TOP 10 THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR A DAD SAY via preaching.com

10. I guess I’m lost! Looks like we’ll have to stop and ask for directions.

9. You know, honey, now that you’re 13, you’ll be ready for unchaperoned car dates. Won’t that be fun?

8. I noticed all your friends have a certain hostile attitude. I like that.

7. Here’s a credit card and the keys to my new car. Go have fun!

6. What do you mean you want to play football? Figure skating’s not good enough for you, Son?

5. Your mother and I are going away for the weekend. You might want to consider throwing a party.

4. Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with your car. Probably one of those doo-hickey thingies that makes it run or something. Just have it towed to a mechanic and pay whatever he asks.

3. No son of mine is going to live under this roof without an earring. Now quit your belly-aching, and let’s go to the mall.

2. Why do you want to go and get a job? I make plenty of money for you to spend.

1. What do I want for my birthday? Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s no big deal. (Okay, they might say it, but they don’t mean it.)

(from The Daily Dilly)

Dangers of Cohabitation | PreachingToday.com
In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are five conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:

1. Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.

2. Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage—particularly when it comes to caring for children—without the legal protection. Research has also found that cohabiting women contribute more than 70 percent of the relationship’s income.

3. Cohabitation brings a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, because cohabiting men are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.

4. Poverty rates are higher among cohabitors. Those who share a home but never marry have 78 percent less wealth than the continuously married.

5. Those who suffer most from cohabitation are the children. The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households. Children ages 12–17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems and 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school.

Brian Lowery, associate editor, PreachingToday.com; source: A. Patrick Schneider II, “Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children,” www.lifesite.net (10-4-07), reprinted from an original article in the New Oxford Review

Man, I hope he is not right. Talk about complete loss of ethics and the nobility of humanity.

Abortion and your right to accurate sex selection. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Sexual SatisfactionAbortion and your right to accurate sex selection.

By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Feb. 25, 2008, at 8:48 AM ET

How does a taboo begin to die?

For an answer, look at Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. “Accuracy of gender test kits in question,” says the headline. The writer, Karen Kaplan, reports that many women are up in arms over home genetic tests that erred in predicting the sex of their kids. More than 100 women are suing one company. Others are calling for regulation.

Newsletter Link

Parents, Oh how much ought you to be continually devising for the good of your children! Often devise how to make them “wise children”; how to give them a desirable education, an education that may render them desirable; how to render them lovely and polite, and serviceable in their generation. Often devise how to enrich their minds with valuable knowledge; how to instill generous, gracious, and heavenly principles into their minds; how to restrain and rescue them from the paths of the destroyer, and fortify them against their peculiar temptations. There is a world of good that you have to do for them. You are without the natural feelings of humanity if you are not in a continual agony to do for them all the good that ever you can. It was no mistake of an ancient writer to say, “Nature teaches us to love our children as ourselves.”

Resolved —

At the birth of my children, I will resolve to do all I can that they may be the Lord’s. I will now actually give them up by faith to God; entreating that each child may be a child of God the Father, a subject of God the Son, a temple of God the Spirit-and be rescued from the condition of a child of wrath, and be possessed and employed by the Lord as an everlasting instrument of His glory. (See Newsletter Link)

A Church-Based Hope for “Adultolescents”

A Church-Based Hope for “Adultolescents”

By John Piper November 13, 2007

Christian Smith, professor of sociology at Notre Dame, wrote in the most recent Books and Culture a review of six books that deal with the new phenomenon of “adultolescence”—that is, the postponement of adulthood into the thirties. I want to relate this phenomenon to the church. But first here is a summary from Smith’s article of what it is and how it came about.

Tags: Adultolescents Piper

Baptist Press - Even at Christmas, too much is too much

Even at Christmas, too much is too much

Posted on Dec 21, 2007 | by Tammy Darling

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Is the toy box overflowing? Are your child’s closet and dresser drawers jammed beyond capacity? Is every available space in your home being utilized in an attempt to store all the stuff?

Special days such as Christmas and birthdays can quickly result in an overabundance of stuff. To help alleviate this problem, let friends and relatives know you appreciate their desire to give something to your child, but that it would be great if they would limit it to just one item.

Too many toys and gadgets and too much clothing may not be the sign of a spoiled child or even a rich family. Often it is simply the result of well-intentioned giving gone too far.

GAMBLING

In an article on “What’s Wrong With Buying Lottery Tickets?” Hal Lane observes, “Legalized gambling teaches the following principles:

1. Gambling is good. The state will give its seal of approval to a practice that has led many into addictive and destructive lifestyles. They will be sanctioning a false hope of instant wealth that has resulted in abandoned children, divorce, financial ruin, theft and suicide. They will lose the moral authority to oppose other forms of gambling that will follow.

2. Greed is good. The state will seek to entice players to take a chance on instant wealth. Instead of teaching the biblical principle that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, it will teach that the lack of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

3. It is good to educate the wealthy with money from the poor. Despite skewed statistics that attempt to say that lottery tickets are bought by a cross section of the economic spectrum, the truth is that the poor and desperate buy disproportionately more lottery tickets. “Those making less than $10,000 per year spend more than any other income group, averaging $597 per year. Furthermore, the top 5 percent of lottery players account for over 50 percent of lottery sales, spending on average $3,870 per year.” (Timothy A. Kelly, Family Research Council)

4. The end justifies the means. It is not how we raise money but how we use the money that determines the morality of the means. If citizens are OK with using revenue generated from lottery ticket sales, will state legislators next consider legalizing pornography and prostitution and earmarking those funds for students’ benefits?

Lotteries are thinly veiled cloaks for greed and selfishness. Christians can stand out as stars in a dark culture by refusing to participate in the many forms of gambling, including the lottery.”

http://erlc.com/article/whats-wrong-with-buying-a-lottery-ticket

Making it a Merry Christmas

Making it a Merry Christmas by Suzanne Hadley

“Hi. My name’s Suzanne and I had a lousy Christmas.”

It was December 28, and I felt like I needed to join a holiday recovery support group. As I hoisted my suitcase into a friend’s trunk, I breathed a sigh of relief to be back on my own turf. With visions of “the great Christmas blow-up” dancing in my head — and trust me, three sisters in tears is not a pretty sight — I collapsed into the front seat.

I soon learned I wasn’t alone in my post-holiday depression. Out poured my friend’s own tale of holiday woe. And in the weeks that followed, I learned that nearly everyone I knew had experienced holiday unpleasantness in some form — the critical mother, the bad gifts, the boredom, the arguments. We had all gone home looking forward to warm family times and returned in need of therapy.

Mentor Series: The Burning Bush

Mentor Series: The Burning Bush by Scott Stanley

Would you marry someone without knowing if it was God’s will for your lives? Few Christians would say “yes” to that question. But how do we know when marrying someone is God’s will? Could it be that our requests for “a burning bush” of proof might reflect our desire to avoid the risks of stewardship God expects of us?

In this last installment from our interview with Dr. Scott Stanley, we discuss how men can address one of the primary obstacles that keeps them from jumping into a marriage.

* * *

Steve: Let’s talk about an issue we hear a lot from Christian men. It’s the idea that any decision as important as marriage — like where to live or where to work — is something so fundamental to the rest of our lives that surely God cares about it and would want to reveal His perfect will for us. In a world of overwhelming choices, how’s a guy supposed to go about discerning whether or not someone is a good match and also God’s perfect will for them?