love to paint

I remember when I was pregnant with Autumn being introduced to an idea that was new to me.  The teacher of our Sunday school class brought up the idea that in teaching our children about God from the time they are born, they will always know God.  As a soon to be new parent, I thought that would be amazing.  I would love to guarantee, in a sense, that my children will know and love the Lord. When my daughters were 3 and 5, they told me that they knew God and loved Jesus. They may have been even younger, because I didn't write down the date.  I puzzled about it for a bit and wondered if they were certain.  I questioned them several times.  They told me they were certain. Last year, I read God, Marriage, and Family by Andreas Kostenberger.  As I read the book, I became keenly aware that we cannot "guarantee" how our children will turn out or that they will come to know the Lord.  I questioned what I'd been taught in that Sunday school class s...

When I was in college and for the past decade, their has been a strong emphasis in the Christian community on apologetics.  We felt we needed to defend our faith against attacks and prove it to people who didn't believe, so that they might come to believe in God.  It was the whole premise of Modern Thought--that everything can and should be explained.  There was a flaw in this.  God cannot be fully explained.  God is far bigger and greater than any of us can fathom. Now, I think the world is using another age-old tactic to keeping people from believing--it's blatant and dangerous in my eyes.   There are three sources of temptation--the world, Satan, and our selves.  The world and Satan blur together and it isn't really all that important to distinguish the two.  The tactic I'm concerned about this morning is one that is employed by the world, but that the self jumps on board with and runs with it.   It is the idea that one must...