Back to School

 School has started up again.  Each year around this time I focus the blog on this topic as it is a critical time in the life of our young people.  As they grow and develop and learn of the world around them, we need to take care to ensure that they have a proper biblical foundation for understanding how to think about the world.  I am afraid that for too long we have been so worried about teaching them to think the right things and how to avoid the wrong things that we have forgotten that we need to teach them to think.  

When we begin to teach them to think there are a few beginning steps.  First we should teach them that they cannot think just any ole way they like.  The Bible demands that we think through its lenses and Christ demands that we have the mind that He has.  Thought then, as well as behavior, needs to be brought into conformity with Christ and His Word!  Secondly, thought is not something that is internal, it is foundational.  We act because of how we think.  We behave because of how we think.  How we think and what we think are foundational acts.  Therefore we should arguably take more care to consider how and what we think that what we do.  Third (but certainly not final), not all ways of thinking are created equal.  When things do not conform to Christ and His Word, and when things cause us to behave in a way that is inconsistent with Christ and His will, we need to change our patterns of thinking.  

So send your kids to school thoughtfully.  Make sure they are thinking well!

Summer Fun

 As it nears the end of summer a recurring question keeps appearing at our house:  did we do enough fun things during the summer?  It does not always seem to matter that we have not had only one free weekend where we had nothing going on, it always seems like we could have done more.  

I think sometimes that we look at our Christian life this way too.  No matter how much we do - no matter how much we read the Bible, or pray or serve we are always seemingly looking to answer the question, "Was it enough?"  This is not how grace works and reveals a fundamental flaw to our understanding of our relationship with God.  There can be no question of if it is enough unless the works that we do actually do something in our relationship with God.  And they cannot.  Because the work of Christ has already been done and it is sufficient.  Therefore our works are done not out of a sense of obligation but in gratitude.  In that sense the question, "Am I grateful enough?" would be a valid one.  There are times I know I am living out of step with the Spirit of God and it can boil down to a lack of gratitude for what Christ has accomplished for me.  But gratitude that is measured is also not true gratitude.  This is of course not to say that the things we do are meaningless and do not matter at all.  That is not at all true.  Nor is it to say that we should not strive to read our Bibles, pray, serve etc.  We should.  But what we should stop doing is preaching grace but practicing a works based way of living.  What we should do is start to be willing to trust in the grace shown us by God Himself and realize that if He can show us grace, perhaps we should stop asking the question that measures these things according to a standard that He says we have already completed in Christ!