The Christian family must be a consistent object of ministry in the local church. For our purposes, we designate the season between Mother's Day and Father's Day to take up the particular ministry issues of marriage and family. Pastors must not forget the great struggles that continually face the homes within their congregations. But equipping husbands and wives, mothers and fathers to build their homes on the principles of God's Word accomplishes much more than easing tensions in the individual homes. This ministry strengthens the whole church.

I have been meditating on Revelation 2:10, "Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life."  Below I have listed eighteen hope-filled observations and applications.

This article collates biographical records outlining the life and Influence of Isaac Watts. I have tried to credit sources within the body of the paper but having read about this great Christian for several years, it is possible, I may have overlooked some for which I apologize ahead of time. I trust His story will be a challenge and example to all who read.

"Give ‘em Watts, boys! Give ‘em Watts!"

Recently I sat down with my palm pilot in hand and punched all of my scheduled holiday family gatherings into the calendar. After doing so, I realized that I am scheduled to attend 7 different family gatherings (from Dec. 6^th - 29^th). Some of those gatherings will be intimate, involving my immediate family, while others will be large, involving my extended family. All in all, I will interact with approximately 73 family members (55 adults, 18 children). That exercise got me thinking about my family members, my relationships with them, and my Christian responsibility to minister the Gospel to them.

After considering my family members and their specific life-situations, I came to this conclusion:

Our nation celebrates and mourns the days that shape our national character. We remember sorrowful days like December 7^th, 1941 or September 11, 2001, and joyful days like July 4^th, 1776. The danger of forgetting is serious. The more we are separated from our past, either by "new history" or a careless obsession with the present, the more we lose our identity as a nation.

This article is not about losing our national identity through reinterpretations of the past or through the growing academic hatred for America's history and heroes, as serious as that may be. My concern regards the lost identity of the evangelical church in forgetting the Reformation.

In our postmodern culture, reprobate intellectualism finds the Biblical idea of God to be odious and loathsome. Recently, the hostility of unbelieving thought has intensified in the public arena through the promotion of skepticism and atheism in the books and articles of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and others.

"And he said, 'Please, show me Your glory.'" - Exodus 33:18

"Surely the LORD our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire." - Deuteronomy 5:24

A Bible is one of the greatest gifts anyone can receive! Though it was written by forty human authors over a period of 1600 years, they are all united by the Divine authorship that superintended their writing, so that using their own personality and vocabulary they recorded the revelation of God without error. Imagine it! God has written a book so that generations living after the prophets and apostles can know Him. St. Augustine spoke truly, "The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home."

How the Cultural Christ Dominates the Religious Landscape

The southern writer Flannery O'Connor said, "By and large, people in the South still conceive of humanity in theological terms. While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted."