Parenthood

Part 3: Raising Children Well: Covenant Friendships

Mark Jones
May 25, 2023
Editor's note: this is part 3 of Raising (Covenant) Children Well. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. Enjoy and be challenged. Friends Closer than a Brother The value of baptism depends, first, on a proper understanding of the sacrament; second, the promises contained in baptism must be...

Raising Children Well: Baptism as an Expression of Love

Mark Jones
May 15, 2023
Editor's note: this is part 2 of Raising (Covenant) Children Well. You can read it here. Enjoy and be challenged. Children of believers are to be baptized because they are covenant members, heirs of the promise that God made to be their God. Fellowship with Christ and his body technically occur...

Christine de Pizan – Theologian and Mother

Simonetta Carr
May 5, 2020
Christine de Pizan – Theologian and Mother Christine de Pizan was the first professional woman writer in France, if not Europe. She is normally seen as an early feminist rather than as a theologian and a mother. But many of her writings are based on her study of Scriptures and the church fathers,...

The Ten Commandments: The Fifth

Jeffrey Stivason
Nov 27, 2019
The Fifth Commandment is weighty. The finger of God inscribed it this way, “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” In the Westminster Larger Catechism, the commandments are typically explained by asking what the duties of a...

Children & Church Membership

Jeffrey Stivason
Jun 7, 2019
A few weeks ago the session on which I serve was interviewing some young teenage girls for communicant membership in the church. When a child in the congregation I serve approaches me about making their profession of faith before the session I ask them two questions. First, I ask to hear their...

Meditating on the Word: The Bible in Family Worship

Tim Bertolet
Mar 29, 2017
One of the most important things you can do with your family is read the Bible together with them. Children are never to young nor too old for you to engage them in Bible reading, study, and devotions as a family together. Honestly, if your family is anything like my family, it can be difficult to...

No Little Women: Know What We’ve Got Before She’s Gone

Grant Van Leuven
Feb 3, 2017
Jennifer Marie, my dear wife, died on the fourteenth of September last year. [1] She was thirty-eight. We had barely made it to our eighteenth wedding celebration the month before. Our four young covenant children prepared and served us a special meal that she could eat. We dined together beneath...

A God Thing

David Garner
Nov 15, 2016
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...

The Freudom of the Christian

Carl Trueman Articles
Jan 30, 2007
Christians often strike me as the most Freudian of people. Say what you like, I have a sneaking suspicion that Freud, rather than Augustine, Luther, or Calvin, probably offers the best insights into the way that Christians really think and act. Let me explain with some examples. The other day I was...

Political Correctness and the New Christian Orthodoxy

Carl Trueman Articles
Aug 26, 2006
I've been reading just about everything Paul Helm writes with great enthusiasm since I first encountered his The Varieties of Belief (1973) during my days as an undergraduate. Moreover, I almost always find myself agreeing with him, even when he champions positions that are no longer popular (e.g...