Jacob Hardman

This post is gonna be a little different than my other ones. In this post I want to acknowledge someone who is so often taken for granted. This is for my mom. The Woman Who Fears the Lord   An excellent wife who can find?      She is far more precious than jewels.   The heart of her husband trusts in her,      and he will have no lack of gain.   She does him good, and not harm,      all the days of her life.   She seeks wool and flax,      and works with willing hands.   She is like the ships of the merchant;      she brings her food from afar.   She rises while it is yet night      and provides food for her household      and portions for her maidens.   She considers a field and buys it;      with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.   She dresses herself wit...

Do you have a hard time trusting God? I know I do. To play devil's advocate for a second, imagine how ludicrous that sounds. Trusting in an unseen being. A being that we can never 100 percent prove exists. A being we can't see, can't feel, can't hear, can't touch. A being we can't comprehend or understand. Faith is a concept lost to most of humanity. We as a species demand proof. We need to see that things exist. We spend countless years doing experiments and studying nature to prove that things do or don't exist. And we are stubborn. How many flawed scientific theories have we held to simply because we can't find an alternative? Or because we refuse to believe the alternative? The truth of the matter is that we as a species crave comfort. We like everything in our lives to fit in a box that we can explain. We want nothing to surprise us. We are afraid of the unknown. The unknown is scary. Who knows what could happen? Think about it. What's the bes...

What is love? The question mankind has been trying to answer for pretty much all of time. Countless books, magazines, songs, movies and people have tried to explain love. But part of what makes love so good and amazing is that you can't really explain it. And you can't really understand or always control it. However, over the course of time we've developed some attributes of love. Our American culture today especially worships love. We love to be in love. And we love to be loved. But like so many other good and perfect things, our culture has perverted and twisted what love truly is. Think about it. In our culture today, love is a very selfish things. So often we hear phrases like "Don't I deserve to be happy?" and "What about my needs?" We are naturally, as human beings, very selfish. And unfortunately, this tendency is twice as damaging in a romantic relationship. Our society today tells us to get what we can in love and get out...

Do you know what I really hate? Worry. Worry worms it's way into your soul and turns an otherwise perfect day into a nail-bitten nightmare. The worst part is that we so often worry about things that we shouldn't be worried about or things we can't control. We worry about our jobs, our relationships, our futures, our reputations, our budget, our faith, the list goes on and on... Basically, we worry about pretty much everything. And it can be a paralyzing fear. It can fill our stomachs with dread and sour our mood and give us many tears and sleepless nights. How many times have I let worry ruin my day? Too many times to count. The ironic thing is that often times I will worry for hours or days or weeks about something, only to find that everything worked itself out in the end and all my worrying was for naught. I mean really, when has my worrying ever helped or changed a situation? Never. The only thing it has done is destroy my peace of mind. But normally I can't help ...

Answer me honestly. Do you struggle with self-image? Probably. We all do at one point or another. It's human nature to look for approval from other people. We so often find our worth in what other people think of us. When a person compliments us or our looks we experience the heights of happiness. We feel confident. Secure. But when someone insults our physical selves we feel worthless. Unsure of ourselves and who we are. So many times we go to great lengths to change the way we appear to fit in more with what society says is beautiful. I'm guilty of it too. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with changing the way we look. Getting a haircut, changing our style of clothing, even getting a tattoo. But why are we doing these things? Is it just to feel accepted by a society that is constantly changing? Think about it. What was considered to be stylish and beautiful 40, 20, even 10 years ago is now considered to be silly and ridiculous. (Take it from a guy who still thi...