Tag Archives: Russell Moore

Reflection and the Benefits of Writing…

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We are all writers.  Even if you don’t realize it, we are.  In emails, texts, school work, reports for your job, in so many ways we all write.  The benefits of a journal are tremendous.  That is partly why I blog.  To be honest, I do for me as much (or more) than I do it for you.  I also use the MacJournal software.  It helps me reflect on my day/week/situation.

But do you reflect?  I don’t do it enough.

While this helps in every area of life, it is particularly useful in your spiritual walk.  To reflect on what God has done in the past gives us perspective for where are currently and where we want to go in the future.

In this Russell Moore video requested by DesiringGod.com, he discusses the ability to overcome writers block and the benefits of reflection.  Soak in his 2:21 of wisdom.

Premier Family Guidance for Less than the cost of a Soda

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My recommendation is to skip buying that $2.50 soda at the restaurant today, get a water, then click one of these links and get a book that can add some eternal value to your family, rather than just empty calories to your diet.

Today I have come across some Kindle Deals on three fantastic books that can change the way you approach child rearing. These books all come from a thoroughly biblical perspective and I believe create the best way to raise you children.  I paid full price for these back in the day…sheesh…but you can get a great deal if you check it out today.

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Shepherding a Child’s Heart – by Tedd Tripp – $1.99

“With the plethora of material on parenting and the family, it is inspiring-and distressing-to see how few books are genuinely biblical. Here is a refreshing exception. Tedd Tripp offers solid, trustworthy, biblical help for parents. If you are looking for the right perspective, and practical help, you won’t find a more excellent guide.” -Pastor John MacArthur

Instructing a Child’s Heart – by Tedd and Margy Tripp – $1.99

“This is not a book that tells you how to control or manipulate your children so that they will spend their lives living in an irrational fear of a domineering parent or a hostile deity. Instead, it is a book that teaches parents to gently but consistently build into children a worldview that begins with the heart and that focuses on God and on His glory. “We should impress truth of the hearts of our children, not to control or manage them, but to point them to the greatest joy and happiness that they can experience–delighting in God and the goodness of his ways.” We’ve waited a long time for the follow-up to Shepherding a Child’s Heart. I believe most parents will feel the wait has been well worth it.” -Tim Challies, Author

Adopted for Life – by Russell Moore – $3.03

“Yes, yes, yes! Russell Moore has given the church a God-centered, gospel-saturated, culturally-sensitive, mission-focused, desperately needed exploration of the priority and privilege of adoption. He exposes misconceptions and uncovers misunderstandings that not only keep us from fostering an adoptive culture in our churches but that keep us from truly understanding the gospel by which we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. This book contains encouragement for children who have been adopted and the parents who’ve adopted them, practical advice for parents who are considering adoption and parents who have never considered adoption, and admonishment for the church-at-large to consider how to be obedient to scriptural commands to care for orphans here and around the world. Readers will find themselves laughing on one page, crying on the next, and ultimately bowing before God, thanking him for adopting them into his heavenly family and considering how to show his love to the fatherless on earth.”
—David Platt, Senior Pastor

 

Fake Love, Fake War – Dealing with Porn and Gaming Additions for Young Men.

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This article, written by Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, touches a topic all student pastors and volunteers need to be addressing with their young men. None are unaffected and we cannot be silent. Read these words and allow God to challenge us as we reach the next generation. I highlighted the last paragraph, so read to the very end. Dr. Moore does not leave us hanging but pushes us to the only answer that provides any real hope.

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You know the guy I’m talking about. He spends hours into the night playing video games and surfing for pornography. He fears he’s a loser. And he has no idea just how much of a loser he is. For some time now, studies have shown us that porn and gaming can become compulsive and addicting. What we too often don’t recognize, though, is why.

In a new book, The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan say we may lose an entire generation of men to pornography and video gaming addictions. Their concern isn’t about morality, but instead about the nature of these addictions in reshaping the patten of desires necessary for community.

If you’re addicted to sugar or tequila or heroin you want more and more of that substance. But porn and video games both are built on novelty, on the quest for newer and different experiences. That’s why you rarely find a man addicted to a single pornographic image. He’s entrapped in an ever-expanding kaleidoscope.

There’s a key difference between porn and gaming. Pornography can’t be consumed in moderation because it is, by definition, immoral. A video game can be a harmless diversion along the lines of a low-stakes athletic competition. But the compulsive form of gaming shares a key element with porn: both are meant to simulate something, something for which men long.

Pornography promises orgasm without intimacy. Video warfare promises adrenaline without danger. The arousal that makes these so attractive is ultimately spiritual to the core.

Satan isn’t a creator but a plagiarist. His power is parasitic, latching on to good impulses and directing them toward his own purpose. God intends a man to feel the wildness of sexuality in the self-giving union with his wife. And a man is meant to, when necessary, fight for his family, his people, for the weak and vulnerable who are being oppressed.

The drive to the ecstasy of just love and to the valor of just war are gospel matters. The sexual union pictures the cosmic mystery of the union of Christ and his church. The call to fight is grounded in a God who protects his people, a Shepherd Christ who grabs his sheep from the jaws of the wolves.

When these drives are directed toward the illusion of ever-expanding novelty, they kill joy. The search for a mate is good, but blessedness isn’t in the parade of novelty before Adam. It is in finding the one who is fitted for him, and living with her in the mission of cultivating the next generation. When necessary, it is right to fight. But God’s warfare isn’t forever novel. It ends in a supper, and in a perpetual peace.

Moreover, these addictions foster the seemingly opposite vices of passivity and hyper-aggression. The porn addict becomes a lecherous loser, with one-flesh union supplanted by masturbatory isolation. The video game addict becomes a pugilistic coward, with other-protecting courage supplanted by aggression with no chance of losing one’s life. In both cases, one seeks the sensation of being a real lover or a real fighter, but venting one’s reproductive or adrenal glands over pixilated images, not flesh and blood for which one is responsible.

Zimbardo and Duncan are right, this is a generation mired in fake love and fake war, and that is dangerous. A man who learns to be a lover through porn will simultaneously love everyone and no one. A man obsessed with violent gaming can learn to fight everyone and no one.

The answer to both addictions is to fight arousal with arousal. Set forth the gospel vision of a Christ who loves his bride and who fights to save her. And then let’s train our young men to follow Christ by learning to love a real woman, sometimes by fighting his own desires and the spirit beings who would eat him up. Let’s teach our men to make love, and to make war . . . for real.