Are we covenant members of a faithful church? Are we pressing on in the midst of suffering, enduring slander or worse for the cause of Christ? This strong medicine for our weak and wandering faith will prepare us faithfully for the days ahead.

When we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ read the Word of God with faith, we are pulling down the very power of heaven to bear on our earthly trials. Because the Word of God is pure and true, we can trust it with our lives: “By this faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God speaking therein” (Westminster Confession of Faith 14.2). The Word of God calls us to “act differently . . . yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come” (WCF 14.2).

First Peter 4:12–19 is written in the rhetorical style of paraenesis—it offers strong encouragement to press on even when it hurts and to not change course because of intense suffering that we will experience. This strong exhortation pushes believers to grow into mature saints. In this passage, Peter commands us to do things that we cannot do without the Lord’s grace: to face the fiery trial with expectation that we will suffer (v. 12); to rejoice in the midst of suffering (v. 13); to interpret the slander that comes our way because of our strong stance for the Christian faith as a blessing from God Himself and a proof of the Spirit of glory resting upon us (v. 14); to mortify all sin and all potential sin, especially murder, robbery, and meddling (v. 15); to glorify the name of God in our words and our deeds as we suffer for the faith (v. 16); to expect God’s hard and rebuking judgment upon the nation to start with the church (v. 17); to realize that, as John Calvin puts it, we can arrive in heaven only after escaping a thousand deaths on earth (what Peter calls being “scarcely saved”). And if all this isn’t enough, God expects us to continue in doing good works in the midst of this agony (v. 19). Written to suffering Christians who are covenant members of a faithful and visible church, belonging to the church and to one another (vv. 1–11), 1 Peter 4:12–19 raises an important question: Why does a God who loves us as a gracious Father want us to suffer for the name of Christ?
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While you should take steps to limit your children’s exposure to pornography, you also need to prepare them for it. Sadly, their exposure is inevitable. But I want to encourage you that teaching your children simple truths can springboard you into deeper and more difficult conversations about God’s design for sex and his desired protection of them.

The reality cannot be denied—the majority of teens are viewing pornography—whether on purpose or by accident.1 We know porn is everywhere, but I think many parents fail to realize what characterizes today’s pornography. Internet porn is made up of moving images with sounds depicting every type of sexual activity and orientation. It is dark, it is free, and it is evil.
What is worse than our children’s exposure to pornography is why they are choosing to view it. Of the children who admitted to intentionally searching for pornography, nearly two-thirds of them revealed they had done so for one or more of these reasons:

To look for new ideas to try sexually
To learn about sex in general
To find out how to get better at sex
To discover what potential partners expect from them sexually

Girls, in particular, mentioned using pornography to learn how to meet boys’ expectations.2
The Internet is providing our children with sex education, and it is the worst type. It displays a corrupted and distorted depiction of what God designed to be a wonderful expression of intimacy and oneness. Pornography lures children in, feeds their curiosity, then leaves them with images that stick. These “hooks” pull them back to look again, and what they see shapes their desires.
We can easily see the potential for great danger in this trend, yet most parents I speak with struggle to talk to their children about pornography, let alone the dangers of it. The Bible tells us that we are to shepherd our children, so we must push past what feels uncomfortable or brings up our own issues with sex. Our children are counting on it.
Scripture beckons our children to listen to our wisdom.
Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,and forsake not your mother’s teaching,for they are a graceful garland for your headand pendants for your neck.My son, if sinners entice you,do not consent (Prov 1:8–10).
Our guidance is not just a source of protection. It also beautifies our children as they become better image bearers.
To help you do what feels impossible, I will outline four negative effects of pornography and provide you with a conversation point for each. I hope that in doing so, you can see how approachable this topic can be, given the biblical truths you are already discussing at home.

Threat: Pornography is confusing and overwhelming for children. Not only can they not process its explicit nature, but they also cannot make sense of the complex themes and messages. They will also see sex portrayed as violent and that any combination of people, sexes, and ages can be involved. This will cause them great stress, and the exposure can be traumatic for some.

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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Monday, March 6, 2023
Since materialism wipes out the possibility of ingrained purpose, and we require purpose to live, what we call expressive individualism naturally arises. We kill God and we will become him. When purpose and therefore meaning are self-determined, we fall into crisis. In other words, one thread of our predicament in this strange malaise we call modernity, is the natural result of our changing understanding of what the world around us is.

We live in a world that tells a story about itself: we learn the story as children in school and we imbibe it in our cups as we go about the day. It’s whispered to us by automobiles and tarmac and concrete pillars and we receive it intravenously by the tap our smartphones have placed in our souls.
The story is simple, though its implications and endless poorly written sequels spin themselves out like the very worst of web serials. It goes like this:
This is it.
The world tells us a story that the stuff that we can see is all there is, and that the stuff we can touch is just stuff. If there were a temptation to believe that perhaps that tree was not just a tree, and maybe, possibly its branches might be raised towards… just stop there. There is nothing to be raised towards. How can there be? What you can see and touch is what there is.
If we were tempted to believe that beauty has a source, that somewhere outside of the stuffy cave we find ourselves in there might be a source of the shadows we watch on the wall, the story will swiftly correct us. Because the world has a ruler, a story-teller, who would really prefer we didn’t consider his existence, or that for most of Christian history we have referred to this Prince of the ‘Air’ who twists stories like smoke around our heads as our Adversary. In Hebrew, the Satan.
But this story—which when we’re feeling philosophical we might call materialism, or naturalism—has got its grip on our world. It’s still pretty new, historically speaking, but it has solidified and deepened. We no longer believe in a Cosmos of ordered light, but instead in a Universe that we describe in mechanistic terms. It sounds like a machine.
We are catechised by our machines, so we start to think in their stories. Even for those who know that there is more, those who know that the story of the world is not that there is stuff that decays to dust but that God became dust and all things will be reconciled to him. Even if we know that the beating heart of the Universe is after death, life we still struggle to believe that what we see and touch is more than it appears. We’re steeped in stories that tell us otherwise.
If I, for example, suggested that what we refer to as the ‘laws of physics,’ our observations about the regular nature of the Cosmos’ operations, are most likely overseen by angels, I sound like I need to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
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