Children and Bad Therapy
Our kids need good parenting, not ‘experts’ and endless medication.
Really loving your child might well mean telling the experts to get out of the way – or telling the drug pushers to butt out because there might be better ways to proceed. And good parenting will often mean just letting our kids be kids: letting them learn by trial and error, by failure, by... Continue Reading
Felling Folly with Wisdom
The path for advance can only be made as wisdom – skillful godly living – fells the trees of foolishness and folly, whose roots have often tripped and ensnared the young.
Wisdom is not the pursuit of the old and gray in hair, but is best found in the formative years of development — from childhood onward. In the pages of the Bible the voice of wisdom cries aloud: “Young Men, Listen!”Parents and churches need to harmonize their voices with wisdom. Boys and men, enlisted in... Continue Reading
“A Hedging and Fencing”: How Charles Spurgeon Promoted Meaningful Membership
Meaningful membership is not about maintaining a pristine church roll. It’s about helping pilgrims finish their journey to the Celestial City.
So often, Spurgeon saw great crowds turn out for his open-air preaching. But he often observed that after the service, the people would simply disperse. There was little opportunity for follow-up. But at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, as people were converted, they were baptized, brought into the church, discipled, and engaged in the work of the... Continue Reading
3 Possible Approaches the Church Can Take to Cultural Shifts
If we want to engage people, we need to spend time with them. Listening, asking, and answering questions. And do so with humility.
Jesus was a master at engaging people within their culture, whether they approached Him as friend or foe. He related to people without typical cultural filters. Even His primary followers had different backgrounds and livelihoods. A classic example is Jesus engaging a woman of questionable character at Jacob’s well near Sychar in the region of... Continue Reading
Why I Do Not Use the Word Ethnicity
The four common marks of a biblical nation are a common birth, a common border, a common language, and a common religion.
To pursue this objective the word nation was replaced by the word ethnicity. But it won’t work! It may have some success in Christian families, in the church were members of various nations all change their allegiance to Christ, and it may have some success within a common geographical boundary where the Ten Commandments of... Continue Reading
The Christian Nationalist Panic
Though I have held out hope that the “Christian nationalism” discourse would start to die down as its shortcomings became evident, I presently see no signs of such relief.
Christianity should not only influence what we support but also how we engage in the political sphere, namely, in a spirit of humility, charity, and good-faith deliberation. Christians should reject Christian nationalism, but not allow the moral panic surrounding it to shame them out of fully engaging in the public square, and doing so as... Continue Reading
His Grace Is Enough
We need grace to enter the kingdom of God and we need grace to continue in the Christian life.
We live in a cynical world, it is easy to become cynical even in our thoughts of God. We can drag the Lord’s love and actions down to our level. You can even think about the Lord’s giving us grace like a parent who in frustration overlooks our transgressions. The Lord’s grace is a deliberate... Continue Reading
What Happened to Prayer Meeting?
The Bible emphasizes the importance of prayer, especially corporate prayer.
Prayer is verbalized dependence on God. If we are not praying together, are our churches truly depending on God? We have strategies, seminars, books, and videos. We have programs designed to fill any lack in our churches. But no programs can replace God. And only prayer accesses His power (Ephesians 6:10-18) and His wisdom (James... Continue Reading
How then Shall We Educate?
The Problem with Parenting Minimalism
It’s not enough to know what is good and what is true; we must come to love what is good and love what is true. We are now in the realm of the affections, and suddenly the parenting terrain is vast and the task before us utterly daunting. For now we will no longer be satisfied with filling our... Continue Reading
The Father’s Gift to the Son
Believers are the Father’s gift to the Son, a gift that is not to be lost or destroyed.
The concept of believers being the gifts of the Father to the Son forms a central element of Jesus’ high-priestly prayer in John 17. Jesus makes repeated references to this “giving”: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give... Continue Reading
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