One of my favorite pastors to read is Richard Baxter. Baxter was a very practical teacher and a Puritan pastor who lived from 1615-1691. Anyone whose books are still in circulation after 350 years must have had some good things to say!
I found myself reading some chapters out of The Godly Home after a very honest conversation with one of my kids in which I was face-to-face with some significant faults as a parent. Baxter wrote that for parents (the “governors” of the family), “…these three things are of greatest necessity: authority, skill, and holiness and readiness of will”. It was a pointed moment of clarity in which I realized that I am in need of the skills, in particular, since this was the area that I had handled a situation so clumsily.
That is one of the areas in which the church can come alongside the family as a help, for “skill” from a biblical definition is really the meaning of “wisdom”. That is my prayer for our church: that we can be a place to gain and share skills for living out the Christian life, especially as it pertains to all the facets of the family.
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