The world is full of people who look back with regret on their teenage ways. They longingly wish they had done things differently. You have the opportunity right now to assure yourself of no regrets.
Here are five regrets you don’t want to live with the rest of your life:
- Moral Regrets. Don’t allow yourself to compromise your purity and be remembered forever with the stains of sexual sin (Rom. 12:1).
- Ministry Regrets. If the Lord is speaking to you about sharing your faith with a classmate, take the opportunity. It may never come again.
- Mentor Regrets. Submit yourself to a good pastor and others you trust to mold you and develop you as a leader. Now is your greatest time of learning and personal development.
- Maximum Regrets. Never leave yourself wondering what could have happened—in school, athletics, church, or any other part of life—if you would have given all you had to give to succeed.
- Media Regrets. Don’t ever allow yourself to look back at your youth as a time when all you did was watch TV, play video games, and go to movies. Do something productive in your life, along with your entertainment.
Source: Every Teenager’s Little Black Book of Hard to Find Information
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.
