It’s that time of year again. The lights, wreaths, ornaments, mistletoes, and if your lucky; snow! Christmas is here, and with it comes the challenge some Christian parents face in regards to how to deal with Santa Clause? Do we mention Santa? Do we talk about the historical Saint Nick? How about the reindeer, presents, and Elves! When Brittany and I first had Liam it seemed like the opinions, perspectives, and thoughts were everywhere and we were faced with the somewhat daunting task of making a decision for our family. In all honesty, we are in a different place now than we were four years ago. We first made the decision that we would not engage Santa in any way. We felt that putting any emphasis on Santa would distract our kids from Jesus.

It wasn’t soon after that I listened to a sermon by Mark Driscoll about how we engage our culture. Driscoll states that we can accept, reject, or redeem culture. As I began to evaluate how we engaged Santa it seemed that our first approach, to reject, was not as practical or beneficial as we initially thought. In fact, in some ways it was harmful. Ultimately, I would encourage every parent to do what is best for their children in light of the Gospel. For Brittany and I, this meant changing our approach to redeeming the concept of Santa. When I say redeem it, I mean that we can take the concept, identify aspects that are helpful and in some ways actually point us to Jesus. In the same way we can take aspects that can be harmful and address them. Here are three reasons Brittany and I choose to redeem the concept of Santa.

Santa Provides An Opportunity to Engage Culture In A Meaningful Way

As we attempted to reject Santa, we faced the overwhelming challenge of all the Santa discussions, commercials, videos, and Santa imposters at the mall. How were we going to reject Santa but have our kids see it everywhere they turned? Then It dawned on us, what an incredible way for us to engage our culture through something that is so saturated at Christmas time! You don’t have to have any religious background to celebrate Santa. We have an opportunity to utilize Santa as a missional bridge to engage our loved ones and neighbors with the beautiful gospel message of Christ.

One of the common objections and resentment’s that I hear about Christians from non Christians is the perception that Christians can’t relate. It almost feels like Christians live in some other galaxy. We have an opportunity to show our culture and society that we are involved within culture and care about the development of culture within our society. In fact, this very much resembles how we are made in the likeness and image of God, Who after speaking all creation into existence, does not step back and out of human history. Rather, He steps into human history humbling himself to human flesh in order to engage and love humanity in the most personal and intimate way possible. As Hollywood began to produce Biblical epics and put them on the big screen I discussed how our engaging with theses movies are actually helpful and not harmful.

Related: Why I Love The Movie Exodus: Gods and Generals

Santa Provides Us With An Opportunity To Point To Jesus

Another serious problem Brittany and I faced was the reality that there was some hypocrisy in how we handled Santa. For instance, my kids love Avengers, Spiderman, Superman, Star Wars, anything that has good guys and bad guys they are into. I don’t reject these things. In fact, I love them, so I engage with them and pretend and play and we enjoy the story line of good and evil and watch how good always prevails. To take it a step further, how many of us have been to Disney Land? Here we are grown adults with our children taking pictures next to Mickey and other Disney characters. Is that wrong? No! For us, Santa falls in the same category. A fictional character similar to Superman or Batman who has some historical roots.

I love Hebrews 3 and I think as we read through the Bible we find that the common theme is simply, Jesus is better. One of the things I try to do with my boys is point out while we are watching super hero cartoons that as awesome as superman is, he is pretend and not real. However, we have a real Jesus who conquered sin and death and did real miracles who loves us! We have someone who is far better and real! As we talk about Santa and how people love the fact that he brings gifts, what a great way to say that there is someone even better than Santa. Jesus came and gave us the perfect give of salvation. One of the most important things that we can do is know who Jesus is.

Related: Seminary 101: Christ as Prophet, Priest, King

Santa Can Encourage Our God Given Gifts Of Imagination

God who is the definition of creative, gave us creative minds. It’s not a bad thing to exercise this creativity. In fact, as adults I think we have lost some of the wonder of imagination. When I watch my boys play and see them tie a towel around their neck as a cape and pick up whatever is around them as weapons and super hero gadgets I am reminded of how important imagination is for us. In fact, so much of what is in the Bible requires us to use our imagination as we wait in eager anticipation for coming of Christ. What does Heaven look like? What will our bodies look like? What do relationships look like in Heaven? Exercising our imagination now and allowing our children to exercise within some safe boundaries will only help them as they engage the scriptures.

Idolatry Can Be Found In Anything

Ultimately, the fear we had was of idolatry. We were afraid that Santa would steal the attention from Jesus and his birth. The reality is, there is so much idolatry going on in our lives all the time. Idolatry can be anything and will always rob us of the joy of Christ. The issue is never the object of our attention, rather our inner motivation. What an incredible opportunity to teach our kids that we can enjoy fun things which in turn cause us to be stirred up in our affections for Jesus.

The post Should Christian Parents Talk About Santa Clause? appeared first on Joel's Travels.

In the midst of tragedy, the faithfulness of God can be incredibly difficult to believe in. Through chaos often times we find ourselves distrusting the goodness of God which results in humanity trying to take matters in their own hands. Simeon and Levi are guilty of this in Genesis 34. Further, Jacob is seemingly silent and unaware of what is taking place in his own household. As he realizes what has happened and the implications that this will bring onto his family, he finds himself in great need once again of great rescue. Then, “God speaks”. God leads Jacob out of his tragedy and shows his faithfulness in spite of Jacobs faithlessness.

Our Remembrance Reaffirms The Truth That We Are Wholly Reliant On God For All Our Needs:

Remembering how God has rescued us gives us a sense of balance and places us in a position where we are not focusing on our works, ability, or self mean, but reaffirms the truth that we are wholly reliant on God for all our needs. In the same way that Jacob is reminded that his needs were and will continue to be met by God, we can also rest in this truth. It is incredibly easy for us to be distracted with what is around us. We can begin to place our trust and hope in our own means and abilities. Therefore, this principle of remembrance is formalized for the believer. Christ gave us the command to remember him as we take communion. As we partake in the wine we are to remember the blood that Christ spilled for his covenant people. As we eat the bread we are to remember the body of Christ that was beaten and broken.

Our Remembrance Produces A Grateful Heart:

This remembrance causes us first, to be grateful to this great God who became man, conquered sin and death, and reconciled the covenant people of God back to himself. Second, it causes the covenant community to rest in the sufficiency of Christ. We are reminded that once again, left to our own means we were aliens and enemies of God (Eph 2) destroying not only ourselves but also those closest to us. What a great reminder of the goodness of God to send his Son and restore His people. The result of is a tremendous relief. We no longer have the burden to produce or perform. We are no longer slaves to the law and feel the defeat of the chains and bondage that we place on ourselves. Rather we respond from a grateful heart as a people who have been reconciled and restored. We live in the truth of the Gospel which free’s us to love people just and Christ loved us. We can now look at others and see them as Christ see’s them. What an incredible blessing to live, move, and breath in light of our recollecting the saving grace of God.

Some of us are in bondage. We are putting ourselves under the bondage and chains of the law. We are motivated from fear or expectation rather than a Gospel reality of grace. We need now more than ever to remember that we will never be able to satisfy ourselves or achieve our hearts desires through our own means. We need to remember the Gospel and live in light of Gods free and unmerited grace.

Catch Up On Posts From The Series!

Theology of Remembrance Pt. 1 – “Our remembrance of the goodness of God stirs up our affections for Jesus”

The post Genesis 35: A Theology Of Remembrance Pt. 2 appeared first on Joel's Travels.

When Brittany and I first got married we always wondered who would be the tough parent and the easy parent. I quickly stated that I would be tough.

Moment of honesty:

I don’t like kids. It’s actually true. I’ve never been a kid person. That’s why I’ve always gravitated towards youth ministry and working with high school and college age students rather than little kids.

Hubris:

This experience lead me to believe that I would be immune to the charm, whinny voice, and utter smooth moves from these little creatures we call kids. Then I became a dad. Quickly it became evident that I was not the stoic father that was immune to childish charm. In fact, when it came to my first born, Liam, I fell pray to his wide eyed smile, cry, and whine almost every time. Brittany became the tough “cant get anything past me” mom. Then my second son Levi came. He has a different kind of charm. The kind where he does something incredibly naughty, looks at you in the face, smiles, and in a raspy voice says, love you daddy da. It gets me every time. My third son Lucas is only 4 months old. He already has the half smile with dimple smile down.

Traveling Life:

Then our lives took a twist. I transitioned into a new role at work where I spend a considerable more time traveling across the US and sometimes the world to present, speak, and teach workshops at conferences. One side affect I never considered would be how this impacted my desire to discipline my boys. I found myself on the road for 2-4 days at a time. When I came home my first thoughts were not about consistency in parenting or the 3-4 things Brittany had been working on the boys with. It was hugging, kissing, and playing with my boys. Even further, the simple thought of disciplining the boys was hard enough, I couldn’t really bring myself to do it. I became the dad who gave the “last warnings” and “second and ONLY chances”.

I quickly realized (Brittany helped a lot with this!) that my travel schedule was not an excuse for me not being present or active in the discipline of our children. In fact, my sons need discipline from their father. Proverbs 23 has it right, children should listen to their fathers instructions. The only way children can listen to their fathers instructions are if fathers are actually giving instruction!

Ways to be present in the discipline of my kids:

Here are a few ways I have tried to provide some course correction:

• Stay in the loop while I am away – Its easy to talk about surface level things with Brittany and the boys while I’m away. The best thing I can do is be intentional about what is happening in the lives of my kids and asking my wife how things are going with them. My wife serves as the window into everyday life when I’m gone. Our ability to communicate well is incredibly helpful as I stay in the loop on the wins and challenges at home.
• Engage in conversation with kids – While I’m away I want to discuss and talk about what has been going one during that day. I want to talk about what happened when Liam got in trouble for hitting his brother. Even though I am in a different state I want my sons to know that daddy is still present and cares about what they are doing. This type of daily recap and recollection is not only helpful for me, but also for my kids to consider the events of the day.
• Take your kids on dates – I give myself the freedom to have either a fun day. Basically, daddy takes the kids out to have fun. Typically, this just means we order pizza, have sword fights, throw the football around, or go to the park. Being able to just have fun with the kids gives me a release and is helpful as I step back into day to day dad living.

My kids need me to be their dad in all areas of their lives. @Muddamalle
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I’ve seen the disaster of parents that are physically or emotionally unavailable. It creates lasting challenges for their kids. The benefits of being godly and attentive parents are countless, and we will see those benefits played out as our kids become spouses and parents themselves one day.

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Related Posts:

• Four Ways To Stay Married With a Crazy Travel Schedule
•  Staying Dad While Traveling
• Being Road Sick

The post The Traveling Dad: The Challenge of Discipline appeared first on Joel's Travels.

1. Ask the question why

2. Pray for Ridley Scott, Christian Bale, and the cast and crew of Exodus

3. Engage your culture

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Christ has taken our nature into heaven, to represent us; and has left us on earth, with his…
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4. Be obedient to the Holy Spirit and your conscience

I don’t think that there is anything more clear than Jesus’ command in his High Priestly prayer (John 17) when in verse 18 he says, “ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world”. It is without a doubt that the intention of Christ was for his disciples to go into the world and engage the world by proclaiming the Gospel. There is no better example than Paul as he preaches on Mars Hill and engages his audience with their own philosophy and tradition as a bridge to tie them to the truth of the Gospel. Hopefully, we can take that example and do it today with opportunities in front of us.

The post Why I Love The Movie Exodus: Gods and Kings appeared first on Joel's Travels.