The Apostle Paul worked with the giants of the faith – men like Peter, Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy. And then there was another fellow, a young man who checked out when trouble checked in. John Mark abandoned Paul early in his first missionary journey. Fast forward several years. Paul is now an aging missionary, and…
It brought Abraham Lincoln through the Civil War. It carried Winston Churchill through the darkest days of WWII. It energized Steve Jobs, inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., and drove Muhammad Ali. Passion. G.W.F. Hegel said, “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” But this isn’t a column on charging the next hill,…
On this date in 1975, Barry Manilow reached #1 on the Billboard adult contemporary charts with his greatest hit ever, I Write the Songs. There was just one problem. Manilow didn’t write the song. The 32-year-old singer-songwriter was proud of his songwriting skills, but he had not written anything that was really that successful. Producer…
Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz made history when his team performed the first heart transplant in America, at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, on December 6, 1967. Neary 41 years later, on November 14, 2008, Dr. Kantrowitz died – of heart failure. Putting the irony of his cause of death aside, Dr. Kantrowitz taught us an important…
There is a famous line from the movie Network. “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Let’s talk about that – anger. The Bible warns us, “Let not the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). There are actually two distinct kinds of anger identified in the Greek New…
The most successful musician in American history said, “I don’t know anything about music, In my line, you don’t have to.” Elvis had a good point. It is not knowledge that matters as much as what we do with that knowledge. My favorite author said is like this: “We don’t fall because we don’t know…
Augustine said, “Thou has created us for thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.” That quote should be taped onto the bathroom mirror of every person in recovery. When we remember that we were not only created by God, but for God, we get an idea of how special we…
“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. Tis grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.” Those immortal words by John Newton have brought comfort to millions, if not billions of saints for the last 250 years. And we need those words – to read, quote, and…
“Give careful thought to your ways. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill” (Haggai 1:5-6). Addiction seeks the next thrill, the next hit, the next high. But it is never enough. To that way of thinking, George Orwell said, “Men can only be happy when they do…
It was one of the most significant events in sports history. The date was March 31, 1985. In Wrestlemania I, The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff defeated Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo for the WWE World Tag Team Championship. A lot of us treat the Christian life as a tag team event. When we get…