Have you ever been treated unethically in a business transaction? Have you ever been grieved by the lack of integrity in a pastor, evangelist or other minister? Sadly, we live in an age in which leaders in both the secular and the spiritual arenas seem to be making up their own sets of rules about how to conduct their businesses, their ministries and their lives.

We may not be able to do much about the current leadership in these arenas other than pray. But if you’re a parent, you can have a positive impact on the next generation. How? By instituting ethics training in your home. This is where it begins. Parents have the God-given responsibility to guide and instruct their children – the future business and spiritual leaders of our nation.

Where do we go to find appropriate foundational truths that lay the groundwork for ethics and morals? How can we purposefully and systematically train our children and ourselves to do the right thing, even when it hurts? Joyce Meyer, Christian speaker and author, states in one of her teachings on integrity, “True integrity is doing the right thing even when no one else is looking.” Isn’t that what we want in our children and ourselves? read more

1:00AM EDT 5/7/2012

“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not lose heart” (Gal. 6:9).

This is not about tired; it is about weary. Weary is spiritual. Although tired and weary may at times feel closely related, they are worlds apart. Tired is physical; weary is spiritual.

When you are tired you are dealing with the physical realm. Being tired means you need physical rest or a break, some sleep and quite possibly a vacation. Weary does not respond to the same treatment as tired. You can go away for a month to rest and relax but you may still be weary.

If you are tired you may need to change some life habits. You may need to begin to exercise or exercise differently. Perhaps you have a physical problem that needs medical attention. The point is, tired is physical. You cannot pray tired away. You do not rebuke tired. You cannot lay hands on someone and cast out tired. read more

1:00AM EDT 4/30/2012

One of the greatest sins in the church is not necessarily gossip, strife, addictions, adultery or fornication—even though all these things are sin. What I believe is the greatest sin today, especially in America, is the sin of prayerlessness or leaving God alone. 

We can easily become caught in the trap where our only consistent time of prayer is offered before each meal and that’s about it. You know what I mean by the meal prayers, don’t you? “God is good; God is great. I’m so hungry I could eat this plate.” I’ve been so hungry before that sometimes I have felt like eating the plate.

One time when I prayed a quick prayer over my meal, I felt the Lord say, “Now, Hank, did you mean that from your heart?” Like most of us, I didn’t mean or even hear what I had prayed. Since then, I always feel convicted when I pray insincere prayers, even if the food is making my mouth water. read more

1:00AM EDT 4/23/2012

Once as I sat on a 737 getting ready to leave the gate at the airport, my window seat looked directly down at the luggage loading area. A large tractor had pulled the string of carts up to a long conveyor belt that ran into the belly of the plane. A worker (I will call him “Larry the luggage guy”) stood with a scanner in his hand. As his “helper luggage guy” placed each piece of luggage on the belt that was slowly moving into the plane, “Larry” electronically scanned the tag that had been placed on the suitcase at check-in.

Wow, I thought. What a great way to keep track of our bags. A bag is placed on the belt, scanned and moves up the conveyor. Next bag … scanned … up the conveyor. Bag after bag. Someone had actually created a marvelous system to prevent “lost” luggage (the airlines will always tell you it is not lost; they just do not know exactly where it is).

Suddenly, someone else standing at another vehicle hollered for “Larry.” He was laughing about something. Larry laid his scanner down and walked over to Mr. Comedian. “Helper” guy seemed to not even notice. He just continued to dutifully place the bags on the belt that was still moving into the plane. Bag after bag was moving up the conveyer belt, but NOT being scanned. read more

1:00AM EDT 4/16/2012

Some years ago I was counseling a teenager who had been raised from infancy by his grandparents. The boy’s father had been killed in an automobile accident, and subsequently his mother disappeared. The grandparents had been doing all they could for him at great expense to themselves. It is difficult for anyone to raise a teenager, and people in their 60s and 70s ought not to have to go through it a second time around.

For several years he rewarded them with unfathomable rebellion, anger and sin until he made his grandparents miserable. I told him, “They did not have to take you in. You could have gone to an orphanage. You could have been a ward of the court. They got up with you in the middle of the night. They changed your diapers and fed you and clothed you. They raised you at great sacrifice to themselves. Nobody would have blamed them if they had said, “We just can’t handle it at our age.”

He replied bitterly, “Do you think this is the first time I’ve ever thought of all that? I know what they’ve done. What am I supposed to do, spend the rest of my life saying ‘thank you’?” read more

1:00AM EDT 4/9/2012