One of the reasons we often wither in the faith, become susceptible to temptation, or simply “get into a rut” is a lack of regular fellowship with Christians outside of our own family. Make it your habit to meet with Christians, of the same sex, for regular fellowship and seek out Christians who are further along in their walk to be your mentors. Often in scriptures like Titus 2 we see it taken for granted that older Christian women will mentor younger Christian women, and that older Christian men will mentor younger Christian men. These brothers and sisters will pray for you, exhort you, teach you, and stir you up to love and good works. They will also keep you accountable in ways the world NEVER will.

1) Read Your Bible Before you read your email, log in to Face Book, turn on the radio, etc.
Far too many of us spend time in the world, before we spend time in the Word and as a result we begin the day with the wrong frame of mind and perspective, and not having “broken our fast” by partaking of the bread of heaven. For many people, this means that they begin the day having partaken of things that cause them to be irritable, anxious, or distracted, rather than filled with the things that promote peace, contentment, and knowledge. If we wonder why we are weak in the faith, it might just be because our primary diet consists of things that are not spiritual food. Let your first meal in the morning be the milk and meat of the Word of God!
“Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies; For they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation.” (Psalm 119:97-99)
2) Start attending the church events you normally miss
If there is one thing we learn from the Apostolic church, it is that they never missed an opportunity to worship together. “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” (Acts 2:42) This should still be the fondest desire of every Christian’s heart. “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go into the house of the LORD.” (Psalm 122:1) But it is also something that we desperately need for our growth. Indeed, the Christians who are growing the most in the faith are almost invariably the ones who spend the most time in worship and study. Sometimes people really are providentially hindered from attending the services of the church, but more often than not we have simply made a decision not to go. There are many excuses we can generate for not coming to both worship services on Sunday or the Bible Study or the Prayer Meeting, but how often can we honestly say, “Lord, the thing that I am doing instead of going to church is more important than worshipping you with the saints and is better for my spiritual growth?” Do we really think that the eternal blessings that we gain from attending on the means of grace will not outweigh the temporary hassles of traveling to church? Do we expect that in heaven we will say, “I’m glad I didn’t go to church more often?” or that if we did attend all the church services we could that we will regret doing so?
Finally, before you protest that you would be physically exhausted if you attended more of the services of the church, make sure that there aren’t other activities you could cut out that would enable you to get more rest. Often church is the first thing we remove from our schedule rather than the last. Christians are by definition people who hope to spend eternity in the corporate worship of the Lord, and we need to begin living now as we mean to continue forever afterwards. Remember, we can suffer from a lack of grace, but it is impossible to suffer from having gotten too much of it!
“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Heb. 10:25)
3) Begin and Stick to a Pattern of Daily Family Worship
Properly understood there are three different spheres in which worship should take place; privately, as we do our personal devotions, corporately, as we assemble for worship with the other saints on the Lord’s Day, and household, as families assemble to worship together on a daily basis.
While all the different spheres of worship have declined in modern times, perhaps none has suffered quite so much as family worship, and I believe that the results of this decline can be seen in the exodus of covenant children from the church. Simply put, an hour of corporate worship or even an hour of corporate worship and a youth program like AWANA cannot ever replace daily household worship and instruction. Fathers, you and not your pastor, youth pastor, or Sunday school worker have been charged with bringing up your children in the training and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). You simply cannot do this without following that daily pattern of instruction and worship set out in Deuteronomy 6. Additionally, Family Worship is a bulwark of any marriage, and you will find that although it is a cliche, there is a LOT of truth to the saying “The Family that Prays Together, Stays Together.” Indeed, it isn’t surprising to see that as family worship has declined, divorce rates have increased. In 10 years of pastoring, I have yet to encounter a family that kept a regular pattern of daily family worship that was on the verge of divorce.
Many families are intimidated by the thought of starting a pattern of family worship because they were not brought up doing it themselves, and were thus never taught how to worship at home. The keys to starting off a successful program of family worship are simplicity and consistency. If you have never done it before, I would recommend you start this way.
First, pick an event that the entire family already does together, such as eating a meal like then covenant that as soon as you have finished your meal you will assemble together for family worship. Keep your family worship simple and brief, and make your family wish there were more of it rather than wish that it would finally end. A sample pattern for worship might include:

Father or Mother Prays
Father reads a short selection from the Bible (no more than a chapter!) that he is familiar with and can explain, or from a good family devotional like the ones written by Jim Cromarty.
Father explains the text and asks the children some questions about the text designed to stimulate thought and conversation
The family closes by praying together and offering up their individual praises and requests to God

Later, after your worship has grown consistent, you can begin gradually adding in other items like singing and reciting the Shorter Catechism, Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments, etc.
“We will not hide them from their children, Telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, And His strength and His wonderful works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments” (Psalm 78:4-7)
4) Start Reading Systematically Through the Bible
One of the trends that has emerged over the years is that while Christians read email, text messages, magazines, novels, and Facebook, they rarely read the bible. The bible reading that does go on is either needs based (I have to read this for a bible study) or random. The result of this is that bible knowledge amongst Christians is declining at a precipitous rate. As an example of that, one seminary president pointed out that while it used to be the case that only 1/3 of the incoming class failed the English bible exam, now only 1/3 of the incoming class pass the English bible exam.
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Things aren’t exactly as they were during those heady days when that first T4G conference took place. We were a happy bunch then, but we are a divided bunch now—roiled over some of the issues I outlined in my concerns, with brawls over social justice and complementarianism chief among them. Collin Hansen proved prescient in his breakout session at the 2018 T4G conference assessing YRR 10 years after his book. Sadly, T4G is no more after this year for a number of reasons, including the divisions that have occurred among Reformed brothers.

Augustine famously wrote in his classic testimony, Confessions, that the human heart is restless till it finds rest in God. Indeed, the best of us can suffer from restlessness at times.
Yet, there remains a restlessness for some within this movement that leaves me concerned. We’re not as young as we used to be, many of us are still Reformed, but too many remain restless in terms of how their theology and ethics land on the ground. In what follows, I will offer six reflections on those concerns.
(If you haven’t read my positive reflections in Part 1, now would be a good time to hear those before reading on.)
1. A Loss of the Complementarity of Law and Gospel.
The Westminster divines and the framers of the Second London Confession gave robust expression to Reformed Theology out of a clear-headed understanding of the complementarity between law and gospel. Yes, the law says “do” and the gospel says “done,” but you cannot understand the holiness of God, man’s need, and the fulsome glory of what Christ did at Calvary without the law.
As Robert Haldane said in his classic commentary on Romans, “Men perceive themselves to be sinners in proportion as they have previously discovered the holiness of God and his law.”[1]
My generation struggled with legalism. In church we talked a lot about which movies were off-limits for believers, whether rock or country music was from God or the Devil, and whether it was a sin for women to wear shorts during summer.
I fear this generation risks over-correcting the previous generation’s error and is slouching toward antinomianism. There seems to be skepticism when it comes to proclaiming the imperatives of Scripture, with such preaching often dismissed as legalism or old-school fundamentalism.
Christian liberty seems to be more in vogue among younger Reformed evangelicals today. This has led to numerous ugly moral failures of several well-known leaders and a generation that is becoming intimately acquainted with the phrase “deconstructing my faith.” Legalism and antinomianism are equally deadly ditches; we need to recover the biblical equilibrium.
2. An Imbalanced Preference of the Mind over a Commitment to Godliness.
Mark Noll’s important 1995 book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind awakened evangelicals of the need to recover a Christian mind, which was one of the great entailments of the Protestant Reformation. I couldn’t agree more. However, I often hear people lauded for their brilliant mind but seem to hear less about their godliness or humility.
Without question, Reformed Theology is a sublime and deeply satisfying exercise of the mind. But we need to recover the balance of our Puritan forefathers such as Jonathan Edwards and John Owen who were among the most luminous intellectual lights in church history and men of profound humility and holiness. Sound doctrine should lead to sound living.
3. A Tendency to Bracket Off Same-Sex Attraction into a Special, Protected Species of Sin.
I have been deeply concerned by the number of writers, pastors, and teachers over the past few years who have openly and rather matter-of-factly identified as same-sex attracted (SSA). Some who struggle with SSA have written on it helpfully and hopefully, but a few seem fixated on SSA and at least insinuate that it is part of their fundamental identity. The Revoice conference comes particularly to mind here.
Same-sex attraction is a bonafide struggle for some and the church should compassionately and patiently apply the healing balm of the gospel to that struggle. But we should never make a particular sin a part of our identity and wallow in it as if to signal to our LGBTQ+-sympathizing neighbors, “See, we’re not such narrow-minded bigots after all.” I fear flirtation may lead to celebration. It is one of the few sins today that receives such kid gloves treatment with an almost protected status. But as John Owen famously said, we must be killing sin, or it will kill us—no matter what form that sin takes, no matter how culturally relevant that sin struggle is.
The term “gay Christian” is dangerous and grossly unbiblical. Can you imagine adopting the descriptor “adulterer Christian” or “homicidally angry Christian” or “covetous Christian”? And even in the church we are attacking the binaries of male and female when God has filled creation with binaries.
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Written by Forrest L. Marion |
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Non-competitive activities, however, may retain one’s focus on the Lord – if engaged in it thoughtfully. Again, readers may think of their favorite examples, from going for a walk or a bike ride with their children/grandchildren to a dad throwing a baseball with his son in the backyard to various other outings or indoor activities that allow for engaging in conversation or reflection on God’s sovereignty, creativity, and lovingkindness – or on the morning’s teaching and preaching. 

Among Christians, Presbyterians generally are those best attuned to the importance of the Christian Sabbath, or Lord’s Day. But this shared sense of importance does not translate to full agreement on the day’s nature or observance. For centuries, followers of Jesus Christ have differed regarding the observance of the fourth commandment.
Regardless, the Westminster Standards highlight the observance of the Lord’s Day which commemorates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus on the first day of the week. The Larger Catechism devotes no less than 7 questions – of 196 – to the fourth commandment (#115-121).
Question 117 asks, “How is the sabbath or the Lord’s day to be sanctified?” The most relevant portion of the lengthy answer is, “The sabbath or Lord’s day is to be sanctified by an holy resting all the day, not only from such works as are at all times sinful, but even from such worldly employments and recreations as are on other days lawful.” The answer to question 119 on “the sins forbidden in the fourth commandment” reiterates the forbidding of “all needless works, words, and thoughts, about our worldly employments and recreations.”
The matter of worldly recreations is the narrow topic here.
A decade ago, while serving on my presbytery’s theological examining committee, I realized that the “recreations” clause was the one nearly always mentioned by candidates taking “exceptions” to the Westminster Standards. That experience has been reinforced by articles in The Aquila Report over the years as well.
One article in 2013 by Teaching Elder (TE) Jason A. Van Bemmel observed: “The biggest objection I have to ‘worldly recreations’ is that people seem eager to engage in leisure activities that do not focus their own hearts and minds on the Lord and that require others to work in order to serve them.”
In 2015, TE Benjamin Shaw expressed the issue of post-morning-worship Lord’s day activities with both humor and insight:
So our civil culture and our theological culture alike lean against prohibiting ‘recreations’ on the Sabbath. Then, we are presented the Dickensian bogeyman of the poor children of Sabbatarians, forced to sit in uncomfortable straight-backed chairs all Sunday afternoon, dressed in their Sunday-best, while their grim-faced father reads to them the opening chapters of 1 Chronicles.    
Assuming one’s regular attendance upon divine worship in the morning at a minimum, must we choose between Sabbath afternoon “leisure activities” that do not focus on the Lord on the one hand and “grim-faced” fathers reading 1 Chronicles’ genealogical chapters to their children on the other? Is there not a more biblical, even confessional, standard to be found somewhere between those two extremes?
All Christians acknowledge the Bible as their highest authority, but challenges may arise when Scripture does not use a particular word that carries weight in one’s confessional documents. The Westminster Standards use the word, “recreations,” which does not appear in the 1599 Geneva Bible or the 1611 King James Bible, the versions most familiar to the assembly when it met several decades later. Isaiah 58:13-14 – historically the favorite Scripture passage of Presbyterians on the topic – arguably comes closest to addressing the essence of recreational activity:
If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy will on mine Holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight to consecrate it, as glorious to the Lord, and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor seeking thine own will, nor speaking a vain word,
Then shalt thou delight in the Lord, and I will cause thee to mount upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.      
Phrases such as, “. . . doing thy will on mine Holy day” and “not doing thine own ways, nor seeking thine own will,” point toward the essence of the recreations clause. In our culture, it’s all about “thine own will” – not God’s will. Even serious Christians are not exempt from such pernicious influences.
I am convinced this is where Greg Bahnsen’s thinking may help. He argued for viewing the recreations clause in the context of competitive versus non-competitive activities.*
Competitive activities by their nature focus one’s attention on the individual or one’s team. Readers may bring to mind their own examples of competition from sports to drama to music and so on. Such competitive activities promote “thine own will.” The very nature of competition means the activity must be self- or man-focused; not God-focused.
Non-competitive activities, however, may retain one’s focus on the Lord – if engaged in it thoughtfully. Again, readers may think of their favorite examples, from going for a walk or a bike ride with their children/grandchildren to a dad throwing a baseball with his son in the backyard to various other outings or indoor activities that allow for engaging in conversation or reflection on God’s sovereignty, creativity, and lovingkindness – or on the morning’s teaching and preaching.
While I cannot recall what Bahnsen may have said about King James I’s infamous – especially to the Puritans – Book of Sports, or Declaration of Sports, which was first issued in 1618 and reissued in 1633 by Charles I, without doubt the Westminster divines had this document in mind when they met in the 1640s. Some pastors, including John Davenport and Thomas Shepard, left England for America, partly because of Charles’s aggressive undermining of the Sabbath through the declaration’s reissuance (Davenport found refuge for a time in the Netherlands). Broader persecution influenced other pastors to emigrate, including John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, who traveled to America in July 1633, three months prior to the reissuance.
It is significant that several of the “lawful recreations” in which James and Charles encouraged their subjects to engage on Sabbath afternoons, were competitive in nature: “archery for men, leaping, vaulting.” The king considered them to be “exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, when we or our successors shall have occasion to use them.” This background supports the validity of viewing Westminster’s “recreations” within the framework of the competitive/non-competitive nature of Sabbath activities as Greg Bahnsen suggested.
Some writers argue for a study to address the Westminster Standards’ handling of the fourth commandment and/or the “recreations” clause. Until that happens, perhaps asking oneself whether a Sabbath activity being considered is competitive, or non-competitive, may promote a more faithful observance of the day and greater delighting in the Lord, which offers the believer a glimpse of the eternal Sabbath toward which he is headed.
Forrest L. Marion is a member of First Presbyterian Church (PCA), Crossville, Tennessee.

*Note: I’m unable to cite that roughly thirty years ago – in the olden days of audiocassettes – I listened to a (borrowed) taped message of Dr. Greg Bahnsen (1948-1995) in which he argued for viewing Sabbath “recreations” through the window of competitive/non-competitive activities. While I regret not having taken notes on his message, my family and former church members will testify that in the 1990s anything touching upon the Christian Sabbath and its observance commanded my attention; my dissertation dealt with the subject. Years later, I contacted Bahnsen Theological Seminary, but they were unable to locate this taped message. If any reader is familiar with this message of Dr. Bahnsen’s, please contact me at [email protected].
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