Your children will spit on your pastoring if they miss out on your fathering
More wisdom from John Piper’s son Barnabas here.
Author: David Thomas
Free Psalms
Thanks to Steve Jeffery for the heads-up on this new recording of 11 of the Psalms from Matt Searles, sung by Miriam Jones. As God’s people we need to take the Psalms to heart, to meditate on them, let the shape and mould us, and of course to sing them.
Matt has therefore done us a great service with this new album Now and Not Yet: Acoustic Psalms. What’s more, for the month of November the album is available for download for FREE here .
Porn Free Church
Do you think your church is a porn free zone?
A life-with-porn versus a life-without-porn is a poor choice. If you set it up in these terms then you won’t produce lasting change. We need to set it up (as it truly is) as a choice between life-with-porn versus life-with-God. We need to show how God always offers more than porn.
Tim Chester writes here how finding lasting satisfaction in an awesome God through the good news of a crucified, risen Saviour, is the only means of creating deep rooted heart based change that shows pornography up to be what it really is – a cheap, unsatisfying, imitation. We need to overwhelmed by the fact that Christ is better.
Sadly our churches are often far too respectable for us to face up the the reality of the problem of porn.
The quote above is taken from Tim’s contribution to a book, Porn Free Church: Raising up gospel communities to destroy secret sins, that’s free to download – at least for now, from the CovenantEyes Internet Accountability web site
Luke 1:57-80 – Silence Is Golden
Thoughts to make your heart sing
Here is a new family devotional resource form the people who brought you the Jesus Storybook Bible.
Thoughts To Make Your Heart Sing is a collection of 101 thoughts on the Bible and faith in God and is aimed at family devotions.
Our copy has yet to arrive from Amazon, but we do use the Jesus Storybook Bible among other Bibles for our family worship times and find that a helpful resource. I would guess that if you like that Bible, this is something you might want to get hold of.
Reform Section 5 – Rowan Atkinson
Catechising Kids
One of the really helpful features of the New City Catechism is that it has been developed with both children and adults in mind. For example, the first question and answer
Q. What is our only hope in life and death?
A. That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Saviour Jesus Christ.
The bold parts of each answer are meant for young children to learn (I wonder how old before graduating onto the whole answer?).
I’m looking forward to starting these with at least some of our children later this week.
Kathy Keller talks about catechism with kids – the reasons, joys and pitfalls on the other side of this link.
Works of Johnathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards is considered by many as the greatest American theologian ever to have lived. Born in 1703 he experienced the First Great Awakening and wrote a jaw dropping amount of material on almost anything you can think of. But Edwards wasn’t just a man of quantity, his writings are top grade quality.
So being able to carry around the goldmine of a fully searchable edition of Edwards’ Works in your pocket for free would be worth getting a little excited about. And thanks to The Jonathan Edwards Center that is now possible for your iPhone or iPad here.
You can also access the whole resource online through a browser here.
New City Catechism now available
Like firewood in a fireplace
Over here, Tim Keller and The Gospel Coalition are about to launch the New City Catechism.
In the article Keller notes,
Superficial smatterings of truth, blurry notions about God and godliness, and thoughtlessness about the issues of living—careerwise, communitywise, familywise, and churchwise—are all too often the marks of evangelical congregations today. (J. I. Packer and Garry Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel)
How can we reshape the lives of people who have grown to breath the evangelical air that Packer and Parrett describe above?
Since May this year we have been looking through the Westminster Shorter Catechism on Sunday evenings and we are now three quarters of the way through the one hundred and seven questions. During that time I’ve heard comments like, Why are we looking at this again?, and Westminster Shorter Whatichism?
Catechisms are however a great tool for learning the basic Biblical plot-line, Christian doctrine and practice and have been used throughout the last 500 years of the church with both young children and new adult converts.
Keller lists a number of reasons why catechesis can be a particularly helpful in understanding better the faith once delivered to the saints, but I particularly like what he says concerning catechising children.
Catechesis done with young children helps them think in biblical categories almost as soon as they can reason. Such instruction, one old writer said, is like firewood in a fireplace. Without the fire—the Spirit of God—firewood will not in itself produce a warming flame. But without fuel there can be no fire either, and that is what catechetical instruction provides.
I’ve mentioned before that a great way of getting children to know great gospel truths found in the WSC are the 4 Questions with Answers CD’s that are available for download from Songs for Saplings.
WHATEVER IS COMMENDABLE 