Because Jesus Wept

Once during morning devotions, I asked my children, “What are some verses in the Bible that give you hope?”

One of them squirmed, “I don’t know . . . ” Then a silly grin spread across his face. “Wait,” he said. “Jesus wept.”

“You are right,” I said. He was surprised. The shortest verse in all of Scripture — just two words, eleven characters — does give us great hope.

Jesus Wept

Jesus’s good friend Lazarus has died (John 11:14). Before his death, Jesus received word that Lazarus was seriously ill. Then he delayed going for two days. When he finally arrived, Lazarus’s sister Martha came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” (John 11:21–22).

Then Mary came to him and said the same thing. John writes, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept” (John 11:33–35).

Jesus delayed his journey on purpose. He knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead (John 11:15). So why did he cry?...to read the rest of this post, visit Desiring God, my writing home for today.

I Hate the Fall

In our house, I discourage my children from using the word "hate." I don’t want to hear “I hate green beans” or “I hate emptying the dishwasher” or “I hate Spelling.” I tell them that it is a serious and heavy word and they need to reserve it for referring to things like sin and evil. 

Today, I feel compelled to talk about what I hate.

I hate the Fall of Man.

I hate watching my once strong, sure, and active grandfather slowly deteriorate from cancer, have a massive stroke, and then pass away.

I hate seeing dear friends divorce.

I hate the brokenness friends endure from past abuse. I hate the memories that haunt them. I hate how it has marked and changed their life.

I hate how I constantly fall back into old sinful habits of relating, of thinking, of speaking.

I hate how the Body is often fractured, bruised, and stunted by miscommunication, false teachers, bad theology, the desire to look more like the world, and by those whose palate has never moved beyond the taste of milk.

I hate how suffering enters our lives and hits us completely by surprise, like our friend's whose son was poisoned and now has brain damage.

I hate how precious lives are taken from the womb before they can draw their first breath.

I hate how my heart forgets God’s grace and is so easily prone to self-righteousness, self-reliance, and self-exaltation.

I hate how we all fail to honor God and give him the glory he is due.

I hate….

The only thing that comforts me in the midst of this dark and fallen world is the fact that God hates sin and evil even more than I (see Isaiah 61:8, Psalm 5:4, Proverbs 6, Zechariah 8:17). That's because sin and evil is an affront to our perfect, holy, and righteous God. In fact, he had every reason to put an end to the entire human race. But instead, he entered the misery of this world, took on frail human flesh, and lived among us.  He faced the horrors, sorrows, and temptations of this world yet never sinned once. He lived the life we could not live. And on the cross, he was made sin so that we could be made righteous. As Tim Keller wrote "God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself." (Reason for God p. 30).

This truth gives me great comfort. It gives me hope when I encounter all the things on my list above. Because I can’t imagine facing a single one of the above circumstances without an understanding of God’s redemptive story. I can’t imagine going through a trial without the knowledge that God is not at work in it. I can’t imagine seeing abuse, disease, and death without the hope that God’s story is not over. I can’t imagine living in this fallen world without the knowledge and presence of God. I can't imagine enduring suffering without the assurance of salvation and the hope of eternity.

Dear friend, we all should hate sin and evil. We should hate the Fall. But even as we hate it, we have hope. God has answered the problem of evil by crushing his own Son. And one day, the Son will return to restore this world and make all things new. On that day, the word "hate" will cease to exist from our vocabulary altogether.

Giving Up Pretending

I recently had my children go through their bedroom and get rid of toys they no longer play with. I was saddened to find in the pile of things to give away, superhero costumes, pirate swords, and homemade shields. It brought back memories of them pretending to be Superman, flying around the house with a red cape trailing behind them or acting out stories of good battling evil.

Playing dress up and pretending to be someone else is fun. But eventually children grow out of doing so.

Or do they?

A Pretend Life

In reality, many of us play dress up every day. Some of us have worn our costumes for so long that we forget we are wearing it. What kind of dress up do we play? We wear false selves, disguising who we really are so that others around us will not see our imperfections, wounds, struggles, sins, or pains.

When someone asks how we are doing and we smile and say, “Fine,” but inside our heart is aching, we are in fact pretending to be someone else. When we act like our life is great while our world is crumbling down around us, we are pretending. When we fear to open up to others about who we really are and instead mask our aches and pains, we are pretending. When we act as though we are not battling sin and temptation in our life, we are pretending.

The truth is, I am often a pretender...to read the rest of this post, visit Ungrind, my writing home today.

Book Review and Giveaway: Give Them Truth

What is your child's greatest need? As parent's we spend countless hours anticipating and meeting our children's needs from checking for fevers to putting on band-aids; from filling hungry bellies to teaching them to look both ways; from providing them clothes to wear to giving them books to read; from reminding them to share to teaching them to pick up their toys. But of all the needs we anticipate, look for, and meet, what is the greatest?

I would argue that our children's greatest need is to know their Maker God and to be restored back into right relationship with him through his Son, Jesus Christ.

 As parents, we are given the responsibility to teach and train our children in the Lord. We are tasked with passing on to them the truths of who he is and what he has done. We are to instruct our children in the word of God, impressing it upon their hearts, when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up (Deuteronomy 6:7). 

This is a huge and very important task yet one that is often neglected or passed off to Christian schools and Sunday school teachers. Simply reading Bible stories to our children at bedtime is not enough. Our children need Biblical instruction. They need to know what God's word teaches about who God is, who they are, and what God has done. They need to know the Bible and they need to know theology.

Give Them Truth: Teaching Eternal Truths to Young Minds

That's the premise of Starr Meade's new book, Give Them Truth. She writes, "Our children cannot apply Scripture without knowing what it says. They cannot love Christ without knowing who he is. They can't obey God without knowing what he has commanded. And they will not know these things if we do not provide deliberate, thorough, rigorous instruction, just as we would do for subjects like math or grammar" (p.25).

Give Them Truth spurs parents on to teach our children the foundational doctrines of the faith. The purpose is not for mere head knowledge. It's not to make them win every game of Bible Trivia. The purpose is so that our children will be prepared for the storms of life. Knowing God's word gives them an anchor to cling to when life is uncertain, frightening, and out of control. Meade writes, "I contend that a robust theology, a strong, well-connected belief system, is the most helpful thing we can give our children to prepare them for the suffering they will inevitably face as they live in a world spoiled by sin." (p. 37)

The book is divided into three sections. The first section's main premise is that too many children in Christian families do not know the Bible or what it teaches. The next section goes into specific teachings and doctrines children need to know such as the doctrine of God, his incommunicable attributes, the Trinity, doctrine of man, sin, salvation through Christ, and the Church. The final section covers specifics on how to go about teaching children what they need to know in God's word and discusses applying the Trivium model of education to Biblical learning. The end of the book includes a helpful list of resources, books, studies, and catechisms.

This well laid out book contains helpful summaries throughout each chapter, highlighting the key points. Though not exhaustive, Give Them Truth provides the foundational truths we need to teach our children. It is readable and not too heady for parents who are not as familiar with theology and theological terms. Over and over, Meade goes back to the point that our children need to know these things to prepare them for the hard challenges and trials of life they will face at some point in their lives. And all of this instruction is given with the knowledge that it is the Spirit who regenerates dead hearts and makes them alive to Christ.  "The task of parent and teacher is to provide the truth to which the heart will respond. We pile up doctrinal truth in the minds of our children, and we eagerly await the Holy Spirit who alone can cause that truth to give life. But the truth needs to be there!" (p. 194)

Our family has used many of Starr Meade's books in our devotional and instructional time with our children. We've loved every book we've used and this one is no exception. In fact, it won't be long before my copy of Give Them Truth is dog-eared and worn.  I highly recommend this book to every parent, grandparent, and Children's ministry worker. 

I am giving away one copy of this book. Enter below. US residents only please. Update: Rachel P. is the winner. Congrats, Rachel! 

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Disclaimer: I received this book for free in exchange for my review. The thoughts and opinions are my own. This post also contains Amazon Affiliate links.

The Vines We Cling To

Where I live, a beautiful sunny day can change in moments as ferocious storm clouds roll in seemingly out of nowhere. And though it happens every summer, I am often caught unawares and unprepared. I don't have an umbrella and of course I'm wearing shoes I don't want to get wet, much less have to walk through ankle deep water in.

These type of storms are similar to what's been happening in my life lately. I've had unexpected events cut into my otherwise sunny day. These circumstances came out of nowhere and knocked me down, like the fierce winds of a S. Florida afternoon thunderstorm storm. I found myself thinking, "This wasn't supposed to happen" and "Why God?" and "This isn't fair" and "I can't take this."

My response reminded me of Jonah's temper tantrum as he watched Nineveh from afar, waiting to see what God would do. After he finally and with reluctance complied with God's command and told the Ninevites they needed to repent, he left the city and sat on a hill.

"Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind,and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said,“Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” (Jonah 4:5-9)

God graciously provided a vine to shade Jonah from the sun. It was a gift from God that comforted Jonah. Then God sent a worm that ate up the vine. This angered Jonah. God used the worm to save Jonah from what the ESV Gospel Transformation Bible (Black) calls a "vine centered life." "A vine centered person is one who is so taken up with the joy of God's good gifts that he or she ends up loving the gifts more than the Giver." (Kindle location, 187639). In other words, idolatry.

God has removed good gifts from my life over the past few months. These were gifts that had become disordered affections in my heart, idols that I loved and cherished more than God. Any of God's good gifts can become idols to us: friendships, ministries, jobs, children, even our hopes and dreams.

My reaction to losing these gifts, like Jonah's reaction, revealed that I did not love what God loved. I cared more about my own comfort and desires. In fact such emotional responses reveal that an idol is reigning tall on the throne of our heart. Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters, suggests looking at these emotional responses as a clue to our heart idols:

“Look at your most uncontrollable emotions. Just as the fisherman looking for fish knows to go where the water is roiling, look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things that you know are wrong. If you are angry, ask, ‘Is there something here too important to me, something I must have at all costs?’ Do the same thing with strong fear or despair and guilt. Ask yourself, ‘Am I so scared, because something in my life is being threatened that I think is a necessity when it is not? Am I so down on myself because I have lost or failed at something that I think is a necessity when it is not?’ … When you ask questions like that, when you ‘pull your emotions up by the roots,’ as it were, you will often find your idols clinging to them”(p. 169-170).

As I've wrestled through my own emotions in recent months, I've learned much about my heart and of my need for grace. My heart is an idol making factory. I come by it naturally. My sinful heart is prone to wander from my one true love. But God has not left me alone. Just as he graciously removes my vines to show me that I've wandered, he also graciously leads me back home to him. His grace for me is just that big and that amazing. And the more I have dwelt on his grace for me, I've found that it comforts me more than the vines ever did.

Do you have vines you cling to?

Note: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.

What Adoptive Families Wish Their Churches Knew

Often, when I think of a courtroom, I think of judgement, brokenness and sadness. As a social worker, I sat in court to support a rape victim as she gave her testimony against her rapist. As a counselor, I sat in court to speak on behalf of juvenile offenders. I’ve even sat in court as part of a jury selection for a heinous crime.

But there was one time I sat in a courtroom for a joyous reason. That day was the culmination of years of prayer. It was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed. I listened intently as the judge declared that three children standing before him were taking on the name of one of my dearest friends. They had been adopted.   

The Beauty of Adoption

Most of us know someone who was adopted or who has adopted a child. According to the U.S. State Department, more than 7,000 children were adopted from other countries in 2013. Over 50,000 children were adopted in the U.S. in the same year. And there are millions of orphans around the world still without a place to call home...to read the rest of this post, visit the ERLC, my writing home today.