1. How to Recognize A Fool
Principle 1: Failing to recognize the Supreme Being is being supremely foolish.
Principle 2: Corruption isn’t just wrong. It’s stupid. In the long run, it doesn’t even work.
Principle 3: Filth and faith are mutually exclusive; as one grows, the other dies.
2. Adultery: One “A” You Don’t Want to Earn
Principle 4: Sex outside of marriage is not what it appears on the surface. Its sweet, smooth beginnings inevitably end in bitterness and injury.
Principle 5: Sex outside of marriage always takes the partners from seduction to reduction…by sucking life itself out of them.
3. Anger: The Nuclear Emotion…with Huge Fallout
Principle 6: The passion of anger is the nuclear fission of the emotions. It can light a city or blow it to bits depending on how its power is released.
Principle 7: Ill-managed anger is an antipersonnel mine; trigger it, and it will maim you and cause permanent injury to those near you.
Principle 8: The only way to manage anger is to surrender it to the Spirit of God; as surrender increases, ill-managed anger decreases.
4. Lying: The Self-Made Trap
Principle 9: Truthful words have hurricane force, but lies the impact of warm breath.
Principle 10: Truth commands long-term respect, but a lie, and the one who speaks it, draws immediate derision.
Principle 11: A lie promises quick and easy benefit, but the promise itself is a lie.
5. Gossip: The Hidden Dagger
Principle 12: Don’t take gossip lightly. Far more than harmless chatter, it’s a deadly dagger to the heart.
Principle 13: Gossip’s companions are worse than urban gangs; Faction, Quarrel and Betrayal are their names.
6. Reproof: A Building Block for Character
Principle 14: Rebuke and reproof are good medicine. They cure moral sickness, so take them faithfully—regardless of how they taste.
Principle 15: Reproof is a test of wisdom and folly; wise people love it, and fools hate it.
Principle 16: The one who doesn’t learn from the correction of others must be reproved personally. Rejecting personal reproof just compounds folly, destruction, and death.
7. Insults and Curses: Unsolicited Instruction
Principle 17: We expose our character, either foolish or wise, by the way we handle curses and insults.
Principle 18: If we listen for the voice of God in it, all comments—regardless of their motivation or content—are potentially useful for character building.
Principle 19: If obedience to God’s Law provides building blocks for our character construction, the search for instruction and correction is the mortar.
Principle 20: Curses and insults are just divinely allowed instruction…in ugly wrappings.
8. Listening: God’s Channel for Personal Growth
Principle 21: Refusing to listen is refusing to learn. The broad road to ignorance and folly is paved with inattention.
Principle 22: Giving full attention to others or their counsel shows that we value both them and their content. Not to do so, at the very least, shows low-level arrogance or contempt.
Principle 23: Ears are windows to the soul. Listen to righteousness and grow spiritually wise; listen to evil and reap spiritual destruction.
9. Scoffers and Mockers, Beware!
Principle 24: The mocker uses ridicule, putdowns, sarcasm, or mimicry to belittle others; the righteous person builds them up.
Principle 25: When relationships are marked by strife, seek out the mockers and eliminate them. If you don’t, they will continually stir the relational pot.
Principle 26: If we don’t replace mockery of authority with joyful submission to and respect for it, it could cost us dearly.
10. The Fast Lane to Ugliness
Principle 27: Obsession with personal appearance is an exercise in futility. Its benefits are short-lived and can be stolen in an instant.
Principle 28: The beauty of a person’s character is the ultimate ”cosmetic surgery” that creates loveliness through the ultimate “faith lift.”
Principle 29: To improve your appearance dramatically, get a “spiritual makeover.”
11. How to Change People’s Minds
Principle 30: Seeking to change other people’s thinking is an exercise in futility unless they direct their wills toward the change; it’s a goal that should never be pursued unaided.
Principle 31: Only God has the power and the access to people’s hearts and inner thoughts sufficient to change their minds.
Principle 32: It is folly to ask God to change the thinking of others until we are first willing to have Him change our own.
12. Using God-given Authority
Principle 33: All authority—in home, office, or elsewhere—vests with God and is loaned to us as a sacred trust to be used as He would use it for His purposes alone.
Principle 34: Authority in the hands of a believer is neither a bludgeon to pound others into submission nor a knife to cut them down. It is a divinely designed instrument of guidance and instruction for building those under our authority.
13. The Rise and Fall of the Proud
Principle 35: The same wind that puffs an ego blows away one’s potential for true honor.
Principle 36: Success can’t be equated with adulation. A miserably indebted celebrity is far worse off than a well-served, debt-free nobody.
Principle 37: Those who feed on their praise are plunging head-long into the greatest fiery test of their lives. Not many will survive with their souls.
14. A Cure for Spiritual Heart Disease
Principle 38: An unguarded heart will destroy your life and run away with your soul.
Principle 39: The road to destruction meanders through three cities: Heart, Mind, and Spirit…and stays too long in Heart. The road to life goes directly to the Spirit—in the same township as Mind.
Principle 40: Only the heart surrendered to God realizes its deepest desires; self-managed hearts get broken and break the hearts of others.
15. One Dangerous Babe (or Dude) to Avoid
Principle 41: Stupidity is an expression of the dominant worldview which parades as “conventional thinking”; only divine insight will help you recognize and transcend it.
Principle 42: Wisdom always strengthens the weak and lifts the downtrodden; Stupidity exploits both.
Principle 43: Wisdom always respects the person, feelings, dignity, and possessions of others; Stupidity rapes them.
Principle 44: The wise and righteous life never fears examination…of its datebook, checkbook, closet, or computer hard drive.
16. Impulse Control and the Key to Character
Principle 45: The one in bondage to repressed impulses is no more a slave than he who is shackled by lack of control over them.
Principle 46: Associating with friends who lack restraint over their appetites exposes us to their contagious virus of excess.
Principle 47: If it is true that “a fool and his money are soon parted,” it’s equally true that one who binges on anything else will likely binge on spending and borrowing.
Principle 48: Financial poverty and bankruptcy begin where lack of control of other impulses leave off.
17. Danger: Eyes That Do Not See
Principle 49: Without divine illumination, our eyes can never see through and beyond the thick darkness around us.
Principle 50: Failure to give attention to the way we are living is to surrender our destiny to the three enemies of success: chance, unexpected risk, and unrecognized stupidity.
Principle 51: No one is so blind as he who will not allow God to enhance and correct his vision.
18. For Adult[erer]s Only
Principle 52: The heart is a person’s spiritual center. If left unguarded, it will be ruptured by demonic darts, not stimulated by Cupid’s arrows.
Principle 53: Defying God’s law in the pursuit of love or sexual pleasure is playing Russian roulette with bullets in every chamber of the gun.
Principle 54: The priceless value of loving loyalty is never realized until all the cheap thrills of infidelity are in the distant past of God’s forgiveness.
19. Rebuke: 10, Flattery 0
Principle 55: True friends will love you enough to scrub you down with truth, even when they know it stings. Your enemies will lather you up with the soft soap of what they think you want to hear.
Principle 56: A relationship based on open truth is true friendship; one built on flattery is a con game.
Principle 57: A loving rebuke requires running your hand along the wall of another’s soul and feeling for a crack to put the truth in; if there’s no crack, don’t bother throwing it at the wall.
20. You Can Tell a Person by His Cover
Principle 58: The eyes are the window to the human soul, and what’s going on there shows on the countenance.
Principle 59: Persons with Christ in them possess a spiritual life and peace which shows as “brightness” and tranquility in the countenance; you can look for and see it.
Principle 60: Sin causes darkness in the human spirit which shows in the countenance; it can’t be covered with makeup nor the light “faked” by a happy face.
Principle 61: True spiritual beauty abides in the heart and is transmitted to the eyes, making a person “ugly” or “beautiful” independent of physical attributes.
21. Your Money and Your Slave Master
Principle 62: Borrowing can be really foolish because it puts the borrower in servitude to the lender…and nobody likes being a slave.
Principle 63: Meeting financial obligations in a prompt and timely manner is a hallmark of integrity. Not to do so puts us in the camp of the wicked.
Principle 64: Time is on the side of those with a cause against us, so we must communicate and settle issues promptly to avoid the dire consequences of delay.
Principle 65: To approach unmet financial obligations by silence, flight, or prideful resistance is not only foolish, it is counterproductive at every level.
22. Somebody, Anybody, Applaud Me!
Principle 66: If we are really great, people will find it out without our telling them. Telling them how great we are usually creates the opposite impression in their minds.
Principle 67: Earthly honor soon dies, but humbling oneself before God brings the acclaim of heaven and its angels forever.
Principle 68: Self-praise steals from God the honor due Him, for no one ever achieves anything worthwhile apart from the gifts, abilities, and grace of his Maker.
23. Laughter Is Not the Best Medicine
Principle 69: Laughter that flows from any place other than a pure heart has a polluted source and a poisonous effect.
Principle 70: The one who is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ has His joy in his spirit; the first, telltale mark of sin’s entrance is loss of joy.
Principle 71: As the pupil of the eye is the window to the world, So the countenance of the face is the window to the soul; it reveals the condition of the heart.
24. Other Names for Treachery
Principle 72: One way to avoid being trapped is to avoid setting traps for others; God turns all evil schemes against those creating them.
Principle 73: The way to escape the traps of others (or the enemy) is to do the right thing no matter the cost; short-term gains at the expense of integrity generate serious long-term losses.
Principle 74: Every evil plan sets a path and draws others to take it. The righteous person runs away from this path as fast as the power of God will take him.
25. Nuclear Sticks and Stones
Principle 75: The ultimate impact for good you make on others during your life may well be the result of the gentle, wise, healing words you speak.
Principle 76: Only eternity will tell how many of the world’s lost and hopeless were pushed into those states of being by someone’s cruel words.. . including ours.
Principle 77: Destructive words are the nuclear “sticks and stones” that reduce human beings to rubble—with an extremely slow rate of fallout.
26. Plan the Work and Work the Plan
Principle 78: A mark of God’s touch on fallen human beings is a love for and commitment to noble labor. Laziness is a major concession to sin and wreaks passive destruction.
Principle 79: Those who aim at nothing are guaranteed a direct hit. Those who set goals but focus no labor on achieving them are no better off than the goal-less ones.
Principle 80: No one can handle the heavy workloads of life without God’s strength. To try is an ungrateful reliance on prideful self.
27. For You, I Have a Special Deal!
Principle 81: To doubt that the rewards God provides for trust and obedience in this life will be ample is to doubt God’s very character and the trustworthiness of His promises to us. It insults Him.
Principle 82: There is a good reason God has a time-delay factor in His reward system. It takes time for the really clever evil-doers and the talk-but-no-walk Christians to show their true colors, but for the righteous, God’s rewards are worth the wait.
Principle 83: When the enemy whispers that the wise, righteous life is a losing proposition, shout at him that he must not have read the last chapter of the Book that describes the Award Ceremony.
28. Plans from the Ultimate Planner
Principle 84: Leaving God out of your planning is a fatal error. Only a fool would ignore omniscience in planning and omnipotence in execution, if available.
Principle 85: It is foolishly arrogant to make plans without consulting others, especially your spouse. It is in diversity of knowledge and experience that effective plans are established.
Principle 86: It is better to make mediocre plans to achieve a noble end than to create excellent plans to do evil because the latter will face divine opposition and the former divine aid.
29. Friends in Low Places
Principle 87: Responding to cautions about unsavory companions with, ”I can handle ’em” is not only naive, but it ignores the spiritual cross-pollination that occurs in relationships.
Principle 88: The associates we choose both reveal and feed the moral appetites of our souls.
Principle 89: Sin is extremely contagious and is commonly spread by the infected companions we choose.
30. The “Dumb Dog” Syndrome
Principle 90: If they are learning experiences, bad decisions are building blocks to wisdom and good character. If not, they are not building blocks but wrecking balls.
Principle 91: Breaking the chain of stupid behaviors is not only wise; it avoids the repeated agony of their consequences and protects relationships with those who love you enough to rescue you.
Principle 92: To avoid bondage to destructive behaviors, one must live by the principle “One stupid act is enough!” After three or more, only the Trinity can deliver you.
31. A Place Called Hope
Principle 93: The flow of hope fulfillment goes in the same direction as God’s moral Law. To challenge God’s Law is to launch your hopes upstream against an all-powerful current.
Principle 94: Trusting in the spiritual guidance and strength of a loving God radically enhances the probability of seeing your hopes fulfilled. In fact, in the end, He guarantees their fulfillment for the faith-filled person.
Principle 95: A teachable attitude is the key to hope fulfillment because the unteachable won’t heed advice and adjust their life direction onto the righteous path that fulfills all hopes.
32. The Awful Consequences of Unteachability
Principle 96: If refusal to listen to the wise counsel of peers is stupidity, refusal to listen to the counsel of God is to solicit judgment.
Principle 97: A yes or no decision is clearly the one most recognized as having effect, but choosing not to decide can create more impact than a yes or no.
Principle 98: Refusing to heed God’s counsel is to volunteer for the dire consequences and to earn scorn from the Counselor you’ve rebuffed.
33. The High Cost of Gloating
Principle 99: The burdensome emotions and actions of bringing down our enemies is a weight God never intended us to bear, so He frees us by bearing these burdens Himself.
Principle 100: To wish judgment for our enemies but mercy for ourselves is unfair. It exploits the forgiveness we have received and displeases the One who gave us undeserved grace.
Principle 101: To rejoice over our enemies’ troubles is to prompt the heavenly Father to turn His attention from giving them what they deserve to disciplining our ingratitude for the grace we didn’t deserve.
34. The Futility of Hiding
Principle 102: Sin, once committed, is “posted on the cosmic Internet” where God and, eventually, others will see it. Bank on it.
Principle 103: Knowing that God sees and knows all we do is a powerful “sin-restraint mechanism” for those who believe it—like a giant floodlight in an otherwise dark alley.
Principle 104: God’s watchfulness over what we think and do is a marvelous blessing to those whose hearts are right and deeds are righteous. It means that no good deed will go unrewarded.
35. The Fool and His Money
Principle 105: The single most significant factor in wealth acquisition is righteous character. Sin and stupidity are thieves.
Principle 106: Both acquiring and retaining significant wealth are predicated on right living. Spending on self and sinful pleasures is like signing over resources to the godly; they’ll end up with them eventually anyway.
Principle 107: Wealth secured through righteous motivation and God-honoring methods has built-in loss insurance. Even if lost, it will be restored.
36. Long Live the Righteous!
Principle 108: The single most significant factor in longevity is avoiding the evil thoughts, actions, and relationships which shorten life.
Principle 109: Acting out that which does not reflect God’s moral law is guaranteed to knock years off your life; doing the right thing is a guaranteed life extender.
Principle 110: The power which sustains and lengthens life is Spirit, and long life is in the grasp of the one energized by the Holy Spirit, not the “unholy spirits” which erode life by degrees.
37. The High Cost of Relying on the Unreliable
Principle 111: To those who rely on them, people with a poor work ethic are a continuing source of annoyance and irritation. At some point, they’ll be driven to seek relief from both.
Principle 112: To cut your losses before they hit, don’t give any responsibility to a person beyond his “wisdom level”. If you do, it will severely impair both you and the goal pursuit.
Principle 113: Choose everyone on whom you plan to rely—friends, spouses, employees, pastors, committee members, and such—with extreme care. Haphazard choices will result in endless and unnecessary hurt.
38. Strange Jewelry
Principle 114: God sees great beauty in a person who is virtuous who has listened to and obeyed the righteous teaching of a good mom and dad. That’s actually more rare than diamonds.
Principle 115: Whatever moral beauty you received from righteous parents should be displayed in the public square and in the home. God will be deeply impressed by your being bedecked in virtue.
39. The Tenderizing Effect of Godliness
Principle 116: Be wary of the person with brash, edgy speech. That sharpness may well have been honed by the grindstone of sin.
Principle 117: The righteous person speaks quietly with an authority infused with power from God. The arrogant intimidation of the wicked cannot shake it.
Principle 118: The righteous person seeks God’s plan for words and action, and implements His plan in grace and patience. The “bold and the beautiful” without God don’t need His guidance; their own godlike status, they believe, will assure their success.
40. The Cunning Human Mind
Principle 119: When searching for wrongdoers, it helps to assume that nobody thinks they’ve done anything wrong. Even if they have, they most likely will see their behavior as well motivated and good.
Principle 120: Human memory is weakest when asked to recall or accept responsibility for some catastrophe or evil act.
Principle 121: justice is ultimately served not by the feeble attempts at discovery we humans create but by the just actions of the Righteous One who already knows all the details…of everything.
41. The “Slut” Factor
Principle 122: Sexual “inactivity” for unmarrieds is not a curse; it is a virtue.
Principle 123: God’s moral law is constantly being swept down stream by the world system through redefinition. Adhere precisely to God’s definitions, or you’ll be swept away by the current.
Principle 124: If one’s moral character is like swine, then adorning it with gold is wasteful and asinine. If one’s character is pure as gold, it will be sufficiently adorned already.
42. The Folly of “Heart-Following”
Principle 125: Unaided by outside wisdom and divine revelation, your “inner guide” will get you more lost than you already are.
Principle 126: The most powerful delusion a person can entertain is that he does not commonly delude himself…in the direction of self-justification.
Principle 127: Claiming to be a “self-made person” whose success comes from “believing in oneself” is a slap in the face to the Creator who gave us talent and provided friends and family to nurture and encourage us along the way.
43. God Knows What Happens in Vegas
Principle 128: An omniscient God surely knows what is done in secret and in the dark. His “night vision and X-ray goggles” make hiding ourselves or our sins from Him an exercise in futility—hiding in plain sight.
Principle 129: Hiding anything from God doesn’t work. He “takes notes” on all human behavior and keeps good books for eternal reference.
Principle 130: It is folly to try to hide in full view of God. It is far better to acknowledge and confess what He already knows, so you can receive His gracious forgiveness.
44. Milestones on the Road to the Poorhouse
Principle 131: Working and eating are flip sides of the currency of life; without eating one cannot work and without working one cannot eat.
Principle 132: Not only is talk “cheap”, without the backing of integrity and hard work, it creates deficits that can never be repaid.
Principle 133: Every person is designed to be intoxicated by God alone. Those “under the influence” of any other person, substance, motivation, or power which does not draw them closer to Him are cruising for a bruising.
45. Curing the Poverty Curse
Principle 134: Wisdom and wealth are spouses in a covenant bond—as are stupidity and poverty. Only death separates them.
Principle 135: The one who chases mirages in the desert will inevitably suffer from the thirst that each vanishing oasis creates. Only sacrifice in pursuit God’s reality brings rewards.
Principle 136: Confounding all earthly economic principles, giving all you have is the key to being free from need and having ample to give more.
46. God’s “Silent Treatment”
Principle 137: God has perfect hearing, but He has a sudden attack of “hearing impairment” when those who choose not to hear His wise, loving counsel close their ears to it.
Principle 138: God is eager to find even one person willing to obey His laws-eager to pour out His blessings, especially on those who love Him.
47. Watch Out! Your Body Is Talking
Principle 139: God wants us to play fair, but to be aware that our opponents may well cheat. Learning their deceitful ways is a good defense.
Principle 140: One “deceitful heart” causes conflict even if all the other hearts are honest.
Principle 141: We communicate in many ways; words are only one of them. Make sure that all your languages speak in uniform purity.
48. God’s “Get Rich Slowly” Scheme
Principle 142: The one who is driven to get rich quickly (1) is vulnerable to scams—”too-good-to-be-true”—schemes, (2) risks rationalizing questionable (even illegal) financial schemes, and (3) sets himself up for losing everything.
Principle 143: God gives people the ability to get wealth. Jesus taught that the “gift of acquiring” enables the gift of giving. As we give, we receive, not the other way around.
Principle 144: We are to give until it hurts, then keep giving until it stops hurting. The tithe (10 percent of the “first fruits’) is the starting point of giving. Give a percentage of the income you’d like to receive.
49. The Wrong Cheering Section
Principle 145: At your death, you have a choice—people cheering your character or cheering your departure. Only you can decide.
Principle 146: The easiest way to draw contempt from others is to sow contemptible motives and behaviors in your dealings with them; sow grace and kindness, and you will usually reap grace and kindness.
Principle 147: One never knows how large a lever a kind word is to lift a sagging spirit and offload a heavy burden.
50. The Check’s Not in the Mail
Principle 148: God always makes sure that generous, righteous lenders get repaid…from some source. He commonly covers the repayment Himself.
Principle 149: Failure to repay borrowed money costs you a lot more than the value of what was borrowed. It costs you your reputation and, most likely, a friendship.
51. Seismic Moral Situations
Principle 150: No grand dreams of love and happiness and no firm resolve to sustain commitment until death ends it can save a marriage or family if even one of the spouses lacks righteous character. Character is the foundation on which all stable relationships are built.
Principle 151: God must keep some fools poor because He knows that if He let them prosper, they would have the means to multiply their folly and its disastrous consequences.
Principle 152: Unless there is familiarity with wealth and power coupled to godliness, a person rising to sudden affluence and celebrity tends to lose all impulse control and to bring chaos to his own life and the lives of those he touches.
52. Seven Things on God’s “Hate List”
Principle 153: Evil behavior is like cancer; it seldom is seen in a single cell but commonly in a “mass” of interconnected, rapidly multiplying, sinful practices.
Principle 154: The root of most other behaviors God hates is self-exaltation. Only those who get to the place where they recognize that life is all about God and nothing about their ego are truly blessed.
Principle 155: A lie is the first drill hole in the Levee of Trust before the flood of falsehood inundates everyone secured by the protective wall of integrity.
53. “Home Sweet Home” … or Not
Principle 156: Bricks and mortar do not make a home. No matter how beautiful or lavish a residence may be, it is only a container for the spiritual interaction among the inhabitants.
Principle 157: Harmonious interpersonal communication is the Spirit-inspired expression of two hearts in tune with God and each other. Unloving speech is the language of warfare. . .for which homes are not designed.
Principle 158: Family issues are not solved by “getting your own space.” The violence and conflict of a bad home will follow you. Allowing God to heal the conflict is the only solution.
54. “Stop Yelling at Me!”
Principle 159: Raising one’s voice sets off an interpersonal “arms race” in which anger and even greater anger and yelling results; soft, gentle words assuage anger and halt the escalation.
Principle 160: When you catch yourself cranking up the volume in your communication, stop and ask God to quiet your spirit. A quiet spirit—even in the most intense interaction—will generate a conversation that sheds light rather than shouts and screams that generate heat.
Principle 161: The godly person is quiet before God and tranquilly submissive to His authority. Nobody goes unpunished for yelling at God and defying His directives.
55. Will Lady Luck Help Out?
Principle 162: When seeking guidance in any of life’s circumstances, rely on God’s guidance, not a chance.
56. Humble Pie … with a Really Tough Crust
Principle 163: A key to success in life is living by John the Baptist’s statement, “He must become more important; I must become less important” John 3:30 NLV). Self-imposed humility actually is blessed by God with “riches, honor, and life.”
57. Shut up!
Principle 164: Silence truly is ”golden,” and talk truly is “cheap.” Only God can enable us to discern when to exchange the talk which is cheap for the quietness which is golden.
Principle 165: There are times to speak and times to keep silent. Unexpressed thoughts will never get you in trouble. In fact, some might even read your timely moments of silence as intelligence! At times, tell yourself to “shut up.”
58. The Divine Right of the King
Principle 166: Asking yourself, “Is there sin here?” and “Who’s in authority here?” will quickly reveal the moral compass for a situation – avoid the sin and submit to the authority.
Principle 167: If you are tempted to play loosely with the authority over you, be most keenly aware that there is One whose authority is never to be tested. To do so is a matter of spiritual life and death! He isn’t called King of Kings for nothing.
59. The “Hundred-Lash” Rule
Principle 168: The severity of the discipline is in direct correlation to the severity of the rebellion; if a rebuke brings submission, the rod will not follow.
Principle 169: Figure out quickly what is necessary to avoid the wrath of an authority figure, and promptly comply with directions. Not doing so will bring painful “lashes.”
Principle 170: Rebellion always complicates things, and rebels create chaos; immediate, joyful compliance simplifies life, for everybody.
60. Building a Legacy
Principle 171: The legacy we leave behind is not measured by our bios, resumes, bank accounts, titles, possessions, or funeral eulogies. It is the essence of our character-what God says about us.
Principle 172: All the wealth in the world cannot give us a good reputation, and abject poverty cannot tarnish it. But a good reputation based on genuine righteousness can assure us of God’s blessing in wealth or poverty in this life and the life to come.
Principle 173: The moral choices we make now are visited on our children and grandchildren long after we are gone. Leaving a legacy rooted in faith and obedience to Jesus Christ and His life principles will stand us in good stead regardless of the other things our progeny inherit from us.