• orphan
    Featured,  Orphan Heart

    How to Heal Your Orphan Heart

    Most definitions of orphan begin and end with the idea of having no parents.  But one can have two parents and still bear deep orphan wounds.  Emotional abandonment in the form of critical parents, neglectful parents, or just very immature ones can leave a child scrambling to supply his or her own needs. Life in an orphanage is one of deprivation and competition, but sometimes life in a family can echo the same familiar themes. So many Christians today live in a state of insecurity, fighting for what is theirs, and working hard to earn approval from God and from others. As most adoptive parents can tell you, just because…

  • marriage
    Featured

    How to Build a Marriage: His Needs, Her Needs

    Sometimes the over-consumption of books can lead one to mistake knowledge for wisdom. This was surely the case for me when we decided to attend a home group on the topic of marriage at our church, Harvest Cathedral, in Macon, Georgia.  We attended the group on the strength of our fondness for our pastors, Steve and Debbie Sawyer, though without any high expectations. I remember asking a fellow professor once how his marriage was. It was an appropriate question in the context of our conversation. His response was disarmingly honest. He called it, “functional”. I was still in the throes of our honeymoon at the time so I remember feeling…