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When I was in graduate school at MTSU, I took a class in teaching exceptional children. That was the label they used in the ‘80's for “special needs” students: you know, those children who were mentally challenged, were blind, were deaf, or could not walk. It was a very interesting and sometimes eye-opening…

Christie Brinkley, the 57-year-old former supermodel, has turned sour about marriage and love. After divorcing her first husband, she married the singer Billy Joel in 1985. At first their marriage was a "blast," she said. "We literally never stopped singing the whole time we were together." But they…

It was supposed to be the "perfect" town. After all, it was planned by Disney itself. The town of Celebration, Florida, a 16-acre utopian community just ten minutes from Walt Disney World, was developed in order to promote "Disney values." Disney designed the buildings, as well as its education and health…

Today we begin a new series entitled Divorce Proof. I want to tell you some of what the Bible says about a truly biblical marriage and how you can apply that truth to keep your marriage strong and your family together. Today we begin at the beginning. We will seek to define marriage. Now, as I do that,…

She never imagined it would end like that. He never saw it coming. Their marriage began as most do with high hopes and bright dreams, but in a year or so, it was all over. No, she didn’t begin to flirt with anyone at work. No, he didn’t ignore her for some flattering woman on the job. Their divorce started…

even couples with perfect budgets and paid-off houses and zero debt still end up arguing about money, angry about money, resentful about money. Even couples with spotless credit reports can be mired in the kind of financial infidelity that sullies relationships. Because the budget isn’t the problem;…

I met him when I was a youth pastor. He was a handsome boy with a gregarious personality, but I could tell something was not right. I knew it on one of the first youth trips I went on with him. I don’t remember a lot that happened, but I just remember that, when we got back pretty late and we were waiting…

The flame in the eyes had been extinguished. The smirk had been humbled. The devil-may-care attitude had been replaced with soberness. His first few days of destitution were likely steamy with resentment. He was mad at everyone. Everyone was to blame. His friends shouldn’t have bailed out on him. And…

Her name was Charlotte. She came in for financial counseling a few months before she and her boyfriend got married. She had done a great job of saving over the years and had a solid head start on her retirement. She was worried because her fiancé, Taylor, had about $20,000 in credit card debt. Charlotte…

This all kind of reminds me of something I just read about NASA. In 1972, I turned 13 years old and NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. According to Leon Jaroff in Time magazine, the satellite's primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph it and its moons, and beam data to earth…

It’s about 9 pm at night when there’s a knock at your door. You go to the door to find me standing there with a stern look on my face. You notice in my hand a piece of wood with a handle. You haven’t seen one of those things in a while but you recognize it so you say, “Rusty, it’s kind of late, what…

Ever heard of an “invisible husband.” Right away some of you might say, “Yes,I have. I married him. Whenever there’s a dish to be washed, a baby to be changed, or a floor to be vacuumed, my husband becomes invisible.” Well, I understand your frustration, but that really isn’t the definition . . . at…

See this much I know: Whatever you consider to be urgent, you focus on. Now, notice I didn’t say that whatever is urgent you focus on; Whatever you consider to be urgent, you focus on. To my knowledge, I’ve only flunked one class throughout my whole college career. No it wasn’t calculus or biochemistry.…

OK, I don’t want you to lose faith in me, but I have a confession that I have to make. When my daughter lived at home, I really struggled to establish a family devotional/teaching time. I would pray with Jenny at night, but when it came to having a family devotional time, I made many attempts, but was…

The movie Four Christmases, which I do not recommend and have not seen, does have a scene which I read about which so shows this. In the movie, the characters, Brad and Kate, are a cohabiting couple without children. The gist of the movie is that they decide to visit their family members after years…

The brother of Ravi Zacharias said this: “Love is as much a question of the will as it is of the emotion. And if you WILL to love somebody, you can.” That was not just a meaningless statement for him. He actually experienced it. You see, Ravi’s brother married the woman arranged for him by his parents,…

Dr. Desmond Morris, well-known researcher and author, spent many years studying the institution of marriage and the factors that contribute to long-term intimacy. A relationship that fails to survive, he said, can usually be traced to the dating days when the bond between a man and a woman was inadequately…

“The playwright Thornton Wilder said it well: ‘I didn’t marry you because you were perfect. I didn’t even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and…

Ever hear the story of the Prodigal Pig? It goes like this: There was a man who had two son And loved them for they were his own. The younger said, “Dad, I want my estate, I think that I’m now fully grown.” The son left home, went far away, And spent all he had living high. A famine then hit and low…

Shannon discovered it in her marriage. She called up her financial planner to ask for help getting out of debt. The financial planner asked her, “Shannon, what kind of debt are we talking about?” Shannon replied, “$30,000.00!” How did she discover it? Well, a few weeks before, she got a call from a video…

One engaged couple went for marriage counseling. They had been engaged for a year but the guy had never told his fiancee about the $32,000.00 worth of debt he had racked up on credit cards. Finally coming clean he told her of the debt and then explained that the reason he had kept that from her was because…

From 2002 to 2005, before the days of reality TV, UCLA recruited 32 local families who agreed to let themselves be videotaped during every waking, at home moment during a week. It was a sociological study aimed at a new “species”: The dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household. They…

Tri Robinson tells of his own recognition of this in his own marriage. When I got home from [a] mountaintop weekend [that had changed my life, drawing me closer to Christ], I was excited to share with Nancy what had happened. This was the very thing that for many years she had desperately wanted and…

The authors of the book, Mistakes Were Made, but not by Me, argue that our tendency to justify our actions is more powerful and deceptive than an explicit lie. They write: [Self-justification] allows people to convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done. In fact, come…

Now, I’ll be the first one to admit that confrontation isn’t pleasant. I don’t like it because I want to be liked. I want people to accept me and consider me their friend. But, right after I moved to Wilson, I discovered that being liked was not the same as being effective in ministry. It happened in…