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Uber-blogger Tim Challies  recently posted a very helpful piece on teaching our children to pray . Please check it out and note the helpful resources he provides. This week I post brief thoughts on how we can encourage children to pray for their parents . Ask them to pray that you would be wise and gracious in raising them.  Ask them to pray that you would have a spirit of humility when raising and loving them.  Ask them to pray that you would be quick to confess and quick to seek forgiveness when you sin against them.  Ask them to pray that your discipline of them would not be primarily punitive, but a gracious and restorative corrective.  Ask them to pray that you would model repentance for them.  Ask them to pray that you would not forget that you are one of God's means of sanctification in their lives, so you want to encourage their obedience with the aim of growing Christlikeness in them. I hope this is a complimenting post to w...

I was captivated by the election returns in November. When I got home Tuesday night, November 8, I predicted to my family that the election would be over by 10pm, with the winner declared and a concession speech given no later than 11:00. I assumed Mrs. Clinton had it in the bag. Ha!  I'm an idiot. By 11:00pm my wife was in bed, my 17 year old daughter was fast asleep and my 14 year old daughter had fallen asleep on the couch (trying to stay up with me).  I couldn't peel myself away from the coverage. As the night eased into the early morning hours, the rhythm of the night was favoring Donald Trump. I was captured. I had to see how it ended. After watching Donald Trump give his first speech as President-elect I climbed into bed around 2:40 early that Wednesday morning. I'm 54 years old. I haven't seen 2:40am (on purpose) in years! The day of work on Wednesday wouldn't wait. I was up at 6:30. I tackled the day in a fairly sluggish way. The wacked out...

I've probably lost my ever-loving mind posting on such an issue. This has been, for many, a very contentious and discouraging election season. Families have been at odds, friends find themselves in pitched battles with one another and Facebook comments between Christians have seen an exceeding number of exclamation points and angry face emoticons. However, regardless of the vote you cast and for whom, we should not be divided as friends, families and fellow Christians. Let me make my case by laying out four categories of voters (there are probably more, but work with me). These categories, in my view, are legitimate reasons to cast your vote (or not) for whoever you think you should cast your vote for. If that is the case, Christian charity (patience, grace, love) compels us to understand one another. It is an opportunity to listen to one another with humility. We may disagree, but that disagreement should not be a barrier in our relationship (or, even worse, destroy them)....

We believe that corporate worship is the most important gathering we take part in each week. So we want to encourage the members of Grace Community Presbyterian Church to prepare to worship together every week. In a previous post I gave the reasons why we want to make our order of service available a few days before we gather on the Lord's Day to worship. We provide links to our order of service on Facebook and Twitter and those links take you to this page , where a pdf of our bulletin can be accessed. A member of our church had the genius idea of taking each week's order of service and building a playlist of the hymns we will be singing that week. The response has been very encouraging. Families are playing the playlist while they eat dinner, it becomes the music they play as they are running errands or exercising. One mom told me that her children look forward to the playlist each week.  These playlists are available on YouTube and we also provide links to each p...

This post is written for the members of the church I serve, Grace Community Presbyterian Church, PCA in Fort Worth, TX. The members of our church nominated 8 men for office this last spring. These eight men begin their training for office on August 14th. If all goes according to schedule, we will complete our training February 19, 2017. It is during this training where these men (along with their wives and families and the current officers of GCPC) will determine if they are willing and able to stand for election and serve their church in the office to which they've been nominated. For all of those who agree to stand for election, there will be written and oral exams to be completed by them. We hope to have officer elections in mid- to late spring, 2017. But I didn't write this only to give you our timeline. I'm asking you to pray for these men and their families. We believe this is one of the most consequential decisions in the lives of these families and the l...

Love/Hate Relationship I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I love it that it allows me to keep up with friends and family, provides forums for "quick-takes" and can be a great resource for deeper reading when links to books and journals are provided. I hate it when it becomes a platform for debate or is used to stir up controversy. The "hate" part of my relationship with social media has been alive and well over the course of the last few days following my denomination's annual meeting which is called our General Assembly. There is a lot of work that takes place during this week; good and necessary work for the good of the Presbyterian Church in America. But, inevitably, stuff will happen that can be controversial. Controversy is in the eye of the beholder, often times. For many of my friends and fellow elders in the PCA, one particular issue was worrisome. I'm Glad You Asked (but not really) We debated and eventually approved a st...

A recent situation at the public high school where my oldest two attend has been a topic of conversation in our home. A high school girl availed herself of the boy's bathroom. A fellow male student snapped a picture of her while she was in there and posted it on social media. Both the female student who entered the boy's bathroom and the male student who snapped the picture have been disciplined. The female is not allowed to enter the boy's bathroom, regardless of whether she identifies as a boy. And under no circumstances may anyone take pictures of others in a bathroom and post those pictures on social media. Cue the firestorm. Those who sympathize with the female student have begun to protest. She should, they argue, be able to enter the boy's bathroom if she identifies as a boy. Another group of students gathered around the flagpole during the protest to pray for the school and all involved. My high school daughter was registering her outrage and frustration...

The privilege of planting and pastoring the same church for 11 years brings with it some hard good-byes. Literally, from the first month, January 2005, people have come, joined and left. This is just part of church life. But, at the same time God has brought many new people in these 11 years, people committed to serve and worship at Grace Community Presbyterian Church, PCA.  We always rejoice when we receive new members. This too, by God's grace, has been a wonderful part of church life. We've lost valuable servants and members because their jobs have taken them out of Fort Worth. I don't like it, but am grateful that another church in another part of the country will be blessed with these former members. But then there are the others who simply transfer their membership to another church in our area. I've heard a whole host of reasons why these former members have decided to leave. Here are just a few: 1. The preaching is bad and getting worse. 2. The churc...

I'm glad you asked. Corporate worship at Grace Community Presbyterian Church , where I serve, lasts anywhere from 70 to 90 minutes each Lord's Day morning. The Order of Service (the Bulletin) will contain 3-5 hymns and/or psalms from the psalter (printed with the melody) [ UPDATE: Because of the faithfulness of one of our church members, we now provide a YouTube playlist of the hymns and songs we will be singing each week as well. You can find out why here . ]. It will also contain the doxology which we sing every week, 3-5 additional songs/hymns that we sing during communion (which we celebrate every week), prayers of adoration, invocation, confession and consecration. An Offertory during the Offering is provided as well as a page of "Communion Reflections", which are quotes from Christians that help us focus on the work and worth of Jesus and our desperate need for Him. There is a Call to Worship and a Confession of Faith as well as a reading from the Old Testam...

The grief is deep when a loved one dies. The sadness of having to send a friend off on a new adventure far from you is palpable. Packing up and driving our first-born to college is on our agenda in the coming new year. I get a pit just typing about it. Goodbyes are hard. In every instance there is a longing to be together again. There is a heaviness to the memories, the pictures bring a new ache. We were born for one another; for communion and community. So every time we utter "goodbye", that little word precedes a tear at the "ever-presence" of that relationship. After the tearing comes the tears. As a Christian, I want to dig around and seek out hope and comfort and permanence when I'm grieving or sad or I ache.  I want heart-ache and unpleasantness to toss me to God, His Word and His promises. God's Word, specifically, Revelation 21:1-4 , does just that; pulls me to God and His promises. There we see that we will experience the reality tha...

[A sleepless night provoked this post a few months ago. It sat in my draft folder until now. Reader beware.] Considering the prospect of giving my daughters away makes this dad think. As a minister I may even officiate their weddings. These are my initial thoughts of what I want to say to them as their dad, first, and as their pastor, second. Today, you enter into the covenant of marriage. As your father, I will walk you down the aisle and place your hand into your future husband's hand. In moments, you will hear the pronouncement, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." With those seven words everything changes. God tells us this in Genesis 2:24 . At this moment you leave us and cleave to one another in marriage. The whole covenant context changes. You are now his wife.  You've been raised as our covenant daughter. We promised to raise you in the fear and admonition of the Lord in and with the community of believers. We sought to do that. You have been such a...

I am a Presbyterian for a thousand different reasons. One of them is relevant to this post. As a Presbyterian, I do not succumb to the very real experience Ron Edmondson addresses in this post ; the loneliness of a pastor. ( Please read that brief post before continuing. This post will make more sense when you do.) Over the past couple of years, in my presbytery, we've had the sad responsibility of addressing tragic circumstances among other ministers in our presbytery. In many of the cases deception and long-nurtured secret sin was exposed. Discipline was imposed with the ultimate purpose, bathed in prayer, that repentance and reclamation would result. Our presbytery has attempted and is attempting to put in place opportunities to address these challenges. Ideas discussed are meetings of pastors within smaller geographical regions for lunch and discussion, a pre-presbytery seminar (once a quarter) to fellowship, learn and pray with one another, designating a portion...

Let's be honest, and I mean that sincerely. I have friends and extended family members that believe it is important that abortion should be a woman's choice and that it should remain safe, legal and accessible. There are those who argue for abortion rights on the basis that it is a human right  and must necessarily be protected in order to achieve gender equality worldwide. I disagree...completely. I want to be honest about why I disagree with my family and friends who support a woman's right to have access to safe and legal abortion. Abortion is the act of killing a baby while in the mother's womb. In some cases, the baby is "partially born" before it is killed. The recent videos filmed and provided by " The Center for Medical Progress " have left no doubt about the premise; abortion kills the baby while in the mother's womb. For it is upon this premise that the parts; hearts, livers, etc. and tissues of the dead baby can be sold, dona...

It is not a stretch to say that, humanly speaking, I am a minister because I faced early on my utter inability to pastor people. I failed in a lot of ways as a Young Life staff person and a youth director in a new PCA church. I still do after being an ordained minister for 16 years. But a primary failure in those early days was my inability (and often unwillingness!) to listen well. I've been reading through the book The Pastor and Counseling  by Jeremy Pierre and Deepak Reju. They have reminded me how the first task of pastoral ministry and pastoral counseling is humility which leads to listening well. Listening means to be fully engaged with the person or people in front of me. Being fully engaged means I am taking in their words, seeking to understand how they see their world. This is intentional activity on my part as I must seek to hear the parts others play in their life; family, friends and most especially God. I can get a sense of this by what they say and what they ...

I want to commend three excellent resources to you that address the current culturally hot topic of homosexuality. They are, in alphabetical order by title, Compassion without Compromise , Is God Anti-Gay and What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? .  I read them recently and am commending them to you now for one primary reason; keeping directly in front of us the people who struggle with same sex attraction and the Person who addresses this struggle. With all of the noise in our culture regarding homosexuals, the definition of marriage, the rule of law, the spheres of church and state and their relationship, I'm hearing lots of doom-saying, pessimism, squishiness and all out calls to retreat. As a minister and a Christian I needed help sorting through it all. These four authors ( Compassion without Compromise was written by two men) have provided me that help in valuable ways. This is not a review of any of the books. There are those who are much better at boo...

Grief Undone: A Journey with God and Cancer by Elizabeth W. D. Groves My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is absolutely wonderful! Libby Groves shares her heart as she shares her grief and, most incredibly, the Lord's sustaining grace throughout it all. Pick it up and read it. View all my reviews