Bro. Matt’s Blog

Ken Sande, President of Peacemaker Ministries, has written an excellent article on the “Five Myths of Divorce.” You need to check this out! Please!

Powered by ScribeFire.

This past week, I have been on vacation. While the majority of the vacation consisted of working on our new home (no small task, no matter how well the condition), the end portion of our vacation was helpful and much needed. Cindy and I right now are in Cincinnati at a hotel enjoying getting reacquainted — not easy with me being the pastor of a church and us being the parents of four small children.

The time in Cincinnati was centered around a marriage conference held at the Mt. Carmel Baptist Church entitled Toward a Growing Marriage. This conference was led by Gary Smalley of the Five Love Languages fame. I must say this to all of you who may come across this page:

If you are married, go to a marriage conference at least once per year. Every marriage could use a tune-up, and many marriages could use resuscitation. Gary Smalley helped us on some biblical and practical levels about communication, conflict, sex, and a myriad of other issues. What helped us as well was the fact that two other couples came from our church and we had a wonderful time of fellowship and discussion about the conference.

If you are a pastor, offer a marriage seminar, retreat, or discipleship small group at your church soon. We as pastors tend to simply look at the sparkly-clean folks who come into our church and truly believe that all is well with them. But when a rash of people begin to ask you questions about their marriage or, even worse, say, “My spouse has asked me for a divorce,” that’s when you realize you have to be reactive and address the issue immediately, and proactive and deal with possible issues which tend to come up in every marriage.

So let me ask you, what kind of marriage conferences or resources have helped you in the past that you could recommend to the rest of us? Leave your comments in the comments section of this blog entry.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Last night my wife and were talking. We were talking through some questions and issues of faith and life. During our conversation, I picked up on a couple of issues that have been a reoccurring theme in her relationship with God (at this point those issues will remain cryptic - this is my blog and not hers and therefore I am entitled to expose myself and not my wife).  I felt the Lord impress on my heart that I needed to step up to lead her and disciple her through these issues. I made the big pronouncement that we should do this Bible Study together that really helped me sort out this stuff in my own life and walk with the Lord.

As soon as I spoke those words, I felt impending doom. I had made those pronouncements before. But when push came to shove, I didn’t deliver. During some time with God this morning I came up with 5 reasons why I won’t lead my wife.

(Click here to read the five reasons. He absolutely nails it!)

(HT: Mark Combs)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:1-4, ESV).

In his commentary on Ephesians, James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000) makes a great point that all of us who have children would do well to remember:

It is a conviction of mine that no man has a right to tell other people how to raise their children until he has children of his own and has tried to raise them. As a corollary, I am convinced that no wise man will give advice even then until his own children have grown up and turned out well.

He speaks wise words indeed. No duty on earth is more joyous, more rewarding, and at the same time painstaking and heartbreaking like raising children. Danny Akin one time said that if school were life, marriage would be graduate school and raising children would be doctoral work. With raising children, you not only learn much about children, but oftentimes you learn more about yourself.

This morning, our passage deals with the mutual relationships between parents and children. Yes, I have four children, but I am not qualified by experience to tell anyone how to raise their children. But through the leadership of the Word of God and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, we can see what God’s design for this relationship is.

Paul writes this in a very troubling period in history. The Roman Empire gave ultimate rule to the father to do with his children as he pleased. Sadly, too many of these fathers ruled in a selfish, heartless, iron-fisted manner. William Barclay notes in the patria potestas (“the father’s power”), it states:

A Roman father had absolute power over his family. He could sell them as slaves; he could make them work in his fields, even in chains; he could take the law into his own hands, for the law was in his own hands, and he could punish as he liked; he could even inflict the death penalty on his child. Further, the power of the Roman father extended over the child’s whole life, so long as the father lived. A Roman son never came of age.

Roman fathers could also reject their children based upon his first sight of the child as well as the gender. One Roman father wrote his wife, “If — good luck to you! — you have a child, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, throw it out.”

Christianity has done so much for the elevation of the status of women — and now in this case, for the status of children in society. Paul was well-aware of this mindset of parenting and was also aware of how diametrically opposed his worldview was. But as Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. We are still struggling with very similar problems here in 21st America.

Here are some more troubling statistics:
 One million children a year see their parents divorce.
 More than 50% of the children in America’s public school live in single-parent homes.
 35% of America’s children live apart from their biological fathers.
 50% of children who live apart from their biological fathers have never set foot in their father’s house.
 Children in single-parent homes have a 300% greater possibility of a negative life outcome than children raised in homes where both parents are present.
 The majority of children in America have less than 10 minutes of significant and meaningful conversation with their parents each week.

It seems that all aspects of the home are under assault by the enemy. With the divorce rates both inside and outside the church up around the 50% area, with the majority of homes in America in which our children are raised are single-parent homes. Even so many who keep their homes together find themselves ruled by a me-first attitude which leads either to yelling on the one end or cold wars on the other.

This morning, I pray that God’s Word will not only inform us about his will, but will also transform our hearts through His Holy Spirit.

(To listen to the rest of this sermon, click here If you would like to save this to your computer, simply right click your mouse and then click “Save Target/Link As…” and you’re good to go!)

Tony Capoccia of the Bible Bulletin Board has posted seven new John MacArthur transcripts of sermons dealing with a wide range of issues. His ministry posts sermons by MacArthur, Spurgeon, J.C. Ryle and Jonathan Edwards to name a few. Here are the most recent additions:

What Should a Wife’s Priorities Be? Can She Work Outside the Home?
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-176404.htm

The Unity of Strong and Weak Christians, Part 4 [Romans 14:16-23]
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-231251.htm

Christians and Politics, Parts 1-4
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/politics1-4.htm

True Servants of Christ
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-231543.htm

True Success in Christian Leadership
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-231292.htm

The Purpose of the Law [Galatians 3]
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-231570.htm

Evangelicalism and the Environmental Movement
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/jm-231546.htm

As one who sends his daughter (and hopefully his other daughter and twin boys) to a Christian school, I fully support the notion for Christian-based education.  Although many would say that this shelters our children and turns the Great Commission upside-down by removing our Christian children from a very hostile and non-Christian environment, I would rebut that argument by saying that God has commissioned us as parents to train up our children in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6) and that we are to teach our children the ways of God so they will not forget God’s ways (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

I heartily recommend Dr. Wayne Grudem’s paper, “Biblical Reasons for Sending our Children to Christian Schools.”  He makes some rather compelling arguments — though I know many of my readers will disagree with his conclusions.  At least a conversation will ensue (hopefully).  We need to really think through what we do as followers of Christ.

John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted fame has developed a website at http://www.familywatchdog.us to show all of the registered sex offenders that live in our respective neighborhoods.  In the state of Kentucky, Florida, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia, pictures of the sex offenders are included.  I pray this will be of use to all of you who have young children to be on the lookout and stay safe.