Becky looked forward to her wedding with a mixture of excitement and sadness. Mark was the man of her dreams, and she was thrilled about becoming his wife. But there was another man she had thought about many times over the years, and his memory brought mostly pain...
Asking Parents to Give Up Their Keys
One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to ask my mother and my mother-in-law to give up their car keys. Doing it with each of them on the same day (since they both lived with us) was especially difficult. Our moms loved running their own errands, going out for...
20 Ways to Prevent and Resolve Conflict in the Church
The COVID crisis, combined with heightened racial and political tension, has triggered unprecedented conflict throughout our nation, as well as in the local church. Churches are literally dividing over masks, racial policies and political positions. As a result,...
To Mask or Not to Mask … That Is the Divisive Question
Masks are dividing churches all around the country. Some church members are willing to continue following government COVID-19 mandates to wear masks during worship services. But other members view masks as an intolerable interference in their worship of God and a...
How Well Do You Love Your Enemies?
Do you have an enemy today? Someone who has has done you great harm or is out to get you right now? Perhaps it's not been quite that bad. Perhaps someone has simply spoken critically to you or about you, or has otherwise disappointed or failed you in a hurtful way....
Preventing a Breach
I learned the hard way how easy it is to breach a dam. When I was fourteen, my dad hired a contractor to enlarge a stock pond on our ranch by building a dam. It was ten feet high and thirty feet thick at its base. As the pond filled, we discovered that the dirt around...
7 Ways to Redeem an Offense
I recently received a complaint from a woman who I will call Ruth (not her real name) regarding a video clip I used in one of my blog posts. The video is called "It’s Not about the Nail." It features a graphic metaphor built around a woman with a nail in her forehead...
Reputation vs Character
Jeff’s reputation was being trashed by people in his own church. He was respected throughout the city for his outstanding Sunday school classes, which had drawn hundreds of people to his church. But then he got caught in the middle of a congregational battle over the...
Changing a Murderer into a Minister
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,...
A Lost Translation … Almost
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...