One of my children came downstairs, after being in their room for ages yesterday, with the following list of verses. They had obviously spent a long time going thru a bible looking at highlighted verses and choosing, as they put it, their “favorite ones”. I think its a pretty good list, actually, and I am grateful for the grace of God at work in this dear child of mine despite all their father’s failings and imperfections. Nothing that I could hope to ever accomplish with the blog will be of more lasting worth than anything positive that I can play some small part in building in the lives of these children of mine. Here is the list (also available in NIV and NLT) which brings tears to my eyes:

Psalm 20:7
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

Proverbs 1:8-9
8 Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
9 for they are a graceful garland for your head
and pendants for your neck.

Proverbs 11:3
3 The integrity of the upright guides them,
but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.

Isaiah 26:4
4 Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Isaiah 40:31
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

Ezekiel 33:11
11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

Joel 2:32
32 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

Matthew 15:18
18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.

John 3:16
16 “For God so loved the world, [1] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Ephesians 4:32
32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Philippians 2:3
3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Hebrews 4:16
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

James 1:22
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

1 John 4:20
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot [2] love God whom he has not seen.

2 John 1:6
6 And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.

Genesis 49:25
25 by the God of your father who will help you,
by the Almighty [3] who will bless you
with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that crouches beneath,
blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

Genesis 15:1
15:1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

Genesis 1:27
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Following just over a month of this self-imposed near-total break from my online life (obviously not including my paid work!) what have I discovered?

1. WordPress’s auto-publish feature is bullet-proof and a real gift
2. You hardly missed me as a result of 1. and my kind guest bloggers. Indeed, traffic remained pretty high considering it was August.
3. Phil Moore is better than I am at explaining why digital fasts are so important.
4. A week is definitely not long enough It took me much longer before I even began to experience digital withdrawal symptoms.
5. It really is hard to stay away from the Internet for several weeks. My “fast” wasn’t total as the weeks drew on. I did scan-read Twitter, Facebook and a couple of blogs a little towards the end. I also started to write this post 20 minutes or so before my deadline,  and last week even wrote a couple of tweets ready for publishing later when my wife had gone away (the observant may have noticed that they appeared in my Twitter stream and were quickly deleted!) I also and scanned and deleted most of my accumulated emails on the same day. Finally, I started an Omnifocus to-do list to capture a small handful of ideas for things to blog about when they began to hit me about a week or so ago.
6. The harsh truth is that I really don’t care about what my readers think about me as much as I thought I did (despite 5)   I trust I will continue to remember this and make sure that I take more care over being kind to my wife and children than I do over looking after you all!  Funily enough, I somehow suspect that the more I focus on pleasing my God and family, the more benefit I may be to you in any case.
7. Learning more about how to not believe your own publicity is a vital result of such a break.  I can’t improve on what I said about this last year. Running a blog can appear to be self-serving at first glance. There has to be a good balance, however, between arrogantly pushing oneself forward, and on the other hand hiding whatever one can share with others under a bushel.  I am not sure I always navigate that tightrope entirely correctly, but, you have to believe me that I know that of myself I have nothing to offer you.  I will not ever apologize for shouting about my savior, and his death and resurrection for us. I know that if I can point you towards him, and to good resources that will help you in your spiritual journey I will have fulfilled one of the roles that God has for me in this life.  It is not the most important one, however.  That is clearly being a husband and father, which is much harder than helping at least some of people who read this blog for a few minutes a day.
8. I remained really quite busy with secular work, preached three times, was on the radio once, and yet removing the digital piece resulted in me now feeling remarkably rested and refreshed. I may need to find some ways to lessen some of the burdens I carry.  Perhaps I need a secretary or something!
9. Just hanging out with the kids in the evenings watching TV, playing Scrabble & Risk with them on the iPad, and being beaten at chess by my 11 year old son is a whole lot of fun. I need to carve out more time to do this better even with the blog up and running. If I could be a better husband and father and a worse blogger that would be fine with me.
10. Having a break has made me itch to write again, and I have really enjoyed writing this post.  I won’t be giving up permanently any time soon!

This is a guest post from my daughter Charis (aged 9). We would do well to follow her example in listing things that she is grateful to God for.  I am sure you don’t need me to tell you how pleased I was to read this, especially to see a few of the items she listed.  Here is her list, written without any help:

1. God
2. the bible
3. church
4. the resurrection
5. food
6. water
7. play/fun
8. family
9. friends
10. shelter
11. toys/games
12. sports
13. school/education
14. art
15. music
16. drama/acting

I want you to take a good long look at your husband or wife today. Right now. Go look at them. Do the same for any children you have. And think of your closest friends too. Then thank God for them. You don’t know how long you will have them. They could be gone in an instant.

I could have lost my beautiful daughter Charis today. If the chicken bone that stuck in her throat had done so just a bit more aggressively . . . or, if when it finally dislodged, it had gone fully into her windpipe instead of being swallowed, then, well, she might not have made it. It was a scare. It was made better by knowing that my God is with me. I do thank God for the medics and the ambulance crew who helped. I am just so glad that I get to rejoice today that my family is all safe. May God make me more appreciative of them each day. And may he help me to be a better father and husband before anything else I do.

God please forgive me for ever taking them, and your care of them, for granted.

My lovely wife and I were both sitting here on our laptops next to each other in the lounge while the children were quietly doing things upstairs. It was a truly idyllic scene as my darling was editing the latest chapter of my book that I’ve been working on in some spare time over Christmas. I hope I haven’t neglected the family too much this Christmas—we have had some fun. Anyway, I must confess that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the scene hasn’t always been this peaceful this holiday, but it was about to get even better. All of a sudden we heard a patter of feet and my second daughter, Charis, presented Andrée and me with the following messages, which is certainly the nicest thing I’ve read so far this year!

DAD

My Dad has brown hair, as brown as chocolate that shines like the stars above. He has light blue eyes, as blue as the sky above me. They shine like the shimmering ocean down below me. His teeth are as white as mints. I just wanted to let all of these readers know that I love my Dad and I’m sure that he loves me too!

MUM

My Mum has brown silky hair that shines like the stars up above. Her eyes are as brown as chocolate and they are as delicate as a diamond and they shine like the ocean below. Her smile makes me feel safe and cosy. Her teeth are as white as mints. I just wanted all of you readers to know that my mum is my hero!

Tamasin—”Why did you come all the way from America to look at all these dead people when there are plenty of living ones in our country as well?”

Henry—”That statue over there is supposed to be an angel! More like a demon, showing off its breasts like that. Disgusting!”

Tamasin and Henry of Darwin’s tomb—”What’s he doing in a church? Surely he’s not welcome here?!?”

Charis—My legs are all shaky (after climbing up then down St. Paul’s 400+ stairs).

UPDATE

Henry Warnock has started a new website. Follow the link to visit it.

Over the last few days Charis, my younger daughter, has been writing stories all by herself. Here are the first two she has ever written:

Baby Plays

Babies are a gift from God. Thank you for baby laughing, baby crawling, baby bouncing, baby rolling, baby playing peekaboo hide your eyes!

This first one was, in fact it turns out, copied from a book. The second one was made up by Charis.

The Princess and the King

They lived in a big castle, where there lived a dragon. The dragon took the princess away to a big tower wot had no doors.

Over at TeamPyro, Dan has a four part response to my set of questions on tongues and gifts which I bashed out quickly before I left. I have read all of Dan’s posts and every one of the comments. Sadly, it seems that there are few, if any, charismatics who read TeamPyro, or if they do, they seem too frit of Dan to respond!

I want to say right at the outset that I respect and admire Dan for taking the time to take me to task so comprehensively. I have never read a better theological discussion on “the other side.” It is my opinion that theology should be written in community, and to be honest, this kind of interaction helps me to understand how and why people whom I respect come to different conclusions than I do. Perhaps blogging may eventually lead to some kind of theological convergence on these and other controversial issues. I love the fact that in Dan I can interact with someone who is no straw man of my creation. Dan does, at times, extend what I said in my post further than I would have wanted to go myself before demolishing the morphed viewpoint, but even in so doing, it is helpful for me to understand how I am perceived by others.

I loved the broadly generous nature of his comments, and the discussion that ensued — for example, the way in which one of his commenters, Centurion, said, “Unfortunately, Adrian is the other side right now.” It seems to me that behind that comment is a whole bunch of “other stuff” that could be said, and which would go something like this . . . “Adrian is someone who, most of the time, we’re happy to agree with — if only he didn’t have those crazy charismatic ideas!” If I have “interpreted” this comment correctly, well then guys . . . the feeling is mutual!

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, there have been a few other responses; here are the ones I’ve found — by all means use the comment box on this post to let me know of other posts on blogs you know about — you can use the following code within a comment: <a href=”http://yoururl.com/”>your link text </a>

Other posts on the tongues debate:

• TrueGrit

• Sam Storms

• Dan Phillips’ own blog, Biblical Christianity

• Wilderness Voice

• English Muffin (a fair few comments also here)

• Intellectuelle

• Centurion (over at TeamPyro)

• Lig Duncan (perhaps wisely) steers clear of the tongues issue, but has a definition of being filled with the Spirit with which I fully agree.

• Mathew Sims promises to join the fun too. (Incidentally, he is just TOO far ahead in his blogging through the T4G statement series — I will have to get back to that soon myself!)

• Charis doesn’t talk about the tongues issue, but has a great post on harsh words and gentle words which we would all do well to continue to remember as well . . . and as we have done so far in this debate!

I will, of course, have to find the time to answer Dan’s great posts. (As I have said before, I don’t have to agree with the conclusions of a post for me to think it’s a great one!). I can’t promise when I will get to them, however, as it is my intention (at least for the present) for this to be a relatively light week of blogging — sort of like easing my way back into “normal life” a bit slowly! I am sure that some of you will suspect that I will find the bait of these posts irresistible . . . but I plan to try!

Perhaps you, my readers, can help me resist the temptation — as of yet, the charismatic view does not seem to have been well represented in the discussions in Dan’s comment section or elsewhere in the blogosphere. I fear that many charismatics may have deserted TeamPyro whilst cessationists may have deserted this blog! So, my charismatic friends, now is your chance to show why I do not need to respond to Dan just yet! When I do get round to it, what should I say? How should I reply?

For that matter, any cessationist readers I have left are welcome to discuss any aspect of this matter here where I have none of the foibles of Dan about off-topic comments. Comment away — just keep it civil!

No I havent gone Catholic, just thought I’d post this somewhat cute picture which was taken today shortly after Charis had fallen from a tree! 

Charis was speaking about christmas the other day (it is almost all we are talking about in our family nowadays!). She said “and after Christmas day its Punching Day, isnt it Daddy…..”

I have just one thing to say to conservative christians who criticise the Narnia film for teaching an alternative theory of the atonement -

ITS A STORY, NOT A SEMINARY CLASS

We have watched it, and I didnt think about the nuances of the atonement once! The story is a great fantasy story which happens to reflect some aspects of the story of Jesus. One of my children (I think it was Charis) said it was the best film she had ever seen. We all loved the film and were enraptured by it.

I have to confess I was crying in one of the first few scenes when the children were leaving london.

Lewis was a master story teller, and his tales work as well for 21st century kids as they did for 20th. We should be grateful that Disney is making a film like this which openly reflects Christian values. I am praying that watching it may prompt a few people to think again about Jesus.

One of our friends kids said “This film is passion of the Christ for kids” and I guess he’s about right.

“Most of all Jesus loves you” by Noel Piper is simple and to an adults eye I initially thought it would not interest many of my kids. With four kids ranging from 4-8 we have a fairly good laboratory to test books out.

When I first read this book to our two year old Joel and our four year old, Charis it was a real hit. Charis asked all kinds of questions about God, and we had one of the best chats yet.

After having it read to him, our six year old Henry asked to take this book to bed with him. For several nights he read the book to himself after we had said goodnight. He said that he sometimes thought about bad or scary things and that this book helped him to feel better. Reading Jesus loves him helped him to conquer some of these fears which he hadnt even told us about.

Even our eight year old likes to read this book to her younger brothers and sister. It is colourful, engaging, simple but taught an important truth to my kids. I cant recommend it highly enough, especially for the 6s and under age group.

This book review was organised by diet of book worms where you can read what other bloggers thought.

My lovely wife taught sunday school for 4-7s today (which includes our children Charis and Joel. She explained the gospel, summarising it into 10 points. If the kids can understand this, why is it that certain people want to make it more complicated and won’t accept this as it is?

1. Everyone has Sinned

2. God hates sin

3. Sin must be punished

4. Jesus took the punishment instead of us on the cross

5. Admit you have been naughty

6. Believe that Jesus took your punishment

7. Say sorry to God

8. Ask God to be in charge of your life

9. Be baptised (note the order here)

10. Receive the Holy Spirit

My sermon on the message that changes the world goes into some of these things in more detail.

If you are a regular reader of this blog why not express in the comments whether you believe all 10 of these points or which if any you would have a problem with affirming. If you have never believed and done these things- now is your chance!

This post is predominantly for anyone who in the run up to Christmas does what I just did and trys to google for an old friend. I found his website and dropped him an email. So anyone who actually knows us and stumbles across this site here is my news! Some of this may be of interest to a few of my regular readers, but if not I apologise!

The run up to this Christmas seems even busier than usual. We have had builders in the loft and utility room in the last couple of weeks and the good news is I am writing this from my loft as we speak. My pile of books is gradually disappearing from the rest of the house and into purpose built shelving in the loft. Andrée is

delighted!

I have just been offered a promotion at work and the job is going well. Andrée is looking forward to having three kids at school/nursery school and one at playgroup in a couple of months, and NO, in case you are wondering she is not pregnant again! She is enjoying her craft and I suspect many a happy evening will now be spent in the loft by both of us as she has her craft workshop up here as well.

Tamasin is almost 8 and continues to be a spirited child who enjoys life. Henry is almost 6 and was so exctied the other day to see a real axe- “I never thought I’d see a real one of those he said”.

Charis is now 4 and is doing really well and has two terms left before she starts reception which is only marginally more scarey than the fact that Joel is about to turn 2. He is into EVERYTHING at the moment. We just lost him a few minutes ago and found him eventually asleep on top of the bunkbed which he knows he’s not meant to climb.

Even if I don’t know you “IRL” it would be great to hear some of your news this christmas. Do drop me a line by email.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Euan at The Obvious?? states : “my reason for trying to give The Obvious? a positive outlook is not so much that I am trying to hide any negative feelings from myself or from those who read me as trying to counter the overwhelmingly negative tone of so much of what we read, hear and see in the media. I remember clearly, when I started writing my blog, feeling that I wanted to do my bit to make the internet the sort of place I woulkd want my kids to grow up in.”

I guess I also blog at least in part for my kids. Its funny to think that Tamasin Henry Charis and Joel will one day know just what their dad was blogging about in 2003!!

I guess we all have lots of reasons to be positive though- there is always someone worse off than you. We have friends who’s daughter has broken her neck- that kind of puts life’s little annoying glitches into context doesnt it!