I would like to compare him to another man who has experienced failure in the past week, Kyle Williams. Now before I bring up the comparison I want to make it clear that I am not comparing the circumstances – nothing could compare with the horrible accident that to this point has cost 16 people their lives, along with the millions of dollars and jobs lost. No situation could compare with that. What I would like to compare at least in some way is how we handle failure.

Kyle Williams committed two very public, costly errors that contributed to the San Francisco 49ers losing their NFC Championship game this past week. As an athlete in a business like football, he knows more than anyone else that he blew it. No one needs to threaten his life, as at least one person has in the wake of this game. He feels awful for his teammates, especially when he fumbled a punt return in overtime that led to the winning overtime field goal for the Giants just a few plays later.

How does he handle it? How do we handle it when we blow it? A football game is not that important in the whole scheme of things, I know. But when you let others down in a big way, how do you bounce back?

Kyle Williams was asked today, in a radio interview with Dan Patrick, what his father, a sports General Manager for the Chicago White Sox, said to him after the game. Williams said that his father was the first person he saw when he left the locker room. His father said this to him, “Are you tough enough? Are you man enough to handle this?” Kyle Williams’ father Kenny knew that the answer was yes. Kenny Williams was confident enough in his son Kyle to know that Kyle would bounce back from this. I assume that’s because his father knew his son well enough, and he had taught Kyle enough from his own experience, to be confident that his son had a good foundation. Kyle’s father was there for him in his failure.

Captain Schettino did not handle his failure well. He ran away from it, he wouldn’t deal with it. Kyle Williams, on the other hand, acknowledged his mistakes and is ready to learn from them. How about you? How about your children, fathers and mothers? Are you preparing your children to avoid situations of failure compounded, like Captain Schettino? Have you taught your children how to deal with failure, to bounce back from it and learn from it, like Kyle Williams? Have you laid for them and with them a rock solid foundation? You can find that foundation in Jesus Christ. He is the only sure, rock solid foundation.

Scripture is like the world: “undecipherable in its fullness and in the multiplicity of its meanings.” [It is] a deep forest, with innumerable branches, “an infinite forest of meanings”: the more involved one gets in it, the more one discovers that it is impossible to explore it right to its end. It is a table arranged by Wisdom, laden with food, where the unfathomable divinity of the Savior is itself offered as nourishment to all. Treasure of the Holy Spirit, whose riches are as infinite as himself. True labyrinth. Deep heavens, unfathomable abyss. Vast sea, where there is endless voyaging “with all sails set.” Ocean of mystery.

Henri de Lubac in Medieval Exegesis, quoted by Peter J. Leithart.

• In order for a man to be courageous, he must know the truth about who God is. Courage that overcomes fear comes from convictions, and convictions about life and death come from the truth of Scripture.
• The easiest thing for a man to do in a devastating crisis is to move into denial and do nothing.
• Another good man standing alongside you will help you be courageous when journeying through the valley…
• It takes repeated acts of courage for a man to truly face and process his emotions… Pleasure and pain were both meant to be experienced by men. For me, that took courage.
• A man is no less courageous if faced with a situation that he can’t fix and about which he doesn’t know what to do, but cries out to God in prayer, “Help me, God!”
• A man can have doubts and still step up.
• A man doesn’t have to understand all of God’s purposes to step up and be His man.

Men, this is sage advice to file away, because courage will be demanded of you at a point in your life (possibly more than once), and the question will be, Are you ready to be a godly man who steps up courageously? Lord willing, you will be.

Reb Bradley, in his post on Homeschool Blindspots, discusses the fallacy of emphasizing outward form.

Preoccupation with results often leads to emphasis on outward form. When we are preoccupied with achieving results it is natural to admire the results others seem to have achieved with their children. We like the way the pastor’s kids sit reverently in the front pew and take notes of their father’s sermon, so we go home and begin to teach our children to sit reverently and to take notes. What we don’t know is that the pastor’s kids conduct themselves with reverence and attentiveness not because he “cleaned the outside of the cup” and simply drilled them to do so — he lived a genuine love for Jesus that was contagious, and watched as the fruit was born (Matt 23:26). Parents are destined for disappointment when they admire fruit in others and seek to emulate merely that expression of fruit in their own children. Fruit is born from the inside — not applied to the outside.

Paul David Tripp calls this “apple-nailing.” We want good fruit, but instead of cultivating that good fruit through lifelong shepherding and caring for our child’s heart, we nail good apples onto a bad apple tree by forcing outward change without the inward heart motivation of a love for God. The short term result might be presentable children, but long term we are only painting the outside to look good while inside there is nothing but dead man’s bones (see Matthew 23:27).

Bradley I think strikes a nerve with many when he touches on a hot button issue, modesty.

I find it fascinating that in the gospels there is not one mention of Jesus coming against immodesty, even though among his followers were prostitutes and the like. Jesus emphasized cleaning up the inside while the Pharisees were the ones preoccupied with cleaning up the outside. We must ask ourselves: Which are we more like – Jesus or the Pharisees? Even now do we justify ourselves, insisting we emphasize cleaning up both the inside and the outside?

I know that some react strongly to these assertions, so let me emphasize that I do want my wife and daughters to adorn themselves modestly. God did address it once in the New Testament (1Tim 2:9), but we must ask ourselves, is it possible that we have elevated modesty, or other issues of outward form, higher than Jesus did? If he only mentioned modesty once in the epistles and never mentioned it in his earthly ministry, but instead emphasized the importance of a changed heart bearing outward fruit, should we not follow his example and concentrate on reaching our children’s hearts?

Don’t get caught up in the fallacy of outward form without inward heart change. God is the final judge, and he judges the heart, so don’t elevate other’s perceptions above what God is doing on the inside.

In this particular episode Mr. Anderson (Robert Young) was on a business trip in New York, an insurance conference at a hotel, a thousand miles away from his wife and family. Next door, in a room of one of his fellow conference attendees, they were having a birthday party. As he was closing his transom to keep the noise from the party from waking him up, there was a knock at his door. When he opened the door a pretty young lady was standing there, and she invited to come to the party. This young lady complimented him, telling him that he was a handsome man and he should come over and join them.

As with any man, I am sure at first he was flattered by her interest. But his response was very revealing. He said something to the effect of, “You know, I have been told that before. In fact just yesterday my little girl told me what a handsome man I am.” And he went on to speak of his greater love for his children and his wife, who he had just finished talking to on the phone. This greater love was what caused him to decide to stay in his room, go to bed, and be faithful to his family.

Often, men, when we attempt to fight these desires that wage war in our minds, we forget that the best weapon is to have a greater love and a greater joy. Yes, I am speaking of a wife and children, if we have either of them. But more so I am referring to the greater love, joy, and desire that can be found in God and God alone. If we cultivate that greater love for God then, when temptation rears it’s ugly head, we can say, “Yes, desire, you are appealing, but I have someone else who satisfies me far more fully and completely than anything else, and that is God.”

Chris Tomlin says it well in his song, Enough, when he speaks of the contentment, satisfaction, and joy he finds in his God and Savior, Jesus.

All of You is more than enough for all of me
For every thirst and every need
You satisfy me with Your love
And all I have in You is more than enough

Now we don’t homeschool our kids (excepts for about 6 weeks back in 2003), but this article still had great relevance for me, because the author touched on some common themes pertinent to all Christian parents involved in shepherding their children.

If you are honest with yourself, you will agree with the first blindspot, having self-centered dreams for your child. Men want sons, women want daughters. Fathers want boys who are athletic, or who love the outdoors, or who are able to do things that they could never do. Mothers want respectful, kind daughters who dress modestly and make wise decisions. You can fill in the blank for your own children.

The problem we often don’t see is that the dreams are our dreams for our children. Bradley reflects on the difficulty that he had with one of his boys, whom he had to ask to leave the home for a time.

You see, I had a dream for my family and it involved adult children who lived at home humbly under parental authority, and who would one day leave home to marry, after following my carefully orchestrated courtship process. But now, my son had gone and “messed up” my perfect dream. Nothing is wrong with dreaming of good things for your children, but the truth was, my dream for my son was mostly about me.

It is only natural for parents to have high hopes and dreams for their children. However, when we begin to see our children as a reflection or validation of us, we become the center of our dreams, and the children become our source of significance. When that happens in our home it affects the way we relate with our children, and subtly breaks down relationship.

What Bradley is trying to say is that if you find your source of significance in the successes of your children and your dreams for them, you are committing idolatry. We will delve into this more in a later post. Suffice it to say, parents we need to check our motives and desires for our children and bring them to the cross, where God can fashion them in a way that reflects his plans.

HT: Ray Ortlund

to limit it to only a stick or a rod, would be too legalistic… It seems obvious that 2 Samuel 7:14 cannot be limited to just a stick (a wooden staff or rod). Job 9:34 is clearly non-literal – God does not use a literal stick. Psalm 89:32 shows the parallelism between scourging from a whip and beating with a rod – essentially categorizing them together as one. Proverbs 26:3 expands the category by adding the bridle to discipline or guide the donkey. Isaiah 11:4 shows that the words of the mouth (God’s, in this case) perform the same action as the rod. This might provide us with the concept of verbal discipline or punishment that might be more fitting in some situations with our children than an actual physical chastisement. Paul is obviously not using “rod” literally in 1 Corinthians 4;21, but is talking about chastisement or discipline. Conclusion: Proverbs 23:13 speaks first and foremost of the actual physical rod or stick that might be used in physical punishment or discipline, but does not exhaust the intent, since the same truths apply with regard to other physical instruments (such as a whip – in modern parlance, a cord or strap or belt) as well as verbal discipline. Too take the “rod” too literally can result in taking a proverb too literally. Remember, the nature of the proverb is to present a general axiom or truth, not to present a universal prescription or truth…

HT: Andrew Callaway

Living faith in God entails sharing God’s priorities.

The biblical authors had a living faith in God.

Therefore the biblical authors shared God’s priorities.

God himself is top priority.

Therefore the biblical authors had God as their top priority.

(James M. Hamilton, Jr., God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology, p. 557)

After having my son read a paragraph from a story that they had never heard, I asked them why that paragraph didn’t make sense. We talked about the fact that they didn’t know the main characters, the main point of the story, or anything else so that they could make sense of it.

I did all this in order to explain to them that the Bible is one big story. It has a main character – God. It has a main point – God’s salvation for people. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is very helpful to look and the big story so that we can see how the different parts fit into the one big story.

What we did then was to read through a book entitled Biblical Theology for Kids! James Hamilton,  a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, wrote this with his son to help kids understand the big picture of what the Bible is all about.

It’s a very short and simple book, only 19 pages with pictures drawn by his 5 year old. It’s one of those books that you can have and read over and over with your child. You can download this little book, Biblical Theology for Kids!, to use with your family. I recommend it.