I was talking with a friend last week who said that they knew something was going on because I didn’t post twice last week! Well, there are some big changes happening and I want to ask you to pray with us through them.

This past Sunday I let our church family know that over the past few months, God has been leading us to plant a church in the Northwest Valley of the Phoenix area. That is where I’m from and it will be nice to be near family again. We know the area, we know the people and we know the need. We are very sad to leave Grace Community Church and the church family that has meant so much to us over these past years but we would not be doing this if we weren’t convinced that this was God’s plan for us.

Please pray for me, my family and Grace Community Church, that this will be smooth, God-honoring and edifying transition for everyone. Today I am in Austin with Acts 29 at their South-Central Regional conference trying to discern the Lord’s will as to whether or not that’s the avenue that He would have us travel. Please pray for wisdom and discernment as how to best pursue the many challenges that lie ahead.

• Visit the Acts 29 website

By Eddie Exposito

I was raised in a moral home, high on religiosity and regulation, but low on gospel. In that traditionally Catholic meadow my musical foundations were developed around a monolithic console stereo with a turntable and an eight-track tape player that belted out everything from Carole King and Stevie Wonder to Janis Joplin and Elvis. I can remember sitting on the shag carpet in my add-on den in the suburbs of New Orleans with my back leaning up against the vibrating speakers imagining myself playing in the band and becoming enamored with what I would later find out is called “the groove”.

Years later I would learn to play percussion taking up the drum kit as my mainstay and forming a local band called Fresh Young Minds which became highly popular in the early 90’s around the New Orleans music scene. God converted me during that time translating me from a bitter atheist into a green believer and I no longer pursued music as a profession; however, my love of music has never died. After battling rabid non-beat Gothardites and a stint with radical fundamentalism whereby I almost literally burned about seventy-eight CDs that were not “Christian” enough, I landed in a confused marshland not sure of what to listen to or whether I could even listen to anything at all without feeling guilty or overwhelmed by hyper-analysis.

Fast-forward to the present: I have a wife and four daughters, over a decade in the faith, pastor a local church, and have found a new love for music. I had gotten burned out on the CCM rotations after they seemed to me to be generating more cheese than gold. At some point I also did not believe that I could stomach yet another love song to Jesus that sounded like a sensual ballad from the star struck to lovelorn. And so I began to uncover my old discs and listened to forbidden rock fruits and nibbled on jazz-ensembled nectar and asked myself exactly why it was that I almost burned all of this creativity?

For the first time I saw these songs as gifts rather than enemies. Sure, some were rotten but I quickly found out that even the rotten fruits were good in that they taught me how to think through the volatile topic of music biblically and became examples that I could use in teaching the proper use vs. the improper use of creative talent. I began for the first time to see that I didn’t have to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater as it were and could instead take each song on its own merit to see if it had any redeemable qualities. Suddenly my musical acumen was not about castigating an entire musical genre but in taking the opportunity and time to listen, analyze, and learn. Later, I would see the tremendous benefit in applying this approach to my children and their schooling.

I found a great sale on refurbished mp3 players and bought three of them; one for me and one for each of my oldest daughters who are ten and twelve. I loaded our players with a variety of songs and tunes including two albums by Anathallo, some Thelonious Monk, the White Stripes, and a few Verdi arias. Their assignment was to listen to the songs and be ready to discuss them with me. They were armed with notepads and pencils as we sat down in our den listening to a few tunes from the selection on our Bose acoustic wave machine. We discussed dissonance and syncopation and crescendos and dynamics and tone and timbre and harmony and bass and counterpoint and rhythm; every aspect of appreciation. I gave them print outs of the song lyrics and we combed over them biblically to see if their subject and message melded or conflicted with Scripture and we talked more about chord structures and arrangements and whether they even liked the songs at all.

What I discovered is that instead of making a long list of musical do’s and don’ts and tabooed types, we should see music as a tool: a tool to teach our children how to discern for themselves what is worthy of discovery and what is worthy of the trash heap. Far more productive conversations have come from this type of discussion and discourse than from me simply banning certain bands from our home.

Give your children the tools they need to figure things out for themselves and you’ve stimulating their minds to think biblically with a critical eye while equipping them for life. Simply ban, dodge, and restrict their choices and you’ll only end up stirring the flesh.

Eddie Exposito and his wife Michelle have four daughters (Elizabeth-Kay, Carlyn, Jeanne-Marie, and Ruby). They have been married for fifteen years living just outside of Slidell, LA where he serves as the pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship. He is also director of Sovereign Grace Homeland Missions (SGHM.org) which ministers to the greater New Orleans area, a rebuilding and evangelism outreach established as a result of hurricane Katrina, where the work to rebuild homes and lives continues to this very day.

• Read Music Through the Eyes of Faith by Harold Best
• Read This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin

By Adam Groza

Recently, I have enjoyed some good conversation with friends about raising our little girls to be godly women. Of course, this will ultimately depend on the working of the Spirit in their lives. But in everyday life, from cloths to comments, actions have consequences. This is true for boys and girls, of course. But my interest here is to share some comments on raising little girls to be godly women. Since Brent is only capable of producing male offspring and has of yet been denied the wonderful privilege of a daughter, I will leave him to comments on raising little boys☺.

So I start with the assumption that the bible defines what it looks like to be a godly woman in such places as Proverbs 31. I will leave you to read that passage, and move ahead to ask the question, “How do we parents encourage our little girls onto a godly path?” I think that answering this will require two sorts of things, the first positive and the second negative.

Positively we must love them, which in Biblical sense, means that we care for them as God has cared for us. Just as God teaches us and reveals truth to us, so too we must teach our daughters. From the earliest age, we must instruct them. Deuteronomy chapter six tells us that this teaching must permeate our home. Dish-washing times are teaching times. So we teach as we live, but we also are intentional about designating time to teach. God has done this for the church in setting aside a day for worship and rest. So too, I think fathers do well to set aside a time of day to have a time of family worship, to teach your children to pray, sing, study, and teach Scripture in the act of praying, singing, reading, and teaching Scripture. When does your family do this and how have you structured it to (practically speaking) work for you?

Yet teaching cannot be detached from affection. God‘s character includes dispositions analogous to human emotions. He loves us, cares for us, and provides for us. Revealed truth detached from loving-kindness would improperly reflect the Father and would likely fail to effectuate a desire for the truth. God is sovereign, but he uses tender interaction to develop love for Himself and our negligence can have adverse consequences. I am of the opinion that little girls especially, because they are the weaker sex (1 Peter 3:7), must be taught and loved with a tenderness and sense of protection which leads them to delight in God.

These are things (though hardly exhaustive) we must do positively to love our little girls such that they become godly women. But there are things that we must avoid as well. There are certain cultural land mines that I intuitively believe will push our daughters from Christ.

First, it seems to me that busyness will destroy the heart of a little girl, especially a father who teaches, hugs, and then leaves. For those of us blessed to have wives who stay at home, our time at home is limited but our ability to give attention to the scribbles, the “ouchies”, and the tea-parties are of critical importance to a little girl. Ministry and work cannot be an excuse for perpetual absence. I am pretty sure any daughter would prefer a no-name poor father who is present than an evangelical celebrity or corporate mountain-mover who is absent. In fact, I venture to guess that our absence might fuel bitterness rather than godly affection and admiration, especially if we are gone in the name of Jesus.

Second, we must guard them from vanity and materialism when they are young. If we want teenage girls who are modest we must dress them modestly when young and tell them how pretty they look when their bodies are covered. It means we don’t let them wear pants with words across the bottom (such as “cutie”) that direct people’s eyes to our daughter’s backside: Unbelievable! Moreover, we must keep them, as much as possible, from the constant media barrage of “princess imagery” that most girls will never obtain without surgery. One thought shared to me by a pastor is to tell our girls they are “pretty” but not “the prettiest girl in the world”. The latter statement instills a sense of beauty by comparison rather than creation and relation. Of course, our only beauty is the righteousness of Christ which is owed completely to our (new) creation and relation to Christ. So too little girls should be pretty to their father: Not because other girls are not pretty or because they are pretty in relation to others but because they are our daughters and beautiful in our eyes.

Lastly, I have been thinking a lot about having a little girl and training her to be content in living simply, which is to say, not materialistic. How do I train my daughter such that one day in the future her husband could say “I think God is leading us to sell our home and cars and go on the mission field” so that she would respond “Yes, let’s go” without a moment’s thought for the material loss she will incur. So loving our daughters to become godly women would include, I think, helping them to be content with less; less toys, less shoes, less cloths, and less stuff. It seems to me that God limits our possessions to teach us dependency. He can give us more, but his love won’t allow it because we need to learn to live with a certain detachment from the things of this world even as we have a healthy appreciation for those same passing thing. So maybe we love our daughters in a more godly way when we buy them a used dress and tell them they look pretty rather than the most expensive dress. We could tell her that the money saved can go to help other kids and/or share the gospel around the world. This does two things: Instills (hopefully) a sense of simplicity and a love for missions. I think the two go hand in hand.

So these are just thoughts about raising daughters to be godly women. Many of you know much more than I on the subject, so I welcome your thoughts and comments.

• Read Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp
• Read Everyday Talk: Talking Freely and Naturally about God With Your Children by John Younts
• Read Teach Them Diligently: How To Use The Scriptures in Child Training by Lou Priolo

Our internet was out yesterday evening and I’m still not feeling quite well. That means there won’t be any thoughtful post today (not that I ever have those anyways!). So instead of a “thoughtful” post, I give you a “thankful” post. Our good friend Shelly from Faith Photography came by the hospital to take some pictures of Eli when we was born and we are so thankful!

 

 

We are so pleased to announce that Eli Calvin Thomas arrived on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 10:42am. He was 7lbs, 6oz and 19.5 inches long. Mom and baby are both doing great and brothers are adjusting. It’s been a bit of a rough time, though because we walked in the door from coming home yesterday and I immediately came down with the flu and a temperature of 102.5! Not a good time to be sick to say the least! I’ve literally been in bed for the past 24 hours and only very recently had the energy to get up at all. But Kristi’s Mom has been here and been a tremendous help.

We appreciate your thoughts and prayers and we’re anxious to adjust to life with four boys!

Kristi and I are going in to the hospital tonight to begin the process of inducing labor! Lord willing, our fourth son, Eli Calvin Thomas will be here some time tomorrow. Please pray that everything would go smoothly and that we would be able to remain calm and joyful during this sometimes trying process.

Of course, that means I’m not sure when I’ll be posting again, but that’s honestly not really at the top of my priority list right now, so sit back, be patient, and please, lift us up in prayer.

See you on the other side. Lord willing with a new son!

I’ve been thinking a bit more about some of the ideas presented with Psalm 127 (see here), particularly in light of influencing our children and the imagery of aiming them as arrows in spiritual warfare. Parents must refuse the culture’s insistence that children are an interruption in our “real” interests, pursuits and lives. We must first believe that children are a blessing before we can live like it, then we must take seriously, not just the education but the formation of our children.

I hate that I have to make this caveat, but I do. It is not my intention to dictate your conscience or that of your family. My wife and I have come to the conviction that, for us, home-education is our current choice. I do sometimes share the reasons why we have come to those convictions, but not as an agenda for home-education. I know that many well-meaning Christians say that if you don’t educate your children at home that you are somehow “giving in.” I don’t believe that. It is not my intention to change anyone’s conscience on this issue, just to share some of the things that have shaped ours.

One of the first things that comes to the fore of many home education conversations is the idea of socialization. The charge, of course, is that children educated at home will lack the necessary social skills needed to be active and productive members of society. But it shouldn’t take most of us long to realize that much of the “socialization” we received in public schools (for those of us who attended public schools) was anything but positive. In fact, thinking back a bit on my own “socialization,” a certain proverb comes to mind (13:20):

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

It’s not necessary to discuss whether I was the companion or the fool or both. But what is necessary to discuss is that Christians must be able to think and respond biblically to such arguments as the “socialization” argument. When we consent to allow others to raise and influence our children, much less, when we allow some of their biggest influences to be their peers, it with much less confidence that we can say they are walking with the wise.

A quick listen to the conversation of many young people (though it’s certainly not age-discriminate) should convince us that “the mouths of fools pour out folly” (Proverbs 15:2) and a quick trip down memory lane ought to remind us that “bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Surely this just goes with common sense. If you stand on a chair and try to pull someone up to you who is on the ground trying to pull you down, who is going to win? It’s much easier to pull someone down than it is to pull someone up, especially someone who does not want to be pulled up. Put your child in a room full of kids who don’t want to be “pulled up” and now we’re told that this developing their social skills.

If Deuteronomy 6 teaches us anything, surely it teaches us that parents are to have the primary role in the formation of their children and despite what our society tells us, this certainly means spending time with our children pouring into them, because if we’re not, someone else is.

All of this is to simply point out that the “socialization” argument against home education is only convincing if we want children who think and act like the rest of the world. The truth is that social skills derive from a variety of settings and situations and if we’re raising children to be adults, shouldn’t they receive more social input from adults than peers? This used to be the norm, as children either worked on the farm with adults or followed in their father’s profession, but since then, we have come to believe that it is healthy for them to be surrounded by people their own age with the same weaknesses.

The church must do better at encouraging and equipping parents to think through these and other issues from a biblical foundation to pursue biblical standards.

• Read Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp
• Read Everyday Talk: Talking Freely and Naturally about God With Your Children by John Younts
• Read Teach Them Diligently: How To Use The Scriptures in Child Training by Lou Priolo