I hope you have enjoyed working through the book of Nehemiah from the perspective of maintaining your sexual purity. And I hope that you’ve gained at least a handful of strategies to turn back the Enemy at the gate.
The most important thing to take away from this reading is that God loves you no [...]
In addition to these gate-keeping precautions, I recommend that you talk honestly with your kids (your boys, in particular) about your struggles. My thirteen-year-old and I have had many discussions about how bad XXX videos are. One day, as we passed a XXX theatre, he said from the backseat, “Dad, you would never watch one [...]
So how do we build walls and guard gates for our kids? Build their walls by making sure they practice spiritual disciplines, and take time to talk about spiritual markers with them. Guard their gates by teaching them what is inappropriate and dangerous in computers, video games, magazines, T.V., movies and other media, and then [...]
What if your son were kept free from this draining fever in the first place, and all of his spiritual energy could be spent on God’s call in His kingdom?
~ Every Man’s Battle
I can’t conclude without talking about our responsibility to our children. If you’re a dad, your job is to build the walls for [...]
I did an object lesson once in a men’s group that illustrated this principle. We started with a small cup full of water and talked about how the clear water in the cup represented our minds as God created them.
Unfortunately, we allowed the vile and the vulgar to get beyond our gates. (I recognize [...]
In Israel, there are two major bodies of water: the Sea of Galilee (a.k.a. the Kinneret) and the Dead Sea (though both are really lakes). Although they are in the same country and connected by a common river (the Jordan), the two couldn’t be more different. The Sea of Galilee is fed by the Jordan [...]
Some time later I asked his permission and came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. I was greatly displeased and threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room. I gave orders to purify [...]
In The Odyssey, Odysseus had his men tie him to the mast of his ship so that he wouldn’t succumb to the Siren’s alluring song as they passed the rocky Sirenum Scopuli islands. The Sirens were mythical sea nymphs who sang so beautifully that sailors would sail their ships into the island cliffs in an [...]
Nehemiah had left Jerusalem in good shape under able leadership, but the people got complacent after he returned to the king. They let down their guard at the gates, and the enemy was able to sneak in and make his home in the heart of the city – the temple. Tobiah didn’t scale the wall, [...]
