Category: FAMILY

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...

Mommy Wars: Judging and Feeling Judged in a Diverse Body

Within a few hours of airing on YouTube, a Similac commercial called “Mother ‘Hood” went viral. In it, groups from several different mommy sub-cultures show up at a playground—nursing moms, bottle-feeding moms, businesswomen-moms, even baby-wearing-yoga moms. Battle lines are drawn immediately and insults fly. Eventually, just...