Jeanne felt privileged when she received an invitation to a banquet where international peace would be discussed. As a strong Christian, she longed for world peace and viewed the banquet as an opportunity to learn how to help bring it about.

When Jeanne took her place at the long table, she picked up a small object in front of her plate. It was a stick about six inches tall and pointed at the top. Each side of the stick carried an inscription. Jeanne could only read the side that was in English. It was a wish for world peace.

The speaker said that in some countries the custom is to have peace poles. Unlike totem poles that tell a story through carved images, peace poles merely speak of peace.

God has called us to peace, to active peacemaking, to spread His peace to our world even when we cannot go to the whole world. We probably don’t have peace poles sitting in our yards but maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea! We need to claim God’s peace and pass it on.

A highly functioning and healthy society is made up of marriages that, first and foremost, have a loving relationship with God.   Read the full story

I re-read I Corinthians 13 “If I can speak many languages or if I can see the future, understand great mysteries and have a ton of knowledge, if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, if I give everything I own to the poor, if I give my body to be burned as a sacrifice, but if I have all of the things the world considers great, but don’t have God’s love within me, I am nothing!

Therefore, I consider myself as nothing so that I can have His love.  Matthew. 5:3.  Then, others can see when I have his love because I have patience, kindness, willingness to lose what I have for others, humility, manners for the sake of others, more concerned about the welfare of others than my own, and the other characteristics of this chapter.

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails.

God’s Love is…

• Patient,
• Kindly,
• Joyful,
• Peaceful
• Full of Goodness,
• Full of Faithfulness,
• Showing Gentleness,
• Reflecting Self-control
• Reflecting Humility
• Honors and Worships God as the one and only God
• Mannerly
• More concerned about the interest of others than self
• Compassionate
• Does not want what belongs to others (Ten Commandments),
• Does not brag, (But is humble),
• Not proud,
• Not rude,
• Does not look out for its own interests, (Compassionate),
• Does not easily become angry (Gentle), (Meek) (Grateful in all trials), (Self-control),
• Does not keep track of other people’s wrongs (Merciful),
• Is not happy with evil,
• Is joyful when the truth is spoken (Pure in heart),
• Always protects,
• Always trusts,
• Always hopes,
• Never gives up
• And it never fails (Peace maker)

Galatians 5:22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love =, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law”.  Beatitudes….beggar, compassionate, meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, Merciful, pure in heart, peace maker, grateful in all trials.

May I be patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on my own way, not ever irritable or resentful.  May I rejoice always in what is right, never in anything that is wrong.  Help me to bear all things and endure whatever I must, to trust in all.

I woke up this morning with a dread feeling for a few minutes. Reality sunk in. I realized again that a person can have giant dreams, but not giant expectations along with those dreams. Two years ago, I met with a leading Christian organization who seemed to be promising me a “BIG” opportunity for ministry. Maybe if I made six new DVDs with my new messages that really do help couples survive major difficulties, they could take these DVDs around the world to help “millions” of couples in churches every where. Great dream, but both the ministry and my new publisher melted down just before my new book and DVDs where released. I was saddened and stressed because of the age old problem of what stress is.

It is the “gap” between what you expect and what you actually “get” in life. The GIANT dreams are OK, but not the giant expectations. I have a problem of believing the promises of others when it comes to the publishing world. But this morning, I realized afresh that I can still have BIG dreams but not big expectations because the expectations are what raise my blood pressure. I know in my heart that ALL things are possible through Christ.

But that doesn’t mean that He will always do for me what I expect. My renewed prayer is “God, you have given me this new giant dream of helping Your Church around the world to start hiding Your Words within their hearts, but you unfold this dream as big as you want. I’ll keep dreaming big and going deeper in You, but you take my dream (faith) as far out as you will. Thanks for the “rest” this morning in my heart.”

I’ll do my best with this new book and let God take it as far as He desires. I’ll even plan how it can be successful, but still leave the final results to Him. But now I can’t wait to see how far He’ll take this new message He has given me.

This morning while stretching after being on the treadmill for 66 minutes, I started running through some of the biggest trials I’ve had over the past 50 years. I love remembering trials because I know now that God has used each one in molding me into more of His character of love.

I asked the question of myself, “Is there any patterns that could have contributed to these terrible trials?” I saw one almost immediately. I made decisions without enough counsel from the right people. For example, I audited my favorite people and company in the world, people who helped me become extremely successful financially. In essence, I tried to squeeze more money from them.

I allowed someone to convince me that they had “cheated” me out of a lot of money and I thought, wow, I should find out if that’s true. Big mistake because it was like taking my own family to court. It was like I died inside and I finally quit the whole thing because my relationships with the key people there were dying.

And relationships are more important to me than money. But there are several of those kinds of experiences that I could have avoided if I had just waited and received more counsel and thought through as many implications as possible. And I did some of these big mistakes against the counsel of my wife. Oh, the pain I’ve added to her life because of rushing into big decisions without enough counsel from the right people.

But today, I’m adding to my counsel team for different decisions in different areas: money, life dreams, ministry opportunities and others.