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Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Colossians 3:21 At the gym, with my buddies, we engage in a near-constant stream of mild-mannered insults towards each other in a continual effort to outdo each other in being funny. And we are funny, or at least we think we are. We’re adults –…
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Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Colossians 3:20 When I was probably six or seven years old, my dad asked if I wanted to go to the local high school football game with him one Friday night. I didn’t because a neighbor boy and I were playing. So, he went,…
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Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Colossians 3:19 In the entryway to our home, my wife has placed a little “Welcome to Our Home” sign. It’s right next to the key hooks and catchall tray, but for some reason, I frequently plop my keys and other stuff right down on…
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Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18 My wife and I have slightly different memories of an event that happened a few months before we were married. While engaged, we lived several hundred miles apart and back then, we still used snail mail. I read something by some Christian…
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And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17 I know from painful experience that a life of following me is miserable. I impulsively want that which tastes good, but which in the end is self-destructive. The…
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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom . . . Colossians 3:16 Once, I daily filled myself with drugs, which painfully and radically consumed my life. My pills turned me into a walking disaster, but they didn’t stop there. My addiction erupted out of my…
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And be thankful. Colossians 3:15 Every February, at the end of the month, I begin to hope that March means Spring. I know from living in Minnesota for 20 years that it’s not Spring yet, but still, I hope. So, the other day, at the end of March, I found myself bitter and angry about…
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And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. Colossians 3:15 Addiction medicine invariably involves a lot of mental health care, with anxiety perhaps being the number one complaint. In jail or treatment, my patient’s lives are often in chaos and, in their angst, they’re…
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And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Colossians 3:14 When my daughter was growing up, we had a once-a-week tradition of making special pancakes – a crepe-like, egg-based pancake. Home from college over Christmas, she asked me to make her special pancakes once again. Something went terribly wrong…
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Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Colossians 3:12-13 To recover from an addiction, we must do more than…
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