4 Reasons to Remember Your Creator in Middle Age

(David Murray)
Although it’s young people that are specifically commanded to remember their Creator (Eccl. 12:1), it’s probably assumed that middle-aged people will have the sense to do the same. Surely by then we have accumulated enough experience to realize that remembering we have a Creator and that we are creatures is basic wisdom. How then do we respect and remember our Creator in busy, striving, stressed-out middle age?

1. Remember that we are complex creatures        MORE

First and Foremost Citizens of Heaven

Many American hymnals include a section for patriotic songs like "God Bless America" and "My Country Tis of Thee." I remember learning and singing these songs in elementary school music classes, taught by my grandma. She and my grandpa were Christian patriots who loved their God and the country where he'd placed them. My grandpa served in the Marine Corps during World War II and always showed honor and respect for our national leaders and military servants.

But I saw a heavenly gaze in his eyes as he drew near to leaving this world. I saw this same longing in my grandma's eyes as she approached her final breath. Although they were patriots here, they knew that this country, this world, was not their home. Their citizenship was in heaven, and they looked forward to arriving in the place Christ had prepared for them.

Like many others, the church of my grandparents often sung patriotic hymns and integrated civic themes and symbols into their Christian worshiping life. This is only appropriate insofar as the liturgy does not distract from the reality that our ultimate loyalty should be to God alone.

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Bilogical Disposition Toward Homosexuality--and Other Sins

(Justin Taylor)
In the book, Psychology and Christianity: Four Views, ed. Eric L. Johnson (IVP, 2000), one of the contributors to that volume, David Myers (professor of psychology at Hope College), advocates a genetic basis for homosexuality.

In his response essay, CCEF’s David Powlison addresses that issue in particular.
Powlison’s perspective both broadens and nuances the discussion. For example, he discusses biological predisposition to homosexuality in the context of biological predispositions that we all have. He also digs a bit deeper into the motivational patterns for lesbianism.  MORE

A Mother's Story of Aborting a Child with a Disability

(Denny Burk)
"I have never read a story like this one before. Sarah Carpenter, a married woman with two children, becomes pregnant with her third child. After finding out that the child had a disability, she and her husband Andrew make the decision to abort the child in order to spare him from having a bad life.
The gut-wrenching thing about this story is that everything inside this woman—her conscience, her maternal instinct—is telling her to protect her baby. But her doctor and family members are telling her to spare her child by killing him. In other words, she has a very real sense of what she ought to do, but her conscience collapses underneath the weight of the culture of death. What follows is an extended excerpt from the article in which this mother explains her decision, her abortion, and its aftermath. Read it. Weep. Pray. Maranatha...."     MORE

The Gospel is big Enough to Fight for Itself

(by byJonathan Parnell, Desiring God)

Russell Moore:

Sometimes believers will throw up their hands in frustration with non-Christian people they know. “I have said everything I know to say to her about the gospel,” one might say. “She already knows it all and doesn’t believe.”
Often what we seek is another argument, a hidden angle that our interlocutor hasn’t thought through before. But that’s rarely how the gospel is heard and received. Think about it in your own case. Did you believe the gospel the first time you ever heard it? Perhaps you did, but if so, you’re quite unusual. Most of us heard the gospel over and over and over again until one day it hit us in a very different way.
And what was different about it? Was it a new argument? Did you say to yourself, “Wait, you mean there’s archaeological evidence proving the historical existence of the Hittites?” or “Hold on, there were five hundred witnesses to the resurrection? Well, what must I do to be saved?”

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