Ephesians 6:4, 1 Peter 5:8, Deuteronomy 6:6-7, 2 Corinthians 3:18
Our Father, Lord, the world is sometimes a dragon with teeth set to devour the dreams of our children. Help our little ones go softly from our homes remembering all we taught them of your great love a...
Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Proverbs 13:20, Matthew 28:19-20, Luke 14:27, Psalm 119:9
When singer John Davidson was learning to drive, his father, a Baptist minister, offered him a deal: he could have a car if he earned straight “B’s” on his report card, read the Bible more, and got a ...
Show your children God’s love by loving them and others as Christ loves you. Be quick to forgive, don’t hold a grudge, look for what’s best, and speak gently into areas of their lives that need growth...
Adolescents have been offered a license to post without any accompanying ethical framework. Is it fair to blame teens for misusing tools that didn’t exist in our childhood? If I had been given a phone...
Have you ever noticed the severe discrepancy behind the very few verses in the Bible that discuss the “how-to” of parenting and the hundreds of Christian books that confidently proclaim “God’s plan fo...
Children are God’s gifts to immature people to help them grow up. They are also God’s gifts to help parents go deep with God. . . . Parenting is not for anything. It is not a contract with God in whic...
Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addic...
God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing a...
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their f...
The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say...
We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models – most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.
1 Corinthians 3:2, Hebrews 5:12-14, Luke 10:25-26, Deuteronomy 6:7, James 1:22
[M]y husband, Nick, tells a story of when he was a teenager riding his bike with his friends, and his chain came off his bike. Nick took the bike to his dad, who said, “I'll fix it, you watch”. Hi...
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been very good at paying attention to my car’s fuel tank. I remember in high school I drove an old Jeep Grand Cherokee that had a digital fuel gauge. In 1998 tha...
There is no better exercise for strengthening the heart than reaching down and lifting people up. Think about it; most of your best friends are those who encourage you. You don’t have many strong rela...
I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an...
65 percent of parents, ages 25-34, believe they check their phone too much. (56% of kids agree.) 31 percent of parents say they don’t set a good example with mobile device usage. (22% of kids agree.)...
Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about...
In her book, Feminine Appeal , Carolyn Mahaney pontificates on the relationship between God’s providence and the guilt we often experience as parents who often fall short in our parenting: We can ...
There is a story about a man who stopped in the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a couple of items for his wife. He wandered around aimlessly for a while searching out the needed gro...
When I engaged with twenty-somethings, for example, who were just entering the adult years, I found them preoccupied with clarifying their identity. What kind of a man or woman am I becoming, they w...
Our Sabbath project grew out of a desire to reclaim some of the unhurried wonder of those early days of parenthood—to see what would happen if, on one day out of seven, we stopped working, striving, a...
Heavenly Father, you are faithful, even when we are not. We look to the examples of our parents, and they often fall short. We, too, fall short when we consider the legacy we pass on to our children, ...
In today’s culture, it’s a race to the top of the ladder. According to Pew Research, millennials are the most educated generation. No one does comparison quite like millennials. We have apps for every...
My son Michael and his wife, Amy, also have been on the dance floor with their Fear Dance. And their reactions have not always been pretty. One day Michael came home with a new cell phone and plan—abo...
Imagine a doctor’s office where every patient is told, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” If I have a headache, that is great advice, but if my appendix has just burst, I will be dead befo...
James 1:19, Luke 24:13-25, 1 Corinthians 14:9, Matthew 13:10-17
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place .” George Bernard Shaw Three-year-old Matthew was chewing on an apple when he asked, “Daddy, why is ...
I became interested in the subject of transition outer changes around 1970 when I was going through some difficult inner and outer changes. Although I gave up my teaching career because of those chang...
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who who creates families for our belonging: We ask for your continual care for the homes in which your people live. Keep them from all bitterness, arrogance, and the...