Guidelines For Living

Harold Sala

How To Build Strong Family Relationships

October 25, 2023

My son, Steve, is a rock climber, something that is much too much for me.  I'm like Sir Francis Chichester, who said, "I will lift mine eyes unto the hills but I will not take my carcass thither."  Anyway, Steve and two of his friends were climbing the highest peak in Switzerland when they stopped to catch their breath and noticed three climbers on the face of an incline a short distance from where they were.  As they watched, the lead climber suddenly lost his footing and fell. 

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A reporter from a Toronto newspaper was asked to do a story on garages which made unreasonable charges.  The reporter pulled a couple wires lose in the electrical system of his car and drove into garages asking for an estimate on repairs which varied from $25 to over $400.  After he got the estimates, he declined to have the work done, drove around the corner and hooked up the wires, and went on to the next garage. 
October 24, 2023
Your bank's cash machine has gone berserk, giving out 20's as if they were 5's, yet your receipt shows no sign of overpayment.  You immediately know that something is wrong.  You asked for a withdrawal of $100, but it gave you $400.  What do you do?  Would you a) Use the emergency telephone to alert the bank.  b) Take the money and run,  or c) Call your friends and tell them to get back there too, as you go to the end of the line for a second run at the machine yourself?
October 23, 2023
"Wake-up calls" is the term applied to them--those close brushes with death which may come by being a participant in a near-fatal car crash, a heart attack, being a passenger on a plane which is hijacked, or waking to the smell of smoke in your house, or about anything when you know that death stalked you but you didn't fall prey to its grasp.
October 20, 2023
The word that a parent uses most often when there is a toddler in the house is, "No!" and the expression that kids use is, "Why can't I?" not really listening for an explanation.  The word "No" draws the lines of battle.  And that line is intact from the cradle to the grave.  The reality is that a lot of life is circumscribed by the negative prohibition, "No!" 
October 19, 2023
"I have just heard your commentary about the tongue," wrote a listener.  This friend added, "I am one of those who … is brutally frank.  I know the truth is bitter, but my greatest defect is to tell a person what wrong he has done which he ought not to do.  Is it unchristian?"  It's amazing to me how many folks such as the woman who wrote feel compelled to point out people's flaws.
October 18, 2023
On November 2, 1863, several months after the battle of Gettysburg, David Wills, a local judge and prominent Pennsylvania citizen, invited Abraham Lincoln to make a "few appropriate remarks" at the consecration of a cemetery for the Union war dead.  Edward Everett, then the young nation’s foremost northern orator, had been invited to speak on September 23, but Everett needed more time for preparation so fate put both of the men on the same program on November 19, 1863.
October 17, 2023
For a moment suppose that God has a blueprint, a plan for your life.  Now if God has a plan for your life, would it not have to be a good one?  After all, He created you, and He knows you better than you know yourself.  He sees your life in the focus of all eternity while with our human limitations we simply see today.
October 16, 2023
When we fail to remember the past, we are condemned to repeat our mistakes and failures, whether it be nationally, personally, or spiritually.  Do you believe that?  Even before the alphabet was developed in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, parents passed on to their children the truths which they wanted preserved.  Oral history, we call it today.  Sometimes the stories were myths but most of them were factual—who did what and what happened to whom.  Those oral traditions included God’s dealings with people, and family history—battles that were fought, marriages which produced offspring, and cataclysmic events such as earthquakes, famines, and floods.
October 13, 2023
It was not without some scientific basis that the prophet Micah, some seven centuries before Christ, exclaimed, “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?”  Micah believed that God would have compassion and would “hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19).
October 12, 2023
Long ago the writer of Scripture told us that he who does not offend in word or deed is a perfect man; and obviously, none of us qualifies.  No matter how loving or kind you are, sooner or later you offend someone.  You say or do something you know is wrong.  More likely it is a protracted dalliance with your conscience, but then you crash and burn.  That's when you come to the fork in the road.  Do you do what is convenient and try to deny the whole issue, or admit it and find help?  Sweeping the wrong aside, justifying yourself as being "human," is the path of convenience, and it's a well trod one, but it isn't a lasting solution which heals your brokenness.
October 11, 2023
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About Guidelines For Living

Start your day with hope, confidence, and purpose by listening to the Guidelines for Living daily devotional with Harold Sala! This 5-minute program offers insightful teaching from God’s Word and practical application for living out your faith in the day-to-day. Strengthen your relationship with Jesus by adding this short devotional to your daily routine.  Guidelines for Living is the longest running five-minute program in Christian radio!  

About Harold Sala

Speaker, author and Bible teacher, Dr. Harold Sala founded Guidelines in 1963 and pioneered the first 5-minute Christian program on radio.  Dr. Sala holds a Ph.D. in biblical text and has taught at conferences, seminars and churches the world over.  An author of over 60 books published in 19 languages, his most recent release is 40 Unstoppable Women (Rose Publishing).

 

 

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