Sometimes people who come for counseling are stuck in repeating patterns of destructive behavior. They may get free for awhile but then the behavior returns. Generational sins that have been present in previous generations may be the reason. 

We are not responsible for the sins of previous generations, but it is our responsibility to break destructive cycles, stand in the gap, and make positive changes for our own lives and the lives of those who come after us, i.e. future generations. We can think of it as a family time line continuum where we are standing at a point in time in our family’s history. We look back and notice those who have come before us and how they have contributed to who we are. We can also play it forward and...

Sometime after Christmas 2016, perhaps in early January, I noticed a small, painful bump on the back of my hand. I knew it was not the normal old age stuff because it hurt like crazy every time I touched or bumped it. Since I was scheduled for a skin checkup at the Veteran’s Administration hospital I thought I’d just ask them what it was. The doc looked at it and said it was probably one of three things, a boil, a mole in the making, or a skin cancer. To determine which of the three it was, he did a biopsy and cut the bump off my hand. The biopsy showed that it was a squamous cell carcinoma, a fairly common skin cancer with a high rate of recovery.

The treatment was a procedure I’d never heard of but one which ...

When I was a youngster I loved the teeter-totter. I loved going up and down on the teeter-totter with a friend. The real trick was, if you and your friend were approximately the same weight, to balance the teeter-totter right in the middle. It’s not as easy as it looks. As a skinny, scrawny kid I often found myself paired with a massive, moosey kid who wanted to use the teeter-totter too. Balancing was out of the question.

Speech is often like that teeter-totter. We need balance when we speak. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.” In other words, real friends will wound you when they see sin or destructive habits in your life. They won’t wound you with a...

You hear a lot about “fake news” these days. I think what is meant by that term is news reported in the media that is made up news with little or no truth behind it. The online website, Politifact, says, Then there’s fake news, the phenomenon that is now sweeping, well, the news. Fake news is made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word. 

Much of the fake news being reported today is rooted in political hostility toward the opposition. Sometimes the fake news concerns doctored statistics to fit a political ideology. A recent article in the Drudge Report said that 56% of broadcast ...

“When I caught him viewing porn, that wasn’t the worst part. He lied to me! I just can’t trust him again. He’s not the man I thought I married.” We hear those words often as we counsel couples. Lying breaks the trust in a marriage and is actually a bigger violation of the relationship than viewing porn! If lying has occurred, how do you regain the trust of your spouse? 

Trust is one of those qualities that, if lost, takes time and effort to regain. When a marriage begins, trust is readily given, but through sins against one another, trust can erode in a marriage to the point where one spouse no longer trusts the other. Without trust, true intimacy is impossible. We cannot be truly intimate with ...