So much pain and sorrow is born out of a foolish expectation that you can postpone or re-start life. A young woman who chooses career over family at 25 will not have a young family at 30. A young man who chooses leisure over work at 25 will not have a burgeoning career at 30.

Or, you could just stay the course - stay married, keep discipling your kids, keep working hard, don't be so introspective, and keep building meaningful relationships with others - and discover that your mid-life crisis was a short portion of the longer road worth traveling.

If you want your marriage to succeed, then do as many of the following as possible from now on: 1) Get married in a church building, as a public ceremony, with a local church pastor officiating. This thing is important, and you should treat it that way. 2) Combine your finances, make a family budget, and be transparent with expenses and revenue. Whatever risks you perceive here, the greater risk is creating financial discord and/or keeping a financial out when things get hard. Make it terribly difficult to disentangle from your spouse. 3) Start having children sooner than later, and have at least one more than you think you can handle. Children are a blessing, and they are also unimaginably needy. This is as it should be, and their needs will cause you and your spouse to mature as husband and wife as well as father and mother. 4) Try to live in the same home for as long as possible (and try to buy a house if you can), and mark it up with family identifiers (pencil on the doorframe for tracking children's growth, family photos, and holiday decor). Stability in marriage is helped by experience of home, place, familiarity, ownership, and the like. 5) Talk with your spouse about your expectations, perceived offenses, and your desires for the future... but don't expect him/her to be much different tomorrow. Maturity is a life-long process, and you require just as much grace as your spouse. This isn't a contract of convenience; it's a promise to stay committed through good times and bad. 6) Spend a good deal of time with older married couples, and spend less time with your peers. Newly weds don't know anything about marriage, and they are just as foolish and tempted as you are. What you need around you (and your spouse) are good examples, wise counselors, and old men and women who can confront you with reality when you're being stupid. 7) Set a few "do not move" practices and times in your daily/weekly family schedule. Eat breakfast or lunch or dinner as a family every day (no matter what). Read the Bible and pray together with your spouse and kids every day. Go to church as a family every Sunday. Have a family movie night every Friday or Saturday. Go on a family vacation to the same beach, forrest, city, or mountain range every year. These are not sure ways to avoid divorce or family disintegration, but doing this stuff will certainly make your marriage/family more likely to last the test of time.

Some married people tempted toward divorce don’t realize that most couples who stay married have experienced all the same despair, pain, and frustration. They stayed married… not because they didn’t go through hard times… but because they didn’t quit during hard times.

The thing is, this is true. With little effort, you may almost certainly find a man or woman who is better than your spouse at everything. And, it is possible that such a person will be happy to have you as well. What this doesn’t acknowledge is the loss of marital union, shared experience, kids and grandkids, family/home/life stability, shared faithfulness, personal reputation, and much more. You can treat marriage like it’s a temporary arrangement centered on your felt needs and preferences, and you’ll never know what it is like to be married.

Some exegetical work on John 1:35-51 before teaching through the passage for a Bible study tonight.

Today, I now *refuse* to believe *anything* I see on video. I have been skeptical for a while, but I've been fairly confident that I could spot fakes when I saw them. However, the AI videos coming out now have sent me over the edge. Nothing is real, except real life.

Some tips for those guys who are just beginning a workout routine: 1) Go to a gym; don’t try to workout at home. 2) Make a plan; don’t just do whatever exercises seem familiar or interesting at the time. 3) Commit to proper form (i.e., stance, position, posture, movement); don’t try to lift heavy at all until you master form. 4) Stick with basic exercises; don’t try to be creative. 5) Leave your phone at home, in your vehicle, or in your pocket; don’t tempt yourself to distraction, and don’t be an irritation to the folks at the gym who want to use the machine you’re sitting on while scrolling. 6) Embrace the soreness; it’s part of the lifestyle, it means you’ve actually done something, and it won’t be quite as bad after a while. 7) Be friendly, but not too friendly. The gym is for training, not for long conversations. Good job getting started. Most of the gym veterans are glad to have you join the club. We will probably even help where and when you need. But we will not like it if you get in the way, become a nuisance, or cause injury to yourself or others. You’re welcome.

On pastoral fitness. Appearance indicates something of a man’s character, self-control, and personal discipline. It’s possible for a slovenly dressed, grossly overweight, and unhygienic man to be growing in spiritual maturity, but he’s not ready to lead you in that direction.

The error of the *social* gospel from the theological liberals of the 20th century was to deny Christian doctrine. The error of the *only* gospel from many evangelicals today is the loss of Christian ethics. These errors are not the same, but they are both errors.

Some exegetical work in preparation for our inductive Bible study tonight at the local church. The testimony of John the Baptist regarding the Son of God who is also the Lamb of God... so that you will believe and have life in His name.

Why are we using vulgarity in ordinary ads and merchandise?

A whole bunch of the Boomer generation demanded that (in order to avoid conflict with friends) they’d not speak of religion or politics. The consequences of such a policy are dreadful, and one of the main frustrations for GenX and Millennials is that it was a conscious choice.

Like... every civilization? Do you think we always have a moral obligation to adopt orphan children? Do you think we always have a moral obligation to protect women from predatory men? How would such a framework mean anything in practice?

This seems obviously true. Where is he wrong?

Ladies, if your 40+ year old husband is below 12% body fat, carefully applying hair product, and getting manis and pedis, then he's either sleeping around now or trying to make it happen. Get yourself a regular joe who generally takes care of himself and others around him.

It’s wild to me that the same guys who hate Christian Nationalism (with the heat of a thousand suns) also want to blast Wolfe for repudiating a foreign policy based on an emotional appeal to a hotly disputed claim that “the Bible tells me so.”