Why is it that when you’re having fun, time seems to fly by, but when you get to school it seems the clock has stopped or is moving backwards? Simple: when you enjoy something, you don’t care how long it takes.
Here are four ways to make school more enjoyable:
- Set goals for your grades and achievement. If you have a vision and you focus on getting there, you’ll move at a different pace (Phil. 3:14).
- Create personal competitions in your classes and with your homework. As you work on each project, motivate yourself with a challenge of some kind. Set yourself up against the clock, your previous grade, or even a fellow student.
- Get involved in something at school you really can look forward to. It may be sports, a club activity, cheerleading, school council—in short, do something you like.
- Go to school each day with a good mental attitude. Your mind and your decisions control your emotions. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As he thinks in this heart, so is he” (NKJV). Decide each day, “This is the day the Lord has made—I will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24)!
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.
