Are you Courageous?

If I asked you to name a courageous man in India, what would be your answer? “William Carey!”, someone might say reading about his pioneering missionary work in India. Maybe Gandhi, given his non-deterrent and determinant spirit in his struggle for Indian freedom. Or even Anna Hazare for his single-handed manhandling of the UPA government. Some might even argue with me for my gender insensitivity when calling out for the “courageous”. Often we look up to towering heroes who’ve moved mountains economically, politically or socially and call them courageous, but little do we think of men who faithfully lead their families in the way of righteousness as courageous. Don’t get the idea? Then you need to watch the movie Courageous. 

Family worship Part 3: How to conduct Family Worship

Some of you may be wondering after reading my previous post, “Fine, it all sounds quite biblical, but I’m not sure we can pull this together given our haphazard schedules!“. I understand this predicament. But think about it for a moment: aren’t misplaced priorities the culprits for our chaos? And should not sound family worship be the fulcrum on which all else is laid and balanced? My firm belief is that if we get this right, every other disorder will settle in it’s place with time (Matt 6:33), and I’ll show you in a minute that family worship can be less an ordeal and more a tie that binds your family together.

What constitutes Family Worship?

Before we take a plunge into the practice of Family Worship, it’s important to understand the necessary intersections and differences between corporate worship in the common assembly of God and in the family. Many have sought to replace one with another calling a Sunday morning worship at the breakfast table as “church” or making sunday school a replacement for sound teaching that should begin at home.

The Family, as we saw in my earlier post, is not an independent, cocooned institution. The family is

Family worship

Some problems are unique to our age. I once heard about an Indo-American youth who was busy rattling off on his computer at home, when his mom told him about his aunt’s ill health. The bug never bothered him, and he continued without missing a keystroke and nonchalantly replied, “Oh, that’s ol’ news. Gran’ma shared it with me a week ago”. You see, Gran’ma was 8000 miles away in India, but the lad was “deeply connected” with his sassy-savvy Gran’ma through Facebook. Pity the mom, she was too late to catch up with her next room son. Often times, in our virtually connected world with ironically compartmentalized homes, each one of us have become private bees having enormous public lives in our workplace and in the online space, such that we are too busy for our family. Some of us catch up with Scripture reading while running to catch a bus and fast our family meal times for fast-food times. It would be surprising in our day and age to witness a family sitting together peacefully at the breakfast table and sharing a meal together. It’s simply unthinkable. Given this context, talking about Family worship would be such a taboo. However,

Revisiting the story of Christmas – Part 2

In my previous post, I had addressed some common issues with Christmas as a festival from the historical viewpoint. Most of you may have already heard some of these arguments and still feel that today’s context lends very little for us to believe that Christmas could be pagan. Personally for our family, the conviction came not from history, but from a proper understanding of what is commonly known today as Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW), which patterns out clearly from the whole tapestry of Scripture. In order to understand this principle, one has to first believe and affirm Tota Scriptura (All of Scripture is sufficient for life and godliness – 2Tim 3:16,17 ) as well as Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone is sufficient for life and godliness - 2Pet 1:3 ). 

Revisiting the story of Christmas

Last year, a cousin of mine, who is a Hindu, wrote to me just about this time, mentioning the coincidence of his date of travel with Christmas. He assumed the day was important to me and I politely shocked him otherwise. For a minute, he was confused. “You are a Christian right? Isn’t 25th of December Christmas? Have you nothing to say on that note”? He’s right. I’m Christian. 25th of December is celebrated as Christmas. And I do have something to say on why we, as a family, don’t celebrate Christmas.

The Sanctifying Sink

Housework is every  woman’s dreaded disease. I’ve never come across a woman who told me, “I just love my work at home – cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning – is what I was made for!” Seriously, if you stack that up against a brawn, slick, smart woman of the 21st century working her way through the world, it does make a homemaker look like a wimp.

I wish I could set that record straight, right now and make every homemaker feel there’s more to the home than dish-washing and cleaning, but