Have Patience
When I was a kid my mom taught us a song about a snail named Herbert who needed to learn to have patience. Being the awesome big sister that I was, I often sang it to my brother whenever he was getting impatient. Of course, this always helped... Read More
Make It Personal | Widen The Circle
Making Christmas Better
by Mike Jeffries I’m writing this post from the Latin American nation of Nicaragua where, over the past few days, we’ve had an interesting international experiment in global generosity from the perspective of five young children. Three families decided one of the best Christmas gifts would be to... Read More
The Lesson of the Ringing Bell
I’ll admit it. I battled a cynical attitude for the ringing bell. I would purposefully walk to a door on the far end of a store’s entrance just to avoid the clanking kettle and eager face petitioning my contribution. Internally, I wrestled both annoyance and guilt on seemingly... Read More
Imagine The End | Make It Personal
Humility Wins
Anyone who ever played for UCLA basketball coach Wooden knew he was more about building character than he was about winning basketball games, although he did both pretty well. His teams won ten championships during a 12-year period, the final one in his last year of coaching in... Read More
Fight For The Heart | Make It Personal
Protective Parents
Finding God in the successes of life . . . . . ..happens so rarely. I wish it did. We pray for success after all. Well, at least very few of us pray for failure. But if we were to be honest, we seek God more intensely in... Read More
Great Insecurities…Great Opportunities
When Reggie and I were finishing up our recent parenting book, I called him to tell I’d noticed something as I read the final manuscript. I realized that none of the personal stories we ended up using in tbe book painted either him or I in a favourable... Read More
Fight For The Heart | Imagine The End | Make It Personal
Earning Trust
Parents instinctively want to be able to trust their kids. But have you ever flipped the question. Are your kids able to trust you? I realize that probably sounds strange, but if you want to have influence and a great relationship with your children and teens, trust is... Read More
Create A Rhythm | Make It Personal
Bankrupt Parents
When our kids were younger, I was working long hours at the church I pastored. My wife was working part time. The kids were in swimming, music and seasonal sports. And to top it all off, one of them was experiencing night terrors. You know, the kind of... Read More
Character and Values | Make It Personal
Entitled Parents
It’s one thing to work on helping your kids fight an attitude of entitlement like we talked about in an earlier post, but let’s face it, to some extent, they learned the behavior from us. If that’s true, what can you do to fight entitlement in your own... Read More
5 Signs You Lack Integrity as a Parent
We all want to see our kids become the kind of people we imagine they can become. To some degree we want to see that in their careers, but at the most basic level we want to see that in their character and heart. How do you do... Read More