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Monday, March 4, 2013

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I think I've been on a diet since I was about six months old, or at least it seems that way. I guess my "thorn in my flesh" is my metabolism. Is that possible? It refuses to convert calories; it loves to store calories instead. Now, over the years, I've made friends with my metabolism, and that's probably why I left 210 pounds years ago and have been able to stay, you know, a lot lower than that by 40 or 50 pounds over the years. I've learned how much intake I can stand in relation to how much I'll be exerting that day. The problem is that the day is filled with caloric choices, whether it's a nibble on those snacks that somebody brought to the office, or getting a sandwich from the deli like everybody else is, or eating that tempting dinner that my wife has prepared.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

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If you're not an avid basketball fan, you may have never heard of Stacey King. He actually some years ago was a rookie player with the Chicago Bulls. I think you've probably heard of Michael Jordan, one of the all-time great superstars of professional basketball. One season, Michael Jordan broke a single game scoring record, and Stacey King, the rookie, had a great quote after that game. He said, "I'll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points in one game." Actually, Michael Jordan scored 69 points; Stacey King scored one. I know the feeling!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

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It actually starts while men are still boys, "I'll beat you!" It's that innate desire in a male to compete, to conquer, to win. A girl is a conquest, a game is a conquest, a career or a business is a conquest. In Spanish, men were called conquistadors! Give them a challenge in their field or in their interest area, and they will work hard to conquer it. Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that these conquerors retreat when the challenge happens to be in a relationship.

Monday, February 25, 2013

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Not long ago I was at a conference in a beautiful mountain setting. We had our work all spread out across the tables we were working on. The tables became messier and messier as the day went on. You know how those meetings go. And, after several hours of our, shall we say hot air, the room was ready for some ventilation. So a couple of fellows went over and opened the windows real wide, and oh did that felt good. And then, a big mountain breeze came up and blew through the room. Some people thought the wind was just what we needed. But some of our work started to blow around, and some thought it was suddenly too cool. One man got up and loudly slammed those windows shut! It seems as if there are always those who want to shut the window when the wind is starting to blow.

Friday, February 22, 2013

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Somewhere on your body there is probably some mark or scar from your early days of riding a bicycle. Most of us took a pretty good spill somewhere along the way and we've got the marks to prove it. Well, our family was staying at a little cabin in the woods, and our oldest son came cruising down this little dirt path on his bike. He spun out on the gravel and he had an unscheduled meeting with the ground. When he got up he was bleeding pretty profusely from his mouth.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

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Five beaches that became bloody battlefields, and that became the turning point of World War II. It was D-Day, June 6, 1944 when the allied forces invaded those beaches on the coast of France and began to move against and tore Germany. Of course Nazi stronghold after Nazi stronghold fell to those advancing allied troops, but the war still dragged on. Finally, the allies smashed into Berlin; the war still was on. Eventually, it came down to a few blocks around Hitler's bunker, and finally only after Hitler's death, the surrender came. Then the war was over. There had been a lot of victories along the way, but the war wasn't over until the last stronghold surrendered.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

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I remember this one visit to Texas where they got me on a horse. Bet you wish you could have been there! They were there with a camera. See, I was with a group of teenagers doing a radio program, and we decided to do part of it with me on horseback. I'm not sure why, but that was what we did. I had asked for like a nice, gentle horse; a tired old horse. So as I started to mount the horse I said, "By the way, what's his name?" They said, "Tornado." I knew I was in big trouble! I said, "Do you have anything named Glue Factory?" They didn't.

Monday, February 18, 2013

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Some of my favorite moments in our kids growing up years have been story-telling time. Now, we did the obligatory Little Engine That Could and Winnie the Pooh, in which I used all of my weird voices. But my best memories are of the Bible stories. Evidently I don't always communicate all the information very clearly. I remember one time after we told the Bible story about the book of Genesis, I said to my daughter, "And Honey, do you remember who the first Mommy and Daddy were?" And she said, "Yep! Eve and Steve." Okay, good, so much for my Bible teaching. I said, "Do you remember who their boys were?" She said, "Yep! Cain and Mable." There we go again.

Friday, February 15, 2013

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There's something invigorating about being the first one out and around in the morning; you sort of feel like the conqueror of your environment. Like when you're the first one out exercising in those first hours of the new day. I had that feeling one morning as I went out for my fitness walk (That's fitness, not fatness).

Thursday, February 14, 2013

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Surprise! I used to be in a quartet. Oh I did! Listen, don't laugh out loud. Yes, when I was in college, for a little while I sang in a gospel quartet. I did not sing any solos. No, no solos for me. Now, musically, I'm okay in a group. Solo – not so much. You know, in a way, we're all like that.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

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Nantucket—a romantic island off the coast of Massachusetts. Waterbrook—a humble cabin in the woods in the mountains north of New York City. Long Beach Island—a little house by the Jersey shore. See, those are places where my wife has been her most beautiful. That’s not because she had new makeup on, or was all dressed up, or did her hair differently. Those are just some places where we’ve gone to be alone, and where I finally slowed down and noticed her again. She’s beautiful all the time, but I don’t notice it all the time, because I see her best when we’re alone. If you’re in a lonely time right now, let’s talk.

Monday, February 11, 2013

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It's amazing what a difference two words can make. For example if you're a teenager, your life can change dramatically when you hear just two words, "You're grounded!" Or if you're working, "You're fired." Or those two words that changed my life forever. You know what those two words were? "I do." It's amazing what two words can do.

Friday, February 8, 2013

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The story goes that some years ago a cartoonist named Walt Disney-maybe you've heard of him-well he went with his children to an amusement park, and he was disgusted! The park was covered with litter, bathrooms were filthy. And that day Walt Disney made up his mind that the park he wanted to build someday would always be clean. If you've ever been to Disneyland or to Disney World, you know Walt Disney got his way.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

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At first, Rob's friends thought he was avoiding them. They'd ask him to go somewhere and he'd say, "Sorry, I can't." Eventually he told them why he couldn't go. He had something much more important to do. He would just say, "I've got to go to my meeting." Not too many teenagers would choose going to a meeting over going with their friends, but Rob made a good choice. See, Rob is a teenage drug addict, and he's being rehabilitated through a 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. One important key to fighting his problem is attending that support group meeting several times a week.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

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The last place I wanted to be was New Zealand, but I was stuck there. Now, I have nothing against New Zealand. In fact, it's one of the most beautiful countries I've ever seen. But I had spent two weeks there in ministry and it was time to be home. I wanted to see my family and I had a lot of important appointments at home.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

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One of the temporary after-effects of my wife's bout with hepatitis years ago was some memory loss. Now, I forget a lot of things and I don't have an excuse. Well, for a while, my wife had a great excuse for forgetting some things, because that memory loss had some real effects. Like the day she left the pot of water on the stove to boil. She promptly moved away from the kitchen and forgot all about it. She told me she even forgot about it after she smelled something burning. So, she went all through the house; checked the dryer, checked the furnace. "What in the world is that burning smell?" Well, when she finally decided to check the kitchen, you can probably guess what the scene was. Oh yeah, there was no more water left in that pot; it had boiled dry. The burner was red hot; the pan had become part of the burner. It was bonded to the burner. It literally had to be broken off. Yeah, she needed some heat to do her job, but not that much heat!

Monday, January 28, 2013

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My wife, my son and I were walking across a parking lot talking. All of a sudden the people who were walking in front of us whirled around and the lady said, "I know that voice!" Well, I'm always afraid when somebody says that to me; I wonder if it's like somebody I like, you know, I owe money to. But this does happen every once in a while, and sometimes it's someone I do owe money to, but more often than not it's someone who somehow has come into contact with this particular voice over the radio, and usually on a lot of occasions.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

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I guess it's possible to get lost in a computer. I'm lost as soon as I turn on a computer, but that's not what I mean. What I'm describing happens to people who really understand computers. There was a Newsweek article a while ago that talked about how some business leaders were complaining about this emerging problem with some of their computer people. They were talking about computer technicians who just kept going deeper and deeper into programs, and spending lots of time on sophisticated functions that didn't really have anything to do with getting their job done. One of them had an interesting name for it - "the rapture of the deep" they called it; lost somewhere in that computer; making the computer an end in itself rather than what it's supposed to be, which I think is a means of getting a job done. You know, some people get lost in the Bible too.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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I got to thinking the other day about some of the close calls in my life; those moments that could have been my last, but obviously they weren't. There was the night that a drunk driver totaled our car with all of our family in it, but thank God it didn't total us. I was driving. We could have died; we didn't.

Monday, January 21, 2013

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Oh, every child loves a circus. And I think there's a child inside of all of us that never grows up. I still love the circus, don't you? I've always been personally fascinated by those death-defying artists from the high trapeze. Hey, wait a minute, I feel like a ring master. I'm trying to get the job, anyway, today. They leap, perfect poise, grace, one trapeze to another, until they end up safe on that platform all the way across the arena from where they started. And I guess you could eventually get used to hanging onto a trapeze, and you'd feel comparatively secure as soon as you reached the next one. My problem would be the time between trapezes. Yeah, that would bother me. Actually, it bothers all of us.

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