Tag: pastors

Elyse Fitzpatrick on Parenting & the False Notion that Our Kids’ Salvation Depends on Us

~ Bob Hayton ~ 1 Comment

Another insightful excerpt from the new book, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick & Jessica Thompson:

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Works righteousness is a deadly and false variation of godly obedience. Godly obedience is motivated by love for God and trust in his gracious plan and power. Works righteousness is motivated by unbelief; it is a reliance on our abilities and a desire to control outcomes. Works righteousness eventuates in penance: I’ll make it up to you by redoubling my efforts tomorrow! rather than repentance: Lord forgive me for my sin today. Thank you that you love me in spite of all my failures. In parenting, works righteousness will cause us to be both fearful and demanding. When we see our failures, we will be overcome with fear: I really blew it with my kids today. I’m so afraid that I’m going to ruin them! When we see their failures, we’ll be overly demanding: I’ve already told you what I want you to do. Didn’t you hear me? I must have told you fifty times in the last five minutes. I’m sick to death of your terrible attitude. You need to listen to me and do what I say without any complaints or grunts or eye rolls. Just do it! It’s obvious how both responses feed off each other in a never-ending cycle of anger and despair and penance.

Works righteousness obliterates the sweet comforts of grace because it cuts us off from God, who alone is the giver of grace. It cuts us off because he absolutely insists on being our sole Savior. This is his claim: “I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior” (Isa. 43:11; see also 45:21). We are not nor can we be the saviors of our children. He is the Savior. When we forget this, our parenting will be pockmarked by fear, severity, and exhaustion.

On the other hand, when we rest in his gracious work we will experience the comforts he has provided for us. He delights in being worshiped as the One who “richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17). He loves flooding our consciences with the peace that comes from knowing our sins are forgiven and our standing before him is completely secure. When we’re quietly resting in grace, we’ll have grace to give our children, too. When we’re freed from the ultimate responsibility of being their savior, we’ll find our parenting burden becoming easy and light. [excerpted from pg. 55 of Give them Grace, published by Crossway Books]

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I can’t help but adding a side-note here. Most IFBx preachers I know pastor their church by this same false notion that the salvation of their flock depends on them. They encourage parents to be harsh with their kids as being the only way to win them ultimately to the Lord. All the while, God’s grace sits untapped in the corner and the legalism factory churns along with everybody working overtime….

You can pick up a copy of this important book on parenting (and the Gospel of God’s grace) at the following retailers: , Monergism Books, Christianbook.com, Amazon.com, and direct from Crossway Books.

Quotes to Note 28: Daniel Doriani on How Pastors Read the Bible

~ Bob Hayton ~ 5 Comments

Recently, I was referencing Daniel Doriani’s commentary on James again. I have reviewed his commentary previously, and it is very good. He has a lot of pastoral wisdom, as seen by the following excerpt.

Here, Doriani exposes the tendencies of pastors or other teachers, to be too professional with the Bible in their own lives. His thoughts are worthy of reflection, which is why I’m sharing them with you here: Let me know what you think and if you agree that he strikes a nerve.

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…This seems obvious, but pastors and seminarians are prone to professionalize their use of Scripture, to read it to help every soul but their own. Let me offer a typology of the ways pastors can read Scripture.

When he is a new Christian, the future pastor’s reading is naïve and devotional. He devours Scripture, underlining virtually every word in his new Bible, feeling that God speaks directly to him with every word.

After a few years, the budding leader’s reading becomes sophisticated and devotional. He still feels that God is speaking to him in the text, but he has learned to read texts in their contexts. He reads Bible dictionaries and commentaries. He knows the translation strategies of various Bible versions and begins to use that knowledge to get at the original text.

The future pastor decides to go to seminary, where he becomes a technical reader. He reads Greek and Hebrew; he consults scholarly sources. He respects the distance between his world and that of biblical thought. His zeal to describe biblical history, culture, and language grows. He pursues what the word originally meant and perhaps neglects what it means today.

As ordination comes, our friend remembers that his study has, as its goal, the edification of the church. He continues to read technically, but now he shares his findings with the church. He becomes a technical-functional reader. His reading may be detached, personally speaking, but he stores and organizes his discoveries so he can offer them to others. While this phase may mark a partial improvement, he does not directly profit from his reading of Scripture.

He needs therefore to become a technical, devotional reader. Every technical skill remains, but he reads like a child, letting the word speak directly to his heart again. He gains what Paul Ricoeur calls a “second naiveté.” He is both technically astute and meek. He both receives God’s word and expounds it. In this way, he finds strength to endure trials and to check the growth of sin.

[pg. 50-51, James (Reformed Expository Commentary) from P&R Publishing]

Piper & Carson on Essential Doctrines

~ fundyreformed ~ 14 Comments

Recently we’ve been debating the idea of whether certain doctrines should be considered fundamental or essential, and others merely secondary. Most Christians and even fundamentalists do admit that there are essential doctrines that are more important than others. However, as my last installment of my church’s elder confession of faith shows, this doesn’t mean other doctrines are not important.

With these thoughts on my mind, I was surprised to find a recent discussion of this very topic from my church’s most recent conference. At the 2008 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, they had a panel discussion on a variety of topics. One of the questions was “What makes a doctrine essential?” John Piper and D.A. Carson did a good job discussing that question. I took the conference video (available for download), and tried to cut it down to just this question: unfortunately, during the last 2 minutes, the audio and video are a little out of sync, but not too much.

 

Update: I should also note that I thought Carson’s warning about “being prophetic from the margins” was similar to my contention that majoring on the minors belittles the Gospel. Also, if anyone can’t view the video online, or download the original video, they can read the transcript.