Trusting the Father's Goodness
Isn’t it wonderful when our children teach us about Jesus? Not that it is always fun, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t waste a moment if you’re just willing to listen. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. – Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. – James 1:17 (ESV) Tonight Stephanie is working so I’ve been …
Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do
Dads, futures dads, and all dudes … Take 10 minutes and check this out! Warning: Don’t show this to many women – chances are they will disagree and want to argue with you about it! (HT: The Art of Manliness)
Reflections on the 2008 MLB All-Star Game
Quite a few people are talking about the MLB All-Star game Tuesday night. It was an amazing game that I think should go down as a classic in All-Star game history. One of the big debates, however, centers around the pitching situation. There were at least two pitchers who participated in the extra innings of the game whose regular season teams didn’t want them to play because of pitching they had done previous to the game. I’m sympathetic to teams who want to protect the arms of their stars, but I think it sucks for the game that there was …
Seeking Counsel and Prayer
For longer than I care to count or admit I have been without any strong Christian male leadership in my life. Sure I have been around Christians; I have been reading books and listening to podcasts and I have been attending church, but what I have not been doing is getting together on a regular basis with men who love Jesus deeply and who love me enough to ask me hard questions and correct me when I’m wrong. About the closest thing I have had to this is my counselor (yes I have one that I see every so often) …
Answering Our Children's Questions
My friend Casey Ross recently blogged that our job as dads is to answer one very important question for our sons and daughters as they grow. Casey wrote, I just finished John Eldredge’s You Have What It Takes: what every father needs to know (only 50 pages and $3.00). He says us dads need to do one thing for our child. Now, come on dads, we can get on board with a plan that only gives us one thing to do to be successful dads! He says: “I’m going to make fathering very simple: answer your child’s question.” So what’s …
Fatherhood Logic
If A: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Psalm 145 :8) And B: Jesus knew the Lord his Father (Luke 3:21-22) And C: By the Spirit we are to be like the Son (2 Corinthians 3:18), the image of the Father (Colossians 1:15) And D: In Christ the Lord is our Father (Romans 8:15-17) And E: As a father I am called to show my children the Father (Ephesians 6:4) Then F: I must learn to be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love
The Chief Task of Parenting
From an upcoming John Piper book on marriage…. The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for God-like transformation. The children will have years of exposure to what the universe is like before they know there is a universe. They will experience the kind of authority there is in the universe and the kind of justice there is in the universe and the kind of love there is in the universe …
Fall From a Low Height Now Or….
A good friend left some great parenting advice in the comment section of another’s blog. Speaking about discipline he quoted an unknown source who said that our goal as parents should be that our children “fall from a low height rather than a high height.” This means we should not shy away from causing our kids momentary discomfort now if we desire them to be happy, productive, individuals later. The pain and consequences of a person’s wrong choices seem to increase proportionately to the increase in their age. That is why it is so crucial to sinful nip behavior in …
His Hair Grew Back Again
Tonight while I was telling the kids the story of Samson before bed my mind came to rest on this verse, “22 But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” I didn’t know exactly what the verse said but the thought occurred to me that there must have been some amount of time that passed between when Samson was captured by the Philistines and when he gave his live to destroy the house he was shackled in. I wondered what that time was like. We read in Judges 16 that when Samson was …
The Importance of Christ-Centered Bedtime Stories
Every night I am home, when it is time for the kids to go to bed, I am the one ‘chosen’ by them for the job of tucking them in, and the same question is always asked during our bedtime routine, “Daddy, will you tell us a story?” I love telling the kids stories. Sometimes I fall asleep while I am laying on the floor telling them. I know this happens because I mumble my way through the story, floating in and out of consciousness, before accidentally ending with the word “Amen” instead of “the end.” To which Jacob promptly …
