My Daughter and Me at Dawn

Every weekday morning I or a member of our Munger staff leads online community prayer. I enjoy leading it from White Rock Lake whenever possible, and recently my little daughter has started to accompany me.

Yesterday morning was a lovely morning at the lake. We arrived just as the dawn was breaking and enjoyed leading everyone through our brief morning liturgy and taking prayer requests. At the end of morning prayer, we always close by reciting The Lord’s Prayer. My daughter has been working on it with me, and this is how we ended our time together yesterday.

Me, My Daughter, and The Lord's Prayer from Andrew Forrest on Vimeo.

What I like about the video above is how we are looking at each other as we’re reciting it. I’m focused on her, and she’s focused on me.

It struck me later that this is what being a father is all about. Lord knows I fail at this most of the time, but I want to be this kind of father, patiently pouring into his children what he knows about the world so that they can grow up to become big and strong and wise.

Fathers, God has already given us all that our children need from us. More than anything, they need our quiet attention and to benefit from whatever little we possess that’s good, true, and wise. If we give them that—no matter how inadequate or insignificant—we’ll be giving them all that we can.

And that will be enough.

Brief Reflections on Fatherhood

Fatherhood is a stewardship. The Lord gives us the blessing of children, but also the responsibility for them: to teach them to love him and his world. My children are under my care, and my job is to cultivate Christ-like character in them and to help them see the world clearly and learn to investigate it with curiosity?it‘s such beautiful world, charged with the grandeur of God.? It‘s easy to become distracted by everything else, so I need to be constantly reminded that nothing I will ever do will be more eternally important than raising my children to love the Lord their God with all their heart and all their soul and all their strength (Deuteronomy 6). And, of course, the surest way for me to do that is to draw near to the Lord myself; I can‘t teach what I'm not first receiving.It says in the scriptures that we love because God first loved us? (1 John 4:19). This means that any true love I have for my children will be a sharing in the love I receive from God who loved me and gave himself for me? (Galatians 2:20). Too many times we earthly fathers try to love out of a sense of emotion or duty, and though emotion and duty are good things, they will not be enough to sustain me as a father over time. To depend as a father on emotion or duty alone would be like trying to exhale and then exhale again, without ever breathing in fresh air. It‘s when I am receiving and abiding in the love of God that I am able to share that love with my children. I love my children, because God first loved me.For me to know what a father is like, I need to look to my Heavenly Father, and there I see a God who so loves the world that he sacrifices for it. This means that fatherhood requires sacrifice: I learn to give my life to the Lord and to die to myself, and then the Lord can use me to love my children in the way they most need. And, in the beautiful mystery of the gospel, it‘s in the giving of my life that I gain it back, in ways that exceed what I can ask or imagine. In this way, therefore, fatherhood becomes exceedingly joyful: I think I am serving my kids, but in the serving I find myself blessed beyond measure.Fatherhood is a stewardship, and I'm accountable.? But the Lord who blesses us with children is a good God, and he will also bless us with the love we need to be fathers. God wants us to succeed as fathers and wants to say to us Well done, good and faithful servant.

You Need a Sex Habit*

Couples who are having problems aren't having sex. Yes, I'm not a researcher or a therapist and my evidence is all anecdotal from conversations with lots of different couples, but I'm telling you: couples who are having problems aren't having (enough) sex. Correlation or causation? Here's what I think.

Sex is a Keystone Habit

I've written previously about keystone habits:

A keystone habit is a simple habit that has effects that cascade into other aspects of an individual‘s or a group‘s life.So, a keystone habit might be:

• Exercising every morning;
• Making your bed every morning
• Having all?players on the team put on their socks in a certain way;
• Putting safety concerns on the top of your corporate agenda.

To think of it another way, a keystone habit is the first domino that falls and knocks down all the others with it.So, a keystone habit in healthy families is having dinner together at home every evening. That simple practice affects?the relationship between the mom and the dad and the kids? behavior in school and even their reading level. It‘s one domino that falls, knocking over a bunch of others."

It's not the keystone habit itself that matters as much as what that particular habit represents and sets in motion. I think sex between a husband and a wife is exactly that sort of habit; it's a domino that falls and knocks over a bunch of others. Here's why:

• Sex requires proximity. It's good for a husband and a wife to spend time together--too much time apart is never good.
• Sex requires selflessness. Like everything else in life that's good for you, sometimes you won't feel like it, but there are times when your husband or your wife will need?it, and therefore your relationship needs it.
• Sex requires?intentionality. Unlike in the movies, married folks don't walk around ripping each others' clothes off whenever possible. With jobs and kids and schedules, sex requires intentionality.
• Sex sends a message. Women tend to become self-conscious about their bodies as they age and have children, and when a husband tells his wife she is?desirable, it draws them together in a profound way. And vice versa (though not the having children part).

Everybody likes sex, but contrary to what a 15 year-old boy would think, it's not the sex itself that makes the difference for couples so much as it is the proximity, selflessness, intentionality, and message of commitment that regular sex brings to a marriage.At least, that's my theory. What do you think? *If you're married. I subscribe to the outlandish and clearly ridiculous belief that sex has a purpose, and that that purpose is only realized within a marriage between a husband and a wife. If you're not married, not having sex won't kill you, believe it or not. You should try it.   

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Should a Pedophile Have Unsupervised Access to Your Child?

No healthy parents would ever allow their children to spend unsupervised time with a pedophile. But, in essence, that's exactly what millions of parents do when it comes to their children and the internet. The internet brings into our houses?dangers that our parents never had to worry about, dangers about which you and I had better be worried. I am worried; for me, the?challenge of raising a child in today's sexualized culture is terrifying

Preying on Children By Any Means Available

On Monday, the front page of my local paper had a story about a former teacher who has been sentenced to 60 years in prison on child pornography charges. It's a very disturbing story; the teacher, who preyed on teenage boys, would send them pictures of naked women, claim to be a woman, and ask the boys to send him naked pictures of themselves in return. The teacher would then blackmail those boys who sent him photos into sending him more photos, and worse. From the?Dallas Morning News:

Many of his victims for months and even years had no idea who did this to them, Johnson said. They were constantly looking over their shoulder and paranoid,? she said. To them, it was just a matter of time? until their photos would be revealed, she said.Some parents noticed that their grades suffered and they lost interest in sports, she said."

The teacher made contact with the boys through various "hook-up apps" on their smart phones.I wish this were one isolated incident. Unfortunately, we know that the dangers to children that the internet presents are ubiquitous.

3 Guarantees About Our Kids and Online Sexual Content

I guarantee you that if you have a boy of adolescent age and older, he is looking at internet pornography. If you have never addressed the issue of pornography with your son or if you have not taken any steps to restrict his internet access (see below), I guarantee he is looking at pornography. I‘think moms especially have a hard time acknowledging or admitting that their boys are furtively looking at pornography, but it is true. (Of course, the sad truth is that many boys and girls much younger than adolescents are also exposed to pornography. Young children are not safe from these dangers, and neither are our girls.)I cannot imagine what it must be like to be an adolescent boy these days and have hardcore pornography available after a few short taps on a smart phone. (Like most men of my age and older, I sincerely thank God that I grew up in the days before internet pornography.) You may think, "Not my son--he's not like that." You are being recklessly naive.I guarantee you that there are bad people out there who will use whatever technology available to prey on children. As soon as a new app is invented, someone somewhere is using it for evil purposes.I guarantee you that if you don't take steps to protect and educate your children, no one else will. Our primary responsibility as parents is to keep our children safe. But, in the cesspool that is our popular culture, how do we do this?

Parenting in a Sexualized Culture

We can't get away from the filth of our culture--it's everywhere. What we can do, though, is take the necessary steps to protect our kids, and, more importantly, educate ourselves and our kids about these issues.First: Install A Filter on Your Home Router ASAP. At my house we use Open DNS. Though there is a free version, I pay the nominal fee ($19.95 a year) for the enhanced features. By no means does a filter mean that we don't have to worry, but it is a necessary step. There are lots of different options out there--pick one and implement it ASAP.Second: Educate Yourself?About Parenting in a Sexualized Culture. I know absolutely nothing about how to parent in a sexualized culture, but there are people out there who have wisdom to share. One such group is a Christian non-profit called pureHOPE. Last year at my church, we hosted pureHope's?Dan Martin?who taught a course on the topic of "Parenting in a Sexualized Culture." My wife attended Dan's course and was both frightened by the reality of what we face as parents and at the same time encouraged by the wise, practical content that Dan shared.At the very least, you should spend some time on the pureHOPE site and familiarize yourself with their content. On top of that, I'd recommend seeing if your church or community group can bring out Dan or another one of the pureHOPE presenters to teach on this vital topic. (I'm sure that there are other great ministries doing work like pureHOPE--I just reference them because I can personally attest to the wisdom they have to share.)

None of Us Would Ever Allow Our Children to Spend Time with Pedophiles

So, why do we allow our kids unfettered access to the Internet, and why are we so determined to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that this stuff has nothing to do with our families?It's time for us to wake up and do the hard, necessary work of preparing ourselves and our children to navigate this sexualized culture.