From my Starbucks cup this morning (#273):
All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles – someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.
– General Colin L. Powell
Founder, America’s Promise – the Alliance for Youth.
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Posted by blestou on July 4th, 2008 — Illustration, Quotes, Ministry, Daily Life, Doctrine, Culture, Family
I commend to you an excellent article in Touchstone magazine by Russell D. Moore, looking at how his adoption of two boys helps him understand our adoption by God through Christ. You won’t find a better explanation of adoption anywhere. Don’t wait for the book, read the article - The Brotherhood of Sons.
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Posted by blestou on December 5th, 2007 — Illustration, Review, Church Life, Culture, Doctrine, Family
The (Re)Publican has a nicely worded post about the substitutionary aspect of the atonement.
We need to get over this false dichotomy that what is legal is necessarily impersonal and that what is personal is necessarily not tied up with legal matters.
And just as in human relationships, the legal serves as a foundation for the personal relationship with God through the cross.
Go read the whole thing. Nice thoughts that will make you feel fuzzy inside, and that’s saying something in a post about penal substitution.
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Posted by blestou on September 25th, 2007 — Illustration, Ministry, Daily Life, Doctrine, Family
Kay Hymowitz describes why, though sympathetic, I am ultimately uncomfortable with libertarianism in her article, Freedom Fetishists.
On the one hand, libertarians make a fetish of freedom; it is their totalizing goal. On the other hand, libertarians depend on the family–an institution that, in crucial respects, is unfree–to produce the sort of people best suited to life in a free-market system (not to mention future members of their own movement). The complex, dynamic economy that libertarians have done so much to expand needs highly advanced human capital–that is, individuals of great moral, cognitive and emotional sophistication. Reams of social-science research prove that these qualities are best produced in traditional families with married parents.
Children do not come into the world respecting private property. They do not emerge from the womb ready to navigate the economic and moral complexities of an “age of abundance.” The only way they learn such things is through a long process of intensive socialization–a process that we now know, thanks to the failed experiments begun by the [left-wing] Aquarians and implicitly supported by libertarians, usually requires intact families and decent schools.
There is more to a successful, stable society - more to sustainable growth - than “everybody do what you please, just try not to hurt anybody.”
Absolute freedom does not maximize actual freedom.
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Posted by blestou on September 12th, 2007 — Links, Illustration, Daily Life, Culture, Doctrine, Politics, Family
Caleb Dean LeStourgeon
8 pounds, 6 oz. — 19 in.
Welcome to the world, little one. May you have a different spirit inside you and whole-heartedly serve the Lord.
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Posted by blestou on September 5th, 2007 — Daily Life, Family
I commend to you the “Theological Refining” post by Devin Hudson. Rarely do I find something that both refreshes and challenges me without sounding arrogant. I began to really pay attention after the following:
I get annoyed when I spend very much time with people who feel like they have it all figured out theologically (usually they are first year seminary students who have read a little Piper and suddenly are experts on the doctrines of grace). Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the more I have learned the more I have realized how much more I need to learn. And the more I affirm the sovereignty of God the more I realize how little my mind can grasp its magnitude. And perhaps it also has to do with the fact that the more I learn the more I realize that following Christ is more about day-to-day living and not so much about how many theology books I have read.
As a young seminarian who knew nothing, I was not annoyed by the know-it-all crowd. I was intimidated. They made me feel inferior and inadequate to the task of ministry and theological education. I did not know enough to know that they could not possibly know
what they claimed to know with such confidence. They were a barrier, not a help, to my growth as a disciple and a minister.
Thank all the heavens that I was preserved through the dark times of loneliness and shame. Praise the Lord that I eventually learned what I needed to learn to understand what God was doing with my life. I received a first-rate head-knowledge education at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. But I also was blessed to receive insight regarding evaluation, discernment, and generous debate as characterized by men such as Tom Schreiner, Russ Moore, and Bruce Ware. Moreover, I was blessed to belong to a congregation of those who modeled the ministry truth that “the people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Ministry, and no less discipleship, is a lifelong lifestyle of a life transformed by the Savior. Grace and truthful love - not just love of the truth of grace - should be the hallmark of the people of God. May we, in our humility, show the world our greatness in Jesus Christ the Lord.
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Posted by blestou on August 29th, 2007 — Ministry, Church Life, Daily Life, Culture, Family, Doctrine, Uncategorized
Just in case you were looking, audio of my sermons are online here at the First Southern Baptist Church of Camp Verde, AZ website.
I’m still new at preaching, so be nice.
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Posted by blestou on August 27th, 2007 — Ministry, Church Life, Links, Daily Life, Culture, Family, Doctrine, Tech, Online
My son asks me to sing this song all the time. I post for all other Dads who need to know this…
Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spiderman.
Is he strong?
Listen bud,
He’s got radioactive blood.
Can he swing from a thread
Take a look overhead
Hey, there
There goes the Spiderman.
In the chill of night
At the scene of a crime
Like a streak of light
He arrives just in time.
Spiderman, Spiderman
Friendly neighborhood Spiderman
Wealth and fame
He’s ignored
Action is his reward.
To him, life is a great big bang up
Whenever there’s a hang up
You’ll find the Spider man.
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Posted by blestou on July 11th, 2007 — Daily Life, Family, Uncategorized
Al Mohler beat me to a post on the news of the latest British decision to allow selective abortions based on “eye squint.” (He places the news in a larger context and is worth a look over.) This really strikes home to me because my little boy has a developing “lazy eye” that we are currently using glasses to correct. The thought that a precious boy like Niam could be killed simply because another set of parents think it is too inconvenient or embarrassing to have children with less than 20/20 eyesight forces me to conclude that the 21st century apple has fallen far from the Western Civilization tree.
One of the most chilling quotes from a Baptist Press article:
When asked about hair color, Grudzinskas said, “If there is a cosmetic aspect to an individual case I would assess it on its merits. [Hair color] can be a cause of bullying which can lead to suicide. With the agreement of the HFEA, I would [screen and destroy the embryos].
Such sentiments rightly categorize abortionists and embryo screeners with ethnic cleansers and murderers. The less we value human life, the less civilized we become. It is not the angry pro-lifers who are suppressing the rights of the few - it is the cold pro-control crowd that is eroding the rights of us all.
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Posted by blestou on May 15th, 2007 — News, Culture, Politics, Doctrine, Family
New Baby is officially a new baby boy! Here is an ultrasound photo of his little human head and face in profile.
I think he resembles Niam. They don’t look exactly alike, but you can tell they are brothers.
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Posted by blestou on April 25th, 2007 — Daily Life, Culture, Doctrine, Family
As I have gotten a little older (and, one hopes, a little wiser), I have come to better appreciate Country music. Outside of an oldies station that plays the music you listened to as a kid, country is about the only thing worth listening to on musical radio.
Jeff Foxworthy tells you why.
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Posted by blestou on April 23rd, 2007 — Links, Daily Life, Culture, Funny Pages, Family
Ben Edgington provides a wonderfully useful service with his online Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s daily Bible reading calendar.
He provides links to the daily passages in a number of Bible versions according to M’Cheyne’s original schedule or the modified schedule by Carson.
Best of all, you can also configure an RSS feed for use on your homepage or news reader.
A biographical summary of M’Cheyne is here. Links to written sources are here.
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Posted by blestou on April 22nd, 2007 — Church Life, Links, Review, Ministry, Daily Life, Family, Doctrine, Online
For eight years, the Family Research Council (FRC) has been trying to tell people about the link between HPV and cervical cancer, and that condoms were little defense. From Gina R. Dalfonzo in Christianity Today:
In short, just as the commercials tell us to do, they told someone.
And they were told to shut up.
A chorus of voices from the media, politicians, and organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) derailed the condom-labeling effort, claiming that FRC and its allies were putting teenagers and young adults in danger by making condoms look bad. “What no one in the HPV brigade mentions,” scoffed Sharon Lerner in the Village Voice in 1999, “is that, even by conservative estimates, a teeny number of people who have the virus—far less than 1 percent—will develop cervical cancer.” The implication was that it was hardly worth putting warnings on condoms for that minuscule number of women.
Interesting bit of history, that. The pointed quote from my perspective comes toward the end of the article.
Instead, we need to learn something from the bitter ironies on display here: namely, that our society will gravitate toward any message that endorses sexuality unencumbered by biblical morality. If “telling someone,” as the ad campaign urges, means that they’ll be advocating safe sex, all well and good. But if the cause of free sex is better served by keeping silent, the message becomes, “Tell no one.” Not even if it might put her health at risk. The urge for absolute sexual autonomy and freedom from any kind of control is that powerful—and that deadly.
The politics of sexuality are alive and well, and not simply the preoccupation of those evil no good Christians.
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Posted by blestou on March 22nd, 2007 — Culture, Politics, Family
