Each fall, a ski resort in Maine hosts an event that is little known to the rest of the nation: the North American Wife Carrying Championship. To compete, husbands transport their wives through a hilly, 278-yard obstacle course that includes a 20-foot trough of water and two log hurdles.((READMORE))

We had just returned to the United States after a three-week trip to South Africa. We were glad to be back, of course, but it’s always a mixed bag to return to our country. International travel has a way of clearing the fog from one’s own nationalistic view of life.((READMORE))

Who are the people that have meant the most to you in your life? Who has had the most influence in your life? Your parents? A coach, a teacher or a Sunday school teacher? Undoubtedly they challenged you to rise above the status quo.((READMORE))

As moms, we get to deal with such exciting things as spit up, poopy pull-ups, and frogs and lizards escaping in the house. So how do you balance all of that with the desire to be an attractive, romantic, interesting wife?

One key is to remember that your children are third on your list of priorities.((READMORE))

Major General Robert Dees (U.S. Army, Retired) was one of a rugged group of alumni from the 101st Airborne Division—the “Screaming Eagles”—who commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of World War II’s Operation Market Garden by parachuting into the same drop zone in Eindhoven, Holland, as their heroic predecessors.((READMORE))

This is a true story.

In the 1870s, when the citizens of Swan Quarter, North Carolina, began looking for a piece of property for a new Methodist church building, their sights fell on a nice piece of elevated land where the structure would be reasonably protected from coastal flooding.((READMORE))

A few days after 9/11, one of my daughters and I met with a businessman and his daughter for an early-morning Bible study. It was always easier to get our kids into the Scriptures with the promise of a fresh doughnut or a breakfast with Dad.((READMORE))

Every family with more than one child at home faces sibling rivalry. Even when it’s not showing itself in fights and raised voices and loud cries of “Mom!” you can be sure it’s going on! They’re jockeying for position.((READMORE))

When you made a covenant to your spouse, it wasn’t just a promise to stay married. It wasn’t a pass/fail exam. It was a sacred pledge to care for and nourish each other—to meet the other’s needs and receive the other—to accept and embrace each other as God’s personal provision for your needs.((READMORE))

On the morning of September 11, 2001, former Staff Sgt. David Karnes was watching the horrific events unfold on television at his office in Connecticut. But this ex-Marine, now an accountant, felt more than pain and sympathy.((READMORE))

For some reason I stayed home from work on September 11, 2001. I had just finished a three-mile run when Barbara met me on the highway near our home with a concerned look on her face. She blurted out the words, “We’ve been attacked!”
After watching television and learning more about the terrorist attacks, I showered and rushed to the office, where I met with leaders of our ministry.((READMORE))

I’ll be the first to admit it: When I go places, I like to be on time. Punctuality is a big deal to me. I am usually not obsessive about it, but I think it says something about your character and about the value you place on the event you’re attending or the person you’re scheduled to meet.((READMORE))

I’m afraid too many of us Christians don’t know what we really believe. Like a cork in the ocean, driven and tossed by the waves, we bounce from opinion to opinion, influenced more by the last book we read than by a lifetime of biblical study.((READMORE))

Within all of us, I believe, is a lingering self-doubt. We may look like we’ve got life totally wired, but we know we don’t. So it hurts when our own insecurities are thrown back in our face—especially when they involve our desire to follow Christ wholly and fully.((READMORE))

John Flanagan, Jr., was flying a routine Air Force mission during the Vietnam War, seeking to confirm a radio report of 300 enemy Vietcong troops spotted in a nearby area. Flying low above the coordinates of the site zone, he could see nothing that aroused his suspicions or indicated the presence of enemy forces.((READMORE))

Barbara and I were eating in a fast-food restaurant when we noticed a couple of college kids wearing T-shirts with gross, sexual vulgarities on them.

Maybe it was because we were out of town—or maybe it was because I was eating a cheeseburger when I should have been having a green salad! But something made me want to appeal to these two young men, man to man.((READMORE))

I’ll never forget the email I received from a husband who described in point-by-point detail what he hoped to get from one of our marriage conferences he and his wife were scheduled to attend. I can’t squeeze all of them onto this page, but you’ll get the idea.((READMORE))

Years ago, I conducted a public interview with Bill and Vonette Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ. I asked them, “Was there ever a time in your marriage where you were at a real crisis? A true fork in the road that could have ended in disaster?”

Bill’s eyes filled with tears, his head dropped a bit, and he began to nod.((READMORE))

Some couples just don’t seem to know any other way to relate to one another than with digs, comebacks and put-downs. But sometimes, that same bitterness of spirit can show itself in less vocal ways, when one or the other spouse stews underneath and passively retaliates.((READMORE))

Every so often—through an aspect of His grace that feels much more like a punch in the stomach—God will crash His way into a pity party and spoil all the fun we get from sulking. That’s exactly what happened on the night I was telling you about yesterday.((READMORE))

I had spent a busy day wrapping up last-minute details, preparing to leave for a conference the next morning. I came home that evening, however, to a wife who had experienced a hard day herself—a very hard day with the kids.((READMORE))

Before you were married, was there someone else?

If so, you need to realize it’s not abnormal for your spouse to feel insecure about an old flame. Even one that went out years ago.

Barbara and I were cleaning up around the house not long ago, and we came across a box of pictures we hadn’t opened since early in our marriage.((READMORE))

Gary Smalley told me one day about being in a Kansas City church where he’d been leading a weekend conference. When the final session was over and he went to retrieve his bag to leave, it was gone.((READMORE))

Danny Akin, a seminary president with the bold audacity to write a book on sexual intimacy, shares this true, touching story:

A woman had been diagnosed with breast cancer so severe that the doctors had no choice but to do a radical mastectomy.((READMORE))

Barbara shared yesterday about some events that occurred during one of the most challenging seasons of our marriage. On top of the crises she mentioned, our one-year-old son, Benjamin, had to be rushed into emergency surgery; we were cheated out of a substantial amount of money on a home we had just bought; and after returning to southwest Missouri to temporarily run my deceased father’s propane business, I had a medical episode of my own.((READMORE))

So how did we resolve our differing needs on that perfect night for love in Mazatlan?
We had a fight!

Not right away, of course. Dennis tried to talk to me. He tried to love me. I wanted to talk, but I didn’t know what to say.((READMORE))

Our sixth year of marriage was a season of suffering. It included financial problems, the death of Dennis’s father and a serious health scare of my own, followed by an unplanned pregnancy.
((READMORE))

If there’s one thing Barbara and I have learned during our many years of raising children, it’s that prayer is indispensable. Irreplaceable. Life giving. That’s why we went before God often with our children’s personal matters in mind.((READMORE))

Soon after our youngest child left for college, I was invited to a baby shower for a young woman expecting her first baby. I anticipated this one to be just like the dozens of other showers I’ve attended over the years.((READMORE))

All parents eventually face the empty-nest years. And many do not look forward to them. But I want to challenge you to think of the empty nest as a brief parenthesis—a chance to catch your breath, a time to seriously evaluate what the next fruit-producing years of your life will look like.((READMORE))

It was not easy for me when our youngest child, Laura, left our home for college. There’s a sense of importance that comes from your children being dependent on you. It becomes your identity.((READMORE))

Many of us have read the old P. D. Eastman book Are You My Mother? to our children. But not many of us have had to grow up asking that question over and over again, to one person after another, growing increasingly convinced that no one was .((READMORE))

Whether you realize it or not, you are engaged in a spiritual battle every day. You live in a culture that is increasingly hostile to your faith. The devil and those who promote his self-indulgent agenda are relentless in their assault on your mind and affections.((READMORE))

Five grown siblings came together at the event of their parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. When the time came to express their thanks to each parent for the one thing that stood out above all in their memories, each of them—without consulting the others—thanked their father for his leadership in family worship.((READMORE))

There was only one problem when Tara Barthel and Judy Dabler set out to write their book Peacemaking Women. No sooner had they started than they weren’t speaking to each other.

Judy had been Tara’s first choice as co-author for a book about resolving conflicts.((READMORE))

Look at the verse above again—it contains one negative command and two positive ones. From our experience, the three commands work together; if you obey the negative command, you are able to fulfill the others as well.((READMORE))

I’ll never forget one particularly hectic period in our family’s life when my schedule had gotten so busy that I didn’t feel like I had time to even change a light bulb. The stress of keeping it all going was occupying just about every waking moment of the week, and our house was really beginning to suffer for it.((READMORE))

Whenever our Weekend to Remember speaker team gets together—as we’re passing each other in the hallway or stepping onto the elevator—we often ask each other one probing question: “Are you clean?” We’re calling each other to personal holiness—we don’t want anyone who represents our Lord and our ministry to stand before others with an unexamined heart.((READMORE))

We Americans recently passed one of those cultural milestones we’ve been slouching toward for years: We now have more television sets in our homes than people.

Nielsen Media Research found that about half of us now have three or more TVs, with a sizable number boasting as many as seven or eight.((READMORE))

To me, one of the saddest scenes in marriage is when a husband and wife retire after dinner to either end of the house—she to watch her television shows, he to watch his. But perhaps it’s only slightly worse than sitting together in the same room, night after night, with the television talking over anything else that might be of interest in sharing with one another.((READMORE))

Christianity has become too much of a spectator sport. Like football, it’s 22 players on the field desperately in need of rest, being watched by thousands who are in need of exercise.
Over the past 10 years, Barbara and I have enjoyed the spiritual exercise of mentoring a small number of younger individuals and couples.((READMORE))

His name was Harry Truman.
No, not “The buck stops here” Harry Truman. Not the “Dewey Defeats Truman” Harry Truman.
No, this Harry Truman lived in a rustic log cabin near pristine Spirit Lake in the crisp, cool timberland of Washington.((READMORE))

For many years George Barna has been a leading researcher on Church and cultural trends in America. When he appeared on our radio broadcast, I posed a question I’d always wanted to ask him: “What was the most stunning set of data you ever received?”

This is a man who isn’t stunned by much.((READMORE))

Only 10 months into their marriage, during an otherwise calm Sunday drive to church one July morning, a young Navy couple’s car was broadsided by a streaking ambulance racing through an intersection.((READMORE))

If you were to point your car southwest of Cortez, Colorado, drive exactly 38 miles along Highway 160 and then hang a right on Four Corners Monument Road, in about a half mile you’d run into the only spot in America where you can be in four states at the same time: the intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.((READMORE))

When I was a boy, the thought of going to heaven sounded boring. As a young lad, I thought that there is so much more here that I wanted to experience. Places to go. Thrills to embrace. The thought of sitting around for all eternity strumming a harp didn’t appeal to me.((READMORE))

It didn’t happen often. I only remember hearing it on a couple of occasions. But I guarantee you that in those rare moments when my father let loose with a foul word, it made a deep impression on me.((READMORE))

Our son Samuel was a top-rated tennis player at age 14, before he was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease. But he struggled at times with getting angry at himself. I warned him often about dealing with this.((READMORE))

When dealing with our young children, we sometimes forget what we’re up against: the deceit that is a natural part of a child’s heart.

It’s intriguing that when God identifies seven things He really hates (see Proverbs 6:16-19), two of the seven concern deceit: “a lying tongue” (verse 17) and “a false witness who utters lies” (verse 19).((READMORE))

Stu Weber, who pastors a church in Portland, Oregon, and is the author of such best-selling books as Tender Warrior: God’s Intention for a Man, remembers an evening he spent many years ago as a seven-year-old boy playing Parcheesi with his grandparents.((READMORE))