Category: FAMILY
The Summer Garden (PART 2): The Role of Corrective Discipline in Preparing Your Child’s Heart to Receive the Gospel
Children are born with a fallen nature and an unregenerate heart. Before salvation they are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). This natural condition amounts to a worse state than being born as a “blank slate” (as many unbiblical thinkers believe to be the case...
The Summer Garden (PART 1): The Role of Corrective Discipline in Preparing Your Child’s Heart to Receive the Gospel
Corrective discipline is much more than just a biblical duty parents are commanded to perform. It plays an effectual role in preparing your child’s heart to receive the gospel. What I am saying here assumes much—perhaps even most—of what godly parents like you do for and with...
What Will Your Children Remember About You?
When my first child was just a baby, I’m sure my mindset was something like, “I might have 18 to 20 years with this gift from God. That’s plenty of time to train her up in the way she should go (Proverbs 22:6).” But the older...
C.H. Spurgeon on Mothers—Like Cat like Kit
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was an English Baptist pastor known for his powerful preaching and extensive writing. Below is an excerpt titled “Like Cat Like Kit” from his publication, John Ploughman’s Pictures or Plain Talk for Plain People, which is filled with pithy and proverbial admonitions...
The Significance of “Please” (and “Thank You”)
My wife and I were always together on the importance of training our five children to say “please” and “thank you,” but we were recently discussing why we held this to be such a central part of child training. Neither of us had ever viewed it...
What to Do if Your Parenting Produced Rebellious, Ungrateful Teenagers
We all have regrets in life. You might wish you had continued with those piano lessons. Or perhaps you’re sorry you didn’t spend more time with your grandparents before their passing. But one of the worst regrets in life is looking back and saying, “I was...
Now that Camp, or the Retreat, or the Conference, is Over
There is a spiritual “high” that is often experienced toward the end of a church camp, retreat, or conference. A few days of solid Bible teaching, intentional fellowship, and extended personal time with the Lord has a way of making a believer’s heart full. “I wish...
Adoption—In God’s Loving Eyes
God loves orphans. Throughout the Old Testament God makes special mention of them (and widows) as dear to His heart. When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall...
Three Reminders for Parents in the Trenches with Young Children
When my mom walked into the room there was dust in the air. Draped over the ceiling fan, filling the curtains, imbedded in the carpet and all over my little brother and sister. It was soot from the cast iron stove—lots of it, strewn all across...
The Best is Yet to Be
Marriage, as designed by God, is the union of a man and woman in a life-long relationship that produces happiness, comfort, companionship, pleasure, and fulfillment for them, and glory and honor for him. As I write this, my wife and I are preparing to celebrate 33...
