Repeat the Sounding Joy

Let me put all my cards on the table, here. The Good Shepherd Band is the worship band at the church I serve. The members of the band are all my friends. I know that I’m biased. You don’t have to tell me.

There’s a reason I put this post in a category called, “Look, Mom!”

But if you’d just indulge me for a few minutes while I ooh and aah over their new Christmas album, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

Advice for Parents, Pt. 3: Should I Move?

One of the most common questions I’ve received in response to my initial post on parenting is summed up in this email I received from a concerned mom:

My question is—what things would you suggest we do to find these opportunities?! Do we need to move? If the invitation is not there to witness godly families in their home, and we have asked for it, but not received it, do we keep asking? . . . Your advice to your friend is wonderful, but what would you tell that friend to do if they did not have access to a church like yours?

I expect this is a pretty common response, so let me take it from a couple different angles.

A soul-searching ministry

As my Twitter feed has probably given away, I’ve been reading Thomas Watson’s Heaven Taken By Storm lately. Watson is easily my favorite Puritan. What I like best about Watson is that he’s so alive to God it’s difficult to read him and not be caught up in worship. His writing is simple but electric. Eminently easy to read.

I was extremely encouraged by this passage from Watson speaking of the ministry of John the Baptist:

Learn what kind of ministry is likely to do most good, namely, that which works upon the consciences of men. John the Baptist lifted up his voice like a trumpet; he preached the doctrine of repentance with power: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2).

He came hewing and cutting down men’s sins, and afterwards preached Christ to them. First he poured in the vinegar of the law, then the wine of the gospel. This was the preaching which made men studiously seek after heaven. John did not so much preach to please as to profit; he chose rather to discover men’s sins than to show his own eloquence.

The best mirror is not that which is most guilded, but that which shows the truest face. That preaching is to be preferred which makes the truest discovery of men’s sins and shows them their hearts.

-Thomas Watson, Heaven Taken By Storm (paragraph breaks mine)

Preaching to the consciences of men is so very difficult. It’s the exact thing that will make you hated as John the Baptist was hated (and eventually executed). And the difficulty is compounded by the number of ear-tickling preachers that are out there assuring people that their sins are not real sins after all. Why would someone stay and have their conscience afflicted by you, when they can easily go down the street and have their ears tickled?

Parading our shame

Last week Jimmy Kimmel put together a YouTube contest asking parents to tell their children they ate all of their Halloween candy and to film the reaction. The best reactions get featured in a segment on Kimmel Live:

The video has been making its rounds on Facebook because a lot of people seem to think it’s funny or cute. But the truth is it’s shameful. I know that no kid is going to respond to something like this with perfect grace. But I know if my kids responded like many of the kids in this video, I would not have laughed.

This behavior is not cute. It is not funny. It is shameful. We should cringe when we watch these kids. We should not laugh. We should grieve.

What does it say about us when we celebrate the blatant disrespect of parents? When we laugh and treat as trivial the sinful responses of children who have only ever been indulged and never loved enough to be disciplined? Who have never been taught contentment and forgiveness? The Bible makes it clear that children that get their own way are a shame to their parents (Pr. 29:15). And children who are not disciplined are not loved (Pr. 13:24; 19:18).

Our acceptance of behavior like this betrays our contempt for God the Father. It betrays our hatred for our children. It betrays our own selfishness and unwillingness to submit ourselves to God’s good discipline. It betrays our own insecurities about our parenting. One of the reasons a video like this can gain traction is because normalization is a (weak) salve for a guilty conscience. In other words, the more failures there are like us, the more justified we feel in our failings.

So what to do?

More Father Hunger

Advice for Parents, Pt. 2: Reversing Fukushima

In light of my last post, I wanted to say a word or two about radioactive soil and mutant vegetables.

Fathers are, by definition, the most shaping and dominating influences in any home. Make no mistake, the home you grew up in was dominated by your father. If he was a good father who honored God, who loved and honored your mother, who disciplined and nurtured you, then your childhood was dominated by a sweet and tender mercy of God. If he was cruel and abusive, you were dominated by his cruelty. If he was present bodily, but abdicated his responsibilities, you were dominated by his abdication. If he was absent, his absence was the most dominating and felt reality in your home.

There’s no escaping the dominance of fathers. He was, by nature, the head of the home you grew up in—whether you or your mother or your siblings liked it or not. This has to do with the way God the Father ordered His creation. And because it is God’s order, it is very good.

But because of sin, the absence and/or abdication of fathers in our culture is the most dominating reality that most of us have to deal with. It is the source of the nuclear meltdown. As a college pastor, I am constantly faced with the effects of this meltdown. My job might best be described as wading through Fukushima or Chernobyl in a hazmat suit, picking up the pieces. Except my job is much more impossible than that. I have to somehow reverse the mutations I encounter:

Advice for Young Parents

I recently received an email from a dear brother in Christ. He’s the father of a young family and he and his wife are getting ready to read Tedd Tripp’s Shepherding a Child’s Heart. He was wondering if I had any other book recommendations or counsel for him. Here’s an edited version of my response:

The first thing I’d say to you is this: there’s no substitution for good models of godly homes. Some things can’t simply be taught. They have to be caught. Which is to say, there’s no substitution for growing up in a godly home.

If you’ve not grown up in a godly home, you are fundamentally twisted in your understanding of what a home should be. And twisted men and women have a tendency to twist sound biblical principles and see them in the light of their own twistedness. Especially when they read them in books or even hear them in sermons. They’re missing the filters they need to help them translate and apply what they are taught in a healthy way. That’s one of the many reasons why the church is so important in discipleship.

For many young couples, telling them to raise their children to be godly is like telling them to make bricks without straw. What does that even mean? Where do I start? Huh? Giving them good resources on parenting is the equivalent of giving them a big pile of straw to work with. Which is a good thing. But the problem is actually much deeper than that…