Jared Longshore's Blog, page 33

Communing Dominion

One of the challenges we face is that fulfilling the dominion mandate takes time. The kingdom of God is not built in a day. And you can run into some really pesky weeds. The disciples once asked the Lord why they could not drive out a particular demon. Jesus responded that this kind can come out by nothing but fasting and prayer (Mark 9:29).

Anyone who tells you that killing sin is easy just hasn’t lived long enough. Confession is one thing. Thank God that when you confess sin, you have done the chief thing. You are forgiven, full stop.

But what do you do when that lust rears its head again? Or your sinful anger returns? Or your daydreaming in envy yet again about why your home is not as big as your neighbor’s? You just confessed these sins last week and here they are popping in for another visit. Is something wrong with you? 

I will let you in on a little secret. If that is you, then welcome to the club. Welcome to the Christian life. No, you don’t get any special badges because you’re in a long battle with a particular character flaw. You’re a regular old Christian like the rest of us. You are sweating in the garden. You are facing another round of contractions, and the fact that this last round seems to be more violent than the last is not a sign that you’re losing. The war inside you between the spirit and the flesh is a sign that you are alive.

The endurance race we all face, the prolonged conflict, is a reminder that we need strength beyond what we can supply. We need bread from heaven, we need sweet wine that will never run dry. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Catching Up with Voddie Baucham

I recently caught up with my friend Voddie Baucham to talk about why conservative evangelicals were slow to see the woke encroachment and how to prepare for what is coming next.

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The Man Named Resurrection

Every good story has an arc. Often things start off with the main character doing well. Then comes a great plunge into trouble, the underworld, then comes resurrection, redemption, and all is well again, often better than before. It is no coincidence that stories that track along these lines grip us for they are patterned after the greatest story of all. 

The year itself follows this pattern. Let us take summer. We are all simply living, enjoying our lengthened days, then comes signs of death, leaves turn old. Then death itself, darkness and cold, until that winter begins to fade and green resurrection springs. 

The point for us to see is that all of these stories and seasons point to something. Do not be lulled to sleep, becoming a person that can only see patterns, types, and narratives. Praise God for patterns, types, and narratives. But it would be a crying shame for a man to get the story and not get the point. Especially because this particular point is a point made flesh. A point that has risen from the grave, with hands still scarred.

His name is Jesus. 

We are not here to worship the idea of resurrection. We are here to worship the man named Resurrection. You will see Him one day. You will see His body. You will behold with your very eyes the one who was pierced for your transgressions. 

He is just as embodied today as He will be on the day you see him. But according to your Father’s wisdom, He has determined for you to live by faith for now. 

Do you see Him? Do you know Him now? Do you love Him? Life Himself smiles at you. A man shepherds you. A High Priest who is risen, risen indeed.

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Resurrection Bread

It simply must be faced that transubstantiation, the teaching which claims this physical bread is the physical body of Christ, simply runs in the wrong direction. We don’t want to bring Christ down. Paul has warned us about that kind of thing. Romans 10:6, “Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:).” 

The truth is far better. We are seated with Christ in heavenly places. This meal is not about the resurrected body of Christ coming down, but we the bride of Christ going up, rising to feast with our resurrected Savior. 

We are not responsible for His resurrection. We did not bring Him up from the grave. We are not responsible for His ascension. We did not hoist Him up to the heavens. What makes us think we could pull Him back down now here at this table?

This supper is much more glorious than that. 

The glory is that we truly commune with Christ in this meal, and the Christ with whom we commune is the One who walked out of the grave. The sons of Adam here participate in, fellowship with, and feed upon the Second Adam, who is not merely a living soul, but a life-giving Spirit. 

Would you live? Then you must come to Christ. Would you have more resurrection power in your daily life? Then come eat and drink. But, this is the central thing, you must eat and drink more than bread and wine. You must eat and drink Christ.

The only way to do so is by faith. And the only faith that will do, is faith in the crucified and risen One. Feed on Him by faith and like Him you too will rise again. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Mere Christendom: As Evangelical as Billy Graham

We find ourselves in Easter season so the question naturally arises, “What hath the resurrection to do with Mere Christendom?” Investigating this question will protect from two dangers. If these two dangers were rattlesnakes, one of them rattles just around the corner and we should really watch out for him. The other has already bitten us and well, that’s not great. But, take hope, Christendom-via-Resurrection will serve as the antivenom.

The bite we have already suffered is the modern evangelical mindset which says the resurrection has nothing to do with Mere Christendom. This mindset insists that we stop talking about Christendom, culture-shaping, Christian Nationalism and the like, and we must stop post haste. If we keep talking Christendom, then we are going to lose the gospel altogether, such is the claim. Paul claimed to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, and if we go pushing everything out to the edges, then we’re going to lose the center. 

Now for the other rattler. Snake number two, rattling just around the bend, claims that we can usher in social, cultural, and civil change from the outside in, top down, and the whole process is really quite simple. But this approach smells too carnal, employing the wisdom from below. It seeks to exercise authority as the Gentiles do, lording it over others and what not.

If we would heal up from the bite we’ve already received, and avoid the other, then we need Mere Christendom via the resurrection. But first another illustration in order to paint a clear picture of our times.

Culture-Shaped; It’s an Ugly Mold

Along with these two snakes, we can conceive of our present moment by way of two Christian teams, neither of which are ready to shape culture and build Christendom: the conservatives and the progressives. The conservatives are anti-woke, and God bless them. These conservatives like to conserve and good on them for that too. Many, however, wobbled on wokeness until they saw which way the chips were going to fall. Even more of them wobbled on COVID. The root problem with this group however is that they don’t really have a plan for where to go. Going somewhere would involve progress and these folks are too busy for that, their time being spent conserving the house the liberals gave them.

The second team is the Christian Progressives. These lack the resisting impulse of the conservatives. They have drifted into varying levels of wokeness. Christendom sounds too much like a kingdom with teeth for them. It sounds like people wouldn’t have enough options. Christendom, even mere Christendom sounds like a world in which you couldn’t exercise your right to krump in a thong before Mrs. Harrison’s 2nd grade class. And without that right my friend, we would be persecuting the Free Methodists in no time.

Christendom Coming

Both of these groups must come to grips with the inevitability of Christendom. As Abraham Kuyper once said, “The situation has always been and will be until the end, Christianity or Paganism, the idols or the Living God.” In God’s kindness, He is revealing to us, among other things, that Christianity indeed is a religion, the sacraments matter, and civil authorities are servants of the Triune God. All of this is good news, but it leaves the conservatives that I pencil-sketched above thinking that we are sacrificing that inner beauty for a Reformed and Evangelical pope. Not only do we not need such a pope, but I claim that if we don’t get on board with Mere Christendom, then we will lose that holy, inner, puritan devotion that we have come to know and love. The vast majority of the men who penned those lovely prayer in the Valley of Vision are with us on the Mere Christendom thing.

A Frame for the Resurrection

So we are after Mere Christendom-via-Resurrection. But to hear the full thunder of the glorious resurrection, we should lay some groundwork, a frame for the glory of Easter morning. Chesterton once said, “When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic . . . The only words that e3ver satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fair books, ‘charm,’ ‘spell,’ ‘enchantment.’ . . . A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched.”

This Chestertonian enchanted world is foundational to resurrection power and our pursuit of Mere Christendom. We are tempted to say that our culture, nation, civil leaders, etc. are natural, merely natural, purely natural; and not a few conservatives don’t like Chesterton getting fancy with the spices describing the intersection of nature, fairies, and spells. FOX news must be kept in a particular box labelled political, physical, practical. The box labelled spiritual and heavenly is kept at the other end of the garage to be opened after I’m done watching Tucker Carlson, mmmkay? Thus, the conservatives.

But the progressive Christians have the same basic frame job on their intellectual house, they just play it the other way. “Yes, you see,” they say, “that FOX news is not spiritual and that is why I don’t watch it. I stay in the spiritual box. I stay in the juicy middle, refusing to pick sides in these earthly battles.” Ah, but both of these groups are discovering that the world is not wired up the way they thought it was. 

Francis Schaeffer warned us about all of this many years ago with his upper story and lower story. The lower story (earth and earthly things) has been untethered from the upper story (heaven and heavenly things) and this is bad juju. The result is that the upper story is devoured by the lower story. Progressive Pietism wanted to keep itself in the heavens, in the box labelled spiritual. But come to find out there were intersectional principalities and powers in that box teaching a false gospel leading big evangelical conferences to yearn for an answer to why they were so white.

On the other hand, Earthly Conservatives have rightly gone to war with Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. But whatever holiness and spiritual power they get when they spend time in the box labelled spiritual doesn’t translate when they get into the box labelled earthly. I have said before, these folks may not be terribly concerned with the kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven, but they sure do want good neighbors . . . and the neighborhood kids to stay off the lawn.

Schaeffer gets us going in the right direction so that we can begin to hook things up the right way. He warned against leaving Christianity in the upper story. He knew it had to touch down on the things of earth. But when it touches you, you know what you have, you have Mere Christendom. 

These troubles with heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, are nothing new. Irenaeus set those straight who taught that the virgin born Jesus was not the heavenly Christ—”But there are some who say that Jesus was merely a receptacle of Christ” (Against Heresies, 313). Irenaeus cites several texts demonstrating that the Son of God took on flesh, and it was this Godman who rose from the dead—”concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestinated the son of God with power through the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” And again, “who was the seed of David according to His birth from Mary; and that Jesus Christ was appointed the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, as being the first begotten in all the creation” (Against Heresies 315, 316).

Christ came from heaven, took on flesh, descended into Hades, and rose again bodily. He is the Second Adam, not merely a living soul but a life-giving Spirit. Which box is He in? In this resurrection glory, we hear, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

The Secret Sauce

The secret sauce to culture shaping and the pursuit of Mere Christendom is the truth that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave lives in us. And He lives in all of us. This is a blood-sealed reality of the new covenant. All of the saints that want to divide, that want to carve out a little kingdom within the kingdom, those saints who are too cool to stand by others, they have lost their grip on the nature of the new covenant. 

The law has been written on our hearts. Hearts of stone have been removed and hearts of flesh have been given. The new covenant is a more fleshy than the old. Our kingdom labors are labors by the Spirit, not by the flesh. They are inside out not outside in. But they are labors that touch upon the flesh and done in the flesh for the life we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God. That Son rose bodily, redeeming His people, soul and body. 

If you want the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you want the power of the Spirit at work in the heart of man, then it is time to sign on for Mere Christendom. We are a kingdom of priests, and our message is: Be reconciled to God. The present movement toward Mere Christendom, the one moving in resurrection power (for no other will live), is a matter of defending justification by faith alone, the virgin-birth of the Messiah, and it possesses a heart more evangelical than Billy Graham.

It is a Great Commission Christendom, that not only obeys but anticipates the successful completion of our Lord’s instruction: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

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Mere Christendom via the Resurrection

We find ourselves in Easter season so the question naturally arises, “What hath the resurrection to do with Mere Christendom?” Investigating this question will protect from two dangers. If these two dangers were rattlesnakes, one of them rattles just around the corner and we should really watch out for him. The other has already bitten us and well, that’s not great. But, take hope, Christendom-via-Resurrection will serve as the antivenom.

The bite we have already suffered is the modern evangelical mindset which says the resurrection has nothing to do with Mere Christendom. This mindset insists that we stop talking about Christendom, culture-shaping, Christian Nationalism and the like, and we must stop post haste. If we keep talking Christendom, then we are going to lose the gospel altogether, such is the claim. Paul claimed to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, and if we go pushing everything out to the edges, then we’re going to lose the center. 

Now for the other rattler. Snake number two, rattling just around the bend, claims that we can usher in social, cultural, and civil change from the outside in, top down, and the whole process is really quite simple. But this approach smells too carnal, employing the wisdom from below. It seeks to exercise authority as the Gentiles do, lording it over others and what not.

If we would heal up from the bite we’ve already received, and avoid the other, then we need Mere Christendom via the resurrection. But first another illustration in order to paint a clear picture of our times.

Culture-Shaped; It’s an Ugly Mold

Along with these two snakes, we can conceive of our present moment by way of two Christian teams, neither of which are ready to shape culture and build Christendom: the conservatives and the progressives. The conservatives are anti-woke, and God bless them. These conservatives like to conserve and good on them for that too. Many, however, wobbled on wokeness until they saw which way the chips were going to fall. Even more of them wobbled on COVID. The root problem with this group however is that they don’t really have a plan for where to go. Going somewhere would involve progress and these folks are too busy for that, their time being spent conserving the house the liberals gave them.

The second team is the Christian Progressives. These lack the resisting impulse of the conservatives. They have drifted into varying levels of wokeness. Christendom sounds too much like a kingdom with teeth for them. It sounds like people wouldn’t have enough options. Christendom, even mere Christendom sounds like a world in which you couldn’t exercise your right to krump in a thong before Mrs. Harrison’s 2nd grade class. And without that right my friend, we would be persecuting the Free Methodists in no time.

Christendom Coming

Both of these groups must come to grips with the inevitability of Christendom. As Abraham Kuyper once said, “The situation has always been and will be until the end, Christianity or Paganism, the idols or the Living God.” In God’s kindness, He is revealing to us, among other things, that Christianity indeed is a religion, the sacraments matter, and civil authorities are servants of the Triune God. All of this is good news, but it leaves the conservatives that I pencil-sketched above thinking that we are sacrificing that inner beauty for a Reformed and Evangelical pope. Not only do we not need such a pope, but I claim that if we don’t get on board with Mere Christendom, then we will lose that holy, inner, puritan devotion that we have come to know and love. The vast majority of the men who penned those lovely prayer in the Valley of Vision are with us on the Mere Christendom thing.

A Frame for the Resurrection

So we are after Mere Christendom-via-Resurrection. But to hear the full thunder of the glorious resurrection, we should lay some groundwork, a frame for the glory of Easter morning. Chesterton once said, “When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic . . . The only words that e3ver satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fair books, ‘charm,’ ‘spell,’ ‘enchantment.’ . . . A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched.”

This Chestertonian enchanted world is foundational to resurrection power and our pursuit of Mere Christendom. We are tempted to say that our culture, nation, civil leaders, etc. are natural, merely natural, purely natural; and not a few conservatives don’t like Chesterton getting fancy with the spices describing the intersection of nature, fairies, and spells. FOX news must be kept in a particular box labelled political, physical, practical. The box labelled spiritual and heavenly is kept at the other end of the garage to be opened after I’m done watching Tucker Carlson, mmmkay? Thus, the conservatives.

But the progressive Christians have the same basic frame job on their intellectual house, they just play it the other way. “Yes, you see,” they say, “that FOX news is not spiritual and that is why I don’t watch it. I stay in the spiritual box. I stay in the juicy middle, refusing to pick sides in these earthly battles.” Ah, but both of these groups are discovering that the world is not wired up the way they thought it was. 

Francis Schaeffer warned us about all of this many years ago with his upper story and lower story. The lower story (earth and earthly things) has been untethered from the upper story (heaven and heavenly things) and this is bad juju. The result is that the upper story is devoured by the lower story. Progressive Pietism wanted to keep itself in the heavens, in the box labelled spiritual. But come to find out there were intersectional principalities and powers in that box teaching a false gospel leading big evangelical conferences to yearn for an answer to why they were so white.

On the other hand, Earthly Conservatives have rightly gone to war with Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. But whatever holiness and spiritual power they get when they spend time in the box labelled spiritual doesn’t translate when they get into the box labelled earthly. I have said before, these folks may not be terribly concerned with the kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven, but they sure do want good neighbors . . . and the neighborhood kids to stay off the lawn.

Schaeffer gets us going in the right direction so that we can begin to hook things up the right way. He warned against leaving Christianity in the upper story. He knew it had to touch down on the things of earth. But when it touches you, you know what you have, you have Mere Christendom. 

These troubles with heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, are nothing new. Irenaeus set those straight who taught that the virgin born Jesus was not the heavenly Christ—”But there are some who say that Jesus was merely a receptacle of Christ” (Against Heresies, 313). Irenaeus cites several texts demonstrating that the Son of God took on flesh, and it was this Godman who rose from the dead—”concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestinated the son of God with power through the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” And again, “who was the seed of David according to His birth from Mary; and that Jesus Christ was appointed the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, as being the first begotten in all the creation” (Against Heresies 315, 316).

Christ came from heaven, took on flesh, descended into Hades, and rose again bodily. He is the Second Adam, not merely a living soul but a life-giving Spirit. Which box is He in? In this resurrection glory, we hear, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

The Secret Sauce

The secret sauce to culture shaping and the pursuit of Mere Christendom is the truth that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave lives in us. And He lives in all of us. This is a blood-sealed reality of the new covenant. All of the saints that want to divide, that want to carve out a little kingdom within the kingdom, those saints who are too cool to stand by others, they have lost their grip on the nature of the new covenant. 

The law has been written on our hearts. Hearts of stone have been removed and hearts of flesh have been given. The new covenant is a more fleshy than the old. Our kingdom labors are labors by the Spirit, not by the flesh. They are inside out not outside in. But they are labors that touch upon the flesh and done in the flesh for the life we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God. That Son rose bodily, redeeming His people, soul and body. 

If you want the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you want the power of the Spirit at work in the heart of man, then it is time to sign on for Mere Christendom. We are a kingdom of priests, and our message is: Be reconciled to God. The present movement toward Mere Christendom, the one moving in resurrection power (for no other will live), is a matter of defending justification by faith alone, the virgin-birth of the Messiah, and it possesses a heart more evangelical than Billy Graham.

It is a Great Commission Christendom, that not only obeys but anticipates the successful completion of our Lord’s instruction: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

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Parental Horse Sense: Lesson 6 — A World of Yes and a No That Doesn’t Budge

One of the sobering things about marriage is that it images Christ and the church. You would think that there are enough difficulties in the institution without this particularity. But then you read Ephesians 5 and come across this high calling, this enlisting to a particular job. The Father says, “Your marriage is to tell the truth about Christ and His bride.” A man who takes this seriously and honestly may well try to decline the job, “Lord, I have considered the offer and frankly I know when a promotion is above my pay grade. I simply can’t do the job. I have to pass up the position.” 

Then, he discovers that God is not asking.

If you read the Bible long enough, you realize that you’re doing this imaging thing all of the time—”So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This imaging principle is not lost on the parental department, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him” (Psalm 103:13). But what if a father shows no pity to his children? Yes, therein lies the trouble and the stakes are high.

If we would image the Father well, then we must follow His lead. When He created His world, He said it was good. When He planted His garden, He planted trees for His image bearers to enjoy, lots of them—”And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat” (Genesis 2:16). Adam was not only to eat of every tree of the garden. But he was to do so freely. 

God did draw one hard line, one no in a sea of yes. And God’s no wasn’t a wet-noodle—”But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17).

Here is Parental Horse Sense Lesson 6: Give your children a world of yes and a no that doesn’t budge.

Now let’s go ahead and face it, we have come to yet another parenting principle that requires more strength than we can muster. That’s OK. Just let this fact remind you that if you parent according to the flesh, you will die (Romans 8:13). But if you parent by the Spirit, you will live.

The problem is we want the parenting without the sacrifice. So we hedge our bets on the yes. To stay with the garden motif, if the kids go to eating from all of the trees in your garden, then you’re going to have to tend those trees. You can guarantee the little cute one is going to leave her apple core lying around somewhere. You will likely find it a week later, brown, shriveled, and peeking out of the couch cushions while guests are over.

This world of yes thing—and for that matter, holding the line on the clear-cut no—just feels like too much. Too much driving to soccer practice. Too much money spent on their education. Too many walks to the park to throw the football. Too many wrong notes struck on the piano while they’re figuring out how to tickle the ivories. Too many trips to the grocery store. Too many questions, 

“Dad, how old is the oldest living NBA player?” – “You know, I don’t know.” 

“Dad, do you think Themistocles was a good guy or a bad guy?” – “Well, I’m not sure about that.” 

“Dad, can we have a movie night tonight?” – “Hmmm. Maybe.” 

“Dad, is there anything that you do know?” – “Yes, yes there is, I know when my superiors are not in the mood for any more questions.”

We live by the strength that God supplies. And He really does supply it. We must trust him for it. When you sense that you have reached your capacity, you must remember that God enlarges your capacity. In fact, that heartburn you are feeling—you may feel it is a heart attack—is often what it feels like when God enlarges your heart: “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Psalm 119:32). 

Parenting is a full speed kind of thing. Not frantic. Not frazzled. But parenting involves running in the way of God’s commandments. Your goal is for your children to pass you one day. By God’s grace, they will go farther and faster than we have gone. But while they’re young enough to be under your roof, you raise them up by running in the way of God’s commandments with them coming fast and furious behind you. They’re following you. The little buggers have more energy than you do it seems so they may well be right on your heels. So ask the LORD to enlarge your heart. He will do this for you and your children.

This enlargement is a promise we have in the New Covenant, which is far better than the Old. Isaiah prophesied of the New Covenant, saying, “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break for into singing . . . Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). 

Paul cites this section of Isaiah when he reminds the Galatian Christians that they are not children of the bondwoman, but children of the freewoman. We will pass on one attitude or another to our children. The only fitting attitude to pass on is that of freeborn children of the freewoman, that glorious new covenant which is marked by the Spirit’s power.

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The Lord Himself Shall Descend

Scripture tells us at many places that we must endure until the end. God wouldn’t go on telling us this if there was no temptation to give up. If you’re going to endure then you must endure in hope. And not many words have suffered as much violence as the word hope.

Our Christian hope is not some vague generalization that all will be well in the end. Our hope is not simply that our souls will meet again, fellowshipping together in a heavenly land. Our hope is that the firmament which God created on the second day of creation will be opened on a future day as it was two thousand years ago. On that future day, our resurrected Lord, who ascended into heaven will descend from heaven. The Apostle Paul tells us of our day of hope in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, “the LORD himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise.”

We live in a world that is being pressed from the top and the bottom. A resurrected man is just above us. His name is Jesus. With him are the spirits of just men made perfect. And His descent is coming. When he descends, His body will be seen just as much as the archangel’s voice will be heard. The bodies of the dead in Christ are below us. To dust they have returned. The ascent of those bodies is coming. On the day of our hope, those bodies will spring up from the ground like the tulips which are soon to break through the soil beneath our feet.

So do not be ignorant of this day, living as others who have no hope. 

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Parental Horse Sense: Lesson 5 — Left-Handed Parenting

These lessons on Parental Horse Sense are worthy of the name because they are not difficult concepts. But don’t let the title of this series fool you. These lessons may not be difficult to grasp, but they border on impossible to implement. Fret not, though, we serve the God who puts the camel through the needle’s eye, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). 

In lesson 5 here, I commend to you Left-Handed Parenting. I should say at the outset, that Right-Handed Parenting has its place. Parents really need to be ambidextrous. But we often forget the left hand, thus lesson 5: Left-Handed Parenting. I’m applying the principles of right and left-handed power to parenting so we should start with the principles themselves.

Right-handed power is the power of “Because I said so.” This power is not bad or corrupt; it is direct and straightforward, however. Jesus told the wind and the waves to be still, and still they were. The centurion was a man under authority who had soldiers under him. He told them to come and they came, to do and they did (Matthew 8:9). But this right-handed power has its limits. And moreover, it is not the only power the Lord has given us.

Robert Capon makes a good point—”Suppose [a son] makes unauthorized use of your car, and you use a little straight-line verbal power to scare him out of doing it again. Well and good. But suppose further that he does it again anyway—and again and again and again. What do you do next if you are committed to straight-line power? You raise your voice a little more nastily each time till you can’t shout any louder. And then you beat him (if you are stronger than he is) until you can’t beat any harder. Then you chain him to a radiator . . .”

You may have many thoughts that spring from Capon’s illustration. But his main point holds. You can’t lock the kids up forever. Right-handed power has its place, particularly in the little years. But you soon find that the kids have brains. They pay attention. They are persuaded, or they are not persuaded. They see your godly life, your good life lived wisely, and it compels them, or it doesn’t. 

Left-handed power is seen in Elisha following Elijah around. Elisha longed for a double portion of Elijah’s blessing. He saw something attractive. Elijah was no slouch. Left-handed power is not about being a limp noodle. But it is about praying for those who are wrong, bad wrong, like Moses did for rebellious Israel over and over again. 

There is a priestly nature to left-handed power. It moves things by use of the angels. It breaks bones with a soft tongue (Proverbs 25:15). Priests pray. And priests offer sacrifice. So this left-handed parenting is in the business of sacrificing. But the sacrifice offered follows in the footsteps of our Great High Priest. That is, the sacrifice offered is oneself. The distortion of this principle is a father and mother being walked on by the children, and I don’t commend that practice in the least. But I do commend sacrificial parenting that doesn’t use the children like pawns while dad and mom live it up off of the back of the little slaves in the home. Think about all of the wicked step-mothers lifting themselves up by stepping on Cinderella and the like. Mark and avoid. 

The goal is to lay your life down for the children. And the glory is that there is power, left-handed power, bound up in such a sacrifice. The wonder is that such a sacrifice returns to you ten-fold and you find that the children have been moved to sacrifice themselves. The apple ends up falling not that far from the tree.

Left-handed parenting is straight up the middle stuff. You have authority. And Jesus has said, “Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28)

So there is nothing too flashy here. But, we are aiming to follow the Son of man who gave his life. So in that regard, this is the kind of parental horse sense that leaves us helpless apart from divine intervention. There we are like Elijah himself pouring water on the sacrifice three times in a row saying, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God” (1 Kings 18:36-37).

God has been known to answer that left-handed prayer with fire, the kind that leaves no water left in the trench.

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Spending Words

The wise man Moses prayed that the Lord would teach us to number our days. In similar fashion, we need to number our words. We will only speak so many of them. God knows the exact number. We do not. But we do know that our tongue will fling only so many words out of our heart. If we would spend our words well, then like a wise bricklayer, we need to know what structure we’re building.

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Now, we too often hear “Let no bad words come out of your mouth.” But that is not what the Apostle Paul said. He said “Let no corrupting words come out. That is, let no worm-words come out that will gnaw away at Zion’s walls.” Stated positively, Paul says to speak words that will build, that will actually bestow and minister grace to others. That’s why you have a tongue.

Your tongue is not an instrument to vent whatever reactions arise within you in response to the difficulties of life. Your tongue is a trowel with which you spread grace upon Living Stones, building up the saints around you. The old ones, the young ones. The strong ones and brittle ones. The ones that you will find in your home. And the ones you will find in your workplace. 

Spending your words like little ministers of grace is no easy task. But it is a glorious one and one to which you’re called. You’re not permitted to say, “Oh, this is too hard, I will just take a vow of silence.” No, by God’s grace, resolve to spend your words for Christ and His kingdom. That means trusting God that his kingdom is being built up, loving the bricks, and refusing to fret when you find out that some of them need a little patch work; that’s why God gave you a trowel. 

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