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We Always Have A Father to Celebrate on Father’s Day

SHEA PATRICK|CONTRIBUTOR As I work on this blog post, Mother’s Day just past. I saw many things on social media celebrating mothers, but also saw the mixed feelings the holiday brings about. I imagine many people have a similar feeling about Father’s Day. A group of my friends and I no longer have fathers here on earth and we often discuss how difficult the day is for us. What do we do with these mixed feelings? Get angry at those who are celebrating? Blast our frustration with God’s plan for us on social media? In contrast, the death of my father is one of those milestone moments in my walk with God— an Ebeneezer reminder of how God cared for me when my dad died. A Hard Grief I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the phone call came. My dad was dead at sixty.  He had just retired eight months before and moved into his dream house with my mom. I just could not believe that it was true. I was in shock. I think the entire first year I lived in disbelief. All the firsts came and went – Father’s Day and his birthday. I also had a one-year-old who turned two six months later—another first where I felt the absence of my dad profoundly. The second year was the hardest for me by far. I think it took the first year for me to really understand the reality of my loss, for my dad’s death to sink in. I often woke in the middle of the night from terrible dreams, only to realize the loss of my dad wasn’t a nightmare; it was all too real. I spent those nights crying out to the Lord in desperate prayer. Every time I was at my parents’ house, I expected him to come around the corner. It was painfully hard to adjust to life without him here. But it was during this period that I really began to understand God as my Father as he showed his fatherly care for me...

We Always Have A Father to Celebrate on Father’s Day2023-08-15T13:22:39+00:00

How I Grew to Love the PCA

JAMYE DOERFLER|GUEST I grew up in non-denominational, charismatic-leaning churches. Then, at 22, I married a PCA guy—one who intended to become a pastor, no less. In the beginning, it was difficult for me to fully embrace the denomination, but twenty-five years later, I can see how God has worked in my heart to bring me to a place where I recently helped my husband plant a PCA church. You may be wondering how a nice Reformed guy could end up with a girl like me in the first place. Peter and I met at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, which was once associated with the PCUSA but now has students of every Christian stripe. When we started dating in senior year, we had no intention of marrying. After all, he wanted to be a pastor, and I wasn’t interested in being a pastor’s wife (but that's a story for another time). Our doctrinal differences weren't as important as the fact that we were both committed Christians. We were out of college and living in different states when we decided to marry, so it wasn’t until then that the rubber hit the road. Like all newlyweds, Peter and I had to make decisions about whose way we would do things. Wash the dishes with a rag or sponge? Open gifts on Christmas Eve or morning? When it came to choosing a church, we had to reconcile differences both of theology and preference. Only there wasn’t much of a debate here—our choices were limited because he needed to be under the care of a Presbytery. What even was a presbytery?!...

How I Grew to Love the PCA2023-08-15T13:23:11+00:00

Entrusted to be Invested

KAREN HODGE|CONTRIBUTOR You are rich friend! Maybe you don't believe me because you bumped up against the "not-enoughness" of life at some hard point today. Perhaps you do not think you have enough time, resources, or energy to do what you feel like God is calling you to do. This scarcity mindset depletes our joy. This summer, I pray as we study First Timothy together that you will survey your spiritual life and find yourself overflowing with contentment and gratitude for all the deposits of sound doctrine entrusted to you to be invested for His glory. At the heart, this is all about stewardship. If you grew up in the Hodge household, you would have heard on the regular, "All of life is stewardship!" We like to define stewardship as something of inestimable value entrusted by the King to be invested for kingdom purposes. A steward's chief responsibility is to be faithful to the Master. I want to open my First Timothy treasure chest and share some of the glorious riches God has entrusted me through studying this pastoral epistle. As one gospel friend to another, I invite you to hold me accountable when I forget these deposits of truth and pray that I will be a faithful steward as I seek to invest them in my church. Deposit #1- Sound doctrine leads to sound and healthy churches, homes, and living. "…the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service…" – 1 Timothy 1:11-12...

Entrusted to be Invested2023-06-01T19:57:29+00:00

Important Lessons Learned in Relational Discomfort

LEAH JONES|GUEST I drove my son to the baseball field on a beautiful spring day. As an avid baseball fan, I was filled with excitement imagining moments of his potential glory. I anticipated watching him grow in a sport that I loved so much. I had visions of him being a superstar all the way through college. After that? Time would tell. After all, I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. My son spoke with all the sincerity his 8-year-old self could muster: “Mom, you don’t need to cheer for me today.” His calm comment was a jolt to my entire system! “Eliot! I love you and am so proud of you.” I secretly thought to myself, “I know baseball, so I know all the cool instructive things to say.” His reply was still calm but very serious, “Mom. It’s practice.” His discomfort demanded he speak truth to me. His point was well taken, and I scaled back my intensity to reflect his reality. Emotional Discomfort, a Gift from the Lord In our friendships, marriages, and family, we have moments of difficulty. We miscommunicate or we hear words and assume the worst. We often feel angry towards someone or hurt by them and can’t really name why. These internal disruptions are not enjoyable, but that does not mean they are bad. Emotional discomfort is a gift from the Lord. It tells us there is something happening, and He is at work to help us understand. In James 3:16-18, we are taught that a life of wisdom is, among other things, peaceable. And peace, by nature, is relational. Peace is not accomplished in a vacuum. The life of wisdom is found by working for peace with one another. In the midst of stressful and uncomfortable conversations we feel confused and flooded with all sorts of emotions. Our immediate reaction is often one of self-preservation or anger. But what God is showing us is our need for repentance and/or a deeper awareness of our wounds...

Important Lessons Learned in Relational Discomfort2023-08-15T13:23:38+00:00

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST “Summertime and the livin’ is easy…” Well, that’s how the song goes anyway. Although I’m not quite sure that summer is all that easy for a mom with kids wanting to go to the pool, have a friend over, visit the park, and build forts in the woods, I do realize that summer is a more flexible time of the year. The long, unscheduled days present opportunities to engage in fun activities, making special memories as a family. That’s what we love about summer, isn’t it? Although my kids are grown, I know that I treasure our picture albums full of smiling, sun kissed faces squinting into the sun next to carefully constructed sand castles. Summertime “easy livin’” also presents us with numerous opportunities to engage our children with the gospel, and that is even more precious than a well-crafted memory album! Memorize Scripture Together Because summer offers a reprieve from the rigors of schoolwork, it is an excellent season to start a Bible verse memory program for your whole family! Choose a verse or passage to learn. Introduce it to the family during dinner, discussing what it means and how it applies to life. As a family, choose an award. Perhaps this could be a trip to the ice-cream parlor, an outing to the lake, or a night by the fire-pit toasting marshmallows for s’mores. Anything can work as long as everyone agrees. Then start memorizing, just a few words at a time, adding to them daily. Have the kids make posters with your family verse, and tape them up on the fridge, in the bathroom, and on your doors. Say it together in the car, in the morning, before bed, or at random times during the day. Once you’ve all learned it, enjoy your reward! You could even make a goal to memorize several passages and have a great big end of summer celebration!...

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family2023-08-15T13:24:03+00:00

A Reason for Pain and Suffering

SHARON ROCKWELL|CONTRIBUTOR Now in the winter of my life, I have witnessed many friends and family members deal with hardships that resulted in physical pain – miscarriages, a stillborn child, loved ones taken too soon, those who have had to endure cancer and heart disease.  Whenever I encounter someone in physical pain, my first inclination has been to pray that the pain would be taken away.  Secondly, I would offer help where needed.  Finally, I would make a deliberate effort to be grateful for all my blessings and for God’s goodness to me.  My feet have landed in pleasant places in comparison.  Psalm 16:5-6 reminds me of God’s goodness; “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.  The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” Never have I looked into the eyes of a friend who was in pain and thought to myself this is a reminder to repent.  But that is precisely what John Piper tells us is a reason for physical pain in the world.  In his book Providence, Piper presents a convincing argument that God uses our pain as a call to repentance.  He reminds us first that our fallen world is under God’s judgement.  He permits the physical pain, the tragedies, and death itself.  But why?  Why does God judge the world with physical pain?  His argument goes back to the fall.  When Adam rebelled and ate the fruit of the tree which he was not supposed to eat, he was essentially taking a stand.  He decided that his ways were better than God’s ways, that God’s law did not matter, arrogantly thinking that there would not be consequences.  It was a mockery of God, completely out of step with what he owed God, which was glory, praise, honor, and obedience. We are still like Adam, completely unaware of how much our sins grieve our holy God.  God has become so insignificant in our daily lives that we don’t realize how much we hurt Him.  Piper suggests this is “one of the reasons God judged moral evil with physical pain.  While fallen people do not value God, they do value being pain free.  Therefore, to point them to the outrage of belittling him, God judges that belittling of God with physical pain and sorrow.  He subjected the whole creation to futility and corruption.  In other words, God puts the call to repentance in the language everyone can understand – the language of pain and death.”[1]...

A Reason for Pain and Suffering2023-08-15T13:24:26+00:00

Making Prayer a Priority in Ministry

MEAGHAN MAY|CONTRIBUTOR Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Better Together: A Team Based Approach to Women’s Ministry. Get your free copy here. We live in a culture that celebrates self-reliance and ingenuity, and this pressure extends into our ministry lives. We become reliant upon instant fixes to what our hearts desire, and our dependence upon the Lord diminishes. We depend upon our own wisdom and skill to accomplish the next task. In love, God uses prayer to shape us to be patient, expectant, and others-oriented. Prayer in the Bible has a communal dimension, which reflects our interdependence. Beginning with the family of Seth in Genesis who called upon the name of the Lord, Scripture shows us that God’s people pray together. In Acts we read that the early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”[1] Prayer as a Priority When we pray with one another, we will learn things about the Lord that we did not understand on our own. As often as we are able, we should prioritize prayer in community. C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves, points out that the angels in Isaiah 6 are crying out “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another. Each angel is communicating to the other angels the part of God’s glory that they see. As we pray and praise the Lord together, we get to know Him better and deepen our delight and dependence on Him. When we pray in community our lives and ministry agendas are pried out of our own hands and return to the One whose glory we seek. The beginning of prayer (and truly the whole thing) is all about God. “Adoration” and “Thanksgiving” are God-oriented and heal the heart of self-centeredness. Augustine taught that one of the chief benefits of prayer is that it addresses our “disordered” loves. [2] He believed that if we do not let God change these drivers inside of us through prayer, they would be “part of the problem, not agents of healing.” When God is our greatest love and deepest delight, every other aspect of our prayer life is transformed...

Making Prayer a Priority in Ministry2023-08-15T13:24:52+00:00

Parenting in the Age of LGBTQ+

KELLY URBON|GUEST An “age” is a cultural period marked by the prominence of a particular item or a particular way of understanding the world. By that definition, our current cultural moment certainly represents a new age with respect to identity, sexuality, and gender. Never before have sexuality and gender been so persistently centered, and so drastically redefined. The numbers related to this change can be a bit shocking. According to a recent Gallup poll, the number of individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or by some description other than heterosexual and cisgender, doubled from 2012 to 2021. By far the biggest change is seen in those who have come of age as a member of Gen Z. A surprising 20% of those born between 1997 and 2003 self-identify as LGBTQ+. Given these statistics, it is no surprise that there has been an enormous increase in the number of parents who have a child sit down with them to reveal that they are gay, bisexual, nonbinary, trans or queer, to name a few. Many parents struggle to respond. Especially for parents whose firm theological convictions are in conflict with outright acceptance of these identities, this part of the parenting journey can be especially challenging. While there are no cookie cutter responses sufficient to meet all of the questions and tasks before these parents, the following are a few suggestions that will lay a basic foundation for a godly response. Cultivate compassion and patience Several months ago I came across a quote by Christian author Tim Challies. It has become a foundational principle in my current parenting. Challies wrote, “Remember that your children are sinners who are beset by the fierce enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Be gentle with them and have pity for them. Don’t be yet another enemy to them.” Colossians 3:12 immediately comes to mind: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”...

Parenting in the Age of LGBTQ+2023-08-15T13:25:51+00:00

To Rejoice with Those Who Rejoice

KERRY ANDERSON|GUEST Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. (Rom. 12:15)  When it comes to opening my mailbox, May is almost as exciting as December. Graduation announcements come in as a close second to Christmas cards among the favorite mail I receive. I love seeing the creativity of the cards, the carefully chosen, personality-reflecting senior pictures, and the promise of the future. I adore reading about the various accomplishments and next steps and I get extra excited when there’s a party invite in there too! I can just sense the beaming smile of a mamma as she addressed them all. And if you’ve ever mailed me one, know that your announcement sat in a special basket and was prayed over until dethroned in December by that first holiday card. When We are Better at Mourning than Rejoicing We’re heading into that end-of-the-school year season when our mailboxes and social media feeds are full of announcements of not just graduations, but also awards days, state championships, senior trips, college acceptances, job acceptances, and let’s not forget engagement and wedding season too! With so much to celebrate, you’d think we’d be masters at it. After all, our God is a God of many feasts and celebrations and in Psalm 35:27, it says He “…delights in the welfare of his servant!” And yet sometimes, those weddings, or graduation announcements, or pictures of a child with an honor roll certificate stir up less than God-honoring thoughts and emotions in us. Though it's a command to rejoice with those that rejoice, our heart can be the enemy to living that out.       My then college-aged daughter once noticed this among her peers. As we pondered what we’d both seen, we concluded that often the people of God are better at mourning than rejoicing. Leaning into support, lifting up in prayer, and bringing a meal are actually easier than being a champion for, celebrating, and truly finding joy in someone else’s experience of blessing. We rush into comfort and rescue, but we hold back from honoring and encouraging. We don't send a congratulations text because we didn’t get that thing we applied for that month. We don’t ask a friend how her son’s wedding went because we weren’t invited. Or we don’t serve on that committee because we had hoped to be the chair. Maybe our child didn’t get into the college of her dreams or make the honor roll. Maybe our graduate can’t articulate what the next step is yet. Maybe you long to be married so attending another engagement party has a sting to it. Maybe your adult child is moving overseas while your friend’s is moving right around the corner. Those are the realities of life and in our over-connected online world, it’s not going away. Which is why we have the imperatives of Scripture to meditate on when our thoughts, hearts, and eyes drift from our eternal focus...

To Rejoice with Those Who Rejoice2023-08-15T13:26:13+00:00

The Sacred Work of Intergenerational Discipleship

KAREN HODGE|CONTRIBUTOR “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Last words are precious and shape us. Moses has some final words for the children of Israel at the end of the exodus. He will not go with them into the promised land but only see it from a distance. He encourages these forgetful people like us to hear and listen up! They have seen sand and sad circumstances, but he invites them to start their new life on solid ground. The Shema above is the centerpiece of daily morning and evening prayer for Jewish families. It bookends each day with holy realignment, which begins by looking upward. We are to hear, listen, heed, and remember that Yahweh, our covenantal and relational LORD is our God, and He is One. In a polytheistic world of gods who compete for our allegiances, He is singular, other, and holy. No one else is His equal. He is our King and should rule and reign in every area of life.  Moses notes the natural overflow of worshiping our LORD is the integration of faith and life. Intergenerational discipleship begins with the relentless dethroning of competing loyalties. God wants all of us—nothing held back—our heart, soul, and might. Our obedience is an overflow of our love for Him, not the Law. It is easy to get this upside down. Jesus quotes this greatest commandment to a young striving lawyer in Matthew 22:36-37...

The Sacred Work of Intergenerational Discipleship2023-08-15T13:26:40+00:00
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