John Hughes in “Why Christian Education and not Secular Indoctrination” in Think Biblically asks this thought-provoking question:

To what extent do most Christian parents take purposeful steps to get to know the character quality of the teacher in classroom of their son or daughter?  At the elementary educational level, their child will spend more time being influenced by that model figure than by any other adult with the possible exception of the parents themselves?”

Food for thought. What think you?

And for older children entering another year of high school or college, here are some recommended resources.

“Opposition is inevitable. We live in a culture hostile to all we believe and proclaim; hostile to masculinity and femininity as defined in Scripture; hostile to the commands of God forbidding fornication, adultery, and homosexuality; hostile to the prescribed commands of God for sexual purity prior to marriage and fidelity in marriage; hostile, most of all and most importantly, to the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross as the way to be reconciled with God.

Regardless of how humbly you hold those positions—and I pray you do hold them humbly, and from my observation I commend you for holding those positions humbly and not self-righteously—you will know opposition. You will know opposition from relatives, teachers, employers, and coworkers. You will know opposition, and that opposition can affect your soul.”

–C. J. Mahaney

“The most spectacular sin that has ever been committed in the history of the world is. . .

the brutal murder of of Jesus Christ, the morally perfect, infinitely worthy, divine Son of God. And probably the most despicable act in the process of this murder was the betrayal of Jesus by one of his closest friends, Judas Iscariot.”  –John Piper.

To read more, click here.

I spent less than an hour reading John Blanchard’s lastest evangelistic booklet “Where Do We Go from Here?”  I highly recommend you keep this tool in your toolbox of resources for explaining the gospel to others. Watch John talk about this little book.

You are twenty-four hours closer to death right now than you were at this time yesterday.  We don’t like to use the word “death” anymore. Instead we call refer to it as someone “passing away”, “moving on”, crossing the river”, “no longer being with us,” or being “six feet under.”  In fact, in some places funeral directors are not called “grief therapists”, funeral homes “slumber rooms” and cemeteries are now referred to as “memorial parks” with “horizontal markers” rather than “grave markers.”  In some hospitals, the phrase “negative patient outcome” has replaced the wording for “death”.

Are you afraid to die?  Are you like Woody Allen who humorously quipped, “I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

We fear death because of the fear of pain, of personal loss, of the unknown, and of meeting God and facing final judgment.

Do you want to be free from the fear of death? Go here, read, and act upon the truth!

My final post from Mahaney’s message on the Troubled Soul:

“Mr. Spurgeon understood the importance of faith toward God. It seems to me he had a gift of faith. I can’t read his writings without experiencing a transfer of faith to my soul. Spurgeon wrote the following about God’s promises, which we are to rehearse before him:

God’s promises were never meant to be thrown aside as waste paper; He intended that they should be used…. Nothing pleases our Lord better than to see His promises put in circulation; He loves to see His children bring them up to Him, and say, “Lord, do as thou hast said.” We glorify God when we plead His promises. Do you think that God will be any the poorer for giving you the riches He has promised? Do you dream that He will be any the less holy for giving holiness to you? Do you imagine He will be any the less pure for washing you from your sins? He has said, “Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins…be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Faith lays hold upon the promise of pardon, and it does not delay, saying, “This is a precious promise, I wonder if it be true?” but it goes straight to the throne with it, and pleads, “Lord, here is the promise, do as thou has said.” Our Lord replies, “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” When a Christian grasps a promise, if he does not take it to God, he dishonours Him; but when he hastens to the throne of grace, and cries, “Lord, I have nothing to recommend me but this, Thou hast said it;” then his desire shall be granted. Our heavenly Banker delights to cash His own notes. Never let the promise rust. Draw the word of promise out of its scabbard, and use it with holy violence. Think not that God will be troubled by your importunately reminding Him of His promises. He loves to hear the loud outcries of needy souls. It is His delight to bestow favours. He is more ready to hear than you are to ask….It is God’s nature to keep His promises; therefore go at once to the throne with, “Do as thou hast said.”

Yes. That is exactly what we are being, in effect, exhorted in this psalm, to talk to God and to remind him of his promises.

Listen: The more time you spend talking to yourself and speaking to God, the more time you spend speaking the gospel to your soul and humbly reminding God of his promises, the less time you will spend listening to your soul, and the more you will experience a joyful and hopeful soul rather than a downcast and a troubled soul”

“But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you.” (Psalm 5:11, ESV).

“I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” (Psalm 9:2, ESV).

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11, ESV).

“Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:11, ESV).

“They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.” (Psalm 36:8, ESV).

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4, ESV).

“Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.” (Psalm 43:4, ESV).

“But the righteous shall be glad; they shall exult before God; they shall be jubilant with joy!” (Psalm 68:3, ESV).

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation. . . .” (Psalm 51:12, ESV).

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” (Philippians 4:4, ESV).

Pastor D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who was also a medical doctor, wrote a classsic book that I highly recommend called Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cures. In this book he counsels that one of the biggest reasons we find ourselves downcast in our souls is that we listen to ourselves rather than talk to ourselves.  He writes,

I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asked. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.’….

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’—what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself,…exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God.’ (pp.20-21)

That is exactly what we must do. “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”

Let me ask you: Have you realized? Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to this reality, this fact, that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

Adapted from The Troubled Soul by C. J. Mahaney

JT writes this in the comment section of this post. I think this is very important to think through:

Let me propose a thesis, and I’d be interested in your response. Evangelicals who support someone like Obama do not truly believe that the unborn are human persons deserving full human rights. I know that sounds both provocative and unfair. But imagine that we were not talking about the unborn but about toddlers. If 50 million–50,000,000!–toddlers had been brutally executed in our country, wouldn’t it be utterly unthinkable to vote for a candidate who had a 100% record of voting for toddler execution and who never once in his career voted for a single restriction on toddler execution–and who promised that his first order of business as president would be to sign a bill that would codify the laws in favor of executing toddlers, and in fact would make sure that taxpayer money supported it?

If you object to the analogy, then you have to explain the morally relevant difference(s) between an unborn person and a toddler. Appearance? Stage of development? Size? Degree of dependency? Location?

If you missed the forum hosted by Rick Warren with the presidential candidates this site has video and a link to the full transcript.

Of most interest to me was how the candidates would respond on the issue of abortion. Warren asked both candidates when a baby gets human rights. McCain answered “at conception,” and Obama said “answering that question is above my pay-grade.” If that doesn’t sum up the difference between these two men on the abortion question, then I don’t know what does. (Part 4 of the video link–3 minutes into it)

You can get a pretty good overview of it here.