The English historian Lord Acton once said, “Mastery is acquired by resolved limitation.” It is the man who, like the Apostle Paul says, “This one thing I do” who succeeds.
This is the key to success in sports. Ben Hogan was one of golf’s immortals, but he did not become great by accident. He did it by resolved limitation. Jimmy Demaret told of the time many years ago w...
Self-control is a sure mark of a strong character, while a lack of self-control is evidence of weakness. The Bible expresses this truth vividly when it says, “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls” (Proverbs 25:28).
In the days before gunpowder and airplanes the chief strength and defense of a city was its walls. If its walls wer...
When Alexander the Great crossed into Asia he gave away almost all of his belongings to his friends. One of his captains asked him, “Sir, what do you keep for yourself?” The answer of the king was, “I keep hope.”
Whatever else you lose or give away, so long as you keep hope you are keeping life’s most valuable asset. Hope is to man what oxygen is to the lungs, what water is to a fish, a...
The song "God Bless America" is also a prayer that God will bless us again. For in spite of all our blessings we still have great needs. I think what Charles Dickens said concerning the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities could well be applied to our day. He said, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”
Today is a time of division. There is a deep cleavage...
At the turn of the 19th century, when the forces of lawlessness were let loose in England, William Wordsworth paid tribute to John Milton by writing, “Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: England, hath need of thee… Oh! raise us up, return to us again; and give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.”
Today this same call could well be sent to every citizen. “America hath need of t...
In this season of Thanksgiving, it's good to remember that the greatest American ideas are rooted in a Bible heritage and faith in God. I mean ideas like the dignity of people and equality before the law. I know that our forefathers were not saints. I know that many were not even Christians. However, they were greatly influenced by biblical faith. The repeated mention of God in our documents, o...
One of the great problems of society is the problem of human suffering. In the face of it many have concluded that there is no God. They reason this way: “If God is both good and all-powerful why does he allow things like cancer, earthquakes, and heart attacks to happen? If he is good he surely doesn’t want them to happen, and if he is all-powerful he could prevent them from happening. Since t...
A man once asked a lady, “How old are you?”
She retorted, “My age is my business. Why do you ask?”
He replied, “You look like you’ve been in business a long time.”
Truth be told, a lot of us have been in business a long time. According to the World Health Organization, by 2050 the world's population aged 60 and over is expected to total 2 billion! Nearly 125 million pe...
The Christian faith is given to us in the Bible full and final, complete and unchanging. Nothing to be added to it or subtracted from it. You may ask, “Am I to believe the same thing my grandfather believed?” Oh yes! Your grandfather may not have known a computer chip from a potato chip, but if he understood the Bible correctly you can believe the same thing he believed.
Just because a...