Fruitfulness

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The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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Daddy Tried audiobook now available...

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Warhorn Media is pleased to announce that Tim Bayly's Daddy Tried is now available as an audiobook. If you haven't had a chance to read it for yourself, swing over to Audible.com or Amazon.com, download a copy, and have Tim read it for you.

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We're also pleased to offer a free download of the Chapter 1 audio to Baylyblog readers.

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Establish Thou the work of our hands...

Here's one of the prayers of Moses. We always read this prayer at funerals and burials. Also at the end when a brother or sister in Christ is near the end of the hard work of dying.

No man can establish the work of his own hands. Only God has that power. This is as true of work raising a family and pastoring a congregation as it is work on the railroad. (This is what your hands look like after a shift as car knocker at Chicago & North Western's Proviso Yards.)

Read and pray this prayer with your family and loved ones tonight.

Psalm 90

A Prayer of Moses the man of God.

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.


Is there a Christian ghetto in our future...

This is a talk given by ruling elder Ken Patrick at a conference held this past Saturday at his church, Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Ludlow, Kentucky. Titled "Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture," the conference's other speakers were Trinity's pastor Chuck Hickey and an attorney from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jeff Shafer. I attended the conference with my son, Joseph, and his fellow pastor Paul Belcher (both serving Christ Church in Cincinnati). Hope you find this talk as wise and helpful as Joseph, Paul, and I did.

* * *

Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think...


The increase in chemical abortions requires a change in method...

Surgical abortions (the gory kind) are declining as chemical abortions increase. According to the baby-killers themselves, chemical abortions (what they call "medical abortions") now have grown to twenty percent of all abortions.

But murderers lie to cover up their bloodshed, so when these people talk you have to listen carefully. They changed the medical definition of "conception" from fertilization to implantation fifty years ago, and since then they have removed a huge number of abortions from the count including all the little ones barred from attaching themselves to their mother's uterine wall by the Pill, IUDs, ellaOne, Minipill, NuvaRing, Yaz, Yasmin, the Patch, Depo-Provera, Plan B "morning after" pills, etc. So the number and percentage of chemical murders of tiny babies is growing much more rapidly than they admit, making the number of abortions much greater than they admit, also.

Mothers don't need to have a doctor commit their chemical abortions. Midwives can do it, although...


The verse that launched a thousand art galleries...

Jeremiah 29:7 is used as a theme verse by many missional churches:

 Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.

Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan is one--perhaps the first--of many churches to make Jeremiah 29:7 a rallying cry for Christian engagement with metropolitan culture. 

A 2003 sermon by Tim Keller on Jeremiah 29:4-14 finds this description in Redeemer's sermon catalogue:


Our little bundle of joy...

This just in: being a parent is hard. Very hard. The Washington Post recently published an article about a study from Germany which indicates that parenthood is downright awful. Here's how the article starts:

Life has its ups and downs, but parenthood is supposed to be among the most joyous. At least that's what the movies and Target ads tell us.

In reality, it turns out that having a child can have a pretty strong negative impact on a person's happiness, according to a new study published in the journal Demography. In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person's life in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner.

So we've known for a long time that we kill babies in this country to the tune of over 1,000,000 per year. And now we know Planned Parenthood sells baby parts to the highest bidder. It should surprise exactly no one for me to say we don't actually like our children...


The invisible graduates...

This article was written by Kate (Yoder '07) Bedinghaus and Heather (Bayly '98) Ummel for the most recent edition of the Taylor University magazine.

Fill in the blank: More Taylor grads work as ________________ than in any other vocation.

  • Teachers
  • Missionaries
  • Youth Pastors
  • Business Professionals

​Answer: It's a trick question. We didn't do a statistical survey, but we're willing to bet the answer is mothers.

As young women at Taylor, our minds were consumed with endless tests, friendships, wing events, and cute boys. There were deeper spiritual questions to ponder. There were decisions about the future to be made. These thoughts left little room for the seemingly faraway possibility of motherhood. The idea of children was filed away under "Someday," after mission work, world travel, and a rewarding career...


Sweet dreams, Mommy...

So to all those who don't know the word 'jaded,' this just sent to one mother by one of her daughters who is now a mother of four herself. It was accompanied by this note: "It's very sweet and well-done, just short peeks into the lives of 3 mothers. I read the comments of women saying it helped them not to feel so conflicted and guilty about staying home with their kids. They made me want to write and say thank you. I'm so glad that you were at home with us, Mom. ...And I'm thankful that, because of the way you raised me, I have the ability to do my work without nagging questions or guilt about what else I should be doing. I love you!"

The following excerpt is from Chesterton's "The Emancipation of Domesticity" in his splendid, What's Wrong with the World. This is an essay I believe every father should read aloud to his daughters after they've had their third child. (My dear Mary Lee says the third is the most difficult because it's the first time husband and wife are outnumbered.)

Honestly, I have no desire to speak with the husband or father who can't understand and doesn't love this essay no matter how fast he can say sovereignty/providential/imputation three times in a row. True Christian faith proves itself by its fruit which, according to Scripture, always starts at home. And what greater fruit does any man give to God than his manly support of the motherhood of his wife and their flat-out commitment to everything needed to raise up godly seed?

Mothers are the greatest!

So now, this dose of ...


Thoughts on Doug Wilson's "11 Theses on Birth Control"

(David) Doug Wilson has written a post elaborating on things he's said about birth control elsewhere. Overall, Tim and I appreciate the post very much. There are qualifications to two of Doug's theses that I (probably "we") would make, despite our agreement with the post's general thrust, and there is one particular point of agreement that we would emphasize.

Working backwards from Doug's 10th thesis to his 6th (because I suspect our aversion to thinking about birth control stems from a concern that coming to view birth control negatively will require disciplinary action against all who practice it)....