s the question Sharon Hersh posed on one of our FamilyLife Today broadcasts recently, and it is a good one.((READMORE))

It’s easy to become discouraged when we fail. It’s easy to lose heart and stop trying. That’s why I love stories like this one:

For many years Bob Brenly was the starting catcher for the San Francisco Giants.((READMORE))

Every time couples get together for one of our Weekend to Remember conferences, the Lord does something special . . . and almost always leaves us with stories like this one:

I had been leading an online extramarital affair with someone from college for almost three years.((READMORE))

One of our favorite games that our children absolutely loved playing was Reverse Hide and Seek. We’d turn out all the lights in our house. Then, instead of having one person look for everyone else, one person hid and all the others would try to find him or her.((READMORE))

R. V. Brown is a giant of a man, a four-year college football letterman who received Christ while still on campus and was turned loose with a fire to introduce his Savior to the youth of America. But one night, this man with the bulging biceps and the evangelist’s heart woke up in a sweat, worried sick about the condition of his dad’s soul.((READMORE))

When each of our sons, Benjamin and Samuel, graduated from high school, I treated them to one of the most unusual breakfasts they had ever enjoyed.

It was a simple meal held in a local hotel meeting room.((READMORE))

I know a man whose son has battled a serious illness his entire life. His whole family has been shaped around the requirements of this boy’s chronic care. Never a full night’s sleep. Never a trip where he and his wife could totally unwind.((READMORE))

Life in a fallen world can be tough. But what makes suffering and hardship worse is that they often turn us against each other rather than toward each other. Here are a few ways to keep that from happening as you negotiate the common speed bumps and detours of life:

Give your spouse time and freedom to process trials differently.((READMORE))

Barbara and I diligently tried to teach our children about God and His Word. We studied the Scriptures with them. We prayed with them. We dialogued often about life issues, casting them in terms of biblical worldview and morality.((READMORE))

Thomas Epting’s young body began showing its first signs of leukemia when he was only two years old. By age four, there was no doubt. And after the disease had ebbed and resurfaced once again at age seven, his family understood that Thomas’s childhood was not going to be normal.((READMORE))

Ask almost any gathering of Christians to name one thing they wish they knew more about and prayer would be near the top of every list. I understand that. Yet perhaps in longing for those far-off secrets of spiritual success, we overlook prayer’s simplicity and beauty.((READMORE))

How many times have you prayed for God to “show up”—that He would reveal His purpose and power and presence in an unmistakable way?

Some people might say, “Aw, that’s just the way Christians talk.((READMORE))

Over the years, Dennis and I have attended hundreds of events involving our children. Baseball games. Volleyball matches. Cheerleading events. Gymnastics competitions. Evangelistic outreaches. Music recitals.((READMORE))

Not long after I graduated from the University of Arkansas, a female friend came to me for counsel. She was dating a young man who happened to be my best friend. And though she wanted to marry him, he was uncertain about committing to her.((READMORE))

General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of operations for Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the early 1990s, exercised this simple premise of authority: A leader never walks by a mistake.
<p>I think he’s got a point, not only in how to lead a military unit, but also in how we raise our children.((READMORE))

When young William Borden—heir to the Borden dairy fortune—graduated from high school more than 100 years ago, his father gave him three things for his graduation gift: enough money for a trip around the world, a servant to accompany him and a brand-new Bible.((READMORE))

Not to be outdone by Barbara’s choice selection of husband-pleasers from yesterday’s reading, here are some ideas from the man’s side of the equation. See what you both think about these.((READMORE))

Who is your closest neighbor? Your husband. And how can you edify (build or improve) your husband and thereby enhance his self-worth, the way the verse above instructs? By discovering—and doing—what pleases him.((READMORE))

I didn’t quite finish telling the story of what happened at the Promise Keepers event I mentioned yesterday. After we finished the demonstration with the traps, a large stream of boys (sons of the dads in attendance) began pouring into the stadium after listening to another speaker in a separate area.((READMORE))

Try to picture this scene: With 50,000 men watching intensely, a 15-year-old young man, Trent—blindfolded and barefoot—begins stepping cautiously across an outdoor stage. Before him are a dozen steel animal traps with their jaws wide open.((READMORE))

I heard the story recently of a couple who, by their tenth anniversary, had been unable to conceive any children. Those of you who have experienced this heartbreak can readily relate to the frustration they felt, the void that remained so senselessly empty in their lives.((READMORE))

In a famous scene from the film Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara searches for a doctor to help her sister-in-law, Melanie, who is about to give birth. As she weaves through stretcher after stretcher of bleeding, dying soldiers, the camera pans back to reveal a swath of misery—a huge square teeming with desperate, injured soldiers lying in the sun.((READMORE))

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, experienced the ultimate graduation, to heaven, on July 19, 2003. And other than my parents, no person has had a greater influence on my life. My mind fails trying to lay a yardstick beside the many, many ways he shaped and influenced me.((READMORE))

As a people, we are healthier but not happier. We are drenched in knowledge but parched for wisdom. Materially we are wealthy, but we suffer a profound poverty of the soul. The longer I live, the more I see that our nation needs a spiritual reformation in its inner spirit.((READMORE))

I’ve often wondered why more people don’t get hurt by foul balls that are hit into the stands during a baseball game. You’d think it would happen almost every time, especially those line drives that carom through an entire seating section.((READMORE))

Ken Sande, who heads up a wonderful group called Peacemaker Ministries, told me about a woman who had just found out that her husband of 20 years had been unfaithful. She clearly had biblical grounds for divorce.((READMORE))

Some people believe the words “Christian” and “depression” should never appear in the same sentence. They believe that a person whose Bible proclaims, “The joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10), should know better than to be unhappy.((READMORE))

I want to spend just one more day wrapping up these seven non-negotiables of life—because when you see them together like this, it becomes much clearer what they’re all about.((READMORE))

When I go to church, I love to worship God in song. I’ve found that closing my eyes and singing to Him without being distracted by people is a very satisfying experience. I love what happens when the Holy Spirit speaks through the Scriptures, realigns my attitude and calls my heart to worship and reflect on His goodness and mercy.((READMORE))

There can be only one Lord in this relationship, or it just doesn’t work. Any other combination of play-callers in this game plan results in confusion, distraction and disobedience.

Non-negotiable Number Six: Serve God, Not Self

The Bible exhorts us to become “slaves” or “bond-servants” of Jesus Christ (see Ephesians 6:6; Acts 16:17; 2 Corinthians 4:5).((READMORE))

The choices you make today or tomorrow are not confined to today or tomorrow. A baby step of obedience may be all the ground you need to cover today in order to put yourself in position to launch a major spiritual breakthrough later on.((READMORE))

A Long Island businessman in the 1930s bought an expensive brass barometer to mount in his home. However, when the man pulled the instrument out of the box and started to hang it, the arrow that indicated current weather conditions was pointing hard to “Hurricane."((READMORE))

I don’t have to tell you how hard the world is vying for your affections. It beckons you and me with the lure of lesser loyalties. The world wants you to have a better car, a bigger house, more-fashionable clothing, a sleeker cell phone, a snazzier computer.((READMORE))

There are few things in life sweeter than lying down in bed after a long, hard day and sinking into a dreamless, uninterrupted, eight-hour sleep. No one enjoys this kind of rest on more of a regular basis than those who have learned to reverence God and practice His presence in their lives.((READMORE))

Over the next seven days, I want to walk you through what I call “the seven non-negotiables of life”—biblical benchmarks that are true simply because He is true.

We’re familiar with some of the non-negotiables of our lives.((READMORE))

For the most part, we raised all of our children the same way. Lived in the same house. Ate the same food. Passed around the same germs. But I’m convinced that if we had raised six more, they would all have been as different from each other as the first six have been.((READMORE))

Have you ever been moved to write a letter to someone who was making some bad decisions in life and needed a good dose of “talking to”? In a situation like this, it is difficult to avoid becoming fairly pious and preachy, even when trying to say things in a nice, persuasive, tough-love kind of way.((READMORE))

I don’t know anything at all about what caused it, what led up to it or even what came of it. But I’m sure it was hard for people not to notice a full-page ad in the Jacksonville newspaper one morning that read: “Please believe the words in my letter.((READMORE))

Are there things that someone has done to you that you think you could never forgive?

You are not alone. Ron Luce, president of Teen Mania Ministries, shares a story that many can identify with.((READMORE))

I am often reminded of what C. S. Lewis said: “Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.” How true. It’s not until forgiveness becomes personal and costly that it takes on its actual size and weight.((READMORE))

A number of years ago, there was a person in my life who had hurt and wronged me, and every time his name came up, my stomach did a sort of little twist.

I thought the problem was that this person never recognized how deeply he had hurt me.((READMORE))

One night, one of our teenagers came into our bedroom and said to us, “You know, it really bugs me that you shut the door to your room at 10:00 or 10:30 every night. I feel like you’re shutting us out of your lives."((READMORE))

A friend sent me an email posting from Ruth McGinnis, a Nashville recording artist and author, who had recently been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. In the midst of her ordeal, God began reframing the definition of success in her life:

One of the most powerful insights I’ve had as a result of this unexpected detour in my well-planned life is truly understanding that the value of my work—the books I’ve written, my instrumental recordings, the speaking and performing I’ve done for countless years—has nothing to do with commercial success.((READMORE))

Sharon’s 15-year-old daughter, Kristin, went to the movies with friends, but then she sent her mom a text message saying they couldn’t find anything to watch and were going over to Dory’s house.

“Dory? Who’s Dory?” Sharon asked.((READMORE))

One of my favorite object lessons in the sixth-grade Sunday School class I taught for many years was the “bad apples” demonstration. During a class at the beginning of the year, I brought some apples with me into the room—a beautiful, shiny red one that I called a “good apple” and a couple of others that looked nice but had at least one bruise.((READMORE))

I can’t attribute this story to its source, but a number of years ago I read a story about Babe Ruth. At the end of his legendary baseball career, the Babe had become obviously overweight. During one of his final contests, he bungled several fly balls in the outfield and struck out weakly with every plate appearance.((READMORE))

I was reading the paper one day and came across an excerpt from a book called The Mistress’ Survival Manual, written by the founder of Mistresses Anonymous. (Now, I didn’t read this book. Honest. I simply read an article that mentioned it.((READMORE))

I had been a mom for about six years when I first began to experience significant anger. And as the pressures of parenthood increased and our older children moved into adolescence, I started getting angry more severely and more often.((READMORE))

Tim Kimmel, who along with his wife, Darcy, is a frequent speaker at our Weekend to Remember marriage conferences, remembers the two of them going out to eat sometime around his fortieth birthday. As they were waiting for their meal to arrive, he began doodling a crude picture of a casket on his paper napkin.((READMORE))

I often give three pieces of advice to young women before their wedding day. But because these remain just as important as we go through marriage and because they are fashioned by the Scriptures and proven by experience, I share them with you today—at whatever stage you find yourself in marriage:((READMORE))