This essay by J.C. Ryle entitled The Duties of Parents (available free online) would be well worth your attention if you are looking for ideas to stimulate your parenting. I commend it to you for tomorrow’s Marriage Monday column.

Here’s an interesting post from Mark Altrogge (author of Give Me One Pure and Holy Passion) on what to do when your pastor offends you (and he will, since he is simply a sinful human being being a tool in God’s hands).

Among the suggestions:

1) Pray
2) Ask, “What does this offense reveal about my heart?”
3) Ask, “Is this one of the “multitude of sins” love covers or a serious sin or pattern of sin that God wants to help him with?”
4) If you can’t cover it in love, go to him. But before you go, ask, “What are my motives for going to him?”
5) Try to believe the best.
6) Forgive him in advance.
7) Go humbly.

From the Editor’s Note:
There’s plenty of material out there on living the Christian life. But there’s not so much, from what we can tell, on living together as a church.

This issue deals with what it means to live in unity. Check it out.

Being humble is a war. All that I am is bent on serving self. Pursuing humility is fight, then. Sure, Peter tells us to “clothe ourselves in humility.” That seems all nice. Like grabbing a shirt out of the closet to put on was ever a difficult thing. Clothing ourselves in humility, though, is a fight. We don’t naturally go there. Our world doesn’t go there. With all the jersey-popping, self-serving, I-want-this-my-own-way, I’ll-do-whatever-I-want attitudes that are swarming around us, the commands to be humble are hard to live.

Here are two helpful items for pursuing it (from 2 of my favorite pastors):

1) John Piper on how he pursues humility.

2) C.J. Mahaney from Humility:

HOW TO WEAKEN PRIDE AND CULTIVATE HUMILITY
(A List of Suggestions):

ALWAYS:
1) Reflect on the wonder of the cross of Christ.

AS EACH DAY BEGINS:
2) Begin each day by acknowledging your dependence upon God and your need for God.
3) Begin your day expressing gratefulness to God.
4) Practice the spiritual disciplines-prayer, study of God’s Word, worship. Do this consistently each day and at the day’s outset, if possible.
5) Seize your commute time to memorize and meditate on Scripture.
6) Cast your cares on Him, for He cares for you.

AS EACH DAY ENDS:
7) At the end of the day, transfer the glory to God.
8) Before going to sleep, receive this gift of sleep from God and acknowledge His purpose for sleep.

FOR SPECIAL FOCUS:
9) Study the attributes of God.
10) Study the doctrines of grace.
11) Study the doctrine of sin.
12) Play golf as much as possible.
13) Laugh often, and laugh often at yourself.

THROUGHOUT YOUR DAYS AND WEEKS:
14) Identify evidences of grace in others.
15) Encourage and serve others each and every day.
16) Invite and pursue correction.
17) Respond humbly to trials.
(Taken from pp.171-172 of his book)

I have personally been helped immensely by these direct applications. Applying these to my heart and life has helped me see the depth of my pride problem and wage ware all the more valiantly (depending on God’s grace as my only hope).

Fight for humility – it leads you onto the path of Biblical greatness.

This week, I really enjoyed Thabiti‘s thoughtful exposition of Psalm 51 recently at Covenant Life Church. The message is entitled: The Guilty. Enjoy!

John Piper offers some good counsel on how to wisely use the money coming to us for the kingdom of God.

Here’s an excerpt:

Clue: Nobody in the world will see you spend your money on yourself and conclude that Christ is your treasure. They will assume you are just like them, no matter how loudly you thank God for this boon. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend it on yourself (the way we do with most of what we earn). Not everything we do can look different from the world—eat, pay utilities, fill up the car, wear clothes (even thrift-store clothes). And yes, we hope (somehow) that spending on ourselves in some way contributes to our being more Christ-exalting people.

But do we really need this money? Very few do. We would have gotten on fine without it. If we didn’t know it was coming, we wouldn’t even be feeling the desires we are feeling right now.

May I encourage you to be radically creative and hedonistic. Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). And those crazy Macedonians in a “severe test of affliction” and in “extreme poverty” had an “abundance of joy” that overflowed in a “wealth of generosity.” They even begged Paul “for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints” (2 Corinthians 8:2-4). They really believed what Jesus said. Really.

Have any of these ideas passed through your mind? Let’s honor God with our money!

I have been anticipating this for a while, but, evidently, the ESV Study Bible will be out this Fall. They have a website where you can register to get regular updates or peruse the features online. Ray Ortlund recently had a novel idea:

I have met people who knew a lot about baseball, a lot about oldies rock and roll [oops], a lot about computers, a lot about a lot, but I have never met anyone who knew the Bible too well. Not one person. Ever. Especially not in these times.

The ESV Study Bible comes out this October. I see an opportunity here. Could we all give ourselves ESV Study Bibles for Christmas and then set 2009 apart as “Our Year of the Bible”? Could we all give less to other things so that we give more to the Bible? Could we bore down together and discover the wonders of this holy Book as never before? Could we acknowledge our spiritual hunger, and thoughtfully, carefully, attentively, daily feed our souls? Could we shut off the noise and listen? Could we re-set our focus from the voices inside our heads to the Voice in the Book? And if we did, is it even conceivable that we could then come to the end of 2009 and say, “Dang. I could have done more TV and more computer and more video games and more dumb stuff. What a loser year 2009 has been! Next year, man, it’s going to be different. No more of this Bible-focus for me. I’m going to LIVE again”? Is there any chance, any chance at all, that could happen? Or might Jesus become more real to us? Might the Holy Spirit be poured out? Might we look back on 2009 as our turn-around year?

October 2008. The ESV Study Bible. Think of the possibilities.

Join the fun! Let’s allow God to impact us through His Word.

For the next few Marriage Monday posts (sorry I’m a day late), I will be posting on the subject of parenting and today I thought I’d begin with a recent post by John Piper. He sent out an excerpt of something he is currently working on. On his writing leave, he is writing on marriage and this includes a chapter on raising children. He writes on the ultimate goal of parenting:

The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for God-like transformation. The children will have years of exposure to what the universe is like before they know there is a universe. They will experience the kind of authority there is in the universe and the kind of justice there is in the universe and the kind of love there is in the universe before they meet the God of authority and justice and love who created and rules of the universe. Children are absorbing from dad his strength and leadership and protection and justice and love; and they are absorbing from mother her care and nurture and warmth and intimacy and justice and love—and, of course, all these overlap.

And all this is happening before the child knows anything about God, but it is profoundly all about God. Will the child be able to recognize God for who he really is in his authority and love and justice because mom and dad have together shown the child what God is like. The chief task of parenting is to know God for who he is in his many attributes, and then to live in such a way with our children that we help them see and know this multi-faceted God. And, of course, that will involve directing them always to the infallible portrait of God in the Bible.

How are you at showing what God is like to your kids? Are you living in such a way that they are given a picture of God? Or are they given a picture of an idol you’re serving? These are questions of deep significance for us. We have to live it before we tell it. May this be true for us.

Our world has become increasingly individualistic and we do all that we can to take advantage of communicating face to face (as God intended?), so when I came across these two articles (from Peacemaker Ministries) this morning on more effective email communication, I was struck with how this is an area that needs to be seized upon and, ultimately used, for the glory of God. Check them out:

The Ten Commandments of Email Communications, which Ken Sande commends as “I commend them to you as an example of biblically-informed wisdom that all of us can benefit from.”

Keeping the Peace – Writing Email that will not Stir up Conflict, an article with helpful commendations from Carolyn McCulley.

While all the talks were exceptional, I thought Piper’s talk really turned the corner and began to press us towards some application. Therefore, I would highly recommend you listen to it:

John Piper: How The Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice