When frustration calls and bitterness looms, when prayers go unanswered and trust is difficult, look afresh to God’s Word and his creation for glimpses of his beauty, power, and majesty. Basking in the glory of God doesn’t change my circumstances, but it often changes my disposition and the attitude of my heart. Being reminded of the glory and power of God helps me to see that he has a plan and is able to execute it.

My son and I enjoy hunting together, and if we have a successful season we have enough meat to feed our family all year. On one occasion, we were walking back to the truck bundled up in camo on a cold night. He said something to me, and I quickly snapped back at him. Later, I lay in bed and thought about my reaction. I tried to figure out the source of my frustration and realized it was due to some struggles I was facing and what seemed like a barrage of unanswered prayers.
I thought about recent prayers where I had pleaded with God to work. They weren’t selfish prayers, just requests for God to correct prevalent evil or relieve pain in situations where people were suffering. Why wasn’t God working? Why hadn’t he swooped down and righted the wrongs I was praying against? Why hadn’t he delivered?
The most natural answer is that there must be something wrong with me. Perhaps I wasn’t faithful enough, or maybe it was some sin in my life. While these are certainly possibilities to be considered, they are not always the answer. Oftentimes, the Lord works in ways we don’t understand, and he never seems to work on the timetable we’ve established.
Leaning on Him
As we enter the new year, I find Proverbs 3:5–6 on repeat in my mind:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

These verses are so popular that they’ve become cliché, but they are the Word of God so don’t let their familiarity cause you to overlook them. Perhaps they’ve become so popular because they deal with one of the most difficult things we as humans struggle with: trusting God instead of ourselves.
“Lean not on your own understanding.” It can often be true, perhaps more than we realize, that our understanding is opposed to trusting in God. What seems to our finite minds the right way that God should answer our prayer can simply be wrong. Proverbs 14:12 states, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” We can pray for his will to be done then still get upset when he doesn’t do ours. When we can’t understand why God hasn’t worked the way we think he should, we are to trust that the Lord knows better than we do. We are to trust his ways instead of our understanding.
I see this in my relationship with my kids. As much as I love them, I must often withhold something that seems good to them. Their young minds can’t understand why I won’t let them ride their bikes in the street, eat another candy bar, or stay up later.
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Do not let the world around you move you off of the unshakable promises that God has made to his church. Pray for the next generation. Pray that God would convert our children.

Several months ago the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus provoked the ire of many with their controversial song, “We’ll Convert Your Children.”
You think that we’ll corrupt your kids,if our agenda goes unchecked.Funny, just this once, you’re correct.
The song continues,
We’ll convert your children.Happens bit by bit.Quietly and subtly.And you will barely notice it…
We’ll convert your children.We’ll make them tolerant and fair…
Your children will care about fairness and justice for others.Your children will work to convert all their sisters and brothers.Then soon we’re almost certain,your kids will start converting you.
In response to the tidal wave of criticism, chorus members released a statement claiming that the song was mere satire, tongue-in-cheek humor that was obviously lost on their hysterical traditionalist objectors. However, further comments demonstrate that lurking behind this veil of “humor” is indeed an agenda that has its sights set on the children of believers:
After decades of children being indoctrinated and taught intolerance for anyone who is ‘other,’ from using the Bible as a weapon to reparative therapy, it’s our turn. We have dedicated ourselves to being role models, teaching, spreading the message of love, tolerance and celebration through our music.[1]
Before the shock of this event wears off on us completely (if it hasn’t already), we would do well to stop, reflect, and ask ourselves the evaluative question, “What can we learn from this?” In the moment, we all felt a great deal, everything from righteous indignation to fear for our children’s future, but what are we to do now?
First, we need to remind ourselves that there is no reason for the church to fear or despair even in the face of such pervasive wickedness. The LGBTQ+ message is radically opposed to our own and holds more sway in our post-Christian culture than ever before—but it isn’t altogether new. What we’re seeing now is nothing but another wave of Romans 1 idolatry dressed in 21st century clothes:
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done…Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:28, 31).
None of what we’re seeing today takes God by surprise. This alone ought to comfort the fearful parent and concerned church member. Yet God’s Word doesn’t just describe the problem, but prescribes manifold ways in which the church can forewarn and forearm its children against the lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:5). God has not left us to fend for ourselves. He has given his church grace to endure before, and so we are assured that the immutably holy, wise, and gracious God will give his 21st century church everything necessary to flourish even in the midst of cultural upheaval.
How then should the church respond to the mounting pressure being applied to our children? Using the baptismal vows provided in the PCA Book of Church Order (BCO) as a guide, I want to address two groups—those parents whose children are still living under their roof and those who either have no children of their own or whose children have grown and since left the nest—and provide concrete ways for all to participate in this work of discipleship.
Christian parents need to take seriously their responsibility to train their children to be mature men and women in Christ. “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). The members of the men’s chorus are right—the slide into sin and apostasy happens “quietly and subtly”, so subtly that we “hardly notice it.” Due to the Fall, by nature we all tend toward spiritual declension, not improvement, and our children are no exception. Growth in godliness on the other hand is anything but subtle or passive, it is a supernatural work of God’s grace in the heart that works against the grain of our sinful nature. Thomas Watson reminds us, “Weeds grow of themselves; flowers are planted. Godliness is a celestial plant that comes from the New Jerusalem.”
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Gerwig’s task as Barbie’s director was to create a movie that celebrated the doll while also acknowledging her controversial status in American culture. But if Barbie is a symbol of unattainable beauty standards, the Barbie movie is a symbol of incoherent feminist standards. Where earlier waves of feminism sought for women’s equal participation in democracy and the marketplace as women, modern feminism seeks to transcend—even leave behind—the female body altogether.

In the new movie Barbie, Greta Gerwig wants you to believe that being pregnant is weird. Midge, a pregnant Barbie doll that serves as the butt of many jokes, was discontinued “because a pregnant doll is just too weird.” Midge has no speaking parts, and characters throughout the movie are repeatedly taken aback whenever she appears. Barbie wants to empower women to be anything they are or choose to be (in the film, Barbie comes in every career, country, shade, size, and even sex) — except, apparently, the one thing that most women eventually hold in common: becoming a mother.
Mattel’s Barbie doll has always provoked conversation about womanhood and the female body. She has been an icon of femininity in the truest sense of the word: Barbie was the ideal. But Barbie has also been plagued by controversy, with some claiming she perpetuated unattainable standards rather than empowering women to overcome them. The Barbie doll’s meteoric success and then rapid decline, however, is only a mirror reflecting deeper cultural questions about what it means to be a woman.
Gerwig’s task as Barbie’s director was to create a movie that celebrated the doll while also acknowledging her controversial status in American culture. But if Barbie is a symbol of unattainable beauty standards, the Barbie movie is a symbol of incoherent feminist standards. Where earlier waves of feminism sought for women’s equal participation in democracy and the marketplace as women, modern feminism seeks to transcend—even leave behind—the female body altogether.
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