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  • 10 Lessons on Parenting Little Ones

    My youngest child is about to turn 10 years old and will soon be joining her two siblings in the double digits. This means that Aileen and I have graduated—we have graduated from parenting little ones to parenting big ones. Lots of parenting remains, of course, but the little years are now in the past.…

  • An Unexpected Blessing of Parenting

    There is a lot about parenting I expected. I had been tipped off to many of the joys and many of the sorrows. I knew it would require long days and late nights; I knew it would draw out both strengths and weaknesses in my character; I knew it would expose a part of my…

  • Boys Need Their Moms

    Thinking back, I wonder if people thought I was a bit of a mama’s boy. I grew up in a stable home and loved and respected both of my parents. I regularly spent time with each of them. But I was always closer to my mother. If this was true when I was young, it…

  • Protect Your Family With Circle

    The Internet has become an indispensable resource for the home and family, but every parent has grappled with properly managing and overseeing that resource. We all know the dangers that lurk out there, yet still believe in the value of maintaining access and the necessity of training our children to use it wisely. As the…

  • Custom-Crafted Kids

    Pepperoni on the whole thing, sausage on one half, mushroom on the other. Thin crust, extra cheese, and throw in a couple of the spicy dipping sauces. And why don’t you make it the combo that comes with a couple of cans of Mountain Dew…” Just imagine if you could order children the way you…

  • Why We Fail at Family Devotions

    I have written about family devotions a number of times (most recently in How We Do Family Devotions), and it always leads to a response. Whenever I write about the subject, I immediately receive emails and messages from people who have tried and failed, or who are still trying and are convinced they are failing.…

  • How We Do Family Devotions

    I am a believer in family devotions. So are most of you, I’m sure. But when I talk to other Christians, and especially to men, I find that this little family tradition is the source of a lot of regret and frustration. Many Christians feel that familiar sense of guilt whenever they stop to think…

  • What Is Your Exit Plan

    What Is Your Exit Plan?

    You are obviously going to snap a picture of yourself when you’re pregnant—or of your wife when she’s pregnant—and share it with the world through Facebook or Instagram or your network of choice. You know the picture: standing in profile with the shirt pulled tight so we can see the bulge of the belly and…

  • The Techniques of a Sexual Predator

    I hate to bring bad news on an otherwise good day, but I think this merits attention. In his book On Guard: Preventing and Responding to Children Abuse at Church, Deepak Reju provides a look at the techniques of a sexual predator, and focuses on the way a predator will prepare or groom an entire…

  • 5 Reasons We Eat Together as a Family

    It is one of my clearest memories from twelfth grade (apart from the one I mention at the end of this article). It was my final year of high school but my first year at Ancaster Public High School. I was in sociology class when the teacher asked this: How many people here eat dinner…

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    A Neglected Grace

    Family worship. For some it evokes a sense of dread, memories of long, boring, tiring times sitting around a table while listening to dad drone on and on. For some it evokes a sense of guilt, false starts and failures and giving up. For a few it evokes joy, sweet times of family fellowship and…

  • Shades of Love

    Shades of Love

    Over the past few weeks I have found myself thinking a lot about love. C.S. Lewis told us that according to the Bible there are four kinds of love: phileo, eros, agape, and storge. But I haven’t been thinking of love in such neat categories and under such clear headings. (Plus, D.A. Carson declared the…

  • How Many Children Should We Have?

    I have written often on the subject of knowing and doing the will of God. Sometimes, though, particular situations arise in which we need very specific applications of those general principles. A reader of this site recently asked me about how to think about how many children to have. Here is what he wrote: The…

  • When Should My Children Be Baptized?

    Every Christian parent longs for his children to trust in Christ and to make this profession public. In Baptist churches, such a profession is made public through baptism. One of the ongoing discussions among Baptists relates to the age at which children can or should be baptized. (Here’s a brief article that lays out the…

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    At What Age Should We Baptize?

    Though by definition baptists agree that a person should be baptized only after confessing faith in Jesus Christ, there are several views on how old a believer must be, or should be, before such a confession can be trusted and acted upon. The views range, on the one end, from baptizing a confessing believer no…

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    Daddy Dates

    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…

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    Hello, I Love You

    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…

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    Amazing Dad

    A few days ago I received in the mail a copy of Amazing Dad by Stephanie Byrd. This is a self-published book and by far the exception among the self-published books I receive–it is really and truly good. Byrd has combed through the letters of the great statesman William Wilberforce, the letters to his children,…

  • Leadership in the Home a Godly Man Leads

    Leadership in the Home – A Godly Man Leads

    This is the third article in a series dealing with leadership in the home. As we saw yesterday, a husband is called to lead his wife. Though this is an unpopular statement in this day and in this culture, it is one that Christians must affirm. Male headship is taught so clearly in Scripture that…

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    Get Outta My Face!

    I have spent the last thirteen years of my life trying to forget my teenage years. It’s not that these years were really so bad and it’s not like I went through a period of utter rebellion as do so many teens (for which I give thanks to God). It’s more that I had little…