Months after a hurtful situation, I found myself still struggling to forgive. Time in and of itself wasn't doing the trick. I finally realized that, before I could freely extend mercy, I had to acknowledge just how painful and unjust the offense against me had been. Perhaps you can relate to this dilemma. If you’re a Christian and you’ve been sinned against, I’m guessing the message you’ve heard the loudest is that you should (quickly) forgive the offense and let it go. Although mercy ultimately triumphs over judgment, we ignore a vital part of God’s character when we rush into Continue Reading
How Christian Parents can Guard their Children against Gender Confusion
John is a quiet boy who prefers drawing and reading poetry to rough-and tumble play. Mary is athletic, a natural leader with an assertive personality. Our culture today is all too quick to point at boys like John and girls like Mary and say, “You’re supposed to be gay. That’s who you really are.” Or we may go a step further and say, “You should have the surgery so you can live as the gender you were really meant to be.” All this as early as grade school. We’re coming to the point of believing that biological gender is completely irrelevant, and that our maleness or femaleness Continue Reading
How to Teach Your Children to Recognize God’s Presence and Voice
It was a perfect summer day, puffy cumulus clouds drifting across an azure sky. My then-seven-year-old son Jed pointed at a large cloud and said, "That one looks like the empty tomb after Jesus rose from the dead!" Then he turned and said, "And that one reminds me of the lion of Judah!" You'd think a seven-year-old would see a ducky or pony shape in the clouds rather than evidence of Jesus' resurrection and lordship. But when children are raised with an awareness of God's presence, they're amazingly perceptive. In fact, even when children aren't raised to know about God, their Continue Reading
Why You Can’t Possibly Crack Life’s Code (and what to do Instead)
She was only ten years old when a random accident took her life. Decades later, her parents still grieve the loss of their daughter. How could the unthinkable happen to this Christian family? Why this senseless tragedy? The writer of Ecclesiastes has some wisdom to offer about the mysterious nature of life. (I’m grateful to the team at thebibleproject.com for the following insights.) Thirty-eight times in the book, the Teacher repeats this phrase: “Hevel, hevel, everything is utterly hevel.” In English Bibles, the Hebrew word “hevel” is usually translated “meaningless.” Continue Reading