A Few Good Reads

“Repentant Parenting Isn’t Hypocrisy, It’s the Gospel”
Katie Hughes writes about the importance of repenting to our children when we sin against them. In our pride we react against this, but it’s vitally important to do. “Somehow in all the parenting literature and teaching I think we’ve lost the importance of repenting to our own children. Now, don’t get me wrong. Instructing children in the way they should go, when they rise up, when they walk along the way, when they sit down to eat, when they lay down to sleep, is vastly important (Deuteronomy 6).

We are called to it, and it IS indeed vile and disappointing when we don’t live it.
Yet we live on this side of the cross, where the perfect parenting life was lived by Jesus, and our punishment for sinning against God in parenting was taken by the death of Jesus. His life and death make it possible for us to both live holy parenting lives AND repent freely when we don’t.”

“Open Bibles, Burning Hearts: A Response to Andy Stanley”
I’ve posted links to several articles responding to Andy Stanley’s recent statements on using the Bible in preaching and on Christianity resting on the resurrection instead of the Bible. His arguments have profound implications, so it’s important to know how to think through and respond to them. John Piper summarizes Stanley’s statements accurately and then works through them in a way that shows why they are rooted in right intentions but ultimately fall short. “So my concluding suggestion is this: join Andy Stanley in caring deeply about winning “post-Christians”; join him in moving beyond simplistic and naïve-sounding shibboleths; join him in cultural awareness and insight into your audience; join him in the excellence of his teaching and communication skills; and join him in his belief in the complete truthfulness of the Bible. And then spend eight years blowing your people’s post-Christian circuits by connecting the voltage of every line in the book of Romans with their brains.”

“What Does It Mean to Fear God?”
I have been preaching through Proverbs for the last couple of months and have been reading it every day for many years. Proverbs begins with, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and we are often confused by what this means. R.C. Sproul helpfully clarifies how we should understand this important phrase. “If we really have a healthy adoration for God, we still should have an element of the knowledge that God can be frightening. “It is a frightening thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). As sinful people, we have every reason to fear God’s judgment; it is part of our motivation to be reconciled with God.”

“Blessed are the Undistracted”
Have you noticed how often we get distracted by buzzing phones or email notifications? We seem to live in constant distraction and this carries over into our worship. Matthew Westerholm shares five tips for dealing with our tendency towards distraction in worship. “And distractions do not stay in the car when we enter into church on a Sunday morning. We arrive with the intent to worship Jesus with focus. But the burdens of our week, the tensions of our morning, the children by our side, the anxiety of our upcoming schedule, and the wandering of our thoughts all conspire to distract us.”

“Exodus 4:18-31: Made Like His Brothers in Every Way”
Peter Krol at Knowable Word gives a great example of how to study a biblical text using the Observation, Interpretation, Application model that you can read about in Howard and William Hendrick’s Living By the Book. “The terminology of this section has much overlap with Genesis 46, where Jacob and his family move to Egypt: go back to Egypt, see if my brother(s) is/are still alive, took wife and sons, describe what they rode on, preparing to meet Pharaoh, encounter with Yahweh at a lodging place along the way, repetition of “people” and “son,” brother coming the other way from Egypt to meet him, happy reunion. Really, you should read Genesis 46:1-34 back-to-back with Exodus 4:18-31. You can’t miss all the similarities.”

“Instead of a Late-Term Abortion for My Disabled Child; I Chose Life”
Casey Fiano reflects on the debate about late-term abortion that has been spawned by last week’s Presidential debate. She does this through the lens of her own personal experience of having her son diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome while he was still in the womb. “People with disabilities are quite clearly seen as not deserving of life. Rather than seeing this for the eugenicist outlook that it is, this attitude is applauded and encouraged. It’s disturbing that this is where we have come as a society, where killing your preborn baby because he or she has a disability is now “compassionate” and “brave,” as opposed to the horrifying tragedy that it is.”