So You Want to Date My Daughter?

1. You must love Jesus. I don’t care if you’re a “good Christian boy.” I was one of those too. So I know the tricks. I’m going to ask you specific, heart-testing questions about your spiritual affections, your daily devotional life, your idols, your disciplines, and the like. I’ll cut you a little bit of slack because you’re young and hormonal and your pre-frontal lobe isn’t fully developed yet, but I’ll be watching you like a hawk. I know you. I was you. You will think you can fool me, and you likely have fooled many other dads who didn’t pay much attention to their daughters’ suitors, but I will be on you like Bourne on that guy whose neck he broke. Which guy was that? Every guy. So love Jesus more than my daughter or go home.

2. You will install X3Watch or Covenant Eyes on your computer and mobile devices and have your regular reports sent to me.

3. I will talk to your dad and tell him I will hold him responsible if you don’t treat my daughter like a lady. If he thinks I’m a crazy person, you fail the test and won’t get to date her. If he understands what I’m saying, that bodes well for you.

4. You will pay for everything. Oh, sure, every now and then my daughter can buy you a Coke or something and a gift on your birthday and at Christmas. But you pay for meals, movies, outings, whatever else. Don’t have a job? I’m sorry, why I am talking to you again?

5. You will accept my Facebook friend request.

6. If it looks like you need a belt to hold your pants up, I will assume you don’t have a job. See #4.

7. Young people dating are putting their best face forward, so if you appear impatient, ill-tempered, or ill-mannered, I know you will gradually become more so over time. I will have no jerks dating my daughters.

8. If I am not your pastor, I will talk to the man who is. If your pastor is a woman, why I am talking to you, again?

9. You don’t love my daughter. You have no idea what love is. You like her and you mightlove her someday. That’s an okay start with me, so put the seatbelt on the mushy gushy stuff. Don’t profess your undying love, quote stupid love song lyrics to her, tell her you’d die for her, or feed her any other boneheaded lines that are way out of your depth as a horny little idiot. A lady’s heart is a fragile thing. If you play with hers, I will show you yours.

10. If you ever find yourself alone with my daughter, don’t panic. Just correct the situation immediately. If I ever catch you trying to get alone with my daughter, that would be the time to panic.

11. It may sound like I’m joking in threatening you harm, and while I might not physically hurt you if you offend my daughter or violate her honor, when I am addressing the issue with you, you will not be laughing.

12. You may think all this sounds very legalistic. That’s fine. You can be one of the many antinomians not dating my daughter.

http://thinklings.org/posts/so-you-want-to-date-my-daughter

Some things are just better left as is.

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amazing testimony indeed

This is a must listen interview that Mark Dever had with Mez McConnell, now pastoring a Scottish inner city church. His story of God tracking him down is an incredible display of grace and sovereignty.

 

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already, not yet, and never again

“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
— Martin Luther

I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am.”

– John Newton

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hmmm, i have been thinking we need new furniture

HT: Justin Taylor

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happy birthday, Gideon

May you always have a dad who puts God before you…however difficult that may be. May you walk all your days with the staggering, stumbling, persevering faith of Abraham.

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Romans 7 in a ballad

Andrew Peterson “Fool With a Fancy Guitar”

Lyrics:

It’s so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulder
So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger
It’s easy to let all this bitterness smolder
Just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter

It’s easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder
It’s easy to not have the heart to remember
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I’ve got voices that scream in my head like a siren
Fears that I feel in the night when I sleep
Stupid choices I made when I played in the mire
Like a kid in the mud on some dirty blind street

I’ve got sorrow to spare, I’ve got loneliness too
I’ve got blood on these hands that hold on to the truth
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I swore on the Bible to not tell a lie
But I’ve lied and lied
And I’ve crossed my heart and I hoped to die
And I’ve died and died

But if it’s true that you gathered my sin in your hand
And you cast it as far as the east from the west
If it’s true that you put on the flesh of a man
And you walked in my shoes through the shadow of death

If it’s true that you dwell in the halls of my heart
Then I’m not just a fool with a fancy guitar
No, I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

HT: Justin Taylor

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“in me there is darkness, but with Thee there is light…”

O God, early in the morning do I cry unto Thee. Help me to pray, and to think only of Thee. I cannot pray alone. In me there is darkness, but with Thee there is light. I am lonely, but Thou leavest me not. I am feeble in heart, but Thou leavest me not. I am restless, but with Thee there is peace. In me there is bitterness, but with Thee there is patience. Thy ways are past understanding, but Thou knowest the way for me.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer

A prayer from a Christmas letter written to fellow prisoners, December 1943.

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ordinary people, extraordinary things

We are Nashville. “What the Media Missed in the ‘Nashville’ Flood” ”

These good Samaritans included a young man on a jet ski who saved a woman whose house was fully engulfed in flames as she pondered whether to die in raging waters or burn to death with her home. Twenty seconds after they raced away from the flames the entire house exploded. “God sent me an angel on a jet ski,” she said.

It wasn’t just organized charities. National representatives of the Red Cross said when they came to town they didn’t have the immediate demands on their resources that they expected because so many people had volunteered their time and supplies to help the victims of the storm that turned neighbors into flood victims. …

We know from experience that when it rains in New York, the whole country gets wet. When it snows there, the Ice Age is upon us. But news goes on outside of New York and Washington. There’s a whole country out there. And stories worth telling.

The national media can no more cover every significant story than the federal govmint can deal with every problem. One of the greatest benefits of American society is free speech. One of the greatest developments of our lifetime is the blogosphere and other social media. Think about it: after Katrina the national media was hysterically reporting rapes and murders in the Superdome. And they were wrong. Blame was affixed to the President. And they were wrong. After the Flood of 2010, ordinary people have posted their extraordinary stories. Yes, some are grievous because of lives lost, or breathtaking because of the property devastation. But more often there are tales of heroism, self-sacrifice, and ordinary people doing the ordinary work of helping their neighbors in an extraordinary way.

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don’t waste the man in the arena

We are studying John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life in Sunday School. Today I was also reminded of President Roosevelt (the better Roosevelt)’s famous quote about watching or working:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

This quote is widely used to motivate people to aim high and work hard to achieve their goals. Reviewing Piper’s book has reminded me that I cannot waste this quote on just the things of this life. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” The God-fearing Christian alone knows the greatest enthusiasms, the highest devotions and the worthiest cause.

And here is what was impressed on me this week: God is sovereign and omniscient, therefore He never risks anything and neither can His children. In other words, for the believer there is no failure, there is no defeat. The Christian need never be, indeed ought never be one of “those cold and timid souls.” His soul should rather be set afire to strive valiantly for God’s kingdom, for he may invest with a guaranteed reward. That is breathtaking. O to spend myself in the “worthy cause” that Christ has laid before me.

Man in the Arena (www.randallmhasson.com/man_in_the_arena.htm)

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the music of possibility and the sound of potential

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