At TVN we reach out to the postmodern college student in order to raise up a generation of local church loving, family oriented, faith defending church planters, pastors, and missionaries. The campus tends to portray one of two lifestyles: a place to contend for Christ or an obstacle to experience Christ. [...]

Candance Chellew Hodge of Religion Dispatches has informed her readers a Presbyterian Judicial Council* for the PCUSA convicted Reverend Jane Spahr. The charges: legally marrying 16 gay or lesbian couples in California. The ceremonies were held before Proposition 8 was passed that banned a same-sex marriage. I read this headline and re-read the headline to make sure I had the correct denomination, PCUSA, could it be you really stood up for a literal reading of the biblical principles for marriage?

Nope. Not yet.

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The Veritas Network is young… but it’s much older than some people realize! Some have only been following TVN for a short few weeks, and others have been following for a short couple of months. The truth, however, is that we’ve been writing content articles for a year!

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Since 1973 when Roe v. Wade changed the landscape of the country there have been more than 50,000,000 aborted children. Even when the number of murders has decreased recently, there are still 1.3 million per year in the United States.

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The protection of children isn’t charity. It isn’t part of a political program fitting somewhere between tax cuts and gun rights or between carbon emission caps and a national service corps. It’s spiritual warfare.

Our God forbids Israel from offering their children, a demon-god, who demands the violent sacrifice of human babies (Leviticus 20:1-8). Indeed, he denounces Molech by name. He further warns that he will cut off from the people of God not only the one who practiced such sacrifice but also all who “at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech” (Lev. 20:4). Behind Molech, God recognizes, there is one who is “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

The spirit of Molech is at work among us even now. Even as you read this page, there are bones of babies being ground to unrecognizable bits, perhaps even a few short miles from where you are sitting. There are babies lying garbage receptacles, waiting to be taken away as “medical waste.” These infants won’t have names until Jesus calls them out for the first time. There are little girls waiting in Asia for a knock at the door, for an American businessman who’s paid a pimp to be able to sexually assault them. There are children staring out the window of a social worker’s office, rubbing their bruises as they hear their mother tell the police why she’ll never do it again.

Aborted babies can’t say, “Abba.” But the Father hears their cries anyway. Do we? p. 65-66

Why? It is precisely because being in Christ means recognition of the fatherhood of God. The abandoning or neglectful father blasphemes against such divine fatherhood with a counterportrayal that is not true of the blessed reality. p.71

When we adopt – and when we encourage a culture of adoption in our churches and communities – we’re picturing somthing that’s true about God. We, like Jesus, see what our Father is doing and do likewise (John 5:19). p. 73

-Russell Moore, Adopted for Life

In the United States, the average age for a man to get married is 28 years old.  To be realistic, there are some people with legitimate reasons to get married at a later age. For instance I know of more than a few people who put marriage off so they could serve as single missionaries out of college. But for the majority with Christianity not even in the background of their decision making, many young men and women do not even think about marriage until they have fooled around to their satisfaction long after college.

I’m privileged to lead two young men who think status quo sucks and they want to marry their brides to be…. earlier than everyone else.

While I applauded their decision because I hold a high view of marriage, I wanted to see why exactly these two men, Randy and Wayne, decided to go ahead and make the lifetime covenant at the ripe age of 21. So here’s a conversation that I had with them recently.

Ben: When the average age for a man to get married is 28, why are you not waiting?

Wayne: When I read the Bible here are the list of priorities I see: 1. God 2. Spouse 3. Children 4. Work. And when it comes to work, I don’t see a college degree as the highest concern, so I’m willing to take that one slower to get the other ones right.

Randy: We both feel like we are ready for the commitment that comes with marriage. We are excited about the growth in God, and each other marriage will bring and what God will teach us about His love through marriage. Personally, Lindsey and I have been dating for 5 years now, so it’s time.

Ben: What do you hope to accomplish in Marriage?

Randy: I hope first and foremost that our marriage will glorify the Creator of marriage. I hope to convey my love for my wife unconditionally and show my commitment to her both physically and emotionally. 

Wayne: Exactly, I want to glorify God by displaying his love for the Church through my love for Natalie. God is the number one priority, and my relationship with Natalie most resembles that.

Ben: What positive examples do you glean from currently married couples in your life?

Wayne: Parenting and Selflessness rise to the top of my list. When I look at the men that are doing a good job at being a husband, they are extremely selfless – always giving to their family and their wife. And every godly couple that I look up to have an extremely high commitment to raising godly children, it’s their main focus.

Randy: I learn from other married couples that commitment is not to be taken lightly. Sometimes we just say we are ready to commit ourselves for marriage, but truly doing that is a huge deal. From observance of other couples it is obvious to see how hard commitment can be and what it truly means. I will be challenged.

Ben: Wayne, what happens if you lose emotional affections for a period of time?

Wayne: The only option is commitment. You look at Jesus and he was committed to love to the point of the cross. Biblical love is not the same as affection, biblical love is sacrificial. When I keep sacrificing for Natalie as a priority, then my emotional affections will follow.

Ben: What do you see as your main responsibility as a husband in Marriage?

Randy: I see my responsibility to be to serve my wife unconditionally. I am learning what the role of head of the household truly means and will continue to learn it. Overall, my responsibility is to lead my wife and family through the principles of Scripture.

Wayne: Show honor to Natalie like 1 Peter 3:7 says. Lead here like Ephesians 5:22-30 describes and to lead in such a way she keeps God as the number one priority throughout all of life.

When I look back on the conversation with these men, I see two men who have taken heart to the Scriptures and refuse to believe otherwise. They are tired of nominal Christianity, a Christianity that says take care of your finances, school, and wild oats before you make the most boring decision of your life. Randy and Wayne see pursuing marriage as the most exciting and God glorifying decision they have ever made, and they were convinced of this from Scripture (cf. Ephesians 5:22-30; 1 Peter 3:7; Genesis 2:18-25; Proverbs 19:14; 31: 10-31).

I once heard David Platt say that sometimes it is necessary to study truth, meaning to dig in with ferocious teeth to discover what God means in Scripture. At other times our souls need to walk through the garden of God’s fellowship, meaning we need to stimulate our love and affections for the truth we already know and have already dug for.

While I was on my honeymoon last week, I was able to do that. I found out nothing will stir your affections to their maximum potential like getting married. The beauty of it was that God used my marriage weekend and the honeymoon not only to grow close to my wife, but to grow my heart in a deeper understanding of His love for us.

Here’s my list of four truths God brought near to me during my honeymoon.

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The World As We See It

1. Preventable diseases rule the world.

• An estimated 24,000 children die each day of  preventable disease and related causes.
• That is equivalent to the 2010 Haitian earthquake hitting every 9 days.
• By the time you have read this far, 4 children have breathed their last.

2. Slavery still exists.

• According to Anti-Slavery International, there are over 20,000,000 people in bondage today.
• If the United States represented the world population, every citizen in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Arkansas would be a slave.
• Each year approximately 600,000 – 820,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across political boundaries with the majority purpose being sex trafficking.
• By the time I posted this today, 891 people lost their dignity by the hand of a slave trader.

3. People Still Have No Access to the Gospel.

• Today, there are 6,770 unreached people groups.
• If one person decided to pray for an unreached people group before bed, he would finish on January 21…. 2028.
• There are 2,740,000,000 people living in an unreached people group.

The question: Will you open your eyes?

Thomas Caldwell of Cinema Autopsy said it best,

Knowing the details of how Inception unravels will not ruin the film for you but going into it as a blank slate is still the most rewarding way to initially experience it.

An ‘experience’ accurately depicts the complexities of psychological sci-fi coupled with jaw dropping visual effects. Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his team extract or incept an idea into their target via dreams. The beauty in this film is the fact they assume the right amount of information is possible and then explain the details. For instance, they assume that people can be connected to another person’s dreams in their subconscious, and then they explain how their interactions work once they are in there.

But, where true beauty exists in their writing, the assumptions can cause the viewer to be emotionally and mentally invested in the story where what is assumed can be translated into real life because the line of reality and sci-fi blurs. So, here are three themes or assumptions that Inception creates for the Christian to observe.

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What is Truth? It sounds like a question raised on today’s college campuses, but in fact was uttered to Jesus himself by Pilate, the Roman official that ordered his crucifixion. In John’s Gospel, we see the account of Jesus questioned by Pilate to investigate why everyone wanted him dead.

John 18:33-38 ³³ Then Pilate went back into the headquarters, summoned Jesus, and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” ³⁴ Jesus answered, “Are you asking this on your own, or have others told you about Me?” ³⁵ “I’m not a Jew, am I?” Pilate replied. “Your own nation and the chief priests handed You over to me. What have You done?” ³⁶ “My kingdom is not of this world,” said Jesus. “If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. As it is, My kingdom does not have its origin here.” ³⁷ “You are a king then?” Pilate asked. “You say that I’m a king,” Jesus replied. “I was born for this, and I have come into the world for this: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” ³⁸ Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

1.  Pilate chose Relativism over Truth.

No doubt Pilate was one of the most cultured men in the world at that time. His career gave him the opportunity to be more exposed to different cultures than any other. Why? Because he was a Roman official attempting to climb the ladder of the Empire. Caesar placed Pilate in Israel to keep them under Rome control while they still did their own thing as a nation. That’s why you see two types of legislation in the gospels: the Sanhedrin and the Roman officials.

The sight of religious practices came and went through Pilate’s eyes, so when Jesus challenged him by looking at this world through the reality of a coming Kingdom he had no concept of understanding Jesus. I speculate that Pilate’s life experience of governing other cultures caused him to deny an overarching story that summed up the fading away of this present world for a coming Kingdom.

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