Successful Marriages Nobody is born a good husband or wife. It takes years of experience and dedication to learn to be one. However, there are several things that will help speed up the process. 1. Be a good listener and talker. We need to learn how to communicate adequately and lovingly. To be a good conversationalist is not easy. It is an acquired skill.2. Communicate with the heart. It is not enough to communicate with words and actions. Our hearts must throb of love. Genuine love, interest and concern must be manifested.3. Desire companionship. Show in every tangible way that your spouse’s companionship is desired. Find common enjoyments that you can experience together.4. Do not allow others to interfere. Never allow relatives or friends to come between you and your spouse. Genesis 2:24 says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."5. Be sympathetic toward each other. We need to try to understand the difficulties our partners face as they go about their daily activities. We need to cultivate our marital relationship so that it will have the most desired climate in which to grow.6. Finally, attend worship services together regularly. A study indicated that 97% of broken marriages involved one or both partners who did not attend services regularly. On the contrary, only one marriage in 57 of those who attended regularly broke up. Furthermore, only one in 500 marriages of people who were deeply committed to God, broke up in divorce. When we put God first in our marriages, we find love, happiness, and success.-- David Riggs What The Lottery Will Teach Our Children By Steve Klein According to the politicians, the proposed Alabama Lottery is for the educational benefit of our children. I submit that, if it passes, the Lottery will indeed help educate our children, but maybe not in the way we’re being led to believe. Here’s what our children will be taught if we pass the Lottery: 1. They will be taught that gambling is a better solution to a financial problem than work and sacrifice. The Bible teaches that financial problems can be overcome by the work and charity of individuals. The Christian is to "labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need."(Eph. 4:28) But the lottery will rearrange Ephesians 4:28 in the minds of children so that they think it says, "let him gamble, playing lotto with his hands, that the State may have something to give him who has need." The Bible teaches Christians to pay taxes to support the legitimate functions of government.(Rom. 13:6-7) Taxes represent a burden and a sacrifice to the citizens of any nation, but they are the proper way to fund the functions of government. The lottery tries to convey that such sacrifices are needless.2. They will be taught that the end justifies the means. There were those who slandered Paul by claiming that he said, "Let us do evil that good may come."(Rom. 3:8) Passing the lottery, ostensibly for the sake of education, will say exactly that to our children. It will say that if you are trying to accomplish something good, it doesn’t matter what evil you have to do in the process.3.They will be taught that a moral principle can always be sacrificed for a financial interest. I read once of a financial interest meeting a moral principle on a narrow bridge. Since they could not pass side by side the moral principle happily laid itself down and was immediately run over and squashed flat by the financial interest. The lottery will teach children that that is just the way it’s supposed to be. They need never let morality stand in the way of getting money.4.They will learn (again) that the older generation—their parents and those in charge of running the country—cannot be trusted to solve social problems, only to create them. It is a simple fact that lotteries create more social problems than they solve. According to a study by Maryland’s Attorney General, child abuse increases dramatically when gambling comes into an area. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has indicated that, when it comes to illegal activity among young people, gambling is second only to alcohol in prevalence; almost 70 percent of seventh graders have bought lottery tickets there according to the study. Many other similar statistics could be cited. The point is that if adults pass the lottery, they are once again betraying their children’s trust.If the lottery is passed, many chjildren will learn the lessons mentioned above, believing them to be the truth. Are these the lessons you want taught to your children? * * * * * * * * * * * Taking Out The Trash (II Chronicles 29) By Joel Wheeler Hezekiah is known by the fact that God added fifteen years to his life. He began to reign as king at the age of twenty-five and ruled for twenty-nine years. He became sick and the prophet told him to get his house in order because he would soon die. Hezekiah prayed to the Lord to spare his life and God answered his prayer by adding fifteen years to it. One of the greatest things that he did was to clean house, that is the House of the Lord. The first thing Hezekiah did was open the doors of the House of the Lord and repair it.(II Chron. 29:3) He then called the Levites and the priest to sanctify themselves and the house of the Lord.(II Chron. 29:4-5) The next thing was to carry the filthiness out of the Holy Place of the temple. The temple was in dire need of repair because it had been defiled and pollutted by the previous generations. There is a valuable lesson in which we must learn. We must clear the trash from our lives in order to be pleasing to God. We must clean out strife. Strife is destructive to the church. James wrote, "For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work."(James 3:16) No congregation can endure strife. It will quickly destroy it. The cure for a strife-infested congregation is to "let each esteem other better than themselves."(Phil. 2:3) We must clean out pride. This is not self-respect but arrogance, haughtiness and leads to self-destruction. This kind of pride causes us to be swollen with conceit and look down on others with contempt. "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."(Prov. 16:18) We must clean out complacency. The church at Laodicea had become lukewarm and complacent in their Christianity. The Lord directed them to be zealous and repent.(Rev. 3:14-19) According to the Lord, lukewarmness is sickening.(Rev. 3:16) We must clean out greed. Greed is defined as covetousness which Paul said by inspiration is idolatry.(Col. 3:5) Greed was the down fall of Achan, Gehazi, and Judas. We must clean out racism. God is not a respecter of persons.(Acts 10:34) Paul wrote, "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him."(Rom. 10:12) Our lives oftentimes becomes cluttered with the garbage of the world. Hezekiah did the right thing by cleaning out the trash from the temple and making it presentable to God. There is a need to remove the clutter and garbage from our lives in order that we may be presentable before the Lord.(Rom. 12:1-2)
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