In short, it is good to hold the highest view and vision of your spouse, but no man is married to the Proverbs 31 woman, and no woman has Proverbs 31 on her resume.
Devotional
When you argue with a fool, you are wasting your time
A fool is always right in his own eyes. He is not interested in learning something new. He is not interested in being challenged. He is not interested in growing. Why should he be? He has already arrived.
Marginalized Oppressors
Don’t assume, because you have experienced poverty or marginalization of some sort, that you are automatically above inflicting the same sort of oppression that you received.
A true friend knows how to wound you
It is not the act of wounding you that qualifies somebody as your friend; rather it is the quality of being your friend that enables someone to wound you in a good way.
Dealing with false accusations
In our world, name-calling and labeling is often a shortcut substitute for the hard labor of moral reasoning. You can quickly find yourself on the wrong side of the aisle, regardless of which side you hope to belong to.
Wearing out your welcome
As much as we might wish this was not the case, and plead the contrary, we conduct all our relationships within a transactional frame.
Wisdom can help you win
When we enlist the pursuit of wisdom to strive for an optimal outcome, what we are seeking is to align our own thinking as much as possible with God’s thinking.
Addiction’s vicious cycle
Addiction is a short-term escape from pain that is purchased at a high interest rate of future pain.
How do we deal with greed?
The key to understanding and disarming our greed is digging a little bit deeper. Why do you want more money? What is it that you hope to gain as a result of having more resources?
Saying things that last
If you want to endure, it really means, for the realist, that you want your words to endure. We want our words to carry meaning, and to continue to shape other people’s lives long after we are gone.
So…did you bring a gift?
The weird, and sometimes maddening truth about gifts is that some of their inherent value is the inconvenience itself.
You don’t reason with an enraged momma bear
You don’t try to “walk alongside” the enraged momma bear, trying to calm her down, redirect her, or help her see reason. You get out of the way.