It is important when we talk about healthy vs. unhealthy relationships to know what healthy relationships actually look like. Most of us seem to recognize what is not healthy and what doesn’t work well, but knowing what to do about it is not easy. We may also have a vague understanding of what healthy relationships look like because the people in them seem to be happy, though we may not know what their relationship “secret” is. Consideration of some characteristics of healthy relationships may help clarify why some relationships survive and thrive and some do not.

Healthy lateral relationships, specifically the marriage relationship, are mutual, reciprocal, and free. Not all relationships are of equal power and authority,...

Nearly as many people ask me how the purity ministry is going as ask me how my retirement is going? Both are going well, thank you. The purity ministry has morphed from being led by me under the umbrella of the National Coalition For Purity to being led by motivated laymen in their churches. Evergreen Church, New Hope, is supplying these lay leaders with the purity supplies they need to launch the ministry. Recently, Grace Evangelical Free Church, Fridley, MN, under the leadership of men’s ministry director, Doug Hanson, and former NCFP board member, Tom Simshauser, led a Friday Night Fight dinner with a focus on sexual purity. Irv was the keynote speaker. Over 60 men attended (nearly double previous Friday Night Fights!) and many ...

Ever played “Whack-a-Mole?” You probably have if you have taken your children to Chuck E. Cheese. Whack-a-Mole is a very physical game in which the player gets a mallet and whacks the moles who pop up at random out of one of their seven holes. The game seemingly goes on ad nauseum until the timer runs out and no more moles pop up to whack. It is a fun but stressful game. Your adrenalin begins to flow because you have to be ready at all times to pound the daylights out of those moles and you never know from which hole they’ll appear.

There are people who live “Whack-a-Mole” lives. They live from crisis to crisis. Their lives are stressful. They never know when the next crisis will appear. Will it be a ...

One of the statements that I hear bantered about during this election year is that Christians are “single-issue” voters. The understanding of those who make this charge is that Christians are rather narrow-minded folks who only care about the abortion issue and little else. I’d like to challenge that thinking. Christians are concerned with how candidates stand on a wide variety of issues. They are primarily concerned with the implementation of Biblical values across a broad spectrum of issues including: capital punishment, ERA, euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, school prayer, religious freedom, secular humanism, parental rights, education, national defense, and a balanced budget to name a few. All of these issues are...