Personal Growth

The damage you suffered may have been done in one terrible moment or over time. But the healing and the restoration will unfold at your pace, at a human pace. It unfolds as part of your story, and it unfolds over time. As a vulnerable child, instead of...

Do you own your smartphone, or does it own you? How quickly do you pick it up in the morning? Do you check it multiple times an hour to make sure you know what's going on in the world? Do you find yourself turning to it first when you're sad, angry, or...

Past broken relationships, concerns about compatibility, and finances are just some of the reasons for the growing trend of couples living together without getting married. But marriage is not just a cultural institution by which people merge lives,...

Everyone is afraid of something. Fear is part of the human experience of living in a broken, fallen world. We try to manage our fears, but our coping mechanisms impact our faith. We hoard resources and stop praying for provision. We stockpile...

What if your human parents were violent, deceptive, cold, or even just occasionally disappointing? Can their failures keep you from understanding God's love and having a growing relationship with your heavenly Father? Some say that you can't know God's...

Nothing in life is turning out the way you expected. You pray and ask for relief, help, and changed circumstances. But what are you to think when it seems like life is going from bad to worse? You wonder if God is even listening. Does he hear your cries...

Prickly, defensive, nasty, volatile, withdrawn, miserable...aren't there days when you feel surrounded by difficult people? How do you cope? You can try avoiding them, gossiping about them, or giving them a piece of your mind. But wait! Don't your...

You spend your days (and maybe nights) helping someone else. If you are a caregiver for someone who is chronically ill, you have already discovered there is a need to be more compassionate, thoughtful, and sacrificial than you ever anticipated. But, to...

Arguments. Betrayal. Inattention. Some of the reasons that relationships shatter. Anger. Confusion. Hurt. Frustration. Some of what we feel when a relationship falls apart. We all have experienced how hard relationships can be in this broken world...

Someone you know and love has died. You feel the emptiness and sorrow of loss. That alone is extremely hard. But suicide adds many other painful reactions to the heartache that death brings. Common reactions are feelings of anger, guilt, betrayal, and...

No matter what the circumstances, death shakes us to the core. It seems so wrong, and it is! We long for comfort, but we don't know where to look. Can God really help when we are overwhelmed with grief? With compassion and biblical wisdom, Paul David...

Everyone experiences hurt in relationships, but most of the time we are able to forgive and forget. But sometimes we experience a major hurt that lingers in our minds and leads to bitterness. We feel trapped by the resulting hostility, ongoing broken...

Are you living under a cloud of guilt that you can't seem to shake no matter what you do? Do you feel guilty about everything, all the time? We all have different ways of dealing with our guilty feelings, but none of them work for very long. Timothy S...

Forgiving someone who has hurt you is one of the most difficult tasks anyone ever faces. In fact, it is so hard that most people avoid it at all costs. But when we don't forgive, we pay the price of bitterness that affects all of our relationships. Is...

Disability has a way of trying even the best of marriages. The cumulative effects of daily routines that never vary, social isolation, financial pressures, unmet expectations, and a life that is vastly different from most couples can wear on the spirits...

Right now you are probably feeling guilty about one thing or another–what you said to your spouse last night, those unrelenting thoughts, something you did years ago and regret, actual lying and cheating, the places where you are struggling right...

Do you dread family get-togethers and try to avoid your extended family whenever you can? When you see your family, do you sometimes regret the way you talk and act? Why is it so hard to get along with the people we grew up with? Childhood hurts,...

You made a commitment to Jesus (or maybe you didn't), but now you are questioning everything. Is there a God? Are you really forgiven and accepted for Jesus's sake? It sounds too good to be true. And if the Bible really is true and Jesus really did rise...

Is a life-threatening illness, a major life change, or just plain old age forcing you to face your own mortality? Probably, like most of us, you'd rather not think or talk about your own death. But ignoring your death won't stop it from...

You feel betrayed. Someone close to you has hurt you deeply. You want to move past the pain and your obsession with what happened, but how? The usual strategies—trying to get even, trying to forget—just aren't working for you. Perhaps it's...