I remember my first confession. It was awkward going into the confessional, kneeling down and waiting. Then there was a sliding sound of a small wooden partition and the priest’s voice asking what I would like to confess. There was a screen over the small opening so I could not see the priest and I was hoping he couldn’t see me either. After all, I was an altar boy! I had come to confess stealing a candy bar. I had already gotten my whooping and apologized to the store owner but Ma said I needed to go to confession. She was right. It was an important step to truly come clean and experience forgiveness in a way I had not experienced it before.

In 1934, Dietrich Bonhoeffer confessed with a number of other pastors and priests that ...read on

“I am frugaler than you are!” He responded, “That’s not even a word. Besides, I am more frugal than you are.” Then she would say, “I am the frugalest!” He conceded. In fact it was because his wife was so frugal - she had not allowed their expenses to increase as income increased during his career in the corporate world, that they could initiate a move into ministry. The Lord honors the discipline of frugality with effective stewardship in life and ministry.

Frugality seems to be a lost discipline today with the estimated total indebtedness of U.S. households being ...read on

They were the last two in the office that evening. As Joe left, he said, “How are you doing Fred, see you in the morning.” Fred responded, “See ya.” Joe did not see Fred again because he committed suicide the next morning. Upon reflecting on that last “conversation” at Fred’s funeral, Joe shared a conviction to be more vulnerable, to mean it when you ask someone how they are doing and be willing to sit down and talk with them. He was not suggesting that he could have prevented the suicide by sitting down that evening, but ...read on

If you have seen the movie, Amazing Grace, you may know William Wilberforce as the man that abolished slave trade in Great Britain in 1807. In his book, “Seven Men and the Secret of their Greatness”, Eric Metaxas quotes Wilberforce writing that “God Almighty has set before me two Great Objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.” Metaxas goes on to write that the terrible evil of the slave trade was only one – albeit the worst – of the social evils running rampant at the time in England. “Reformation of Manners” had to do with the other social evils - Child labor was common with poor children as young as five and six working ten- or twelve-hour days; alcoholism was an epidemic of proportions hard to imagine today; and sexual trafficking of woman had fully 25 percent of all single women in London working as prostitutes at an average age of sixteen. Wilberforce knew these Objects were set before him by God and it would be God working through him and many others that would bring them to realization.

Today in America, social evils are alive and well ...read on