Life Discipleship Resources from Dr. Henry Brandt
Ken, at 40, was a happy man. He had worked hard all his life. His dad had never been able to hold a job, and so Ken delivered papers as a boy to help his mother.
Ken quit school in the tenth grade to work as a messenger boy in the office of a big factory. He was determined to do better than his dad and to provide properly for his family. [Read more...]
Bart Nolan was a key designer in a large supersonic aircraft company. Some of the best features of these fast, high-flying planes originated in his creative mind. However, Bart’s boss often tinkered with the finished designs. This worried Bart; he was afraid the tinkering might someday show up as an expensive failure.
The boss took credit for a thing if it worked, and if it didn’t, he blamed Bart, who thought it only natural that he had grown to dislike the boss. [Read more...]
Viola Walker was far from an avid angler, but she did go fishing with her husband, Louis, several times after they were married. Then, after three trips to the same trout steam and enduring her husband’s complaints that she scared the fish away, Viola gave up the fishing business.
Viola’s interest was community projects and current events. She became deeply involved in these activities. Then, after one fishing trip, Louis talked about a “genuine fisherwoman” who had been in their crowd, and Viola felt a pang of jealousy. And she was hurt when he said he couldn’t stay home to watch her debate the new expressway route on television because he was meeting his fishing friends, including “Lady Walton.” [Read more...]
Todd Turner was in trouble: for the third time, his wife had threatened to leave him, and this time she meant it. And all over a dog—or so Todd said.
Todd was away from home much of the time and had bought Tracy a dog for company before the birth of their first child. After the baby’s arrival, Todd wanted to get rid of the dog.
“If the dog goes, I go, too,” Tracy warned.
“All right, go ahead,” he told her.
And so they separated. [Read more...]
“I’ll post those receipts the way you say to, Ken, but Mr. Roland never had me do them that way,” said Margaret Lowe to her husband in their insurance office.
“Mr. Roland … it’s always ‘Mr. Roland did this’ or ‘Mr. Roland didn’t do that’” he snapped.
“Don’t forget, Ken,” Margaret said, “Mr. Roland was successful enough to sell out at 50 and move to Florida.”
“And when I’m 65, I’ll still be struggling to complete the down payment on the business. You might as well add that,” he growled.
For ten years, Margaret had admired Mr. Roland’s keen business sense. When Kenneth Lowe joined Mr. Roland’s sales force, Margaret thought she saw the same qualities in the new employee and she accepted his proposal of marriage after a rather hurried courtship. Then in those first few months of living together she found she didn’t know Ken as well as she had thought. [Read more...]
Bill and Jan Stanton lived in a long, rambling nine-room ranch house on a three-acre beautifully wooded tract of land. The swimming pool in the backyard, the two expensive cars in the garage, the neatly landscaped yard all added up to the obvious—total success. [Read more...]
Everything seemed in their favor when George and Ellie got married. He was a research chemist with a good income, they bought a nice house, were active in the church, and popular with their friends. But in a few weeks this young couple was in my office seeking help.
Their story went like this. George came home one night and was greeted as usual in the living room with a tender kiss. But as he held Ellie in his arms, his eyes wandered to a corner of the room and he saw hanging from the ceiling a long, wavy cobweb.
He said nothing about it that night, or the next, but both times while maintaining a pleasant appearance, he said to himself in disgust, “What kind of a woman did I marry that she can’t keep her house clean?” [Read more...]
Neither Frank nor Kate Bonner really wanted to break up their home, yet they were heading in that direction–fast!
After 23 years of marriage, Frank had become interested in a younger woman in his office. Kate said she could see why. Kate’s hair was gray, her hands showed the years of housework she had done, her face was lined with the wrinkles of middle age. She was tired much of the time and was subject to frequent and sudden illnesses. [Read more...]
“I was shocked,” said Calvin Lane, though as he spoke I sensed his shock had turned to bitterness. “My uncle was a deacon in the church, but the first time I accompanied him to the company convention he led the way in painting the town.”
In the course of five years Calvin had come to wonder whether a commitment to the Lord actually meant anything. The inconsistencies he observed made him wonder. [Read more...]
In the days following Harry Chase’s fatal heart attack, many of the 5,000 people of Arlington were saying that Sybil, his wife, would get along all right. She was resourceful, attractive, well liked. And Harry, a leading figure in Arlington’s business community, had undoubtedly made adequate financial provision for her and their three young children.
But three days after their church’s biggest funeral in years, the facts began leaking out–Harry Chase had left his family penniless. He had spent all that he had, even mortgaging his home and business, on another woman. [Read more...]
