Archive for May, 2010

Media Break

Im taking a break from blogging, Facebook, and Twitter for a while. Probably pick things back up in the fall.


GB
2010
05/27
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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New RBBC Site

Check out the new website for Red Bluff Baptist Church. Its still a work in progress!

2010
05/24
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Affections For His Afflictions

This may be the most important sermon I have ever preached. It is from 2008. If you have 45 minutes, check it out. Let me know what you think if you want.


2010
05/21
CATEGORY
preaching
sermons
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Steve Jobs On Flash


Steve Jobs explains HERE why Apple doesn’t use Flash on mobile devices.

2010
05/21
CATEGORY
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On Men and Their Children

The most recent sermon in the ON MEN series is up.



2010
05/20
CATEGORY
On Men
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All You Need Is Love

But what is love? Here is what Paul D. Tripp says it is:

Love is being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of your husband or wife without impatience or anger.

Love is actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward your spouse, while looking for ways to encourage and praise.

Love is the daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.

Love is being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding, and being more committed to unity and love than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.

Love is a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.

Love means being willing, when confronted by your spouse, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.

Love is a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to your husband or wife is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.

Love is being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged but to look for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.

Love is being a good student of your spouse, looking for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support him as he carries it, or encourage him along the way.

Love is always being willing to ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.

Love is recognizing the high value of trust in a marriage and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.

Love is speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack your spouse’s character or assault his or her intelligence.

Love is being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt your spouse into giving you what you want or doing something your way.

Love is being unwilling to ask your spouse to be the source of your identity, meaning and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of his or hers.

Love is the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a husband or a wife.

Love is a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your marriage.

Love is staying faithful to your commitment to treat your spouse with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when he or she doesn’t seem to deserve it or is unwilling to reciprocate.

Love is the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of your marriage without asking anything in return or using your sacrifices to place your spouse in your debt.

Love is being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm your marriage, hurt your husband or wife, or weaken the bond of trust between you.

Love is refusing to be self-focused or demanding but instead look- ing for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.

Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace. (All quotes from What Did You Expect?)
2010
05/17
CATEGORY
Love
marriage
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Raising Obedient Children

Here is a post from The Resurgence by PJ and Ashleigh Smyth
Here are a few ways that we are trying to raise obedient children:

1. We are confident in our God-given parental authority.
God has set parents in place as the authority figures in the lives of children. Hebrews 12 speaks of how discipline is actually a privilege of being a son. Don’t fear that your child will resent your discipline. On the contrary, they will soon realise that it is a sign of your love for them.

2. We never count to three.
The counting-to-three routine undermines your authority and places your child in the driving seat. You are training them that, essentially, obedience is a negotiation and they can determine the timing of their obedience. Train them to think, “I must obey straight away.”

3. We model it ourselves to authority figures in our lives.
Several times a year there is a clash between what my “boss” is asking me to do and what my family and I would like to do. I always seize these opportunities to explain to my boys that I must obey my boss straight away and with a good attitude, and that although I would much rather spend Saturday morning with them, I must obey my “boss” and go to that meeting.

4. We try not to exasperate our children (Eph. 6:4).
Avoid petty rules. Pick your battles. Be merciful and compassionate. When you are in the wrong, say a sincere “sorry” to them. Also, make sure that you are giving them sufficient attention so that they are not compelled to rebel just to get some time and attention from you.

5. We use appropriate forms of punishment.
We discipline mostly for three D’s: disobedience, disrespect, and destruction (of property or your brother’s nose). Punishment must be proportional to the offense and also proportional to the child’s stage of life. If it is not then you will find that you exasperate a growing child. Also, the mode of punishment must be what will best help the child. Different parents have more “faith” in some forms of punishment than others, and different children respond differently to different forms of punishment. I acknowledge and respect that, although we have had continued success with the primary biblical form of disciplining children with a wooden spoon on their chubby bottoms.

6. We are convinced that it really is worth the effort.
The joy of parenting increases dramatically when you have obedient children, and most importantly, you are equipping your children with the vital life-skill of obedience, which will stand them in good stead in their obedience to God, life, at school, and in the workplace.
2010
05/16
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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On Men and Their Kids: A Follow Up.

I am pretty certain that I said some things in this mornings sermon on parenting that some of you had a hard time with. I challenged some of the non-biblical methods of discipling children. I want here to explore those a little more and perhaps clarify some things I was unable to get to.

Spanking
Spanking your children is not child abuse. Beating, hitting, and harming them is. Spanking is all about love, correction, training and forming. It is not punishment, it is correcting. You will read many secular articles and statistics on spanking and how it is harmful to the child. The problem with these studies is that they assume that if one group of children were harmed by spanking, then all children are. This is a logical fallacy! There is certainly a right and wrong way to spank. Spanking in the context of angry, aggressive, uncontrolled, lazy parents is certainly harmful and unbiblical. Here are some of the verses on the rod from Proverbs. I’ll let you decide if they have harming the child in mind.
Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him…Proverbs 13:24
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him…Proverbs 22:15
If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol…Proverbs 23:14
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother…Proverbs 29:15
Here are some of the ideas I gave for spanking:
Do it privately
Dont embarrass the child and rob them of their dignity.
Make it hurt
The rod loosens their heart and humbles them, preparing them for correction, rebuke, confession, teaching, and the Gospel.
Remind them why
Be sure to tell them why you are spanking them. Its not because you are angry or because you are fed up with them.
Tell them how many licks
This shows that you are in control.
Get them to confess their sin
They need to openly acknowledge their sin and make retribution if necessary.
Pray with them, hold them, love them
You must communicate love and tenderness with them.
Get to their heart
You must get beneath the surface and expose the idols of their heart so you can apply the Gospel.
Timeout
Timeout is a method used by many parents today. The Bible does not mention it so I will not call it a sin. I will however say that it is ineffective even if it produces obedience. The problem with timeout is that it does not teach anything. It makes the child cope with timeout. If a child is left to himself he will not learn anything. Furthermore, they may only obey to avoid timeout, not because obedience glorifies God. I will say that parents may need to sit a child down for a few minutes in order for them to calm down, but they must eventually spank them and/or engage them with correction.
Grounding
Grounding is quite popular, but, like timeout, I am not convinced its the best method for discipline. Grounding does not teach anything. The child simply learns to fear being grounded and therefore they obey to avoid it. It simply caters to their greed and self-interest. Grounding merely changes the environment of the child, not their hearts. Most kids are angry, cranky, and bitter while being grounded, this is not the goal of discipline. Their hearts must be challenged and corrected. Furthermore, grounding can last a long time, discipline should be short and immediate so as to produce repentance. Grounding is too easy; correcting, training, forming, teaching, and instructing takes longer and is more lasting. Parents should certainly restrain their children and take things away at times if they are abusing privileges, but grounding should not be the motivation for obedience. Their hearts must be engaged with the ways of God.
Counting
Many parents count in order to warn the child that punishment is coming. But counting sends the message that sinning is OK for a few seconds. The time to obey is NOW, not in five seconds!
Reward and Bribery
I have heard parents on many occasions say to their children:
“If you don’t straighten up, we are not getting ice cream later!”
“If you are good all week, we’ll get a new toy for you.”
“If you are quiet in here, you can stay up later tonight.”
This is perhaps the most dangerous of all the parenting methods! This feeds this child’s greed, lust for things, idolatry, and self-interest. It does not teach them generosity, integrity, truth, and humility. They obey to get stuff, not because obeying pleases God. In addition, its a false view of the world. When you pay your taxes the IRS does not send you candy!
In the sermon I gave what I consider the biblical methods for raising and discipling children. I will post when it is up. It must be said however, that great parenting does not produce great children, nor does bad parenting produce bad children. God is sovereign over our children, not us. However, this is not a reason to be lazy and passive as we bring our children up.
GB
2010
05/16
CATEGORY
children
parenting
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The Love Test

Last Sunday I asked if we could test if our love for our wives had grown cold. Then I gave what I’ve called The Love Test. Here is the list:

  • Do the kids consume all you do with your wife?
  • Have you stopped dating?
  • Have you stopped kissing? (really kissing!)
  • Do you live parallel lives? (you have your life, she has hers.)
  • Have you stopped doing things only SHE likes?
  • Have you become self-righteous? (you only see her weaknesses, rarely her strengths)
  • Have you stopped pursuing her like you did when you dated her?
  • Do you avoid conflict when you should engage it?
  • Have you given up on growing your marriage?
  • Do you stay up to date with your wife? (her hobbies, prayers, fears, concerns, books, struggles)
  • Have you made it your goal to serve her or to be served by her?
2010
05/15
CATEGORY
marriage
Men
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BABIES – Official Trailer [HD]

This looks interesting!
2010
05/15
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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