Posts that contain content related to living a Christian life.
The deleavening that you do leading up to the Days of Unleavened Bread can bring some sweet, sweet meditations. There are a lot of lessons packed into that crumb-sweeping! Today, we flash back to some lessons we’ve learned, and we hope they inspire you to do some meditating yourself this season. [BTW: The Apple Podcast is taking a while to load. We’ll come back and add it when it is up, too!]
One of the biggest complaints I ever heard from my students was about the school’s dress code, and these complaints sometimes caused me to think about the relationship between female modesty and male thoughts. The students had been told that boys were easily distracted by female dress—hence, at least one of the reasons to have a dress code. While the students did not like to acknowledge that connection, the Bible also points out in 1 Timothy 2:9 that women should “adorn themselves in modest apparel” and focus more on “the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:1-6). Young ladies in the Church are taught this principle and given instructions on how to put it into practice, and if you’re one of them, a great place to start is the companion to this post, Mrs. Jeanine Smith’s “Women and Modesty.”
But this post is for young men: When you think of modesty, do you think it only applies to the ladies? That can be a dangerous trap, for two reasons.
Read moreIn Muslim nations and communities, women dress in burkas or long-sleeved abaya in order to be considered appropriate in their culture. Yet in Indian culture, an exposed belly is not considered revealing—whether it is 20 years old or 80, and whether its size is 2 or 32. Meanwhile, in the United States, Amish women dress only in dresses comprised of a simple scoop-neck bodice attached to a loosely gathered straight skirt, and perhaps only pinned together, because pleats and buttons are considered too ostentatious.
Depending on where you live, culture does play into how one should dress. However, with a few exceptions here and there, most Western nations have a lot of leeway in what is considered appropriate or inappropriate for women to wear. But do we have that much latitude in God’s view?
Biblically, women should not be ashamed of their bodies. When God created Eve, He made her beautiful, and women are designed to want to be that way. Peter acknowledges that women want to be beautiful, and he extends that to beauty that is more than skin deep (1 Peter 3:3). Our character needs to be beautiful, and every godly woman wants to be beautiful on both the outside and the inside.
So, if God meant for women to be beautiful, why must Christian women be concerned with what they wear in public? Does God care if we wear yoga pants and a cropped sweatshirt to the mall? Does God care if we wear a low-cut blouse with a keyhole opening? Does God mind if, when we sit down and cross our legs, anyone in front of us can see halfway up our thighs? Although it is godly for women to desire to be beautiful, is that the same as being sexy—by definition, “sexually suggestive or stimulating”—in public?
Read moreToday we answer a question from a listener: With the world getting worse as Jesus Christ’s return approaches nearer, how should a young person think about his or her future?
I was working on organizing a new LCN article series about the four basic disciplines (Bible study, prayer, fasting, and meditation), and in doing so, I came across this sermon by Mr. Richard Ames on knowing your Bible. Toward the end, he discusses seven keys to knowing your Bible, and I thought that they sounded very helpful and worth passing on.
The embedded sermon video below is already cued up to begin at the very moment he begins discussing those seven basic keys. Jump in and have a listen!
Here is the July-August 2020 Tomorrow’s World article by Mr. Jonathan McNair that was referenced on this week’s podcast: “Should We Kiss Dating Hello?” Though it was written to parents, it is really instructive for anyone wanting to understand what we should be focusing on in different stages of our development, versus the priorities pressed on us by a world that sees us as “walking wallets” instead of growing human beings with an eternal future who are seeking to live a good life.
Just click here to go straight to it!
How do you deal with having a crush? It’s a popular question you’ve sent to us, and we tackle it on this week’s podcast.
Also, we’ll follow this up with another post that has a link to the Tomorrow’s World article by Mr. Jonathan McNair about dating, “Should We Kiss Dating Hello?”
Scroll below for the usual podcast platforms!
Tomorrow’s World