I think the quickest way to ruin Valentine's Day is with strife.

"Strife" means "vigorous or bitter conflict, discord and antagonism; to quarrel, struggle or clash; competition; rivalry."

James 3:14-16 tells us clearly, "If ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work" (KJV).

Strife is devilish. It opens the door for the enemy to bring confusion and evil into our lives. Love, on the other hand, is the source of power for any successful relationship. Galatians 5:6 even tells us that our faith works through love.

Satan is continuously sending situations our way to tempt us to yield to the opposite of love, which is selfishness.

During this season of love we can study God's Word and learn what authentic love is and what it is not. First Corinthians 13 reveals its attributes: "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails" (vv. 4-8, NKJV).

So make a decision to keep strife out of every relationship and keep love in. At home, work, school and church, commit to walk in love. If at any moment you slip up and get into strife, simply make it right.

Say to the other person: "Please forgive me. I love you. I don't want to be in strife with you."

Then say to the Lord: "Father, I repent of that attitude. I refuse to yield to strife or to any enemy of love. I choose to walk in love."

Keep acting on what you know about love from God's Word. Walk in love. When you do, you will keep your faith strong and the blessings of God will be continually evident to everyone ... for love never fails! Don't let strife ruin your Valentine's Day.

Gloria Copeland is co-founder and vice president of Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas.

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About a year after our father died, my sister Kathy became suicidal and was admitted into the psychiatric ward of the hospital. She had attempted suicide in the past. Now her despair was an unprotested submission to defeat. Five years of counseling and prayer seemed to have changed little.

“I’m so tired of trying,” she told me one day. “I don’t feel close to God. I don’t care about living. If it weren’t for my kids, I’d just give up.” read more

There's a right way and a wrong way to spill your guts. Here are some guidelines about biblical confession.

In a rush to unburden his heart, John released a torrent of painful information to his wife. JoAnn, deeply wounded and betrayed, exploded and ran from the room sobbing, "I never want to see you again!"

Confessing sins, especially when they involve broken covenant or violated trust, can be very devastating to the person hearing the information for the first time. There is no clear scriptural procedure to lead us through this dangerous minefield. But there are some principles that will help in the process.

Be honest with yourself. Have you yourself acknowledged your sin? Pastoral counselor David Seamands says you cannot confess to God what you will not first admit to yourself.

Scrutinize your motives. Ensure that by the grace of God you are sincerely humbling yourself. Make sure you are not engaging in a blame game, shifting responsibility for your behavior to someone else's failure. ("I'm sorry I did this, but you never ... .")

Ask God for wisdom. He stands ready to give it. We have His promise in James 1:5: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him" (NIV).

Consider the "load." Bible teacher Jack Frost says you should never drive a 10-ton truck over a 5-ton bridge. Is the person you're confessing to strong enough to bear the weight of what you are about to disclose?

Seek godly counsel. If you think you need this, get it first. A trusted pastor or experienced counselor can be enlisted to hear your confession and advise you how to approach the one you have wronged.

An excellent secular book that deals with this subject is Disclosing Secrets: When, to Whom, and How Much to Reveal (Gentle Path Press). The authors, Deborah Corley and Jennifer Schneider, have researched the effects of disclosure on relationships.

They write: "Despite the sense of pain and loss, enough good had come out of the process that the majority said they would recommend disclosure to other couples."

Harvey Brown Jr. is president of Impact Ministries in Wilmore, Kentucky. He is featured on a new DVD, Living in the Freedom Christ Gives: Finding Healing and Wholeness in a Sexually Broken World. It is available at www.impactministries.org. read more

Offense is one of the most binding traps into which a believer can fall; here's why it is imperative you avoid it.

Years ago, people built traps in order to catch birds. They would balance a box on a stick tied to a rope and birdseed or other food would be placed under the box. When a bird came to eat the seed, the stick would trip, and the box would fall on the unsuspecting bird.

In Greek, that stick is called the skandalizo, translated “to offend.” When skandalizo becomes your portion—and it will—and you find yourself in a spiritually or emotionally dark box, it is often difficult to recover because you can feel like you’re fighting a tar baby. Every move is the wrong one. Every prayer sounds like a poorly verbalized whimper. All counsel seems petty or counterproductive.

Being scandalized or offended is one of the most binding traps into which a believer can fall. In many ways, it goes far beyond simply being hurt, deceived or ensnared by carnal sin; it has the capacity to totally undermine and destroy our walk with the Lord. When we have been scandalized, we really do not care what anyone thinks. We feel the early signs of deep-seated anger, and if we are not careful we can rapidly be sucked into the vacuum of rage and depression.

Jesus warned us about not being offended. We must allow God to do things that we would never expect. Maturity involves guarding against stumbling, falling into sin, or giving up our faith because our expectations were unmet.

Bob Mumford is a veteran charismatic Bible teacher and founder of Lifechangers ministry. read more

To my surprise, I've remained single far longer than I ever expected or wanted to. As the years have progressed, I have found myself increasingly challenged by the need for answers to the tough things I was facing. Unfortunately, resources to help me and those like me have been few.

It is good for us to want others in our lives whom we love and who love us. But I have found it difficult, as a single, to sustain the level of relationship with other people I believe God wants me to have.

Various barriers inhibit this, and He wants to remove them. He wants to open the floodgates to abundantly meet the relational needs of singles today.

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Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. —Matthew 10:37

All relationships must ever be subservient to God's greater glory. No matter how close people get to each other, they must be closer to God. The irony is, the closer people are to God, the more they will love each other. The more they put the voice of God prior to their commitment to each other, the more they really respect each other. read more 11:00PM EST 2/21/2010