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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. I compiled some of that feedback and came up with a list of reasons we fail at family devotions. We Make it Too Hard I …
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 about it. For something so simple family devotions sure are hard. I think the best way to learn family devotions is by example: Find out …
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 reply, “So excited! Can’t wait to meet the baby!” It’s a new tradition, and a good one I think. We get to rejoice with those …
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 church so that he can take advantage of its children. His words are worth reading and worth considering. The most common technique for sexual offenders …
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 as a family at least twice a week? Two of us put up hands—me and the only other Christian in the class. Everyone else told about how their family …
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 clean boundaries between these four terms to be an exegetical fallacy and I would not dare to contradict him.) I have been thinking about all …
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 topic of deciding on family size and what’s right for your family has come up among ourselves and our friends. It seems different for everyone. …
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 3 common positions on the age of baptism.) Many children raised in a Christian home—perhaps even most of them—profess faith at a young age. Many …
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 matter how young to, on the other end, not baptizing them until they are practically independent from their parents. I’ve linked to statements from solid churches …
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 to deny it leaves us prone to fall into any number of other radically false teachings. If we can read the Bible and walk away …