Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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A key component of every parent’s task is helping our children form good habits. A key component of every Christian parent’s task is helping our children form the good habit of personal devotions. We are convinced that our children are sinners in need of God’s saving grace, we are convinced that God’s Word is powerful, we are convinced that God is pleased to use his Word to convict our children of their sin and draw them to his Son. This …
Yesterday I began to look at Michael Pearl’s To Train Up a Child (click here to read it). My interest in this book is based in part on its popularity and in part on the way in which it very clearly highlights how faulty foundational beliefs will lead to faulty actions. In the first part of the review I showed that Pearl advocates a particular method of training children and that he distinguishes this training from discipline. Today I want …
What if I told you that there is a parenting technique you can follow that will give you “a renewed vision for your family—no more raised voices, no contention, no bad attitudes, fewer spankings, a cheerful atmosphere in the home, and total obedience from your children?” And what if I told you that this technique “always works with every child?” And what if I added that this technique comes with God’s own seal of approval because it is “the same …
It is unlikely that I am the only father who is more than a little bit intimidated at the thought of raising daughters. Terrified and overwhelmed is more like it. If I didn’t have strong, Christian role models to emulate (my own parents among them), I might just despair. One of the early lessons I have learned (I’m still relatively new to this—my girls are just 9 and 5) is the value of daddy dates, which is to say, taking …
There was a time when homeschooling was a very lonely place to be. Perhaps in some contexts it still is. In today’s Christian circles though, at least the circles I’ve been exposed to locally and across the continent, it seems that homeschooling has entered the mainstream and for many families is now the default option. Speaking from experience, as the father of 3 children who all attend local public schools, I can attest that public schooling can be a very …
Here is another roundup of 30 Minute Reviews. These are books that I did not have time or opportunity to read from beginning to end. Instead, I tried to spend at least 30 minutes with each–enough to get a bit of a sense of what the book is all about. The Mighty Weakness of John Knox by Douglas Bond – This book marks the third volume in The Long Line of Godly Men Prolifes–a series that accompanies Steven Lawson’s A Long Line …
Last week I posted a review of The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West, a book that takes a hard look at our cultural obsession with immaturity. That review garnered quite a bit of attention, so I thought it might be interesting to go into the archives and pull out a review of another book I read some time ago, one with a fair bit of overlap–Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax. It takes a look at what may well …
I have just one memory that involves Ted Kluck. A year ago, maybe a little bit less, he and I were together in Chicago at a small gathering of young(ish) Christian authors. Ten or fifteen of us were gathered there, sitting around a group of tables in a hotel conference room. We had the opportunity to spend an evening with D.A. Carson, the D.A. Carson, to ask him any question we wanted. It’s no small thing to have open access, …
In the years since I began reviewing books, I have read titles on a wide variety of topics. But it occurred to me as I considered Russell Moore’s title Adopted for Life that I had never read a book that dealt entirely with adoption. Sure, adoption has factored into books on family and books on theology, but never had I read a full-length treatment of the subject. Having heard so much positive press surrounding Adopted for Life I thought it …
This is the year of John Calvin. In celebration of the 500th anniversary of his birth, many ministries are holding conferences to discuss his life and impact and many Christian publishers are releasing biographies of the man who did so much to form the Christian faith and the Western world. Reformation Heritage Books has taken a unique route by producing a biography targeted at children from ages 7 to 10. Written by Simonetta Carr and illustrated by Emanuele Taglietti, the …