Book Review: Family-Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham, Jr.

I don’t recall when I first heard of Voddie Baucham but we did have the privilege of seeing him live at the Desiring God National Conference in Minneapolis back in 2006. During that same timeframe I called him and talked with him about twenty-five minutes. He was gracious and I recall our conversation went very well. What I cannot recall is why I called him in the first place!

I started reading his first book, The Ever-Loving Truth, but did not finish it, which is nothing new in my world. This book, Family-Driven Faith, which I purchased through the Amazon Kindle Store and read over three devices (my iPad, my iPhone, and my wife’s Kindle Fire), was more engaging to me because of my interest in the subject matter. Two areas of interest drove me to read this book: (1) how to do a better job as the spiritual leader of my home and (2) how to more effectively lead our church to equip parents in discipling their children. Family-Driven Faith is the only book I have ever read that that I can recall addresses these two issues, and Baucham does so boldly and directly.

Read Full Post »

Pushing Your Kids Away from the Church and God

Sure, it’s self-serving to post this, but it’s definitely a pattern I’ve seen through the years:

. . . I once overheard a visitor to one of our services tell this story to a young father. He said, “This morning you brought your child to be given over to the Lord. I did that once too. But let me urge you from the bottom of my heart, don’t do to your child what I did to mine. As he grew up, he listened to me criticize the pastor year after year. As a consequence, I turned off my boy to the church and to ministers, and today he is far from God.”

- C. John Miller, Outgrowing the Ingrown Church, p. 34

(HT: Chris Brauns)

Read Full Post »

Ben Phillips on Modesty

One of my good longtime friends, Ben Phillips, is my guest for this post. He recently penned this excellent piece on modesty. Ben is currently serving as the Family Ministry Team Leader at the Arkansas Baptist Convention. 

Modest Choices by Ben Phillips

Gaze at the TV, view a hit music video, examine a magazine, saunter through the mall, (dare I say enter a sanctuary?) and it’s easy to observe that modesty is not the fashion trend in today’s American culture.  A 2007 report by the American Psychological Association on the sexualization of girls reveals the negative consequences of this pervasive societal drift.

As a father of a teenage daughter and two sons, I’ve wrestled with this issue from a biblical perspective.  One writer quotes, “modesty is more about the heart than the hemline.”  In order to apprehend modesty correctly, one must inform the heart with Scripture.

Read Full Post »

5 Best Toys

Do you ever read something and say, “I wish I had come up with that?” This is really good, and SO true.

Read Full Post »

Parenting Wisdom From An Older Saint

One of the things that I am afraid our culture has almost totally abandoned is the value of tapping into the wisdom of those who have been walking longer on this earth. My wife and I recently listened to this wonderful recording of the recently retired Pastor Albert Martin. For parents, there is GOLD in this testimony. Listen and take heed.

Read Full Post »

Mohler on Apple’s Steve Jobs, Parenting, and P0RN

Political scientists and sociologists long ago came to the realization that one of the most significant indicators of political behavior is parenthood. Those who bear responsibility to raise children look at the world differently from those who do not. In fact, parenthood may be the most easily identifiable predictor of an individual’s position on an entire range of issues.Now, along comes Steve Jobs to prove the point. Jobs, the Maestro of Cool at Apple, recently engaged in a most interesting email exchange with Ryan Tate, who writes the “Valleywag” blog for the gossip Web site, Gawker.

On his initial email to Steve Jobs, Tate complained about what he described as a lack of freedom in Apple’s approach to the approval of products for its “App Store” for iPods, the iPhone, and the iPad. “If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?,” Tate asked. “Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with ‘revolution?’ Revolutions are about freedom.”

Apparently, Tate was upset about some of the restrictions put in place by Apple. Among those restrictions is a ban on pornography.

Steve Jobs threw Ryan Tate’s definition of freedom right back at him. Is Apple about freedom? “Yep,” said Jobs, “freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’.”

Read the rest of Dr. Mohler’s post HERE.

Read Full Post »

“This Was Grace”

Phenomenal 90 second testimony:

Read Full Post »

How One Christian Man Leads His Home Spiritually

A lot of Christian men wonder how to go about leading their family devotionally. Here’s a good example.

Read Full Post »

March Madness, Fathers and Sons

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (BP)–The earliest memory I have of March Madness was when I was 7 years old. Al McGuire’s Marquette won the tournament. I was pulling for Marquette because I liked their colors and I thought the untucked jerseys with the school name below the number…

Read the rest of my latest column HERE.

Read Full Post »

Laws of Parenting

These rules are maxims since the beginning of parenting and shall remain so until the end of time. As certain as gravity is pulling things down, these laws are fixed:

#1 – When you really need to hear something important, your kids will find a way to be so loud they will drown out what you need to hear (especially when you are on the phone).

#2 -  Whenever you are about to have your family picture taken, one of your kids will secure a black eye, scratch across the face, or anything of that nature that might be used in the future as evidence that you are an abuser.

#3 – Whenever someone lends you a CD or DVD for a few days, you kids will find a way to scratch it so that you have to covertly buy another one to replace it.

#4 – If your child says he feels like he is going to throw up, he will…before you can get him to the bathroom or off of the carpet/rug.

#5 – If you accidentally say something confidential in front of your child, the secret will be revealed in the most public and embarrassing way.

#6 – Whatever you hope does not get broken…will.

#7 – If you have a van, at some point a child, unbeknownst to you, will turn on a dome light which will drain your battery overnight, and always the night before an important morning meeting.

Can you think of some more?

Read Full Post »