8 Thoughts To Encourage Your Kids In Schoolwork: As the school year begins I hope all of us – kids and adults alike – remember why we work. It is not to earn our salvation, security, or success. We work because God works. By working well wherever He has placed us, we can reflect His glorious image and worship Him.

How God Defines Success: From a worldly standpoint, they appeared to be failures. Yet, from God’s perspective, they were found faithful. They were true successes in His eyes – and ultimately, only His assessment matters.

Of Whom I Am The Foremost: Jesus goes around making enemies into friends, of himself and each other. He makes them family. How does this work? The gospel.

Do You Think It Happened, Or Not?: That’s what the Bible means when it says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). It means that Jesus, the resurrected and reigning King, the One to whom God has granted all authority in heaven and on earth, has the right and authority to save people from their sin.

The Most Important Thing My Parents Did: Why? I ask the question from time-to-time. Why are all five of my parents’ kids following the Lord, while so many of our friends and their families are not?

In Her Shoes: A Christian Woman Who's Had An Abortion: I ask you today, as I’ve done before, to take a walk in another woman’s shoes: a Christian woman who’s had an abortion. I’ve asked her to share her story so we see the power of Christ’s redemption and so we’re ready and able to respond when someone we know and worship beside confesses an abortion.

What Is A Disciple? 6 Expert Views: After all, the early disciples were called Christians because they were learners, students, and apprentices of Christ. Thus, just as “being Canadian” is a part of the identity of a Canadian citizen, “being Christian” or “being a disciple” is an identity issue. But what exactly is a disciple? What sort of definition should we use to understand our identity?

6 Things Jesus Does With Sin: John the Baptist commands a beholding of the sin-taking-away Lamb. What do we see in this beholding? How exactly does Jesus take away our sin? Here are 6 things Jesus does with sin:

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Three Christian Misconceptions About Muslims: When the average Westerner hears “Muslim,” a number of images come to mind—mostly negative. But most Muslims would be just as horrified as we are at the assumptions entertained about them. Here are some of the most common misconceptions that Westerners have about Muslims:

Seven Ways We Can Guard And Repair Relationships: One of the most beautiful scenes in the Bible is between brothers who had been long alienated: “Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept” (Genesis 33:4).  God wants that beauty to reappear in every generation, as needed.

The Dangers Of Pet Sins: Pet sins are those sins we believe we have domesticated. We view them as small and insignificant. We don’t fight against them, we feed them, and in some ways they make us feel good. But there is no such things as domesticated sin. All sin, even our “pet sins” are dangerous.

The Worst Honeymoon Ever: On Friday night, as part of a fundraising dinner for our youth group’s mission trip, Shona and I won the “Most Interesting Honeymoon” award. “Interesting” is quite the euphemism; “worst” would be more fitting. Because there can’t be many honeymoons as disastrous as ours was. But having given everybody a bit of a laugh, I thought, it’s time to share this fiasco with the world and hopefully put a few smiles on some faces. Settle down, this may take a while.

Sundown Thinking In The Church: Christian, there is no room for “sundown town” thinking for those who hail the Sun of Righteousness. His dawning never fades to sunset and His light dwells in prismatic splendor in His many-colored servants. Don’t live a monochromatic life. Dream in kingdom color. It’s better—I promise.

Can We Really Be Free From Excessive Fears?: We all desire to be free of this tyrant. But is this possible? Can we really be free from excessive fears? Jesus’s answer is yes.

The Bigger Thing In Bible Study: It is a beautiful thing to do devotional material and to spend time meditating on one or two verses, but if that is all we ever do, we will tend to focus on very small portions of Scripture, and it can feel satisfying in one regard, but it isn’t necessarily building toward the bigger thing.

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Discipling Your Kids Is More Than Family Devotions: I am confident, therefore, that as we steep ourselves in Scripture and allow God to broaden our view of discipleship to encompass the entire day, our capacity to perceive and leverage timely opportunities will become the natural outflow of our lives. As a result, our children may find faith that is utterly pervasive and a Savior who really does change everything, not just bedtime.

Inviting Children Into The Prayer Closet: When I look at John Newton’s life, a man who was once nicknamed “The Great Blasphemer,” I wonder how many of his mother’s pleas with God, blessings that filled a prayer closet and his little preschooler ears, carried him through his far away years and helped to bring his heart close to Jesus?  Only God knows.

When I Glory In My Shame: I need to be aware of these things—each of those ugly things on my ugly list. And most of all, I need to remember what is mostly deeply true. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to have the approval of others, and especially to receive the affirmation of God. But the crucial fact is, I already have it through Christ. I am already accepted by God because of what Christ has done, and this acceptance is all I need. When I am at my best it means everything to me. But when I am at my worst, it means nothing.

You Are My Son, and I Love You: As a Christian who believes the gospel should permeate every area of my life, there are more and more blind spots that I’m learning to see more clearly. When it comes to baseball, I realized that my sincere attempts to make them better players was not honoring the gospel. My response to them was based on their performance (good works), and their identity as a baseball player was more dominant in their thinking than being my sons.

10 Lessons Regarding Vacation: I am not the savior of the church. Jesus is. I don’t have to die for the church. Jesus did. I don’t have to run the church. Jesus does. 

Three Takeaways From Parks And Rec: So I invite you to stay awhile. Enjoy the best of your city and work to change the worst. As Perd Hapley might say, “The story of this article is that place matters. And by place, I mean, wherever you live.”

Praying In The Spirit: But we do pray, we can pray, we should pray because the Spirit assures that God is our Father who longs to hear us. The Spirit of God enables us to share the experience of sonship that God the Son experiences. That is a glorious gift of grace. It means confidence, intimacy and joy.

How Christians Should Mortify Sin: Mortification withers sin’s power over you by focusing on Christ’s redemption in a way that softens your heart with gratitude and love; which brings you to hate the sin for itself, so it loses its power of attraction over you. In summary, then, we kill sin in the Spirit when we turn from sinful practices ruthlessly and turn our heart from sinful motivations with a sense of our debt to love and grace, by minding the things of the Spirit.

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Blog Post by Brandon Adent

A man with a large, pointy hat dipped a bony finger into a glass bowl, like a child reaching for the last morsels of cookie dough. As the finger re-emerged from the vessel, black with dust from the shelf you need a stool to reach, a woman knelt before the hatted man, hands folded anxiously, not bothering to wipe her eyes or stop the purple running down her nose. Reaching out, the finger smeared the substance onto her quivering forehead in the shape of a cross. As the woman stood, she moved her hands in a way I'd never seen, then walked away, tears streaming, as another came to take her place.

It's been many years, but the images have stayed with me, however molded they may be in the years between then and now, images beamed into our living room via the miracle of television. Why would you let a man rub dirt on your face? She's crying, so it must hurt! Why are her hands folded?! She should unfold them, hit him and run away before he hurts anyone else! Why is there a line for that? 

To an 8 year old, the ritual was bizarre. Even now, it seems bizarre.

I grew up in a home that loves Jesus, but didn't really celebrate Ash Wednesday or Lent. When I asked my parents, they said the woman was crying because she was sad about her sin. The concept was mostly foreign to me. Mostly because I didn’t think I had that much of it. Sure, I wasn’t perfect, but Jesus was, right? And He died for the sin that I did have. So why do I need to be sad for my sin?

What Is Ash Wednesday?

Ash Wednesday is the official start of the season of Lent, six and a half weeks in total, consisting of 40 week-days of fasting as an act of repentance prior to Easter, or, Resurrection Sunday. The institution of the day, or the season, is not in your Bible. It was set up by the early church to provide some structure in how to think about, and prepare for, Resurrection Sunday.

First observed in the 7th century, Ash Wednesday served as an invitation for certain people to publically begin a season of penance. This specific practice then fell into disuse, and was re-instituted in the 10th-ish century, but opened up to the general congregation rather than “certain people”.* As a part of the ceremony, the repentant were marked with ashes as an outward symbol of an inward disposition of the heart; that is, a heart that loves Jesus, one that mourns sin as offensive before a holy God, and acknowledges their inability to meet God’s standard of perfection apart from Christ.

A lot has happened since then. Ash Wednesday has probably been abused and misused, twisted to mean something it was never meant to over the years. I don’t know the specifics, and even if I did, I wouldn’t get into them here.

Again, it’s important to remember that  “Ash Wednesday” the service, the start of the season of Lent, is not in our Bibles. Because God has not prescribed structure here, we are free to use old traditions and modify them to our current context, so long as they are not sinful and offensive to God or harmful to our community. 

Over the next six minutes or so, I want to explain why we celebrate Ash Wednesday today, how we celebrate it, and why it matters as we go about our lives.

Why We Celebrate

In the Bible, we see several instances where God calls His people to Himself in “solemn assembly” (Neh 9, Numbers 29:12) The primary objective of these gatherings was not to subjugate people with feelings of guilt or condemnation. Rather, it was to show off the glory of God by the preaching and reading of his word, realize the inability of His people to meet the standard set, to recognize that sin is willful slavery, and to respond in worship to a God who shows mercy (the withholding of punishment) and grace (unmerited favor) to His people.

Ash Wednesday is a continuation in that tradition. We need to constantly be reminded that our sin is a big deal. That it’s offensive to our Creator. That it’s rebellion against the King of the universe. That it’s hurtful to our Father in Heaven, that it makes Him sad and angry that we would choose to worship anyone or anything but Him.

So, if we’re talking about something so harmful as sin, why do I keep talking about how and why we “celebrate” Ash Wednesday?

Again, the purpose of this service is not to make us feel guilty for our sin; it’s to remind us that Jesus is bigger and better than our sin. Where we fail, Jesus has succeeded, and being found in Him is more satisfying than any act of sin we can conceive.

Such an occasion calls for celebration!

How We Celebrate

Since and Ash Wednesday service follows in the tradition of “solemn assembly”, we celebrate in many ways that the Bible says people celebrated. We’ll read God’s Word. We’ll hear God’s Word explained. We’ll sing some songs. We’ll pray. We’ll receive communion. All things that we would do in a typical Sunday service.

However, as a tangible, physical reminder of repentance and the mercy and grace found in Jesus, we’ll do a little something extra, that has its roots in the establishment of Ash Wednesday.

Ashes

Back in the days when the Old Testament was written, people used to dump ashes on their heads as a sign of mourning sin, either that they had committed, or had been committed against them.  (Tamar in 2 Sam 13:19, Mordecai in Esther 4:1, Job in Job 42:6). Ashes were a symbol of mourning in ancient culture, and often accompanied by sackcloth (think wearing an itchy burlap shirt) and fasting. One did this to 1.) be physically miserable as a reminder that they needed communion with God more than they needed physical comfort and 2.) Show everyone how miserable they were.

You wouldn’t tell a joke to a person in mourning. In fact, you would probably go out of your way to avoid such a person. Such signs show that we care about sin and brokenness, recognize that it grieves our Father and King, that we wish it didn’t exist, and that where the sin is ours, we want to turn from it.

Anointed With Oil

Similarly, people would be anointed with oil as a sign. But not as one of mourning. Being anointed with oil was a sign of favor, of holiness, of set-apartness. The kings were anointed with oil when they were called to lead and serve their people (1 Sam 10, 16:13), priests when they were called into temple service (Exodus 30:22). 

The oil is fragrant, the point being that the wearer can -figuratively speaking- smell God’s favor on their foreheads.

This is an outward sign of an inward reality that God ordained before time itself. The oil does not put God’s favor on you. Only Jesus can do that. 

And if you’re in Him, He has! God knew who you would become before you were born. He knew the sin you’d commit, no matter how hidden you think it is. And He sent His Son to die for you, that you would be washed clean of all your wickedness given a perfect, sinless, good-deed-filled record before the Righteous Judge, and adopted into the family of God Almighty.

The oil is meant to remind us of all this, and mixed with the ashes, it reminds us of the favor we have despite the sin in our lives.

Why This All Matters

We’ve talked about the roots of the Ash Wednesday “holy-day”, where it comes from, and how we observe it as a church.

So why does all this matter?

In 1517, Martin Luther began his 96 Theses with “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”

Repentance, as we said before, is the act of turning from sin toward the Savior.

Every moment of every day, we need to face the Savior as individuals. But we shouldn’t stop there. God has certainly saved us individually, but when He saves us, He saves us into a community of people that we get to call family.

Ash Wednesday is a great opportunity to get together with members of the family and seek after God together. To see and hear how great He is, to really take a look at the ugliness of our sin and the sweetness and beauty of His grace, and to turn to Him in repentance.

If you’re available, we’d love to have you join us Wednesday, February 18 at 6:30 PM to celebrate Ash Wednesday.

Source: “Ash Wednesday” Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Page 116. Copyright 2005 Oxford University Press.

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"Dad Look!" When Your Kids Invite You Into There World: I don’t want to be the dad of a passing glance. I want to enter the world of my children, just like God entered ours. I want to be a father who delights in the imaginary innovations of my children, just like God enjoys watching His children make something of this world He has given us.

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Women's Discipleship And The Mommy Blogosphere: The influence of this niche demographic presents an interesting challenge for those involved with women’s discipleship. Statistically, women make up over 60% of church attendees, but given the fact that (especially in conservative denominations) church leadership is overwhelmingly male, there’s the real probability that church leaders might underestimate its influence on their congregations. Books, church services, and organized women’s ministry are probably not the primary forces shaping the young mothers in your church. Because of this, there are some things that leaders need to understand about the mommy blogosphere.

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