Category: Rambling
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Foreplay is always “in play”: 6 Ways to Rethink Everyday Encounters with Your Spouse
Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. Hebrews 13:4 (MSG) From the get-go of this blog, please note: The goal isn’t to get more sex into your marriage (though I’m not against that whatsoever). The goal is to develop intimacy. Sex doesn’t necessarily lead to intimacy. Intimacy doesn’t always…
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Silence is NOT Golden: 5 Helps When Silence Hits Your Marriage
The question driving today blog: Is your heart for your marriage stronger than your silence? Isaiah 62:1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet, Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, And her salvation like a torch that is burning. Silence can be good. Small increments…
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Pastor Burnout Prevention: 6 Ideas to help you find rest.
(Please note: What you are about to read is more than a pastoral issue. It plagues far too many homes so please read in the context of your vocation.) Something has been burning in my heart a lot lately. Between conversations with pastors and parishioners, and speaking on this subject yesterday at Northpoint Bible College, I felt…
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Assaulted with Assumption: 5 Marital Assumptions to Deal With
It only took me 5 or so years, but I discovered that Anne wasn’t the biggest fan of flowers. It’s not that she doesn’t like them (she confirmed she did), but they didn’t speak to her ANYTHING close to what I thought they were communicating. Through dating and into marriage, I had been buying them…
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Happy wife… Miserable husband: 6 Reasons Why Appeasement Doesn’t Work
You’ve said it, I’ve said it: Happy wife…happy life. Call it nice. Call it sweet. I call it appeasement. It’s a conflict avoidance style that sacrifices your feelings, beliefs, or ideas in order to pacify or please the other person. To some, this seems like a noble identity to assume. After all, keeping peace and harmony in the…
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Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad: 42 lessons they taught me about parenting.
I often get asked about when my passion for marriage began. It began with my parents, Hal and Linda Barringer. Watching their marriage not only made me want what they had, but shaped the marriage I have. Don’t get me wrong, as they’ll tell you, they are by no means the model of perfection (ever seen…
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Say No to Venting: 6 Ways to Appropriately Deal with Marital Frustrations.
I’m a pro social media guy. If you follow me, you know I post just about everything. I try to keep most of my tweets/posts about things that are edifying or of comedic value. But as you well know, social media is a breeding ground for venting. One my personal pet peeves on social media is…
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How to pray for your pastor: 5 lessons my intercessor team taught me
One of the greatest decisions I ever made as a new Lead Pastor was for an intercessory team. I saw it as a priority my mentor (props to Joel Stocker) and it was one of the first things Anne said we needed to establish when we got to Kalamazoo. Very early in our tenor here, I…
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Slave to the Scale: 6 Thoughts to Help You Be Healthy Without Destroying Yourself
[My disclaimer to this blog: This article has high capacity to offend on deep levels if you lose the heart behind it. My heart is to tell MY story and not someone else’s. I’m not trying to point fingers but open you up to the struggle and temptation that I deal with that lies in…
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Social-Media Church: 8 Reasons why you should encourage your congregation to post while you preach.
I’m a proponent of social-media. Like it or not, it’s here and we have an opportunity to utilize it as an amazing tool for our preaching. The words “Hear, O Israel” in Deuteronomy 6:4 tells us that God wanted his instructions to have the maximum reach. He didn’t want anyone to miss out on what he…
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