Five Things to Teach Your Children This Christmas

“Mom, I need to add something to my Christmas wish list.”

It’s that time of year again. The stores are adorned with all things red and green. Mailboxes and inboxes are filled with ads, sales, and catalogs. Prettily wrapped packages are at the forefront of nearly everyone’s minds — especially kids’.

Christmas provides a wonderful opportunity to pour the truths of the gospel into the hearts of our children. It’s an ideal time to show them the greatest gift they could ever receive, the gift of Jesus Christ.

Below is a list of important truths to teach our children this Christmas:

During Advent, with the anticipation of the 25th, we can teach and prepare our children for the celebration in Scripture of Jesus’s birth. In our family, we like to begin with the story of Creation and daily walk through the story of redemption until we get to Christ’s birth on Christmas day. We talk about the fall and God’s promise of a Savior in Genesis 3:15. We read about his promise to Abraham that he reaffirms throughout the Old Testament. We discuss Moses and the “one greater than Moses” who would come. We read the prophecies in Isaiah. We look at how all of the Bible points to our Redeemer.

For the world, the holiday season is about extravagance, opulence, and making every detail picture-perfect. The story of Jesus, however, is one of humility. Christmastime provides a great opportunity to teach our children about what it means to be greatest in the kingdom (Matthew 20:26–28). His parents, his place of birth, his hometown, and his very act of taking on human flesh were all demonstrations of humility. Most people expected the Messiah to arrive in a castle, not a stable. Most expected him to live a life of royalty, not poverty. Most expected him to conquer the Romans, not be crucified by them. Read through Philippians 2:1–11 and show your children the humility of Christ.

In a similar vein, teaching our children how God works through weakness is another topic to teach at Christmas. God often chooses the unlikely and the weak to use in his story of redemption. Mary was a simple, poor girl from an insignificant town. Peter was an uneducated fisherman. God’s glory is displayed when he works through our weaknesses. This is seen most dramatically in Jesus’s death on the cross in our place and his resurrection on the third day, securing our victory over sin and death.

Another important truth we can emphasize with our children during this season is that God keeps his promises. We can begin with the promise of a Savior after the fall and go throughout the Old Testament, looking at God’s promise to redeem his people, culminating in the fulfilled promise in Christ.

Last year, my children learned a different name for Jesus each day during Advent. We studied names such as Messiah, Lamb of God, Immanuel, Alpha and Omega, and Prince of Peace. Teaching children the names of Jesus and what they mean helps them know more about Jesus, his character, and what he has done. We made a chain link out of paper with a different name printed out on each one. Another way to learn the names might be to create a Christmas ornament for each one and hang them on a Christmas tree each time you study a name.

Take advantage of this time of year to teach your children about the Christ-child. Spend time in the word, showing them the promised Messiah and how that promise was fulfilled in the baby born in Bethlehem. Help them see that Jesus is the greatest gift they could ever receive and the greatest gift they could share with others.

18 Things I Will Not Regret Doing With My Kids

Like most parents, I have those moments where guilt and regret comes over me like a wave. I consider then how much of my parenting time has already passed by and how little remains. My oldest child, my son, is thirteen. He is already a teenager, just one year away from high school, just eight years from the age I was when I left home to get married. My girls are following close behind him. When that wave rises up, when I feel like I could drown beneath all that regret, I sometimes consider those things I will never regret.

Here are 18 things I know I will not regret doing with my kids.

1. Praying with them for them. It baffles me that one of the things that most intimidates me is praying with my kids. I don’t mean praying with the whole family before or after a meal, but praying with my daughter for my daughter or with my son for my son. Yet this kind of prayer lets them see that I am concerned for what concerns them and it lets us join in prayer together for those very things. I know I need to prioritize this because I will never regret praying with them for them.

2. Reading books to them. As summer turns to fall, as the days grow shorter and the nights grow colder, we spend many of our evenings together in the living room as I read books aloud. We’ve read our way across this world and across many others; we’ve read forward in history and we’ve read about days long past; we’ve met heroes and villains; and we have experienced it all together as a family. I will never regret reading books to my children.

3. Kissing them goodnight. The days get long and I get so weary. By the time the children head to bed I am sometimes so worn down that the very last thing I want to do is see the kids to bed and to kiss them goodnight. But I am always glad I did and often find these the times where the children are most tender, most eager to speak, and most eager to listen. I know I will never regret all those goodnight kisses.

4. Taking them to church. There is such joy in sitting in church together as a family, worshipping the Lord together and hearing from him in his Word together. I do not take my children to church so they can learn good manners or be better people; I take them to church so they can learn who they are, so they can learn who God is, and so they can encounter and experience Grace. I will never regret prioritizing church.

5. Taking them out for breakfast. One much-loved tradition in our family is taking my children out for breakfast on Saturday mornings—one of them each week. It’s a tradition I have lost and revived and lost again and revived again. It is a tradition worth maintaining. The $10 or $20 expense and the time it takes pales in comparison to the investment in their lives. I will never regret our breakfast daddy dates.

6. Letting my friends be their friends. I love it when my children befriend, and are befriended by, my friends. I want my children to have friends who are older and wiser than they are and friends who can help them in those areas where I am weak. I will never regret encouraging my friends to be their friends.

7. Doing family devotions. Family devotions is a difficult discipline to maintain, and especially as the kids get older and have more lessons and responsibilities. But we commit and re-commit and persevere because these are precious times—just a few minutes together to read the Bible, to talk about what we’ve heard, and to pray. I know I will never regret a single moment spent pursuing the Lord together.

8. Disciplining them. I hate disciplining my children; I hate having to discipline them. Yet I am absolutely convinced that to refuse to discipline them is to refuse to love and respect them. The lost privilege, the stern talking-to, the time spent alone in their room—these are all seen as hatred in the moment, but seen as love later on. I will never regret lovingly disciplining my children.

9. Doing special things. Life is largely lived in the mundane and love is mostly shown in the day-to-day. But there is also value in the afternoons at the ballgame, the evenings at the ballet, the business trips with dad. I will never regret doing those special things with my children.

10. Asking their forgiveness. I have more trouble apologizing to my children than to anyone else. Somewhere way in the back of my mind I am convinced that to apologize to them is to show weakness; but at my best times I know that to apologize to them—to ask their forgiveness when I have sinned against them—is honoring to God and to them. I will never regret those times I have asked their forgiveness.

11. Forgiving them. My great weakness is one of my kids’ great strengths; when they sin they are almost always quick to seek my forgiveness. I will never regret sincerely and immediately granting the forgiveness they ask.

12. Loving their mother. I know that the stability of a mother and father who are firmly committed to one another brings stability to the whole family. I can love my children by assuring them of my love for their mother through my words and deeds and affection. I will never regret regularly affirming my love for their mother.

13. Identifying God’s Grace. As my children make professions of faith and as they begin to grow in godly character, it has been a joy to see God’s grace in their lives. I am learning to tell them what I am seeing, to commend them for it, and to point to the One who has generated it. I know I’ll never regret identifying this kind of grace in their lives.

14. Expressing affection. I love to walk hand-in-hand with my daughters and I love to hug my son before he goes off to school. This physical affection makes them feel safe and loved while teaching boundaries and platonic, appropriate touch. I will never regret continuing to express physical affection.

15. Planning little surprises. The small and occasional gifts when I return home from a speaking engagement; a single rose for my girls when I buy their mother a bouquet of flowers; the dinner at McDonald’s for no reason at all. I will never regret planning and delivering these special little surprises.

16. Giving them my full attention. I almost always have an electronic device within reach and often I have two or three of them. It is so easy to break out of a conversation with every buzz or beep, to break eye contact and to break concentration. I know I’ll never regret giving my children my full attention when they have something to say.

17. Pointing to the gospel. The gospel is not merely a gateway to the Christian life, but the very source of hope and joy in the Christian life. We need to return to the gospel again and again; we need the gospel every day. And I will never regret pointing my children to the gospel.

18. Telling them “I love you”. I love my children dearly and I can show that love in each of the ways I’ve listed above. But when they head off to school, when they go out with friends, when they call me at the office, when we FaceTime from afar, I will never regret telling them one more time, “I love you.”

What are some things you will never regret doing with your kids?

(With a hat tip to HuffPo)

View the original article here

18 Things I Will Not Regret Doing With My Wife

Last week I shared 18 Things I Will Not Regret Doing With My Kids, and the time I spent writing that article got me thinking about the fifteen years I’ve been married to Aileen (and the three years before that when we dated). I felt it was only right to think of another eighteen things, and this time to do so in her honor.

Here are 18 things I know I will never regret doing with my wife.

1. Praying with her. It took too long for the two of us to begin to really pray together; even now, we have a long way to go. But we have learned the importance of praying together and never regret the times we spend together before the Lord.

2. Dating her. We have all heard a thousand times how important it is to keep dating, even after getting married. This is easier said than done when the children are young and high-maintenance, but we have found it much easier now that the kids are just a little bit older. I have never regretted these times alone together.

3. Serving with her. While the majority of my relationship with Aileen is lived out face-to-face, we have always worked very well together side-by-side. We’ve planned and executed all kinds of events and programs in the past, and inevitably grow closer as we have done this. I never regret the time we spend serving together.

4. Looking back with her. Some of our sweetest times are spent looking at relics of days gone by—the silly journals we kept when dating, the photos of our wedding, the children when they were infants. Looking back is a genuine pleasure and we never regret that time together, remembering what the Lord has done and where he has brought us.

5. Leading her in love. I am convinced God has called me to lovingly lead my wife. This kind of leadership does not come easy to me, but I know there is a high cost to refusing to take it up. I never regret leading Aileen, when I lead with her good as my goal and with Christ as my model.

6. Buying her flowers. I am fifteen years into marriage and still feel sheepish carrying a bouquet of flowers through a parking lot. But the flowers continue to be special, she continues to love them, I continue to enjoy giving the gift. I will never regret showing love that way.

7. Asking her forgiveness. It is a strange and ugly reality that the person I love most is the person I sin against most often. I have never-ending opportunities to ask her forgiveness. While it requires choking down my pride, I know I will never regret asking her to forgive me when I have sinned against her.

8. Forgiving her. Of course it works both ways, and she sins against me as well. Like me, she can struggle with asking for forgiveness, so when she does ask, I never regret immediately and sincerely forgiving her, and putting that offense out of my mind.

9. Holding her hand. It is so easy to allow what used to be special to become unremarkable and forgotten. Holding hands is one of those sweet habits that can so quickly be lost. I will never regret reaching out and walking with her, hand-in-hand.

10. Planning her hobby time. Aileen gives so much of herself to home and family, but tends to be at her best when she has a hobby to give some of her time and attention to. I never regret the time we carve out to plan how she can give time to the hobbies she loves.

11. Washing her with the Word. The book of Ephesians makes it clear that one of a husband’s joyful responsibilities is washing his wife in the water of God’s Word. As our marriage has progressed we have seen more and more clearly the value and beauty of doing this very thing. I will never regret those times we spend together, hearing from God through his Word.

12. Listening to her. I am far too quick to give my own opinion, to make excuses, to speak without really listening and hearing. But I am learning that I will never regret the times when I patiently listen and allow Aileen to speak without interruption, without interjection, without having me become all defensive.

13. Reading with her. If you want to talk about compatibility within marriage, well, Aileen and I are very incompatible when it comes to the books we love to read. But when we do find one of those books and when we commit to reading it together, I never regret the time or the effort.

14. Delighting in her. In all the sin, stress and strain life can bring, it is so easy to lose that sense of wonder and delight in the gift of a wife. I will never regret thinking about her, thanking God for her, and increasing my delight in her.

15.Enjoying shared interests. One of the first things I did when when I began dating Aileen was learn to like tennis; that was just the first of many interests we learned to enjoy together. I have never regretted learning to enjoy something she loves for her sake and for the sake of our relationship.

16. Worshipping with her. One of my great joys in life is worshipping the Lord side-by-side with the one person I love more than any other. This is a little foretaste of heaven, just a glimpse of eternity, where we will worship him perfectly forever. I never regret prioritizing church and worshipping with Aileen.

17. Getting away with her. We love our family vacations with the five of us sprawled out at the beach or huddled in a cabin. But Aileen and I also find great benefit in vacations alone, whether that is a couple of days somewhere nearby, or a week somewhere far from home. I will never regret interrupting normal life for these sweet times together.

18. Saying I love you. Yes, even the “I love you” can become an empty habit rather than a meaningful declaration. When I pause for just a moment, when I think about what I am saying, that little phrase takes on much greater depth of meaning. I never have and I never will regret looking Aileen in the eyes and saying, “I love you.”

The joy of this list is that I could so easily have come up with another eighteen items, and another eighteen beyond that. The Lord has blessed me so far beyond what I deserve.

Staying Faithful When Things Get Worse

Genesis chapters 37–41 only tell the low and high points of Joseph’s Egyptian slavery and imprisonment. But he spent at least 12 years there before he suddenly became the Egyptian Prime Minister. And during that terribly lonely, desolate time, things seemed to go from bad to worse. Imagine what Joseph might have experienced at about year nine into his sojourn.

Darkness had swallowed the light again. Joseph dreaded the night in this foul Egyptian hellhole. It was hard to fight off the relentless hopelessness as he waited the escape of sleep.

Day after monotonous day passed with no sign of change. The familiar desperation surged hot in his chest. His youth was seeping out the cracks of his cage. He was pacing in his soul. Joseph wanted to scream.

Fists to his forehead he pleaded again with God in the dark for deliverance.

And he remembered. It was the remembering that kept his hope alive and bitterness at bay.

He rehearsed the stories of God that had filled him with awe as a child. God had promised Great-grandfather Abraham, a child by his barren wife. But he made them wait an agonizing 25 years before giving them Grandfather Isaac. And God had promised Grandmother Rebekah that her older twin, Uncle Esau, would serve the younger twin, Father Jacob. But God had mysteriously woven human deception and immorality into his plan to make that happen.

Jacob’s smile filled Joseph’s mind. Oh Father! He covered his mouth to choke back his sobs. It had been nine years since he last saw that dear face. Would he ever see it again? Was Father still alive?

He felt something crawl across his leg. Leaping up, he brushed himself off. He shook out the mat. A shiver ran down his spine. Joseph hated spiders.

Lying back down, he remembered how Father Jacob had been caught in his Uncle Laban’s manipulative web for 20 long years. Yet God was faithful to his word and eventually delivered Jacob and brought him back to the Promised Land a wealthy man.

And then there were those strange dreams he had had. They had been unusually powerful, unlike any other dreams before or since. He felt ambivalent about them. They likely were the reason he was now in an Egyptian jail. His brothers’ envy of his father’s favor turned homicidal when he inferred that he had God’s favor as well.

Distant screams let Joseph know another fight had broken out in the barracks. It made him grateful for his private cell, the favor bestowed on the chief scribe to the warden.

He smiled at the irony of this “favor.” Favor in a prison. His brothers would love this if they only knew. He seemed about as far away from what those dreams foretold as he could be.

Yet, as foolish as it seemed right now, Joseph could not shake the deep conviction that God meant to bring those dreams to pass. And he could not deny the strange pattern he saw in God’s dealings with his forebears. God made stunning promises and then ordained time and circumstances to work in such ways as to make the promises seem impossible to fulfill. And then God moved.

The common thread Joseph traced through all the stories, the one thing God seemed to honor and bless more than anything else, was faith. Great-grandfather Abraham believed God’s word. Grandfather Isaac believed God’s word. Grandmother Rebekah believed God’s word. Father Jacob believed God’s word. They all believed even when it didn’t look like God’s word was going to come true. And all of them ultimately saw God’s faithfulness to his promises, despite circumstances and their own failings.

Faith-fueled peace doused the anxious fire in Joseph’s chest. “I believe you, my God,” he whispered. “Like my forefathers, I will wait for you. I have no idea what my being in an Egyptian prison has to do with your purposes. But I will keep honoring you here where you have placed me. Bring your word to pass as it seems best to you. I am yours. Use me!”

In the biblical account it’s tempting to only see Joseph’s heroic character and achievements. But God does not want us to miss the largely silent, desperate years Joseph endured.

Imagine the pain of his brothers’ betrayal, the separation from his father, the horror of slavery, the seduction and false accusation by Potiphar’s wife, and the desperation he felt as his youth passed away in prison.

Sometimes faithfulness to God and his word sets us on a course where circumstances get worse, not better. It is then that knowing God’s promises and his ways are crucial. Faith in God’s future grace for us is what sustains us in those desperate moments.

We all love the fairytale ending of Joseph’s story. And we should, because Joseph’s life is a foreshadowing of a heavenly reality. God sent his Son to die and be raised in order to set his children “free indeed” (John 8:36). There is coming a day when those who are faithful, even to death (Revelation 2:10) will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).

Our current circumstances, however dismal or successful, are not our story’s end. They are chapters in a much larger story that really does have a happily ever after.

This meditation is included in the forthcoming book Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith (Crossway, April 30, 2013).

God Does All Things Well

“This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this is the place of repose”—
“But He knows the way that I take.” Job 23:10
The shadow of a palm of blessed consolation and comfort, under which sat blessed old Job.
The Book of Job has been well defined to be “the record of an earnest soul’s perplexities, where the double difficulty of life is solved—the existence of moral evil, and the question whether suffering is a mark of God’s wrath or not. What falls from Job’s lips is the musing of a man half-stunned, half-surprised, looking out upon the darkness of life, and asking sorrowfully, ‘Why are these things so?’” In his checkered experience he loses at times the footsteps of a God of love. Through anguished tears he gives voice to his soul-trouble, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.” “If I go to the east, He is not there; and if I go to the west, I do not find Him. When He is at work in the north, I do not see Him; when He turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of Him” (Job 23:8, 9).
But though to sense and sight all is dark, faith rises to the ascendant, and, piercing the environing cloud, her voice is heard, “But He knows the way that I take.” All that Providential drama is arranged by Him—life, with all its lights and shadows, its joys and its sorrows. It is enough for the sufferer to be assured that his path and lot are not the result of wayward and capricious accident. The furnace (to take the new figure employed in the same verse) is lighted by the God whose hand was for the moment hidden; and that same faith can add, “When He has tried me, I will come forth as gold.”
Believer! what a glorious assurance! This way of yours—this, it may be crooked, mysterious, tangled way—this way of trial and of tears, “the way of the wilderness”—”He knows it.” The furnace, seven times heated—He lighted it. Oh! how would every sorrow and loss be aggravated and embittered if we had nothing to cling to but the theory of arbitrary appointment and dreary fatalism! But we may take courage. There is an Almighty Guide knowing and directing our footsteps, whether it be to the bitter pool of Marah, or to the joy and refreshment of Elim. That way, dark to the Egyptians, has its pillar of cloud and fire for His own Israel. The furnace is hot; but not only can we trust the hand that kindles it, but we have the assurance that the fires are lit not to consume, but to refine; and that when the refining process is completed (no sooner—no later), He brings His people forth as gold. When they think Him least near, He is often nearest. “When my spirit grows faint within me, it is You who know my way.”

We joyfully believe the day is coming when we shall write under every mysterious providence, “He has done all things well.” Yes, bereaved ones, you shall no more weep over early graves, when you yourselves pass upwards to the realms of glory, and hear from the loved and glorified as they are waiting to greet you at the door of heaven, that by an early death they were “taken away from the evil to come.” Meanwhile let us rejoice in the assurance, that “the Lord reigns!”—that He knows and appoints “the way” both for ourselves and for others. Oh, comforting thought! enough to dry all tears and silence all murmurings—”Is there evil in the city,” in the cottage, in the palace—is there evil which blights some unknown poor man’s dwelling—is there evil which clothes a nation in mourning, “and the Lord has not done it”?
—-John MacDuff

 

Four Things for Journalists to Remember in Covering Religious Beliefs They Disagree With

Ross Douthat:

First, conservative Christianity is a large and complicated world, and like other such worlds — the realm of the secular intelligentsia very much included — it has various centers and various fringes, which overlap in complicated ways. Sometimes teasing out these connections tells us something meaningful and interesting. But it’s easy to succumb to a paranoid six-degrees-of-separation game, in which the most radical figure in a particular community is always the most important one, or the most extreme passage in a particular writer’s work always defines his real-world influence.

Second, journalists should avoid double standards. If you roll your eyes when conservatives trumpet Barack Obama’s links to Chicago socialists and academic radicals, you probably shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that Bachmann’s more outré law school influences prove she’s a budding Torquemada. If you didn’t spend the Jeremiah Wright controversy searching works of black liberation theology for inflammatory evidence of what Obama “really” believed, you probably shouldn’t obsess over the supposed links between Rick Perry and R. J. Rushdoony, the Christian Reconstructionist guru.

Third, journalists should resist the temptation to apply the language of conspiracy to groups and causes that they find unfamiliar or extreme. Republican politicians are often accused of using religious “code words” and “dog whistles,” for instance, when all they’re doing is employing the everyday language of an America that’s more biblically literate than the national press corps. Likewise, what often gets described as religious-right “infiltration” of government usually just amounts to conservative Christians’ using the normal mechanisms of democratic politics to oust politicians whom they disagree with, or to fight back against laws that they don’t like.

Finally, journalists should remember that Republican politicians have usually been far more adept at mobilizing their religious constituents than those constituents have been at claiming any sort of political “dominion.” George W. Bush rallied evangelical voters in 2004 with his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and then dropped the gay marriage issue almost completely in his second term. Perry knows how to stroke the egos of Texas preachers, but he was listening to pharmaceutical lobbyists, not religious conservatives, when he signed an executive order mandating S.T.D. vaccinations for Texas teenagers.

This last point suggests the crucial error that the religious right’s liberal critics tend to make. They look at Christian conservatism and see a host of legitimately problematic tendencies: Manichaean rhetoric, grandiose ambitions, apocalyptic enthusiasms. But they don’t recognize these tendencies for what they often are: not signs of religious conservatism’s growing strength and looming triumph, but evidence of its persistent disappointments and defeats.