Parents and Facebook
I recently posted a guest-blog for Covenant Eyes on the role of parents in establishing Facebook parameters for their kids: According to a recent survey, 75% of teens have a Facebook profile, 54% check their status once a day, and 65% of them access Facebook through their mobile devices. Teens are living, increasingly, in a […]
10 Things Nobody Tells You About Being a Dad
Before I became a dad, I thought I would be a pretty good dad. After all I grew up in a nice, Christian home, I read parenting books, and heard quite a few conference messages and radio programs on biblical parenting. I was set. The kids I would raise would be fortunate to have me […]
5 Inconvenient Truths about the Writing Life
I get a lot of questions about the writing life from very interested folks. Some romanticize it as if its an easy, dreamy career filled only with paychecks and fame and unicorns. But there are inconvenient truths about writing that nobody tells you until you actually step into it. I don’t write these to discourage […]
Why Mother’s Day Will Be Harder for Us This Year
I’m thirty-four and so Mother’s Day has endured several new seasons for me. There was the season of my birth, which I don’t remember of course. Then there was the seasons of childhood where I came home from church on Mother’s Day with hand-made cards, where I partnered with my dad and siblings to make […]
Friday Five: Julie Ziglar Norman
Julie Ziglar Norman is the youngest daughter of world renowned motivational and inspirational author and speaker Zig Ziglar. After 25 years of living every day with regret, shame, guilt and depression but trying to cover it with a smile, Julie began her journey letting go of the shame and embracing freedom in Christ. Having spent […]
Why Christians Are Not the Point of Easter
I’m studying for my Easter sermon. I have to be honest, sometimes I get intimidated by Easter sermons. It’s not that I don’t enjoy preaching about the pivot point of our faith: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s just that I know on Easter there are those people sitting and listening to my message that […]
5 Attitudes for Christians in a Political Season
So another Presidential campaign season is upon us and Christians are engaged at all levels and on both sides of most debates. As a recovering political junkie, I realize how easily my time, my energy, my attitudes can get sucked into the life force of Presidential politics. So here are a few attitudes that we […]
Can We Build the Church By Being Against the Church?
It’s hard to read a Christian book or blog post or to hear a sermon without hearing some overt or implied criticism of some part of the evangelical Church as a whole. That’s not even counting the Twitter feeds of Christians. I’m reading a terrific book right on the centrality of the gospel by one of my […]
A Better Way to Discern
I come from a very conservative theological background and I maintain many of those same convictions. But one thing that has changed in my heart over the years is my attitude toward people from different ministry contexts and denominations. I used to think that if their bullet points didn’t line up with mine, then I […]
Guardrails and Grace | Covenant Eyes
I wrote a guest blog for the Covenant Eyes blog on the interaction between guardrails and grace. Here’s an excerpt: A few years ago, Angela and I decided we were going to vacation somewhere in the Carolinas. We settled on Myrtle Beach. So our journey took us through the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and on […]
10 Things I’m Thankful for in 2011
Today is Thanksgiving. This year (2011) I have much to be thankful for. I could fill pages. But I distilled them down to ten: Nine years of marriage to a beautiful and godly woman, Angela who has faithfully stood with me in ministry, trains our children in the Lord every day, and enjoys watching crime […]
Russell Moore on Forgiveness:
When we forgive, we are confessing that vengeance is God’s (Rom. 12:19). We don’t need to exact justice from a fellow believer because justice has already fallen at the cross. We don’t need to exact vengeance from an unbeliever because we know the sin against us will be judged in hell or, more hopefully, when […]