Category Archives: christianity

Ever feel like God’s ignoring you?

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Ever felt like God wasn’t paying any attention when you were praying?

My friend, Tom, can see things I cannot see. When we go hunting bunnies – he always sees them. Hunting groundhogs – Tom spots them, I don’t. Hunting deer – I see trees where he sees Bambi. I am that way with cars. As I drive my car, I will say to Laurel, “Do you hear that?”And although she hears nothing, there’s a wheel-bearing or a tire with a defect making a noise. Laurel doesn’t hear it. I do. Laurel has come to the place that if I tell her the car is making a strange noise, she trusts me and we get it repaired. And I am the same with Tom – if he says to stop when we are hunting together, I stop. I look. I listen. I trust him.

Do you know people like that? They are just plain good at seeing things. Maybe they see things when hunting. They have hunters’ eyes. Maybe they hear something in an automobile that is out of place. They have mechanic’s ears. Maybe they see things in the Bible that you might miss. They have spiritual eyes. You need spiritual eyes to see what’s happening in our passage today. If you don’t look carefully, you’ll walk right by them.

Learning to see with spiritual eyes can help us see compassion when it’s otherwise hidden. It can help us understand how to remain faithful when God seems to be ignoring us.

Enjoy the podcast, and learn to see God’s compassion, when it’s hard to find.

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What it takes to be “a good man”

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As we celebrated Fathers’ Day, most of us took a moment to recall our fathers. My father was like many – he had lots of good character qualities. And he had some areas of his life where he could have improved. Patience was not one of his strengths. That’s probably why I never became a fisherman. But one of the strengths my father had was that he was a good man.

Some time ago that phrase, “he’s a good man” entered my daughter’s vocabulary. She would talk about professors at college and say, “Dad – you’d really like him. He’s a good man.” One day she was talking about Jim Bell and she said, “He’s a good man.” Then it happened….

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Guarding Against “Attachment Disorder”

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Last fall, I read an article in a Christian magazine about Eastern European children who have been adopted by American couples. The author noted that many such children have great difficulty clinging to their new parents. It seems that, in many cases, the abandonment they experience in the early years of their development causes them to have a problem trusting anyone – including the new parents. Their lives can be marked by hostility, inability to form close relationships, and distrust of people, particularly authority figures. These children can become self-destructive, highly sensitive to rejection and anger, and blame everyone close to them for the problems in their lives. Psychologists call this syndrome Attachment Disorder.

As I read it, I immediately realized that it’s not just Eastern European children who struggle with Attachment Disorder. Continue reading →

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