This week the blog is sponsored by Harvest USA.
Today, more than ever, parents need to take a proactive approach in preparing their children for a world bombarding them with false messages about sex, gender, and identity. If parents abdicate their God-given responsibility to equip and train their children with a biblical foundation for understanding sex and gender, the world is fully prepared to indoctrinate them in unbiblical ideologies that promote the self as god and individual experience as the supreme authority.
Raising Sexually Faithful Kids
Whether it’s pornography, LGBTQ+ ideologies, sexting, or hook-up apps, children are facing a torrent of temptations and dangers in matters of sexuality. This is why Harvest USA is offering a free online course for parents entitled Raising Sexually Faithful Kids. This eight-session course will help you understand what it looks like to proactively teach your children about God’s good gift of sexuality and how to guard that gift against temptations to misuse it in sinful ways. We also want to equip you to know how to respond to your children in love and truth when theystart to wrestle with sexual sins of various kinds. Raising Sexually Faithful Kids will help you understand your children not only at the level of their behavior but also by looking into the deeper issues of their hearts. You’ll learn how struggles with pornography, promiscuity, same-sex attraction, or gender distress may developand how the gospel of Jesus Christ offers hope for repentance, healing, and transformation. You’ll also be equipped for having not simply a one-off, awkward sex talk, but an ongoing dialogue with your children about God’s good design for sex with age-appropriate conversations during critical seasons. You’ll also receive vital information about ways to protect your family from the growing dangers technology presents. Raising sexually faithful kids requires a robust technology protection plan. Finally, you’ll learn how to engage in compassionate care and discipleship if you find your son has been looking at pornography or your daughter has been caught sexting.Your loving and truthful response to your child’s sin and struggles will show them the character of our good and loving heavenly Father.
Parenting Boys and Girls in a Gender-Confused World
Maybe you’ve already encountered how challenging it is to help your kids when peers, teachers, school guidance counselors, social media—perhaps even your familyphysician—promote ideas about our bodies, identity, personhood, or gender that don’t line up with biblical faith. Or maybe you have the painful experience of your child or their friends identifying as transgender, genderqueer, or something else celebrated by the evolving sexual and gender revolution. Parenting Boys and Girls in a Gender-Confused World is an eight-session, free online course from Harvest USA that will give you practical guidance as you seek to disciple sons and daughters about what it means to be a boy or girl created in love to bear God’s image. We wantto help you help them grow in understanding God’s design so they can think Biblically about gender and have the knowledge and courage to explain and defend the goodness of our Creator’s intent. And, of course, we want to guide you in how to offer compassionate discipleship if your child is struggling in this area. For free access to both courses, as well as many other resources on biblical sexuality, visitharvestusa.org or check out our courses at harvestusa.org/courses.

May you know the Lord’s sweet blessings as you serve and worship him this weekend.

Logos has lots of great material from Zondervan on sale, including the excellent ZECNT/ZECOT series.
I’m very grateful to AGTV for sponsoring the blog this week with news of their excellent and expanding programming.
(Yesterday on the blog: When Prayer Is a Struggle)
After Mars Hill And John Wayne
This is a good reminder of simple truths. “Evangelicals over the last decade have done a poor job of sticking to the centre of the road with respect to marital sexuality. The abuses and excesses being detailed in exposés like ‘Jesus And John Wayne’ and ‘The Rise And Fall Of Mars Hill’ have launched a (predictable) overreaction among some, leaving many confused as to what the Bible does, in fact, say about proper, kind, and loving sexual conduct within marriage.”
God Scares Me to Death
“God is sovereign. He does as he pleases. This comforts some people—and terrifies others.” I understand this fear very well.
Is “Beloved” Still a Word? (Video)
I don’t completely agree with Bill Mounce here, but I do think he raises some interesting points about words that have begun to get a bit antiquated in English (and without a suitable replacement).
Cathedral Feels
I enjoyed and benefitted from this one. “Cathedrals were designed to invoke a sense of awe and wonder. Cathedrals are intended to move within the worshiper, an internal sense of smallness in contrast to the grandeur of God. Surely, in your travels, some of you have experienced just this.”
The Endless Life Cycle of Book Cover Trends
To be clear, I don’t recommend the books in this article. But I do recommend it as an interesting look at where book covers come from. “What you see on a cover is the product of intermingling cultural and economic forces.”
When Furrows Fight Back
Aimee Joseph: “We are wired for work. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a result of the fall. Challenges in work and struggles with identity around work were most assuredly a consequence of man’s rebellion against God’s created and careful order; however, work itself honors God and is a needed part of human flourishing.”
Flashback: Thank God For Your Job (Doesn’t Matter What Your Job Is!)
If God blesses your labors to give you enough or even more than enough to meet your needs, you ought to give him praise and thanks.

Whatever circumstances our pasts may hold, we can rise above them into a future shaped by God’s grace. —Erwin Lutzer

In many churches, it is standard practice to have Christians take some kind of a spiritual gift inventory. Through a series of questions that probe an individual’s interests, passions, and successes, these tests claim to help people discover the ways the Holy Spirit has gifted them to better love and serve his people.

Much has been written about such inventories and many people have expressed a degree of skepticism about their usefulness or accuracy. I have long observed that these resources typically lead people to front-of-the-room service more than less visible forms and that they generally lead people to serve in ways that are within their comfort zone and consistent with their pre-existing desires.

Yet the great majority of Christian love and service happens outside the gaze of the congregation and many of the ways God calls us to serve him contradict our natural desires rather than harmonize with them. God is able and often eager to ask us to do things that are difficult and that push us well outside our natural capacities. Hence we find Moses the stuttering leader and Saul the shy king. We find a host of ministers and leaders who, if they remained consistent with their natural talents or desires would never set foot in a pulpit or dare to pastor a church. We find a host of Christians who serve in ways they never would have chosen had God not provided burden and opportunity.

Where you spot a need, consider meeting it. Where you spot a weakness, consider strengthening it. Where you spot an opportunity, consider taking it.Share

This is not to say that such inventories are useless or have no purpose. Yet it seems wise to treat them with some degree of caution, and willingly make ourselves available to God to serve in any capacity, whether we can identify special gifting or not. The reason is simple: it often seems that God gives the gift with the calling, rather than the calling with the gift.

With that in mind, here is one inventory that I would encourage you to consider. Instead of surveying yourself, survey your local church. Instead of assessing your own strengths, assess your church’s needs. Instead of focusing on the gifts God may have given you, focus on the gifts that God may want your church to have. Where you spot a need, consider meeting it. Where you spot a weakness, consider strengthening it. Where you spot an opportunity, consider taking it. You may just find that as you move forward, even with trepidation, God bestows the gifting.