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
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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
The One Way You Can Astonish Jesus
The man wasn't even a Jew. He and his men had been stationed in Capernaum by the Roman authorities to keep law and order. But he'd established a good relationship with the local Jewish elders, so he asked them for a favor. Would they go to Jesus and ask him to come and heal his paralyzed servant, who lay close to death? Not only did the elders go to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly on behalf of the centurion. "This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue," they said. So Jesus went with them (Luke 7:4-6). Before he got to the Continue Reading
One Practical, Effective Way to Teach Your Children How to Pray
During a Sunday morning service years ago, our pastor asked the congregation to gather in small groups to pray for one another. My group included a teenage boy and his mother. We took turns expressing prayer needs, but when it came time to start praying, the boy turned to his mother and said, "Mom, you're going to have to help me with this." His mother prayed aloud, one sentence at a time, and he repeated what she said. Clearly, this young man had never learned how to communicate with God outside of religious rituals. He was certainly old enough and smart enough to talk to God Continue Reading