Fake Beauty All Around

Someone sent me this video. After you watch it, you may want to go back to the beginning.



This reminds me of what C. S. Lewis said in Screwtape Letters.

At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men's vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. At present we are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children. And that is not all. We have engineered a great increase in the licence which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught to believe that it is being "frank" and "healthy" and getting back to nature. As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist—making the rôle of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. What follows you can easily forecast!

Oh, and a much more important and AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE ON THE SUBJECT:

...but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. (The apostle Peter - 1Pe 3:4)

Sermon - Motherhood as a Reflection of God

Here is my Mother's Day sermon with audio and notes:

MOTHERHOOD AS A REFLECTION OF GOD

5.10.09

Motherhood as a Reflection of God

Isaiah 49:13-16

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Mother's Day and My Sermon - Reflecting God

Heads up husbands, fathers, children - Sunday is Mother's Day if you didn't already know that.

This Sunday, Lord willing, I will be preaching on a subject I talked to the MOMs and MORE group about - "Motherhood as a Reflection of God."

One of my texts is Isaiah 49:13-16.

Mothers are made in the image of God.
I want to look at how motherhood uniquely reflects the glory of God as well as the practical implications of this truth to mothers, husbands of mothers, children of mothers and the Gospel.

Please pray for me and for the body at Grace Church.

For Pastor's Wives

(HT - Thabiti Anyabwile)

My favorite woman is a pastor's wife--Molly (that would be my wife).
I thought I would share with her and others the following links to the audio of the women's workshops from the Sovereign Grace Pastors' Conference.

• The Pastor’s Wife and Culture: What Feminism Has Done to Femininity (Carolyn McCulley) Listen | Download MP3
  

• The Pastor’s Wife and Ministry Opportunities: Five Great Deals She Won’t Want to Miss (Carolyn Mahaney) Listen | Download MP3

Motherhood Is a Reflection of God

This morning I was given the privilege of speaking to several mothers during our church's "Moms and More" meeting.

My subject was -- "Motherhood as a reflection of the glory of God."

"How does motherhood uniquely reflect the glory of God?

Here are my notes with Scripture at our church media page.

Here are the 3 points I made: (2 Ways Motherhood reflects the Glory of God)

1. Through Bearing
Mothers have the privilege of reflecting the glory of God by bringing life into this world.

2. Through Sharing
Mothers have the privilege of reflecting the glory of God by nurturing their children.

3. Through Caring
Mothers have the privilege of reflecting the glory of God by their loving care towards their children.

Women and Marriage - Driscoll

A few days ago I posted the sermon by Mark Driscoll on Men and Marriage. Here is the sermon he preached the Sunday before called "Women and Marriage". You can download it below. This is really important stuff. I am thankful to God that my wife, Molly, is a great example of a godly, honoring, submissive wife who is growing in an understanding of her role. By the way, she does not take "submissive" as a slight but as a fruit of the Spirit in her life.
I pray to God that I would be a loving head who lays his life down for her as Christ does for His church. (see Ephesians 5:22-33)



To download click here.

Here is the sermon to Men. Men, you must listen to this!



To download click here.

Is it Biblical to have a Woman VP?

It's an understatement to say that Sarah Palin has excited the conservative evangelical base in America. This same base has a large group within it that hold feminism as a heresy and who believe that the Bible teaches that women are restricted from a certain type of leadership in the home and in the church (I am one of them). Is there a contradiction here? Are we seeing a great hypocritcal and pragmatic response by conservative evangelicals? I don't necessarily think so. I found Kevin Bauder's article, "A Women's Place," very helpful as I think on this subject.  Here is the the beginning of the article:

The nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for the vice presidency has placed some conservatives in a double-bind. On the one hand, they have been disappointed with the less-than-thorough conservatism of John McCain, so the more “Reaganesque” position of Governor Palin comes as a welcome balance. On the other hand, their understanding of the biblical role of women leaves scant opportunity for a female to occupy the second-highest (and, potentially, the highest) office in the land.

Read the entire article here.

Reading for Godly Homemaking

I am married to a great homemaker and I love the subject of homemaking--it is very undervalued in our culture. Here is a great website called GIRL TALK by C. J. Mahaney's wife and daughters.

Recently, Girl Talk has been covering the subject of Homemaking.

Here are some of the titles:

A Daughter's Heart for the Home

Mom's Example in the Home

Homemaking Books

Note from a Homemaker

Homemaking School

More Chesterton on Homemaking

Speaking of Homemaking...

More Like Christ

Not Her Best

Dealing with Distraction

The Homemaker's Secret of Fulfillment

Heralding the Homemaker

Homemaking is Not a Hindrance

Homemaking is Not a Holding Pattern

In Honor of Home

At Home with Humor

Where Home Is

Lessons from a Grieving Mother - Molly Piper

Molly Piper is a friend from my seminary days (at Bethlehem). She is the daughter-in-law of John Piper and she writes this article about the grief she has and still experiences from the lost of her daughter through "stillbirth." I think it is helpful to read because it gives some helpful advice in how to help comfort those who are suffering from a great loss:

Molly writes:

A year ago I was seven months pregnant with our second child. We found out at our 18-week ultrasound, much to my delight, that this one was a girl. As the last months of pregnancy ambled on, we got more and more excited. We had done the boy thing already; we were ready for a daughter.

Everything was normal as the end of pregnancy drew near. There were no signs of a problem when I visited the doctor that final week. However, at 39 weeks and 4 days, I couldn't shake the feeling, “I haven't been feeling this baby move as much.”

We went to the hospital, not really alarmed, but concerned. When they couldn't find her heartbeat, mine beat fast enough and furiously enough for both of us, as though it were trying to live for her. Ultrasounds confirmed that our child had died.

We delivered her that day—September 22, 2007—Felicity Margaret Piper. She weighed 9 pounds, 5 ounces and was perfectly formed, though her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck.

I had no category for “stillbirth” before this. Who gets 39 weeks into a smooth pregnancy and doesn't think they're definitely going to bring home their baby?

The road we've walked the past 10 months has been horribly difficult, the hardest thing we've ever walked through in our lives.

Here are some things I'd like people to know about me during this time. Maybe it will be helpful for you as you love other women you know who are living through the loss of a child.

You can read the rest of the blog here.

You can read Molly's blog here.

Defining the Sucessful Woman?

Here is a good and brief article from Boundless Line on what truly is a successful woman. Ted Slater writes (emphasis mine):

Successful Women
When you hear that term, what comes to mind?

A couple of days ago I was flipping through some old copies of my grad school alumni magazine. They featured current and former students who'd done well, who had gone on to write books, make waves in government, take on pastorates, receive teaching awards, produce prize-winning films, head up inner city missions, and so on.

And that was just the women.

The message is that "successful women," those whom we should honor for their leadership skills, are those who influence people on a large scale. The more people affected by the alumna, the more successful.

But what about those women who went on to influence a small group of people, and more deeply? What about those women who, with master's degrees in hand, chose to forgo acclaim and take on the humble responsibility of being mere mothers? Who exchanged the inch-deep significance of a sterile board room for the eternal significance of the family room?

It's enough that my alumni magazine promotes women pastors, a vocation with no biblical precedence. But by remaining silent about the influential role of full-time mother, they imply that such women may not be counted among the "successful."

I know it's a cliche, but perhaps it is so because it's so true: In their last moments, women will likely not regret having spent so few hours working for The Man. They'll regret not having spent as much time as they could with the ones they love. In the case of married women, that's likely to include their children.

It's fine to recognize the success of women outside the home. Let's also recognize the too-overlooked success of those who, as the saying goes, rock the cradle.

Um, did I mention that we're expecting our third daughter to be born this Friday? Not sure that's relevant.... ;-)

I am thankful for the many successful women I know who work harder than any successful business man or woman or pastor--my wife (Molly) is one of them.

You can go to the post here and read some of the comments.