In my sermon of 12/20/2009, I related the contents of a discussion that I had with a female college student. During the discussion, I used the term “soul mate” a couple of times. The quote reads as follows: 

            “Well”, I inquired, “since you came to college to date [young men], do you have any idea as to how many young men you plan to date during your collegiate career?”

            “I’m dating him”, she responded, “and I don’t really plan to date anyone else right now.”

            I asked, “Does he feel the same way? Are you the only one that he plans to date?”

            “I hope so”, she said.

            “I hope so, too”, I responded, “but I’m not very confident of that. Few people that I know married the first person that they dated. To me, it doesn’t sound very likely that a person could find their soul mate in a random sample of people on their first try.…

            My wife Marie and I took up ballroom dancing in 2008. We’ve learned a few moves, and we go out to dance at the various clubs and dance venues in Lansing and the surrounding area. Often, in my sermons, I talk about the inequity between men and women at the dances. Since I only dance with my wife, she gets to dance on any song that she wishes. Many of the single ladies don’t get to dance very often, because they don’t have a partner. As a matter of fact, the reason that hustles are the most popular ballroom dances is that they give the ladies without a partner a chance to dance.

            I commented on this in my last sermon, and I received a question from someone that listened to my sermon on the Internet as to whether or not it was the ladies’ fault that they do not have partners. In my sermon, I said “God says that we ought not separate. However, the devil’s design for us is that we…

            I was sitting in the coffee shop today uploading sermons to the web, and a young man was sitting behind me talking to an older woman. When their discussion turned to Christianity, my ears perked up. The young man was of the opinion that there may be a god somewhere, but he was not too enchanted with the Church or any other form of organized religion. “After all”, he opined, “don’t all of the religions teach the same thing, just with different names? How can any of them say that they are right? Since they all claim to speak for God and they all have different points of view, I doubt if any of them actually know.” 

            The older lady responded, “Well, I grew up a Methodist, but we lived on a farm and we didn’t go to church very often. My Dad said that he talked with God while he was on his tractor, and Mom said that she talked with God when she worked in her garden. I think that your…

            In this generation, the foundation of marriage is the wedding. This is true because a wedding gives a woman the maximum chance to get the attention of her relatives and peers. She is the queen for the day, people buy her presents, people tell her how beautiful she is because she gets to wear the beautiful white dress while all of her friends have to wear the ugly bridesmaids’ dresses, and so on. It is a major faux pas to come to the wedding looking better than the bride, because the bride is the focal point of the wedding day.

            This fact tells us that women need attention. There is no question about it. I have watched a great deal of women’s television since my wife has been laid up, and I can tell you that if you could develop and market a product that could guarantee women that using your product would get them more attention, you would become rich beyond your wildest dreams. Women want to be noticed; they want to…

In a group counseling session, a woman spent a great deal of time beating herself up for getting pregnant outside of wedlock twice and putting the two children up for adoption. She knew that she did not have the ability to provide for the children that she brought into the world. She felt that she was a bad person for not actually raising her own children until she talked to a counselor that informed her that to put her children up for adoption was actually heroic. Rather than raising them in poverty without a nuclear family structure, she had given her children an intact, loving, two parent family, a mother and a father with the means and commitment to care for them emotionally as well as financially. Biology does not trump circumstances, and, without question, a child is better served by an intact two-parent family environment than by a single mother, biology notwithstanding.

A woman that had actually raised her child as single mother echoed the sentiments of the counselor in the meeting. She said,…

Matthew 28:18-20
18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

Acts 2:37-38
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”
38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

These two methods of baptism are given in the Bible. Baptist churches generally baptize using the formula given in Matthew…

There are two habits of speech that most spouses would like to see removed from their spouses’ manner of speaking.

1.  Criticism – Being someone’s spouse does not give a person the right to criticize, or to speak in a critical tone. A person should be as polite to their spouse as they are to anyone else with whom they come into contact. In fact, the amount of conversation that a person has to have with their spouse would logically dictate that they speak more politely to their spouse than anyone else. It is almost impossible to get a positive response from a person that you regularly criticize, even if that person is your spouses. Criticism includes cutting remarks or “jokes” about personal habits or deficiencies.

• a.  If there is an issue that you want to address with your spouse, you should do so in a matter of fact, objective, dispassionate manner, giving your spouse your position in a factual way, rather than an emotional one, focusing on the specific behavior that you would

…

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it.

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades, and they will give you as many chances as you want to get the right answer. In the real world you CAN fail, and for many things you only get one chance to get it right without incurring a penalty.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He will not care if you complain to your parents and friends about him, and he will not be interested in excuses to justify not doing your work or not following instructions. The first sign of human intelligence is the ability to follow simple instructions. Learn to act intelligently.

Rule 5: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off,…

Sexual ecstasy is the gift that you are going to give your husband as a wedding present. He is receiving the present of enjoying you sexually because he has decided to make a very special, lifelong legal commitment to take care of you. If you give him yourself sexually before he actually makes this very special commitment, you have nothing special to give him on his wedding day.

Men really do not care about the beautiful wedding ceremony. The ceremony is for you and your female relatives and friends. Your wedding celebrates the fact that he is promising you security for life. Since he is making the promise to take care of you from now on, his participation in the wedding ceremony is his gift to you, even though your parents may be paying for the ceremony. Your sexuality is your gift to him, and to do things in the proper order requires that he gives you his gift, his pledge of security, before you give him your gift, that is, your sexuality.

Doing things…

DR. DONALD BARNHOUSE shares this story about a man falling into the temptation of lust with his secretary.

One day I was visited by a young man in his thirties, who had a personal problem. He told his story something like this: “I work for such-and-such a company, and I have a private office. Several months ago my secretary was absent and I had to use another girl. One day she brought papers for my perusal; she got too close, and when she leaned over my desk, she let her hair trail across my face. I fought it down, but after all, I am a man, and toward the end of the day I put my hand on her and she came right back to be kissed. Even while kissing her, I was visualizing my two children running to meet me and my wife standing in the door. I hated what I was doing, but I kept on. I had the greatest desire to push her from me, but I kept pulling her to me;…