You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to…
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Imagine if your pastor shared the following message the week before Christmas. “Here is our plan to celebrate the birth of Jesus this year as a church family. We have scheduled a ‘decoration day!’ You are all invited to join…
Most of the time when we need to discipline our children, we are confronted with both an incorrect action and an incorrect attitude. Sometimes, however, we encounter a right action with a wrong attitude. For example, suppose you tell your son to apologize to his sister…
I need to start off by confessing this was not our idea. We stole (ahem, borrowed) it from some friends (thank you, Kyle and Sarah). A few years ago, my wife and I took a parenting class at our church…
My husband and I both work full time in ministry. We are the proud parents of two teenagers. Often, as a family, we are pulled in different directions. Sports, jobs, theatre practice, music lessons, church events, and so on. We…
One of the most frequently asked questions we have received after the release of our new book on parenting teens is, “Should we require our teenaged son or daughter to go to church with us when they do not want…
My friend Samantha Krieger just wrote a post called What I Want My Daughters to Know About Beauty & Worth. I recommend you read her post and subscribe to her blog. She is one of the best writers I know and…
It was not my finest moment. We were running behind on Tuesday evening. Kristen had one of the four boys and I had the other three. For whatever reason, the boys didn’t understand that we were late and we needed…
My daughter wasn’t crying because she lost the spelling bee. She was crying because she got knocked out in the second round. She’s smart. That’s her thing. So missing the word tofu embarrassed her. To make it worse, she knew…
The other day I sat down and wrote out a list of all the things that “needed” to be done. The list felt immeasurably long and I quickly felt overwhelmed. I couldn’t even figure out where to start because the…
