During this holiday season, I like to spend time with the “5 F’s”:  “friends, family, food, fishing, and football!”

 I also like to take time to give thanks to God for one other “F”:  Fellowship.

This Christmas week, I listed a few things I would like to say to Him:

I’ve pastored long enough to know the mood swings of the holidays:  cheer, euphoria, laughter and loneliness, regret, and depression.

How can you prepare for the “swings of the season?”  Try these six remedies: 

Intentionality is so critical.  Reactionary life never goes anywhere.

Why not be intentional about your plan for next year?  I like to put a plan in place to have the best year ever.

Here are my top four areas:

How’s it going in your marriage?  Are you drifting?  Losing ground?  Fearful of your future together? 

We all love to evaluate. 

Here are seven questions that have really helped me with my marriage:

People broke through doors, overturned displays, ran through aisles and pulled down televisions on to people’s heads and into a heap on the floor.

Black Friday.  How did we go from “Seasons Greetings” to “Seasons Beatings?” 

Here are some good perspectives to keep during this most blessed season: 

TRUST is affecting everything in your life:  your leadership, marriage, business, parenting, and legacy.

What are the main areas that make people trust you?

Relationships get shallow and boring.  We may live together but drift apart.  We lose the excitement and energy we once had.

You can ENERGIZE every relationship with three simple principles:

Everybody leads something:  their family, their children, their business, their community their church…or themselves.

Paul spoke about “faithful leaders.”  He listed their 5 greatest qualities to his spiritual son, Timothy (2 Tim. 2). 

Check out how you measure up: 

America has gone out of control.

Civility, respect, and honor are disappearing.  Anger, vitriol, and assault have become the norm. 

Here are my 7 rules on how to have a good disagreement:

As I talk to men around the country, most of their marriage issues center around one word:  “respect.”  They perceive that their wife’s words are demeaning and they go into shutdown mode.

As a husband of 42 years, let me give you my thoughts on why this is and how to repair that tension!

I have often wondered, “What does a wife really need in a husband?”

She may have money, children, clothes, and a home…and yet still feel a deep need.

Husbands, I think I can help you with one word:  “strength.”

Some see grace as your constant “get out of jail free” pass.  We all do, of course, need grace day-by-day for all our failures and shortcomings.

We all need to make changes.  Often, we can’t even see what needs to be changed about ourselves.  That’s where marriage comes in.

“If I will let Him, God will work through my spouse to change me into a far better person.”

Staying together in marriage is not easy. It requires extreme patience, empathy, and understanding.  

I have found the #1 rule for long-term marriage:  “Never doubt God’s wisdom in putting you together.”

Here is how that plays out in real life:

People are quitting too easily.  They quit a difficult  marriage.  They quit a job.  They quit a hard task.  Anyone can start and have a “honeymoon” but it takes a certain mentality to stay and finish the job.

I love the Message translation of 2 Cor. 4:1—“…don’t throw up your hands and walk off the job because you run into occasional hard times.”

Here are my 6 secrets to “hanging in there…”:

I was always puzzled to read in the Book of Revelation about the “seven lamps of the Spirit” before the throne. 

I finally figured out what they are:  aspects of the Spirit’s work in your life. 

Here they are and what they practically can do in your life:

The suicide of an apparently successful, talented, and influential 30-year-old pastor near Los Angeles this week has stunned American Christian leadership.

David faced unthinkable pressure. He wrote his deepest psalms while living under intense pressure and anxiety.

Here are a few important thoughts to remember about anxiety and pressure:

Grief and regret are the twin prongs of paralysis.  If you can change it, change it.  If you can’t change it, move past it.

How do you defeat the challenge of grief and regret?

This week a bridge suddenly collapsed in Genoa, Italy. That’s not supposed to happen.  Bridges don’t collapse. 

Leaders are not supposed to collapse, either. 

Here is how I look at life's “bridges” that suddenly fall:

Pain is real.  Everyone feels it.

How can you turn your pain into purpose?