My mother-in-law lived with our family for twenty years. For six of those years, my mother also lived with us. Corlette and I called them “the Two Treasures.” In all the years they lived in our home, I never heard one word of criticism, grumbling, or complaining from...
When Corlette and I were raising and educating our children, we struggled far more with relational challenges than we did with academic content. Put four sinful people together in the same home and the relational tensions will easily eclipse educational issues. Our...
Adversity tends to pull us down. It hurts when others sin against us, take us for granted, fail to stand up for us, or break their commitments to us. Such treatment can easily cause us to feel discouraged, bitter or depressed. But there is a way to convert these kinds...
Would you like to have hundreds of articles, videos and downloadable ebooklets on relational wisdom, biblical peacemaking and Christian conciliation available on your smartphone? To review just before a difficult conversation or meeting ... To remind you how to show...
After weeks of nonstop travel, I was running out of energy. As a result I was unusually apathetic as I walked into the conference center for one of my recent presentations. Not a good attitude for teaching relational wisdom. So I began to pray. “Lord, I feel lousy...
Businge Peter Simon passed the long hours in his prison cell dreaming about how he would murder the man who sent him there. But before he could put his plot into action, God intervened in a dramatic way. Here is what Businge wrote to me: Brother Ken, Praise the Lord,...
One of my dearest friends and coworkers passed away ten days ago. Gary Brook had been fighting a respiratory illness for nearly a decade but had finally been approved for a lung transplant in Seattle, Washington. Just hours before his death, he and I had been planning...
In memory of the military personnel who have risked their lives to protect our freedoms, I am reprinting a post that describes how a highly respected Army officer, now serving as a United States Congressman, lived out relational principles from God’s Word as he led...
XYZ Translators (all names changed) was about to lose a ten-year investment in learning the language of a remote tribe in Africa. John and Janice had lived with the tribe for a decade, building relationships, mastering their vocabulary and creating an alphabet they...
Thousands of high school and college seniors are about to graduate and launch into the next season of their lives. Most of them are less prepared for that transition than they realize. Regardless of how well they’ve done academically, most graduates today suffer from...
I inherited my love for practical jokes from my uncles. One of them was particularly adept at catching me off guard. Like the time he called me on the phone and said he was a police officer with a warrant for my arrest for unpaid traffic tickets. His timing was...
Every person on the face of the earth has a God-given capacity for empathy and compassion. Like every other ability, however, empathy does not improve on its own. But with deliberate practice, each of us can see steady and lasting improvement in this vital relational...
The current political climate, at both state and national levels, has highlighted the close connection between politics, pride and emotion. In an outward sense, every politician is constantly striving to build credibility, prestige and influence by highlighting...
I recently learned what makes some of the most powerful people in the world cry. Dr. Michael Lindsay, President of Gordon College, has interviewed 550 of the most successful political, business, and nonprofit leaders in the United States. This group included two U.S....
If you want to diminish the value of a confession, use one of these three phrases. “I’m sorry if I’ve done something to upset you.” When you use "if" in a confession, what people often hear is, “I don’t know that I’ve done anything wrong, but since you’re obviously...