Category Archives: Family Times

One of the gods of this Age

Androgyny is not a term that most are familiar with, but it means to have both parts of both genders. The entity isn’t either male or female, nor is the entity neither male nor female.

The androgynous entity is both male and female. Such is the god of this age. Such is the altar from which many Christians worship.

How can you tell if you are worshipping the false god of androgenity?

Do you see male and female gender differences as inconsequential in the worship of the living and true God?

Galatians 3:28,29, while describing the qualitative nature of salvation in that gender is no way that God distinguishes who may be saved (both male and female may be saved), if gender was now no longer and issue post salvation, God would have removed our gender from us at that point.

Equality related to salvation doesn’t work out to be that our roles are dissolved into a jumbled mess of spaghetti or into a pot of seafood gumbo. It does mean the freedom to serve within our roles with the unencumbered and delimiting freedom of God’s word, which has many distinctives that should be a comfort; not a hindrance, to worshipping God.

For a man to provide for his family and a woman to be a keeper at home is the freedom that comes to a child who is in his right place and not getting into everything that he has no business entangling himself with… Thus becoming a busy body rather than seeking to be busy about doing the work of God’s kingdom and avoiding piercing himself through with many griefs.

God’s word still rules supreme over our culture and the ‘gods’ of this age… it’s just, are we willing to submit ourselves to His word, or will we butt our heads against the brick wall of His certain and unchanging word?

 

My Basis for Planning for Provision

Why do I plan in the first place? That is what is answered in this post.

I do the work that I do to Glorify God and to Love Him with All of who I am by seeking to live a life consistent with His word for the Purpose of one day Hearing Jesus Christ say to me and those whom I Love, “Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant. Enter into the Joy of the LORD.”

I realize that I cannot enjoy God by doing stuff in and of my own self and my own strength, and that the above is impossible without confidence that He has saved me and not only can but will make the above happen one day for me. If this will happen, it can only happen if He is doing it in and through me. It also cannot happen without my applying conscious and willful effort toward doing all that I know to do in order to achieve the things that He has commanded me to do.

I don’t want to live a life and at the end of my life have ‘nothing’ to show for it… not that my works save me, but that since He saved me, I want to do everything I can conceivably and possibly do to work for Him because I LOVE HIM.

I see my work related to provision as the following- Three Levels of Attainment possibilities:
1. Level 1: Obey the Gospel unto Salvation (Completed when He saved me through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone apart from my efforts, will, conscious efforts, etc.)
2. Level 2: Meet your responsibilities in a sinful, fallen, cursed, post flood, premillennial world (this level is ongoing as I live in this world)
3. Level 3: Ruling over and subduing the Earth (as I am successful in Level 2, I am able to participate in Level 3)

It is obvious that I cannot do any of these without His blessing, help, and His provision of resources and opportunities to use those resources.

With the acknowledgement that I can do nothing of myself and of my own ‘strength’, but with the understanding and faith that I have obeyed the call of the Gospel (Level 1), my goal is to do the Will of God through furthering the Kingdom of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ by:

  1. Level 2: Provision for my family and extended relatives as needed:
    • Nourishment as in adequate and healthy food and activities
    • Clothing appropriate for timing, season and growth of the individual
    • Shelter staying protected from the elements
  2. Level 2: Keeping my word concerning obligations
  3. Level 2: Savings for expected happenings
  4. Level 2: Savings for unexpected life circumstances
  5. Level 2: Comfortable lifestyle established
  6. Level 2: Extension of Christ’s Kingdom through effectively providing resources to preach the gospel to the entire planet cf. Matthew 28:18-20. This one is here because if I haven’t managed my family well, which is numbers 1-5, then I am not qualified to reach toward this priority.

Level 3 will happen as a side note and as an adjunct to the above, if at all. I don’t see that it is possible to start level 3 without all of Level 2 being completed first, but it is true that level 3 goals are and must be achieved in the process of reaching level 2 goals.

This is my ‘Why?’ or Mission, and how I seek to accomplish it

A Father Has Compassion on His Children

“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.” Psalm 103:13

Why would God choose us to be examples of how He works? Because it is so obvious… a father must have compassion on his children.

The father has been there since the beginning of the relationship with the child’s mom- your wife. We were there before the relationship began, and we were the reason, from a purely mechanical perspective, that God used to bring the child into the world to begin with… not to denigrate the position and role of the wife at all. Obviously children wouldn’t exist without both.

We understand our wives’ frailty, and then we see our children born into the world… more frailty… and that in a world that suffers from the curse and the fall. We as men must see ourselves as the protector, but the protector of what? The protector of the weak and frail against those things, forces, elements that would destroy them or render them incapable of both surviving and thriving. We are the reason that our wives can nurture. Yes, she has her role, but that doesn’t diminish ours.

And that role is compassion.

Because we have compassion, we deal kindly with others’ weaknesses, especially with your wife and your children. We have compassion because we also know our own weaknesses. Compassion isn’t weak, but is mindful of weakness and responds with strength in relationship to that weakness.

There is a time and a place to “stand up and be a man” in terms of the rock-like steadiness that is expected of a man. But the hardness is a reliability, like a rock, that serves as the basis for your wife and children to be able to have a life that is capable of surviving in this world. It isn’t a harshness that results in animosity and ostracization, but trustworthiness. It is a shield to them that protects them and gives them a bubble of protection against that which is ugly, perverse and evil in this world.

This rock like nature is derived by men from their relationship to the Father through the LORD Jesus Christ.