Who you are now and who you will be is determined by the decisions you make. One out of every one person will make decisions. When you have to make a decision and don’t, that is in itself a decision.
So the question is, what kind of decision-maker are you going to be? To help keep you from sabotaging your future, here are five decisions not to make.
- Disobey your parents. God has placed your parents in your life to help guide you.
- Make quick decisions. Before making a decision, take time to think it over.
- Develop wrong relationships. The people you spend time with probably have the most influence on the decisions you make.
- Wait for your big break. You must get off the couch and pursue your God-given destiny.
- Give up. Both winners and losers face challenges, but winners don’t quit.
Source: Every Teenager’s Little Black Book on Cool
by Blaine Bartel.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Blaine and Lori Bartel didn’t set out to build a place like this. They became it.
Blaine once lived at the top of the ministry world—national TV, a booming youth movement at Church on the Move, and a growing church in Dallas. But while the stage lights were bright, the darkness underneath was darker. A secret 23-year sexual addiction buried everything he valued—his marriage, ministry, finances, reputation, and identity.
Crushed and barely holding on to life, he spent over a year in deep therapy, wrestling with shame and fighting for healing. Then, somewhere on a windswept highway between Kansas City and Tulsa, he heard the voice that lifted him out of the soil:
“I am not going to give you a recovery. I am calling you into resurrection.”
Everything changed.
Blaine found complete freedom and began decoding a Jesus-centered path that leads men out of the grave and into new life. For more than a decade, he’s been guiding other men through that same resurrection.
Lori was walking her own road—rebuilding after 17 years married to a chronic alcoholic, carrying both the wounds and the courage of a woman who refused to stay broken. She was searching for purpose, for peace, for somewhere her heart could breathe again.
Then God crossed their paths.
They met over pasta at Ti Amo (“I love you”—God’s little wink).
A year later, in a simple wedding wrapped in hope, they said yes to each other and to a calling bigger than themselves.
Today—13 years in—they share one mission:
To pull men out of addiction and to rebuild the marriages addiction has shattered.
House of Resurrection is the fruit of the very ground that once tried to bury them—a sacred space for honesty, healing, and brand-new beginnings.
They are joyful parents of four grown kids, proud grandparents of two, and happiest anywhere with lakes, beaches, sunshine, and reminders that darkness never gets to write the final chapter.
