As we discuss ways that prosperity gospel sneaks into the family, we decided to start off by looking at the book of Proverbs, as these are often the verses that are cherry picked and often used to take prosperity gospel ideas in regard to the family.

The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.

Joseph was not the father of Jesus, but then again, he was. Jesus was the true offspring of the heavenly Father, but even the Son of God needed a daddy.

We need a God who can heal us of true guilt and false guilt. We need a Christ who not only removes the shame we feel for what we’ve done, but who washes away the shame that others have smeared upon us.

Being a run-of-the-mill, mediocre parent is a gift to your children. It models for them what life is all about: the little things, the overlooked things, the minuscule elements of daily life that—in various ways—are God’s gifts to us.

The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.

There is no pain like the pain of being mistreated by those who, above all others, you expect to love you unconditionally.

It’s one of my favorite family pictures. Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on a couch are my granddad, my dad, me, and my son. A four-generation snapshot: Lee Roy to Carson to Chad to Luke.

In divorce God married me to the cross. I didn’t want it; indeed, I hated it. But upon my shoulders God laid it. The ring of nails. The veil of darkness. The kiss of death. When we are stripped of all the good we think we are and have, we come face to face with the evil within. We fight and wrestle and gasp and die and become nothing.

The Son that He is sending into this world will need more than a mother; He needs a father.

My daughter’s honest, pointed question of “Why?” not only desired an answer; it deserved and demanded the “dreadful beauty” of an honest response.

We like to define ourselves, and to have others see us and talk about us, based upon our accomplishments.