Mad About Marriage and Lifestyle Magazine co-host Gayle Tucker died on April 10 at age 60, according to her husband, Mike.  

“I’m sorry to announce that Gayle Tucker passed away late this afternoon,” Mike said, according to Adventist Review.  

Gayle, who battled pancreatic cancer, was part of the Faith For Today television network since 2009.  

“She was always with Mike—but she had a vision and passion for ministry and for reaching people in relevant ways,” said Daniel R. Jackson, President of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America. “She had a tremendous impact on couples. As a woman, she demonstrated a level of ministry commitment that is a model.” 

According to the Mad About Marriage website, Gayle devoted her life to ministry, after serving for 16 years as pastor of administration, music and worship at the Arlington Seventh-day Adventist Church in Arlington, Texas.  

She was the first woman to become a Credentialed Commissioned Minister in the Southwestern Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, according to her biography. Gayle has a background in elementary education and has made family relationships an emphasis in her ministry.  

Before her death, Gayle and Mike traveled North America for several years as co-presenters for From This Day Forward and Love For A Lifetime marriage conferences.  

Mike posted to Facebook after his wife’s death:  

7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;
8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;
9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
11 For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
12 So death works in us, but life in you.
13 But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I BELIEVED, THEREFORE I SPOKE,” we also believe, therefore we also speak,
14 knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you.
15 For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is bspreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.
16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Few people have so completely lost the world but gained their soul as Ali Husnain has (name changed for security reasons). The son of prominent Shia Muslim parents in Pakistan, Husnain decided at age 17 to convert to Christianity. His family thought he was kidding and worked hard to change his mind, but Husnain was fully committed to Christ.

For that, he became a target for terrorist groups in his city. God helped Husnain to survive an assassination attempt, but ultimately he was forced to abandon his home and his family for the sake of Christ. Husnain escaped to London, where he now lives, but he says he wants to go back and share the message of Christ with his family and nation.

“When I came to England, I had a dream from God,” Husnain says. “I saw myself back in Pakistan preaching the gospel. … I lost my family. We don’t talk much, and they hate me. But I want to go back and turn their hate to love. I want to show them I’m still their son and show them the peace and love of God. I strongly feel that from God.”

In the meantime, Husnain has been sharing his testimony with others. He believes that his life is a testament to God’s incredible power of salvation.

“I want people to take hope and have a strong faith,” he says. “I loved everything in my life. When I was 17, I had to leave everything. It was a really hard time, but I’ve grown from it. Now I can pass my experience to other people. Our God is a strong God. If He protected me, then He will protect you.”

Husnain tells his full story in The Cost: My Life on a Terrorist Hit List, which he co-authored with J. Chester. The Cost is now available wherever Christian books are sold. —Taylor Berglund

Today, I’m sharing a recent interview I conducted with Kyle Winkler. He is a fresh new voice with keen insight into the root causes of insecurity.

His recent book, Silence Satan is the No. 1 spiritual warfare book on Amazon.

I think you will enjoy hearing him today.

Click here to listen to the interview.

P.S. Do you subscribe to Ministry Today? Will you please consider doing it? 

With the link below you will receive my special publisher’s offer. Our baseline subscription is $. My offer to you is a one-year subscription (6 issues) for $.

I’d like to know what you think of Ministry Today and would love to hear from you.

Please click here today for the Dr. Greene special.

Today’s Scripture

“My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4-5).

Platform Tip No. 96

How many times have we all said at one time or another, “If you need anything at all, let me know.”

Our servant-hearts beat to make a difference in the lives of others.

If we could, we would show up in the homes of our people every day and share wisdom and counsel.

While we can’t do that, we can show up every day on a platform and provide a message of hope.

When we care about people who need help and we have demonstrated that we show up every day with a relevant message, we introduce them to change for the better.

That’s the power of a message with frequency.

Do you want to learn more about developing your personal platform?

Send for my free series of lessons titled, “The Fundamentals of Creating, Curating and Developing Content for Multiple Platforms.” Send your request to: platform@.

We will not share your email address with anyone. 

{eoa}

With President Obama and Senate Democrats attempting to turn up the heat on Senate Republicans over the nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, there are some cracks forming—on the liberal side of the argument.

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who also was nominated by Obama, expressed what most would call a complaint last weekend. And that complaint was directed at Garland’s nomination.

“I, for one, do think there is a disadvantage from having five Catholics, three Jews, and everyone from an Ivy League school,” she said during a talk at Brooklyn Law School.

Sotomayor then complained about the lack of criminal law experience on the high court. Her argument for was that varied backgrounds would help justices to consider issues differently, based on their personal experiences. The late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia—whose vacancy is now the hot topic of Washington, D.C.—also made a call for “diversity” shortly before his death, although he was only seeking to break the Ivy League’s grip on the court.

“A different perspective can permit you to more fully understand the arguments that are before you and help you articulate your position in a way that everyone will understand,” Sotomayor said.

Although she did not specifically mention Garland, he seemed to be the target of her comments. Many liberals have complained about his selection, which they view as “insufficiently diverse” to their liking, which prompted an awkward defense from Obama last week.

“Yeah, he’s a white guy, but he’s a really outstanding jurist,” he said during a speech at the University of Chicago prior to Sotomayor’s speech. “I’m sorry. I mean, you know, I think that’s important.

“But at no point did I say: ‘Oh, you know what? I need a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot. Can you find me one?’ I mean, that’s just not how I’ve approached it.”

As for the mounting pressure on Senate Republicans, particularly on Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), there was a quiet meeting Tuesday morning in the Senate Dining Room that was closed off from the press. There, the senator met with Garland for a previously agreed-upon breakfast meeting.

Grassley’s committee press secretary, Taylor Foy, issued the following statement following the get together:

“Both Senator Grassley and Judge Garland arrived early so the meeting began at 7:45 a.m. in the Senate Dining Room. The meeting was cordial and pleasant. As he indicated last week, Grassley explained why the Senate won’t be moving forward during this hyper-partisan election year. Grassley thanked Judge Garland for his service. The meeting ended at 8:55 a.m.”

The man accused of fatally shooting three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic last year said he hoped that when he died fetuses in heaven would thank him for stopping more abortions, court documents showed on Monday.

Robert Lewis Dear, 57, made the comments to police after he surrendered following a shooting rampage and five-hour siege last November at the Colorado Springs clinic that also left nine others injured.

Dear is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.

Among those killed were a young mother, a U.S. Army veteran and a police officer from a nearby university who responded to the scene.

The new disclosures emerged after El Paso County District Court Judge Gilbert Martinez agreed to unseal arrest and search warrant affidavits in the case.

Dear also told police that he was upset with Planned Parenthood for performing abortions and “the selling of body parts,” according to the documents.

He said he admired Paul Hill, an anti-abortion extremist who was executed in Florida in 2003 for the murder of an abortion provider in 1994, police said.

A wounded victim told police that Dear approached her in the clinic parking lot and opened fire after saying that she “shouldn’t have come here today,” the documents said.

Dear ambushed several responding police officers, and was wearing a homemade ballistic vest comprised of silver coins and duct tape, police said.

In outbursts at earlier hearings and in media interviews, Dear called himself “a warrior for the babies,” claiming he was guilty and that there would be no trial. He also said he wanted to fire his court-appointed lawyers and defend himself.

Martinez ordered the South Carolina native to undergo a competency examination at the state mental hospital to determine if he was fit to act as his own lawyer.

The court-appointed evaluation deemed him incompetent, his lawyers said in court filings.

In an interview with the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper last month, Dear indicated that he may have changed his mind and might not fire his lawyers.

“Yeah, I want to be my own attorney,” Dear told the newspaper. “But if my attorney will start following my rules and doing what I want, then maybe I’ll work a deal with him.”

Martinez will rule whether Dear is competent sometime after an April 28 hearing on the issue.

© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

This will probably sound crazy. You should have goals for conflict with your wife.

I’m not saying you need to seek out conflict. I’m not saying you have to enjoy it. (Quite frankly, if you did enjoy conflict, there would probably be something else wrong.) I am saying when you find yourself in the middle of one, you should have some goals in mind.

Psychologists, athletes and coaches, teachers and managers, and even the Marines have a shared appreciation for the power of goals. Know where you’re headed. Know what you’re trying to accomplish. It can change everything.

So how about during a fight with your wife? Many times, it feels like the highest possible goal is simply to get out of conflict as quickly as possible. That makes sense. You don’t want it to last forever, and sometimes, it’s exactly the right approach to try to cool things down.

But consider a few different goals for and during conflict that might help your marriage:

1. Move toward your wife. Don’t keep score. Conflict inherently involves something that’s between us, causing separation. A difference of opinion, a hurt, competing agendas. Make it your goal to move toward your wife in the face of obstacles. One way of arguing (not a healthy one) is to tally who is right and who is wrong, score the 12 rounds, and see who won the fight.

A better way is to carry an attitude of I’m not letting anything get between us. Not this moment of frustration. Not fatigue. Not the kids. Not sex. Not a difference of opinion about where we vacation this year. No issue is keeping me from you. Hear the difference? In conflict, if your goal is to get closer to your wife, to move toward her despite any obstacle, the direction of your intent is already bent toward resolution rather than simply making yourself heard … or scoring better points.

2. Do and say what will benefit her. Don’t try to get her to change. So often, we expose things in our spouses in order to benefit ourselves. “You’re making my life miserable when you act like this!” We fight, trying to get the other person to see how off base and hurtful they are to us. This isn’t always wrong, but there’s a better goal.

During conflict, say things and behave in a way that is intended to benefit your wife more than yourself.  What will be advantageous for her to hear? Sometimes, that’s confrontational truth. But it comes out so differently if you’re offering it as a life-giving assistance instead of self-defensive assault.

And in conflict, what does your wife need you to do or be? Offer that instead of doing the things that merely make you feel better in the moment. You might find yourself actually staying involved in the conflict longer in order to make sure your wife knows she’s not alone. Or you might find that the conversation goes to a deeper and better place as you address the underlying issues that fueled the conflict in the first place.

3. Repair a breach. Don’t aggravate old wounds. Doctors have long noted that when a broken bone heals, calcium deposits repair the bone more strongly at the very site of the fracture. If you think of conflict as a fracture in the relationship, make it your goal to heal the break and repair the breach.

Often times we can make heated conflict an excuse to dump more frustrations that we’ve been secreting around. Instead of thinking, How can I add to the case I’m making? Change your goal to one of healing the breach. That doesn’t necessarily mean capitulation. Wounds often require painful scrubbing and cleaning to heal. But work toward healing, not intentionally gouging old injuries.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds, after all. Keeping goals like these in mind when you find yourself in a conflict with your wife can help you keep steering toward health even in the middle of difficult times.

For the original article, visit .

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden belt near a football stadium in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden on Tuesday, killing at least four people, witnesses and a security source said.

Ten people were wounded in the attack, which appeared to target young army recruits waiting for buses outside a military checkpoint in the city’s north, the witnesses and source added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but jihadist militants have carried out similar suicide bombings in Aden in the past.

Such groups are not involved in a nationwide truce that started between the main warring parties in Yemen this week. {eoa}

© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

Egypt has Khokha, India has Chamki and now Afghanistan is getting its first home-grown “Sesame Street” Muppet—a six-year-old girl called Zari.

Zari, a curious and lively girl whose name means “shimmering” in the Dari and Pashto languages, makes her debut on Thursday on the “Baghch-e-Simsim” Afghan local co-production of the long-running U.S. educational TV show for pre-schoolers.

For a small girl, Zari has a big mission.

She’s there to promote female empowerment in a nation where women and children were almost completely excluded from educational opportunities some 15 years ago, according to a 2014 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) report. Afghanistan now has about five million kids under the age of five, but about one-third of them are not in school.

Zari will be featured in “Sesame Street” segments about health, exercise and well-being, and will interview a doctor and other professionals to find out what she would need to do to become one herself.

“The exciting part about Zari is that she is modeling for young girls that it is wonderful to go to school and that it’s ok to dream about having a career,” Sherrie Westin, Sesame Workshop’s executive vice president of global impact and philanthropy, told Reuters.

“It’s so powerful that the first Afghan Muppet is a girl,” Westin added.

With her purple face and tangle of brown, blue and orange wool hair, Zari will wear clothes ranging from casual to traditional, and will be veiled where appropriate, said officials fromSesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind “Sesame Street.”

She joins “Baghch-e-Simsin” at the beginning of its fifth season. The show, which receives funding from the U.S. Department of State, is the most watched TV program among young children in Afghanistan, where 81 percent of children aged three to seven have seen it, according to Sesame Workshop.

Research has shown that previous seasons of the show have begun to open the minds of Afghan fathers about the value of educating their daughters, Westin said.

Sesame Workshop partnered with the Afghan education ministry in the hope of reducing any cultural resistance to Zari and the ideas she will help to introduce.

Zari follows female Muppets like Chamki in India and Kami in South Africa who play a key role in “Sesame Street” co-productions around the world where favorite characters like Elmo and Big Bird appear alongside locally-produced content.

Westin said TV shows like “Sesame Street,” which launched in the United States in 1969, can open minds and influence attitudes in a non-threatening way.

“Part of the power of the broadcast and Zari’s potential as a role model is to reach children and parents where they may not have access to other educational content,” she said. {eoa}

© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.

Last month, a Michigan abortionist published a statement that abortion clinics are “one incineration company away from being closed.”

Immediately, the pro-life group Created Equal launched #ProjectWeakLink, a public information campaign aimed at targeting Planned Parenthood’s largest waste disposal contractor, Stericycle. The S&P listed Fortune 500 company and its CEO, Charles Alutto, were then subjected to a public shaming campaign for enabling Planned Parenthood’s killing of the unborn.

Just two days later, Created Equal was notified by Stericycle’s attorneys that the company was seeking a temporary restraining order in the 19th Judicial Circuit Court in Lake County, Illinois, to stop the campaign. The Thomas More Society then stepped in to defend the group in court.

“No business has the right to be ‘free from public criticism of its practices.’ Companies have a responsibility to be accountable to the public,” Thomas More Society Special Counsel Peter Breen said. “When businesses like Stericycle engage in practices to which the public objects, citizens have a right to express displeasure, deliver bad reviews and ask others to speak out against the business as well. Abortion industry partners like Stericycle are not exempt.”

The “David vs. Goliath” courtroom match-up teamed the small advocacy group and the Chicago-based pro-bono attorneys of the Thomas More Society against Stericycle’s legal team headed by former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Scott Lassar. Breen argued for Created Equal, attacking on First Amendment free speech grounds and against the claims by Stericycle’s CEO that he was a victim of “false accusations.”

Judge Margaret Marcouiller heard the arguments, and rejected the request for the temporary restraining order, but gave Stericycle’s attorneys two weeks to amend their original complaint. Read her decision here. Created Equal may now resume its awareness campaign against Stericycle’s practices, while Thomas More Society attorneys seek to have the case against the group dismissed entirely.

“We will not be bullied into silence,” Created Equal National Director Mark Harrington said after the injunction was denied. “This lawsuit confirms that Stericycle is more interested in doing the dirty work for Planned Parenthood than protecting their image as a respectable waste disposal company. 

“Further public exposure of their sloppy and unethical business practices in a lawsuit is far more damaging to Stericycle’s image than ceasing to dispose of aborted babies for Planned Parenthood. If Stericycle is really concerned about their image, they need to cease transporting and disposing of aborted babies for Planned Parenthood. The campaign continues.”

Michael Snyder, author of the Economic Collapse Blog and The Rapture Verdict says believers must endure all seven years of the Great Tribulation prophesied in Revelation.  

“I’m telling you right now this book (The Rapture Verdict) has been shaking me like none other,” Revelation in The News host Zack Drew says. ” … It needs to be in every person’s home. You wrote this book that details why, it’s been changing my own views, because I didn’t believe this, I believed something different.” 

Christians will not “magically escape” the chilling prophecies of the end times, Snyder says.  

Watch the video to see why.