ESTEEMER

Have you ever sat down in church and wondered if you were even in the right place? Did you spend an hour or two hours listening to readings and talks, but feel like your time would have been better spent somewhere else? Well, if you haven't, I have. Ministers and pastors have to puta lot of work into doing their jobs. They work with people all week, they handle the administration of the church, andsome pastors are also married. What do you think that means from week to week? It means that the true message, the powerful information, sometimesgets mucked up in the normal grind of life. I'm not here to go on and on in acriticism of full-time pastors, but Ido believe in this: If a pastor does not produce a quality message on a regular basis...reconsider where you are spending your time. After doing church for years and years, I took some time off. I did a lot of reading, I created lots of projects,and when I was ready to come back, I did. Now, I was 18, and I would neve...

Have you thought about that? Why do some people coast through life? Its because they embrace truth. They stick to it like glue. They don’t waver, they don’t change. They let their intelligence deal with problems. But there is another way to approach challenges. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you consider sin? Most folks think of the worst stuff there is, then pronounce their own behavior as acceptableand sometimes successful. They sweep indiscretions under the rug. I do it all the time myself. Lifehas gotten extremely tough as I have gotten older. As I go through each day, I notice that my behavior has started to prompt an examination of how I approach communication. At a certain point in my married life, it because much easier to shut myself down when arguments would flare up. I would turn off my jets, and just tell my wife that I was tired or that I was not in the mood to talk. There was a big problem with that! I was cutting her off from real information th...