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Parental Horse Sense: Lesson 5 — Left-Handed Parenting
These lessons on Parental Horse Sense are worthy of the name because they are not difficult concepts. But don’t let the title of this series fool you. These lessons may not be difficult to grasp, but they border on impossible to implement. Fret not, though, we serve the God who puts the camel through the…
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Spending Words
The wise man Moses prayed that the Lord would teach us to number our days. In similar fashion, we need to number our words. We will only speak so many of them. God knows the exact number. We do not. But we do know that our tongue will fling only so many words out of…
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A Table That Opens to the Kingdom of Heaven
In a day and age when many do not know who they are or whose they are, we come to a table that reminds us of both. This is the table of the Lord. And those who eat and drink here are members of his body and belong to him. The Heidelberg Catechism says that…
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Parental Horse Sense: Lesson 4 – Feast! Feast! Feast! I Say.
I should begin by telling you that I am a firm believer in the fact that a good coach delivering a good pep talk before the game can change the course of the contest. His team may just win if his pre-game rouser is on key. The same goes for kings as they ride before…
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If You Do Not Go Up With Us
Our Christian growth often stalls because we forget that the power of Christ rest upon us. We know which direction we want to go. We have counted the cost involved in order to get there. But our progress is not what it ought to be because we have forgotten what Moses remembered in the wilderness.…
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Far Better Than a Fenced Table
It is common for Christians to talk about ministers fencing the Lord’s Table. And we really can do better with our word pictures. It is easy for this image to become quite displeasing. One imagines a high chain link fence running right along the edges of a table, forbidding anyone from enjoying the meal. The…
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Parental Horse Sense: Lesson 3 — Raise Them as Insiders (Even When They Botch It)
In his work The City of God, Augustine explains that all mankind falls into one of two categories: the city of God or the city of man. To be in the city of God is to have God as Father and Christ as Savior. A citizen of this city shares in the Holy Spirit. But to…
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A Poor and Contrite Spirit
One of the temptations that naturally comes with God’s blessing is that of thinking that you got that blessing by your own strength. We imagine that the blessings are just out there for the taking, and, hey, I woke up early, I stayed up late, I used my resources in the right way and that’s…
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Something Greater Than the Temple Is Here
One sabbath, as the disciples walked in a field, they plucked grain to eat. The Pharisees didn’t like this. They charged the disciples with doing what was unlawful on the sabbath. Jesus’ response was to say, “Haven’t you read in the law how the priests in the temple profane the sabbath and are blameless” (Matthew…
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How to Avoid Developing a Complex
Not all complexity is bad. Complex wines are enjoyable enough. Complex math problems produce some very helpful tools. But we are not to be consumed with the complex, or taken captive by it as if it were always a good thing. A man enamored with the complex will soon find that he has a complex. He does…