Can You Keep Your Kids from “Running Away” from God after Graduation?

“Make sure you shut the door!” This phrase is uttered a few dozen times a day in my home. With the warmer Spring weather we have children coming in and out of the house all the time. We also have a dog. She is an extremely curious, 1 year-old Boxer (fawn) named Bristol, who very much enjoys being outside. If the door is left open, or allowed to close slowly, Bristol will seize her opportunity to run out the door and then she’s off. She runs down the alley, through the neighborhood, off to experience the freedom of self-discovery. We have been told by neighbors that she sometimes just joins their family on their walk or goes into their yard to play. She seizes her opportunity.

 

However, there are times when she doesn’t run. Actually there is only one time. This is when someone with authority is standing in front of the door or close enough to catch her quickly. In this case she just sits there waiting for us to get distracted or leave our post. She is most certainly restrained by the law and not trained by grace.   Continue at Erik Raymond

How a Dad Loves a Prodigal

My dad and I are really close. In fact, we're so close that I worked for him doing all of his bookkeeping for the year before my twins were born. I loved talking to him nearly every day, especially since he lives so far away from me now. But we weren't always so close.

I was once a prodigal daughter.

For nearly two years I ran from my parents, family, and the Lord. I liked sin and liked living in sin. Talking to my dad (and mom) meant conviction, and I wanted nothing to do with it. If you peered through the window of my past you would have seen that I perfectly fit the profile of the son in Luke 15:11-32. I was wild, impulsive, and opposed to authority on every level.

A quick survey of the families in your church would probably reveal that many have or had children who in some way have strayed from the faith of their upbringing. Parenting is hard work with no real guarantee of the outcome. While every situation is unique and has its own challenges, one thing is certain—prodigal children need to know they are loved. And my parents made sure of that.   Continue at Courtney Reissig

Why Family Is 'Irreplaceable'

"If the church could just recapture that vision and embrace God's design for family," says Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, "we could revolutionize our society." Daly says that was the thinking behind Irreplaceable, Focus on the Family's new documentary film (and its companion small-group experience, The Family Project). When his team first started work on these initiatives, they had three concepts at the forefront of their minds: recover, renew, and reclaim.

I recently corresponded with Glenn Stanton, co-author of both Irreplaceable and The Family Project and director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family, about these projects and the current state of the family.   Continue at Jim Daly

Protect Your Family with the Skydog

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 Internet matures, we are gaining some great new tools to help us.

Skydog is designed to help parents manage and oversee their family’s digital lifestyle. It is comprised of two complementary components: a wireless router (to replace your existing router) and an online app (accessible via computer or mobile devices). Between the two of them they offer a powerful and accessible suite of tools.   Continue at Tim Challies

Failing with Family

As a phone conversation with my sister was winding down, she offered stinging final words after debriefing over some family drama: "Well, we all know you're the spiritual one in the family." I sighed an internal ugh, knowing that she really meant to say self-righteous one. In an attempt to defend what I thought she was implying, I launched into a stream of apologetic clarifications. In the end, it felt like an exercise in futility. I knew the reputation I had forged years earlier in much less sanctified times had never been forgotten.

The truth is that I had deservedly earned the title. As a young, arrogant, spiritually immature and self-assured believer, I had driven my nose up at my families' failures and displayed enough told-you-so-disappointment that I'm surprised they didn't excommunicate me altogether. It wasn't until I had experienced quite a few of my own failures that God thankfully shut down my pharisaical rantings for good. Looking back on those early days, I still feel ashamed at the ways I disgraced the name of Christ and the reputation of believers.     Continue at Ronnie Martin

No Moms and Dads Needed to Make a Family?

There's is a video trailer for a new documentary titled Breeders: A Subclass of Women? The film takes a critical look at the issue of surrogacy and how the practice turns babies and women into commodities. Here’s a description from the film’s website:

Surrogacy is fast becoming one of the major issues of the 21st century—celebrities and everyday people are increasingly using surrogates to build their families. But the practice is fraught with complex implications for women, children, and families. What is the impact on the women who serve as surrogates and on the children who are born from surrogacy? In what ways might money complicate things? What about altruistic surrogacy done for a family member or close friend? Is surrogacy a beautiful, loving act or does it simply degrade pregnancy to a service and a baby to a product? Can we find a middle ground? Should we even look for one?    Continue at Denny Burk

The 4 Most Important Parenting Lessons I Learned in 2013

This October marked two years home with our youngest boys, adopted from Uganda in 2011. The first year was pure survival. We spend most of our days just trying to make it, adjusting to our new normal. This year was different.

Over the last twelve months, my husband Joel and I realized we needed to learn how to parent differently if our family was going to do more than simply survive. Our trusted, traditional parenting model simply didn’t work. We a needed fresh approach.

We began reading about parenting children from “hard places”—children like ours who have endured significant early trauma, and don’t respond to  traditional, consequence-based methods. Thanks to the work of Dr. Karyn Purvis, and her Trust-Based Relational (TBRI) model of parenting, we were able to view our children with new, more compassionate eyes. We began to see progress, and finally felt like we had found an approach that made sense. Continue at Megan Hyatt Miller

My Take: Why My Family is Quitting the Boy Scouts

Editor's Note: John Stemberger is an Eagle Scout and president of On My Honor, a coalition of concerned parents, Scout Leaders, Scouting donors, Eagle Scouts and others affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America who are united in their support of Scouting’s timeless values and their opposition to open homosexuality in the Scouts. Find more information at www.OnMyHonor.net.

 

By John Stemberger, Special to CNN

(CNN)– On Thursday, delegates to the Boy Scouts of America’s national conference met in Grapevine, Texas, to determine the fate of one of the most beloved organizations in this country’s history. This organization that has stood the test of time will probably be destroyed now that they have decided to admit openly gay boys as Scouts.

Sex and politics have no place in the Boy Scouts, and allowing open homosexuality will lead to myriad bad consequences.

First, the new BSA policy is logically incoherent and morally and ethically inconsistent. The BSA had never discriminated against homosexuals. The BSA membership application did not ask about sexual orientation, and there has never been a witch hunt in the BSA to find or remove its gay members.    Continue at John Stemberger

How Far is Too Far?

Everyone has had to ask or answer the question at one time or another: When it comes to the physical component of a dating relationship, how far is too far? Can we hold hands? Can we kiss? Can we do a little bit more than kiss? Should we even explore the physical relationship a little bit to ensure we are compatible?

I am accustomed to giving the easy answer: "It's not about how far can we go, but how holy we can be. You are asking all the wrong questions!" That may make me feel smart and a little bit godly, but it's not exactly a satisfying or helpful answer.

In their book Sex, Dating, and Relationships: A Fresh Approach, Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas offer an answer. They are aware of the long history of legalistic answers and the many slippery slope or fear-based approaches that have more to do with avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies than pursuing holiness. They do not want to create a new law, but draw out an implication of the deepest meaning of marriage. They are convinced that the Bible offers us exactly the answer we are looking for. How far is too far? "Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible does speak with clarity--objective clarity--about what is physically appropriate between an unmarried man and woman in a pre-marriage relationship."

They premise their answer on the fact that the marriage relationship, and hence the sexual relationship, is meant to be a portrait of the relationship of Christ and his church. (Click here to read about the gospel and marriage.) In that way they begin not with law but with gospel.    Continue at Tim Challies

Would You Go to Prison For Your Stance on Homosexuality?

What would you do if you received a letter from the authorities that said:

“If you continue preaching the gospel and attempting to convert people to Jesus Christ, you will be sentenced to prison for an indeterminate period of time”? I know my response (or what I hope) my response would be. I would continue preaching until they followed through on their promise—and then I’d keep proclaiming Christ in prison.

But what if I received a letter that said this:

“If you continue preaching that homosexuality is a sin and attempting to counsel those with a homosexual orientation to pursue celibacy and/or healing in Jesus Christ, you will be sentenced to prison for an indeterminate period of time”?

Could I never again preach what God says about homosexuality and still be faithful in preaching the gospel of Christ? I mean is it really something worth going to prison for—sacrificing my cherished freedom, life with my family, further gospel ministry? I see nothing about a stance on homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 15. I know that I could never say, “Homosexuality is not a sin” but could I simply say nothing? 

Help from John Bunyan and Martin Luther

John Bunyan had only been married two years when he was carried off to prison. He left his wife with four children (none of them her own) and the grief of having just lost a newborn baby. He was in prison for twelve years. He could have left any moment if he would have promised not to preach. This was Bunyan’s response:    Continue at Mike Leake

Raising Bubble Babies

The fascinating case of young David Vetter, makes for a vivid illustration. Vetter was born in 1971 with a condition ominiously called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency. What that meant was that his little body had no natural ability to fight off any disease. The mildest form of any germ could result in his death. Doctors attempted to protect him by placing him in a sterile plastic environment. The media, with uncharacteristic discreetness, never revealed his name while he was alive, but dubbed him affectionately as “The Bubble Boy.”

Vetter’s medical team sought to provide him with as normal a life as possible. The boy was educated, watched TV, and had a playroom area—but all within the confines of the sterile bubble.

In an attempt at curing the child, a bone marrow transplant was done from his sister through intravenous tubes running into the bubble. What pre-screening tests could not reveal was that the donor’s blood contained dormant traces of a virus. With no immune system, the virus rapidly spread and killed David Vetter at age twelve.

That sad story has a parallel in the spiritual world. 

Many parents treat the souls of their children as if they possessed an incurable immune deficiency. Anxious about infecting their young ones with worldly philosophy, they keep them in a sterile environment. Some parents never allow their children to play with other kids, or venture outside the home. All their education and entertainment comes directly from their parents. This certainly does preserve the children from worldly, unbiblical influences, and is highly appropriate in the very young years [emphasis added after some commenters missed my support of protecting little kids.] But at some point, if the child has any hope of surviving independently outside the home, he or she will need to have been educated about what is out there. In other words, temptation is not only conquered by avoidance, but also by pre-emptive education of how to identify the lure and consequences of the temptation, as in what the father does for his son in Prov 7.    Continue at Clint Archer

A Christian Man’s Travel Plan

This week I’ll be traveling away from home to teach the book of Hebrews in Memphis, TN and then the book of Romans in Little Rock, AR. As I prep for my trip, there are three basic things that are on my mind: family, purity, and ministry. I thought I’d share how I plan for each of these when I’m on the road in case it might help you prepare for your own travels.

 

Family

Whenever I’m gone, I want to make sure my family knows that I love them and that I’m thinking about them. I do this with phone calls, but I also do a couple other things.

1. For my wife I write her a card for each day I’ll be gone. The card usually has a short prayer or a couple sentences telling her something I love about her, and then a verse of Scripture. It takes about 20 minutes to do these cards (depending on how long the trip is) and I’m pretty sure it blesses her more than I realize.
2. For the kids, I try to rally them together before I leave and show them on a map where I’m going. I ask them to pray for me while I’m gone and tell them what I plan to do while I’m there. I don’t always leave them something to open when I’m away, but I always bring them something back to let them know they were on my mind while I was there.    Continue at Garrett Kell

Suggested Resources for Family Ministry

I recently had a dear friend ask me to give him a few resources for implementing a family ministry structure in the church that he pastors. I thought that perhaps others might benefit from the list I provided.

Conceptual:

“Our church wants to begin doing family ministry”. That sentence can mean any number of things. The people in your church probably have differing ideas as to what actually constitutes family ministry. That is why you need to have a season where everyone gets on the same page as to what family ministry actually consists of. The most helpful book for doing this is3 Views of Family Ministry edited by Timothy Paul Jones from the Perspectives Series. (Read my review here).

Though I ultimately embrace a different model, one book that will need to be considered is Voddie Baucham’s Family Driven Faith. Here he makes a strong case for the necessity of family ministry. I prefer the Family-Equipping model and so I believe that Baucham overstates a few things. However, this is a valuable resource in showing the need for doing family ministry.

Another helpful book is Trained in the Fear of God edited by Timothy Paul Jones and Randy Stinson. This books gives theological, historical, and practical reasons for installing a family-equipping ministry model.    Continue at Mike Leake

A Pastor’s Reflections: Family or Church First?

One of the challenges that pastors face is the dilemma of when to put family or church first. Many within the church never face this dilemma. When there is a church event or function it doesn’t really register in the minds of many, and if there is a scheduling conflict, family always comes first. If there’s a soccer game for one of the kids, well, they will miss the church picnic—there’s hardly a thought given to choosing one over the other. For the pastor, on the other hand, the dilemma appears quite regularly.

Unlike the member of the congregation, the minister typically has to be at most every church function. Unlike the member of the church, the pastor has many other duties to serve the church that will take him away from his family, such as session or consistory meetings, pastoral visits, counseling sessions, meetings of presbytery or classis, and meetings of general assembly or synod. In a number of these scenarios the tyranny of the urgent can also press in. The pastor will frequently face people who desperately need help immediately or the emergency session meeting comes without notice because a problem has quickly arisen in the church, and like a fire, is burning out of control. The pastor’s daughter may have a soccer game, and regrettably, the pastor will have to miss the game due to the scheduling conflict. The pressure upon the pastor in these scenarios is greater, I believe, than the layman’s job. It’s one thing to turn down a late-night meeting for work because money-making can wait. It’s entirely another thing to turn down an emergency counseling appointment with someone who has just lost a child to suicide. I liken the pastor’s calling to an ER doctor—sometimes time is of the essence in a way somewhat differently than for other vocations. So what is the pastor to do?   Continue at Westminster

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How Did This Happen? The Family Crisis as a Theological Crisis

Writing a generation ago, sociologist Christopher Lasch pointed to the weakening of the family as the most significant and dangerous development of our times. In his book, Haven in a Heartless World, Lasch described the breakdown of the natural family as a calamity for the society at large, as well as for the individuals whose lives are so directly affected.

Tellingly, he also wrote this: “The first thing to understand about the present crisis of the family is that it did not materialize overnight.” Indeed, it did not. The current crisis of the family must be traced to economic, political, social, and ideological causes. But there is another cause as well. The family crisis is a theological crisis, and this must be the church’s first concern.

The first theological fact about the family is the truth that the natural family (the family consisting of married parents of the opposite sex and their biological and adopted offspring) is not a product of human social evolution. The Bible reveals that God created human beings to live and to thrive within the context of the family, constituted on the foundation of marriage.

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Genesis reveals God’s act of creating human beings as male and female, uniting them in the covenant of marriage, and assigning to them the responsibility to multiply and to exercise both dominion and stewardship. The perfection of marriage was made clear by the fact that the man and the woman were naked in the Garden, and they were unashamed.   Continue at Al Mohler

Four Reasons my Family Trick-or-Treats

Tomorrow night my children will hit our cul-de-sac, knocking on neighbor’s doors, and looking for candy. One will be dressed as a lady bug, and the other will probably be crying because she is not matching her sister.

I recognize that the issue of Halloween and the celebration thereof is a gray area. Because it was not a holiday celebrated in the first century, the Bible does not expressly say one way or the other if children in Christian families should be free to frolic dressed as Pterygota.

Yet the Bible does give us some principles that do apply. The first is that you should not violate your conscience. So if participation in these kind of festivities causes you to associate door knockers with worldly delights sprinkled with the demonic, then I’d stop reading right about now. 


The Bible also tells us a few other principles that apply. Namely that dates are not sacred, and that a particular day cannot reasonably be associated with either demonic practices or godly practices (Col 2:16; Rom 14:5). We are bound to days only insomuch as our conscience binds us, and we should strive to bring our consciences into conformity with Scripture.

But I also understand that the whole issue of days and holidays in the NT are in the context of when to worship, and not when to beg for candy. So let me explain below why I choose to participate in my family’s quest for Reese’s:   Continue at Jesse Johnson

Worshiping at the Altar of Family

When visiting a number of Reformed churches in the last few months, we've noticed a significant trend. These churches are bursting with children---lots of biological children, of course, but also a good number of adopted and even foster kids. This is a great thing, all those kids, even if we are a little extra sensitive, due to our status as Dreaded Infertile Couple. But we've gotten used to this baby boom---the infant dedication/baptism/rose-on-the-piano acknowledgements, the romper-room-kindergarten-classroom atmosphere in the sanctuary, the baby showers. And lest we sound too much like curmudgeons, we assure you that God has helped to heal the pain of infertility through the adoptions of our two sons (and used those same two wiggly, loud, preciously infuriating boys to confirm that we were not, ever, meant to be parents of a huge family).

But perhaps this sensitivity to the "normal" family experience of marriage at 21 with five kids by age 30 (five is the new two) has given us some perspective that may have escaped the Normals. It came to me this Sunday while sitting behind a family with six or seven kids and listening to the pastor talk about the things we sacrifice to God's agenda. He was talking about how the disciples had ambition for the wrong thing---power in an earthly kingdom. He went on to apply that faulty expectation to misplaced ambitions in our lives: wealth, power, and fame. He clarified that these things are not inherently, incurably wrong, and some devoted Christians do indeed gain wealth, power, and fame. But he spoke of the lust for them, the chasing after them, the have-to-have-them, the sum-total-of-my-being, as being the problem. He quoted David Powlison: "good gifts, bad gods." True, powerful, and convicting words.  Continue at Kristin and Ted Kluck

Two Parents Aren’t Enough!

Even though God’s design for marriage and the family is extremely clear in Scripture, from the very first chapters of Genesis, our culture continues to try to change that design to make it fit with man’s opinions and desires. More and more, we’re seeing the decline of the family in society with the rise of homosexual marriage, abortion, and now even more radical definitions of the family makeup.

In yet another example of how we are losing the culture, the California legislature is considering a bill that, if passed, would allow families to consist of more than two parents. California State Senator Mark Leno claims that in order to keep up with a changing culture and to offer children the best protection, the courts must be allowed to name as parents more people than just the child’s father and mother. In other words, the child could legally have three or more parents!

The law would not only apply to heterosexual relationships, but also to same-sex relationships (one of the bill’s sponsors is the National Center for Lesbian Rights). This would make the possible redefinitions of family numerous! (It is important to note that there are a few other states that already have similar laws in place.)  Continue at Ken Ham

You Cannot Improve on God's Design for the Family

Children needing more than two parents?

This is the case being made by California State Senator Mark Leno, who says that for children to be really protected, the state must be able to assign legal parentage to more than the child's mother and father. How many more? As many as the adults in play desire. Biological parentage now bends to legal parentage simply because adults who want to create these experimental families have access to the court system. No children have asked for such thing. But Leno explains his bill is necessary because it "brings California into the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Ozzie and Harriet families today."

Beside the "Ozzie and Harriet family" being a fictitious Hollywood creation, does the arrival of the 21st century demand we fundamentally change our collective and historic understanding of parenthood? Sociologically and anthropologically, no society anywhere has found an alternative to the gold-standard of parentage---a married mother and father---for providing the health, safety, educational and life-opportunities that thriving children require. Mountains of careful and diverse research consistently show that not a single one of these new "alternative family" forms emerging over the last 40 years have done so. But here we are, continuing to invent them all the same, all under the illusion of progress.

Theology of Family

 

So how should Christians who don't consider themselves "culture warriors" think about such developments? Does Christianity possess a theology of family and parenting that should guide our thinking?  Continue at Glenn T. Stanton

Can Christians Use Birth Control?

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age–and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.

Most evangelical Protestants greeted the advent of modern birth control technologies with applause and relief. Lacking any substantial theology of marriage, sex, or the family, evangelicals welcomed the development of “The Pill” much as the world celebrated the discovery of penicillin — as one more milestone in the inevitable march of human progress, and the conquest of nature.

At the same time, evangelicals overcame their traditional reticence in matters of sexuality, and produced a growth industry in books, seminars, and even sermon series celebrating sexual ecstasy as one of God’s blessings to married Christians. Once reluctant to admit the very existence of sexuality, evangelicals emerged from the 1960s ready to dish out the latest sexual advice without blushing. As one of the best-selling evangelical sex manuals proclaims, marital sex is Intended for Pleasure. Many evangelicals seem to have forgotten that it was intended for something else as well.

For many evangelical Christians, birth control has been an issue of concern only for Catholics. When Pope Paul VI released his famous encyclical outlawing artificial birth control, Humanae Vitae, most evangelicals responded with disregard — perhaps thankful that evangelicals had no pope who could hand down a similar edict. Evangelical couples became devoted users of birth control technologies ranging from the Pill to barrier methods and Intrauterine Devices [IUDs]. That is all changing, and a new generation of evangelical couples is asking new questions.

A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control–and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies. Several developments contributed to this reconsideration, but the most important of these is the abortion revolution. The early evangelical response to legalized abortion was woefully inadequate. Some of the largest evangelical denominations at first accepted at least some version of abortion on demand.  Continue at Al Mohler