Category: Journal

HR

Offer most parents a way to understand their children better and they will jump at the opportunity.   The Five Love Languages of Children (Northfield Publishing, 1997) provides just such a chance to open up new and practical ways of understanding parent-child relationships.    This insightful, yet easy to read book, is a collaborative effort by two highly credentialed and successful authors.    Gary Chapman, Ph. D.  is extending the insights of his 1992 best-seller The Five Love Languages.  Ross Campbell, M.D. is the author of the volume that I had previously labeled the best book on child-raising that I have ever read, How to Really Love Your Child, which has sold over a million copies.   Their collaborative book now contends strongly for that title.

The heart of the book is the section explaining how the five love languages work in the lives of children.   If you have never been exposed to Dr. Chapman’s work on the love languages, you will be completely engrossed and fascinated as you reflect on your own parent-child communication in the light of the five; physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts and acts of service.   Each chapter includes helpful illustrative stories from real life and examples from the conversations of children to help the reader understand the principles.   Chapter seven is a practical chapter titled “How to Discover Your Child’s Primary Love Language.”   The real benefit will be the positive results in your closest relationships as you gain insights and learn to put his principles into practice.

The second half of the book tackles with great wisdom different challenges that face families which greatly affect how we show love to children; challenges like discipline, helping children learn, and dealing with anger.   Also in this section is a chapter especially for single parents that contains, among other things, especially helpful guidance concerning the grief process in children.   And there is a chapter on the five languages as they apply to married couples; a short summary from Dr. Chapman’s first book. 

There is a list for additional reading as well as occasional helpful references in the text.  A section at the end contains a detailed action plan and short group discussion guide for each chapter.

I believe every parent should read this book.   Grandparents, teachers, counselors and pastors would also benefit greatly from it as well.   Dr. Chapman concludes, “I dream of a day when all children can grow up in homes filled with love and security, where their developing energies can be channeled to learning and serving rather than craving and searching for the love they did not receive at home” (p. 193).  This book will help bring that day a little closer.

I decided to work at home today (Thursday, Feb. 25) while the snow fell.  Not that I couldn’t have waded through the snow to my office; it’s only a few hundred yards.   But I needed to read a book in preparation for this week’s message and write a couple book reviews too.   Home seemed a cozy place to accomplish that; now that I have a laptop.   It was great to be at home with JoAnne too.  We played a couple table games in between working on our various projects, and talked to some family members on the phone. 

Snow days are one of the privileges of this climate.   You can feed the birds and the watch them at the feeders; build a fire in the fireplace insert and enjoy its warmth; work on a big jigsaw puzzle for awhile.   Move a little snow with the snow blower and shovel and have some hot tomato soup with bread and melted cheese for lunch.   We also spent a little time watching the winter Olympics.   My jaw drops open when I see ski jumpers twisting and turning in the air and landing on their feet.  How do they ever learn to do that without getting killed?  For her part, JoAnne loves watching skating.

1.     Why is this passage listed among difficult passages?

People have always wondered whether Jesus should be taken literally or figuratively here when he speaks of gouging out an eye or a cutting off a hand.  Here’s an interesting historical note I found that assures us the problem is not new.

“Shortly after the publication of William Tyndale’s English New Testament, the attempt to restrict its circulation was defended on the ground that the simple reader might mistakenly take such language literally and “pluck out his eyes, and so the whole realm will be full of blind men, to the great decay of the nation and the manifest loss of the King’s grace; and thus by reading of the Holy Scriptures will the whole realm come into confusion.” So a preaching friar is said to have declared in a Cambridge sermon; but he met his match in Hugh Latimer, who, in a sermon preached the following Sunday, said that simple people were well able to distinguish between literal and figurative terms. “For example,” Latimer went on, “if we paint a fox preaching in a friar’s hood, nobody imagines that a fox is meant, but that craft and hypocrisy are described.” 1

(from Hard Sayings of the Bible, Copyright © 1996 by Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce, Manfred T. Brauch, published by InterVarsity Press. All rights reserved.)

2.     How do we deal with the difficulties in this passage?

There are multiple reasons to say that Jesus is speaking figuratively. 

1. If we ask why Jesus mentions the right eye or hand, we have to answer that it is probably because the right hand was considered more valuable as most people were right handed.  And often our dominant eye is the same one that we are handed too.  So if Jesus picked these for a reason like that, it means his point relates to the item’s importance to us and its influence rather than to the literal body part.
2. Speaking of an eye or a hand causing us to sin is easily recognizable as figurative expression.  Jesus spoke of how sin comes from inside us, not outside (Matt. 15:18,19).  Our eye or hand does not cause sin, it is our mind and heart that are led astray (James 1:14,15.  Another way to think about this is to think of the fact that it is patently absurd to think that cutting off the hand or gouging the eye would actually do away with lust against which Jesus was preaching in v. 28.    The very absurdity of it forces us to go deeper and look elsewhere for our answer.
3.  A couple different people at our Bible study observed that this saying seemed to them to be of the same type as his saying about his body and blood;  “My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink” (John 6:55 NIV).   In both sayings, Jesus makes his point in such an exaggerated way that one is forced to look beyond the literal meaning.  Those listening at that time had the same trouble discerning between literal and figurative.  Finally Jesus pointed out that    “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (Jn 6:63  NIV).   This helped point the disciples past a strict literal reading of his words.     
4. There is a consistent record in the church of interpreting Matthew 5:29 figuratively.

3.     What are the key truths or inspirational messages of this passage?

1. One important lesson here is this.  Jesus is asking us to remove things in our lives that are sources of temptation, even things that are near and dear to us.   A good OT example is the reward that Gideon received for leading Israel in battle against the Midianites (Judges 8:25-27).  While it started out as an innocent reward, it ended up as a snare to Israel.

2. Another important part of the passage is the warning about the consequences of not separating ourselves from the source of such temptations.  They can result in the whole self being spiritually lost.  Sin that we harbor, at the very least, hinders our prayers and hardens our hearts, stopping any spiritual progress and making us insensitive to God’s further corrections.  Most often sin causes obvious spiritual retrogression and proves much more addictive and enslaving than we had thought.  Here Jesus warns that such a path leads to hell.

So the key question for us to ask ourselves is this;   Are there things in our lives that are causing us to lose spiritual focus; to make wrong decisions; to persist in sinful actions?  In order to take Jesus’ warning seriously, what are we going to do about them?

The last two Sundays  (Feb. 7 and 14, 2010) I have been talking on Sunday mornings about the transformation of character that God is catalyzing in all believers.   Paul describes it in Colossians 3 as a putting off of spiritual attitudes, habits and character traits that went with our pre-Christian self (vv. 5-9), and a putting on of new spiritual qualities and behaviors that fit with our new commitment to Christ (vv. 10-14).    The key section is “you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col. 3:9, 10).  It is intriguing to note the combination of active and passive verbs to describe what is happening in our lives.  I am reminded how Paul in another place combines in two adjacent verses, “work out your salvation…for it is God who works in you… (Philippians 2:12,13).  Apparently, this transformation is something God is doing, but also something we need to be active in as well.  So what is our part?   How do we enthusiastically cooperate with what God is doing in our lives?   The answer is very important to our Christian walk.  

As I studied for these two messages, I discovered that Colossians 3:15-17 contains a brief summary of five disciplines that are essential to what God is doing in our lives.   If we are faithfully practicing these five, they will greatly enhance and enable the Holy Spirit’s work in us.  They tell use some of our part in the process.  I will just outline them briefly as they are familiar but not necessarily in this context.

1. Peace.      We are to let the peace of Christ rule in us.   This begins with our own peace with God (Rom. 5:1) and then expands into our peace of mind in distressing circumstances and into reconciliation for our troubled relationships too.   Jesus gave us the gift of his peace (John 14:27).  Certainly when the peace of Christ is coming in, it will be nearly impossible to harbor malice or bitterness.  And we will find it impossible to have Christ’s peace when involved in sexual sin, for example.
2. Thankfulness.    Three times, once in each verse, Paul commends thankfulness.   It is not possible to be deeply grateful and sinfully angry at the same time, is it?    Yet when we are grateful to a loved one, for example, we are much more willing to “bear with” some small but normally irritating action.
3. The Word of Christ.    There seem to be two aspects of this discipline.  The first is how we are to allow God’s Word to work inside us—“dwell in you richly.”  When I think about this, I think about meditating on phrases like this one, about studying passages, about applying lessons from what I read and study to my own life.   What does “dwell in you richly” mean to you?   The second half of this discipline refers more to the corporate learning and application of God’s Word.  Paul continues “as you teach and admonish one another.”  
4. Active worship.    It is not just the activity of singing in church or going through the rituals of a service, it is what happens in our hearts.   But while we are engaged, truly engaged in worship, we are intentionally opening our lives, our affections, our minds, to the Holy Spirit.  We are putting ourselves in a place where God can work.
5. Living life in Christ.   “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus (v. 17).    Think of your life as a new incarnation of Jesus, not in a proud false-Messiah way, but in a humble understanding that if people around you are to see Jesus it will be because they see his Spirit shining out of you.   This is the discipline of submitting each daily action to the test of holiness, to the discernment of God’s will, to the understanding that you are acting on his behalf. 

If we were wondering how in the world we would ever be able to put away the old self and put on the new, I think Paul has given us five secrets to help us.   Regular practice of these simple disciplines will certainly help us grow into who God wants us to be.   These five, I think, are the how-to section of the chapter.

This past Wednesday, as I walked through an area mall, I noticed many people with ashes on their foreheads in commemoration of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.   While we usually associate the use of ashes on that day with Catholics, there are Protestants from more formal traditions that also have the pastor put a spot or a cross of ash on their foreheads at an Ash Wednesday service.   My daughter attended at Christian Reformed church for several years that practiced it.  

I was talking to someone via email the other day about the possible Scriptural background for the custom.    I remembered that ashes were utilized symbolically in more than one way in the Old Testament.   The use we most commonly think about was as a symbol of repentance as exemplified in Daniel 9:3 and Job 42:6.   They were also used to show grief as in the loss of a loved one; examples are Isaiah 61:3 and Jeremiah 6:26. These two were probably the most common.   But in addition, there was a third use that is very important as a possible background and aid for understanding the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday.   It is not completely unrelated to the other two but has a unique emphasis.  Ashes were applied to the body in the OT during times of severe fasting and prayer as a sign of abject humility.   We can see this in Esther 4:1, 3 and in Isaiah 58:5.  However, in the latter passage, while the text illustrates the practice, the prophet is warning the people because they did not practice the ritual with genuine hearts, which is always a danger. 

Whether we symbolize it with ashes or not, part of the attitude of each of us as Christians on Ash Wednesday and indeed for all of Lent is humility before God.   As believers, we do not need to mourn past sins that have been forgiven, which God has washed away and forgotten,  but we do need to remember that we are not sinless (1 John 1:8) and we need at this season especially to pray with David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts:  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23,24 KJV).  That is a key to spiritual humility.

On Ash Wednesday

Ashes are everywhere, to mock the pride
That raged and leaped and perished in its flame,
Yet vanity within us has not died;
The cautery has left us much the same.

Before our bones are ashes, and our wills
Have forfeited all power to repent,
God, bend our stubborn spirits and our skills
To uttermost obedience this Lent.

Poem by Elinor Lennen
(Lenten-Easter Sourcebook,  1961 Charles Wallis, ed. P. 27)

I have decided to make some additions to my blog.   On the pages side, I have recently added a devotional section and a book review section.  For both of these areas, I will occasionally also publish articles by other teachers in our local church that I think are helpful and well written with author’s name noted.    

I am also starting to use the links section more, adding links that I think readers might find helpful or links that might help readers understand me.   In addition, I am experimenting with categories, adding a category called “Who Am I” to double label occasional journal articles that I think might be of continuing value to together make a picture of who I am.  I’m also planning to add one called “Joy Notes.”    It will be for short uplifting devotional thoughts, usually with a quote in them. Probably many joy Notes will also be in the Journal.  These will distinguished from the devotional pages which will be usually be longer writings, and sometimes authored by others.

These pages will be short inspiring devotionals.  Some I will find and am able to publish.  Some I will write.  And some I will approve that have been written by other people I know.  I will always endeavor to credit the source properly and put my name if I have written it myself.   Sometimes I will include a comment of my own too.

Well, since February has arrived, I suppose I will have to finally agree to take down the train display.  It has been a lot of fun again this year and it is always such a long time until next Thanksgiving when it can go up again.