"The spirit of faith and piety of the parents should be regarded as the most powerful means for the preservation, upbringing, and strengthening of the life of grace in children." -- Theophan the Recluse God gives parents sway. Children feel a compulsion to please their parents. They want to make their mom and dad proud of them. This hard-wired herald of grace is a call for parents to step up. Parents will influence their children. The only question is how? Their presence of absence will be felt. Their words or lack thereof will speak volumes. Their time given or withheld will carry weight. Go ..read more

Happy Birthday, Juniper Elise! You are FIVE years old today. It seems like it was just yesterday that you were toddling down the hall to grab my legs and say, "Hi" when I came out of my bedroom during work hours to get some coffee or to go outside for a walk. Wait a minute, that wasn't yesterday, that was earlier this morning! You have always been excited to see me and sad to see me go. You are, to be fair, the first Van Voorst to grow up with me working down the hall for most of your life. I was sent home from Shelter before you turned one and I've been working from our home ever since. It's ..read more

Haggai 2:4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work: for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts. Be strong and get to work. God is with you. Do not reason, "God is with me, why be or do anything?" That is godless backchat. All labor in the Lord is not in vain, but laziness is. If God is for us, who can stop us? Scripture reasons that the Lord's presence produces enthusiasm, not skepticism. If the Lord is at hand, we ought to be at work. Whenever any reasons th ..read more

Haggai 1:5-7 Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Consider your ways. God is not mocked. You cannot sow sin and reap satisfaction. You cannot indulge in discord and enjoy harmony. If you flatter chaos, you will not attract order. So, if all of your attempts to fill the void only produce a bigg ..read more

"I hope, as soon as practicable, to attack." -- Stonewall Jackson The gates of Hell will not prevail against the advance of the Kingdom of Christ. Christendom is not in quarantine hoping to ride out the deluge of disease outside it's pearly gates. The call to defend the faith once delivered is not a command to cloister. The enmity inserted into existence by God does not merely run the one direction. Yes, the world will hate us like it hated Christ, but do we hate the world the way Christ did? Which is to say, do we love the world the way the Father did? He so loved the world that He sent ..read more

Deuteronomy 20:17-18 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God. We pick up on where we plop down. We observe and more often than not absorb the habits and customs of our surroundings. In fact, without intention, this will happen. No one can resist the current they are caught up in without, uh... resisting it.&nbs ..read more

Deuteronomy 17:18-20 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the ..read more

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once described the presence of children in church as, "The sweet sights and sounds of a holy hubbub.” Chaos is not an excess of life, but an abundance of death. An engine running makes noise, but an engine dying makes a different noise. Chaos is the cacophony of failing parts, not the sound of thriving ones. Children are not chaotic. That is the word we use, but it is not the condition of our kids. They are abounding in life and vitality. They are the opposite of chaos. They are an engine firing on all cylinders, not one giving up the ghost of its last one. The hu ..read more

"Living in the world that actually exists is an enormous advantage. There are times when it almost seems to me like cheating or something. In the long run, we need not worry. In the long run, blind stupidity never works. The revolutionary alternates between throwing rocks at the moon and barking at it." -- Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers The barking outside your door is a bit disconcerting and the rocks they throw might miss the moon, but they still come down on someone somewhere. All the miscalculations of the malcontents will misfire, but they still cost someone something. Their misjudg ..read more

"He (Jesus) has conquered every foe that obstructed the way. Cheer up now thou faint-hearted warrior. Not only has Christ travelled the road, but he has slain thine enemies. Dost thou dread sin? He has nailed it to his cross. Dost thou fear death? He has been the death of Death. Art thou afraid of hell? He has barred it against the advent of any of his children; they shall never see the gulf of perdition. Whatever foes may be before the Christian, they are all overcome. There are lions, but their teeth are broken; there are serpents, but their fangs are extracted; there are rivers, but they ar ..read more