Protection. We guard our home car, skin, and even time, but sometimes we neglect to guard one of the most important areas—our thought life. We need to place a guard over our thought life.
Here’s How:
- Take control. Don’t allow your thoughts to wander like an out-of-control car. Grab hold of the steering wheel. The Word of God says to take captive every thought and to bring it into the obedience of Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5.) You may not be able to control every thought that comes in, but you can determine whether or not it stays.
- Guard your gate. What’s the gate of your mind? It’s your eyes and ears. Don’t put junk into your thought life by throwing open the gate. Filter what comes in. Remember the computer term G.I.G.O.: garbage in, garbage out.
- Thought replacement. When thoughts of fear or doubt come your way, replace them with love and faith. You cannot have two complete thoughts in your mind at the same time. For good thought replacement ideas, see Philippians 4:8.
Source: Every Teenager’s Little Black Book on Sex and Dating
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.