What in the world does it mean to be a theological community? Think with me. What is the core, the essence of theology? Theology is the study of God and what the family must recognize is the ultimate fact of facts of the human existence is the existence, character and plan of God. God is the ultimate fact that defines and gives reason and meaning to every other fact. Everything you look at, you can't look at properly unless you look at it through the lens of the existence, the character and the plan of God. You can't understand history, you can't understand science, you can't understand mathematics, you can't understand human relationships, you can't understand finances or government or community or sexuality or leisure. You cannot properly understand anything, unless you start with the existence, the character and the plan of God. The great Christian thinker, John Calvin, said this. "There is no knowing that doesn't begin with knowing God." Now, God has helped us here. Because God has created his world in such a way that His world reveals Him and so you don't have to have unnatural, sort of weird biblical conversations with your kids out of context. It doesn't have to be unnatural to talk about God. Think about this. Because God has embedded His existence in creation, it's absolutely unnatural not to talk about God all the time. Think about this. Everywhere you look, you see the glory of God. God made soft and God made hard. God made cold and God made hot. God made water that boils on one end and freezes on the other. You probably use both ends today. God made the amazing muscles of the human face that can create such expression just by flexing. The lens of the human eye that focuses this close, all the way to infinity. Well, with some of us. God made the endless timbre of the human voice that every human voice has a different timbre to it, so that somebody can call you on the phone and they don't even need to tell you their name because you recognize that timbre of that individual voice. How awesome is that? God made the delicacy of a human kiss, the endless variety of human hair. Think just of the engineering of the nose. Look around. Go ahead do it. How many billion has God created and He hasn't repeated a model? And the engineering is great. Could you imagine if your nose was upside down? Not only would it look weird, you couldn't go out in the rain. Can you imagine if your nose was here? That would be weird. It would be way too close to your armpit. Do this for me. Just look at your finger for a moment. The finger is amazing design, you know. It's got this thin layer of skin on the end of it and this hyper constellation of nerve endings. Your finger's so "nerve-acious" there. On the other end is this ever replenishing hard surface that you need to pick things up. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His glory.” You don't have to go any further than the end of your finger to see the glory of God. I was home one afternoon making bread. I love to cook and I added some yeast to some warm water and a little bit of oil, a little bit of sugar, a little bit of salt. The yeast had bloomed, and I had added the flour and I had begun to knead it. And it was that sort of unappetizing-looking plasticine substance at that moment. But I was thinking about the fact that the yeast would create a gas and interact with the gluten of the flour. And this would begin to expand and then become this light, airy substance; and when baked, would form this beautiful crust. And it hit me that this chemical physical process came out of the mind of God. And it's just one of millions of millions of those physical chemical processes that came out of the mouth of God. I was actually making bread, but it was a moment of wonder and worship for me. About then, my then 20-year-old son, Ethan, came home. He had ridden a subway home and I said to him as he walked in the door, "Hey, Ethan, do you ever think about yeast?" He said, "Yeah, Dad, I was riding home on the subway today thinking yeast is cool."
Transcript: Session 1
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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