Dedicated Christian parents work hard and pray diligently that their children will develop a strong and growing faith in their years at home. It's one of the most rewarding parts of parenting to watch this happen, and we want to make sure that faith continues to flourish as they leave our homes and go out into the world. That is why one of our greatest fears is that the secular university and its aggressively atheistic professors will lead our kids like away from the faith. Many Christian parents avoid secular schools for this very concern.

But do the years and experiences of college actually contribute to our young people losing or walking away from their faith? The answer - and the reasons for it - might surprise you.

Leading scholars have examined this question using sophisticated and reliable research methodologies, publishing their findings in premier sociological journals.

In the last few years, social scientists have "found that the religiously undermining effect of higher education . . . has disappeared." Professor Christian Smith, a world-renowned sociologist of religion from Notre Dame University (and a faithful Christian parent himself) explains that recent investigations published in the Review of Higher Education reveal,

[T]hat among recently surveyed college students, 2.7 times more report that their religious beliefs have strengthened during their college experience than say their beliefs weakened. (1)

Research from the University of Texas-Austin delivers more good news, finding that young people who avoid college "exhibit the most extensive patterns of religious decline" compared to those who do attend college. (2) They explain the loss of faith among the non-college attending young adults has little to do with secularizing ideology, but simply results from a lack of intentionality and direction in their lives. Those who seem to drift through these formative and transitional years with no definite goals or plans likely bring this same attitude and action to their faith life.

Christian Smith explains that one careful and comprehensive review of the research literature on this question over the last few decades shows that a "clearly perceptible change appears to have begun in the 1990s" regarding the impact of college attendance on one's faith.

Professor Smith observes three primary and very interesting reasons why the university is not the faith-shredder we imagine it to be:

1)    The increase in presence and effectiveness of campus-based ministries like Campus Crusade, InterVarsity, and Young Life.

2)    The increase of relativism and the decline of strict scientism, which allows for discussion of faith and spiritual speculation, similar to what Paul experienced at the Aeropagus.

3)    An increase in committed evangelical and Catholic faculty at secular universities in America who can serve as an encouragement and balance for Christian students.

Smith adds this interesting note of explanation,

More broadly, adolescents today are generally quite conventional, and specifically so with regard to religion - less rebellious, for instance than they were during the baby boom generation - and so are generally content to continue in the faith traditions in which they were raised, however much that faith may or may not mean to them.

He continues with a very surprising, but important observation that has great merit,

And at the very general level, American culture and perhaps Western culture seems to have shifted from a secular to a post-secular era in which secularist assumptions are no longer simply taken for granted but are rather on the table for questioning and religion is increasingly considered a legitimate topic of discussion -- a cultural shift that has likely much affected contemporary youth. (3)

An important lesson we should take from findings like this is that time and culture do not remain fixed or stagnant.

What was true just a few decades ago can change today, for both good or ill, and for very interesting and unsuspected reasons. We must pay attention to the cultural changes happening under our feet and what they bring about so we are not stuck in believing truths that have, over time, transformed into myths.

Sources:

(1) Christian Smith, Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 248-249.

(2) Jeremy E. Uecker, Mark Regnerus, Margaret Vaaler, "Losing My Religion: The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood," Social Forces, (2007) 85: 1-26; Regnerus and Uecker, "How Corrosive is College to Religious Faith and Practice?" Social Science Research Council, February 2007, p. 3.

(3) Smith, 2009, p. 249, 250.

Other articles in this series:

Does 'Abba' Mean 'Daddy'?

C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton Quotes

Burning Your Ships for Jesus

Misquoting Francis of Assisi

The Cross an Electric Chair?

Divorce Rate Among Christians

Do Faithful Christians Take the Bible Literally?

Is the 'I Only Need Jesus!' Declaration Christian?

Who Really Started the Family 'Culture War'?

Are Your Kids Likely to Lose Their Faith?

Are Millennials More Self-Sacrificing and Community-Minded Than Previous Generations?

My nightstand is a mess—the biggest eyesore in our bedroom (according to my wife). I have about 30 books piled up on top of each other. I'm constantly reading, and I'm always reading more than one book at a time. I have everything from books I've been asked to endorse to books I'm consulting for my current sermon series to books I'm reading for fun.

I'm also a curious reader, which means I'm always reading books by people just to find out how they write and what they say about certain things—which means I'm not simply reading books by people within my theological tradition. One of my concerns about some who would consider themselves "reformed" is that they only read books by other "reformed" people. This, in my opinion, is a big mistake. And when some do read books outside their own theological tradition, they only do so with an eye to critique instead of an eye to learn. At least this was my mistake for far too many years. I graduated from a well-known reformed seminary (and am unbelievably grateful for the education I received there), and I never heard of any of the books, theologians, or scholars I list below (except one). I have, therefore, greatly varied my reading over the past five years or so and am reading many more books by writers, thinkers, and scholars outside of my theological  tradition. Seven years ago I heard Tim Keller say, "When you read one thinker, you become a clone. Two thinkers, you become confused. Ten thinkers, you begin developing your own voice. Two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise."

So a few books on my nightstand right now include: Humble Orthodoxy by Joshua Harris, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought by Gerhard Ebeling, The Foolishness of Preaching by Robert Capon, On Being a Theologian of the Cross by Gerhard Forde, The Mockingbird Devotional by Ethan Richardson and Sean Norris (eds.), The Genius of Luther's Theology by Robert Kolb and Charles Arand, This American Gospel by Ethan Richardson, Between Noon and Three by Robert Capon, The Reconstruction of Morality by Karl Holl, Living by Faith by Oswald Bayer, Handling the Word of Truth by John Pless, and How to Talk So People Will Listen by Steve Brown.

I'm learning, in the words of Eugene Peterson, that "discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own." The way many of us think about sanctification is, well, not very sanctified. In fact, it's terribly narcissistic. We spend too much time thinking about how we're doing, if we're growing, whether we're doing it right or not. We spend too much time pondering our spiritual failures and brooding over our spiritual successes. Somewhere along the way we've come to believe that the focus of the Christian faith is the life of the Christian.

Ironically, I've discovered that the more I focus on my need to get better, the worse I actually get—I become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with our performance over Christ's performance for us actually hinders spiritual growth because it makes us increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective—the exact opposite of how the Bible describes what it means to be sanctified. Sanctification is forgetting about yourself. "He must increase but I must decrease" (John 3:30) properly describes the painful sanctification process. "Decreasing" is impossible for the one who keeps thinking about himself. As J. C. Kromsigt said, "The good seed cannot flourish when it is repeatedly dug up for the purpose of examining its growth." Thankfully, the focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. The gospel frees us from ourselves. It announces that this whole thing is about Jesus and dependent on Jesus. The good news is the declaration of his victory for us, not our "victorious Christian life." The gospel asserts that God's final word over a Christian has already been spoken: "Paid in full."

There are four books I've re-read a few times in the last two years: Living by Grace by William Hordern, The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz, Who Will Deliver Us? by Paul Zahl, and Sanctification by Harold Senkbeil. All four of those books have been extremely helpful to me personally and theologically. They've helped me better understand my sin, God's grace, and the distinction between the law and the gospel. They've guided me through deep and wide pastoral challenges and, I think, made me a better preacher, pastor, and counselor.

What are your favorite fiction books?

I'm not a huge reader of fiction. I consider that to be a weakness in my reading habits, not a strength. I would strongly encourage readers of theology to increase their reading of fiction. When our reading habits become one-dimensional, our thinking becomes one-dimensional. But three fiction books that have profoundly influenced me are Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz, and The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.

**********

Also in this series: Jared Wilson and Kathy Keller.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush was recently criticized for claiming that immigrants are more "fertile" than native-born Americans (he's mostly right). Bush's statement, along with debates about immigration reform and the latest news from the Census Bureau, have brought an issue that many people are confused about -- demography -- into the national spotlight. Here are 9 things you should know about demography and demographic trends.

1. Populations and subpopulations can change through three processes: fertility (the number of children that women have), mortality (the number of deaths that occur), and migration (the movement of persons from a locality of origin to a destination place across some pre-defined, political boundary). Demography is the statistical study of human populations and these changes.

2. Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. In developed countries, such as the United States, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman. This means that 100 women will bear 211 children, 103 of which will be females. About 3% of the alive female infants are expected to die before they bear children, thus producing 100 women in the next generation. In countries with high infant and child mortality rates, however, the average number of births may need to be much higher.

3. Total fertility rate represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with current age-specific fertility rates. From 2008-2012, the fertility rates for the countries with the highest population was: China (1.6); India (2.6); U.S. (1.9); Indonesia (2.1); Brazil (1.8).

4. Fertility rates began falling in Western, industrialized countries in 1968 (oral contraceptive, first introduced in 1960, had become widely used by then). By 1975, every Western First World nation was below the replacement rate. Over the course of the next two decades, massive fertility decline spread worldwide: In 1979, the global fertility rate was 6.0; today it's 2.52 and still declining.

5. Most population models suggest we are currently at "peak child," that is, the world currently has about 2 billion children and that number is likely to decline over time, not increase. Because of this, the world population will peak at 10 billion before declining.

6. In the U.S., the largest population group — whites who are not Hispanic — recorded more deaths than births last year for the first time ever. Between July 2011 and July 2012, an estimated 12,400 more white Americans died than were born. (The number of whites still increased slightly last year because immigration more than compensated for the gap between births and deaths.) Demographers have long expected that deaths among the non-Hispanic white population ultimately would outpace births, but they didn't expect it until the end of the decade.

7. Sub-replacement level fertility rates can have a wide-ranging effect on everything from marriage to sex trafficking to global conflict. For example, demographic projections suggest that by 2030 more than 25 percent of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have married. As demographer Nicholas Eberstadt points out, "The coming marriage squeeze will likely be even more acute in the Chinese countryside, since the poor, uneducated, and rural population will be more likely to lose out in the competition for brides. Beijing will have to determine how it will cope with a growing demographic of unmarried, underprivileged, and, quite possibly, deeply discontented young men."

8. Countries can sometimes offset low fertility rates by increasing immigration. According to Eberstadt, the U.S. population, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections, is set to grow by 20 percent, or over 60 million people (from 310 million to 374 million), between 2010 and 2030. By such projections, the population growth rate of the U.S. will nearly match India's. Virtually every age group in the country is set to increase in size over the next 20 years. Unlike all other affluent countries, the United States can expect a growing pool of working-age people (a moderate but steady rise averaging 0.5 percent per year over the next 20 years).

9. According to the World Bank, the nations with the largest proportions of unbelievers had an average annual population growth rate of just 0.7% in the period 1975-97, while the populations of the most religious countries grew three times as fast.

Recent posts in this series:

9 Things You Should Know About Fathers and Father's Day

9 Things You Should Know About Mothers and Mother's Day

9 Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain

9 Things You Should Know About Planned Parenthood

9 Things You Should Know About the Boston Marathon Bombing

9 Things You Should Know About Female Body Image Issues

9 Things You Should Know About the Gosnell Infanticide and Murder Trial

9 Things You Should Know About Edith Schaeffer

9 Things You Should Know About Duck Dynasty

Last night, as if on cue, the cicadas began their summer serenade. I love their mechanical, monotonous, lullaby-like whirring, welling up at dusk on a heat-laden summer evening. From my childhood it has been a sound bound tightly to all that is summer—a chorus signifying the return of stillness, an invocation to rest, rest, rest.

After nine months of school, activities, and friends, the four Wilkin kids are once again fully present in our home. Our summer will be marked by some travel (cousins who need to enjoy our company), some learning (good books to be read, good recipes to try), and some household chores that never seem to get done during the school year (it cannot be an accident that the number of dirty windows in my home divides neatly by four). But the highest item on our summer agenda, and the one we all look forward to the most, is rest. There will be time to listen to the cicadas.

Here is a remarkable thing about the Christian faith: we have a God who commands us to rest. Our God commands us to hold still, to cease from labor, to actively enter into repose—not merely as a means to regain our strength, but as an act of worship.

The gods of other religions and the god of self, these demand ceaseless toil. To please these gods, worshipers work incessantly at the business of self-denial, approval-seeking, pilgrimage—repeated rites that strive to prove the worth of the supplicant and earn the favor of the deity.

Those who seek the approval of lesser gods commit themselves to a course of utter exhaustion. But not the Christian. In our obedient observance of rest, the work of our Savior is understood most clearly. We rest not as an attempt to earn his approval, but as an assent that his approval has already been earned in the sun-going-down, Sabbath-initiating work of Christ on the cross. Christ worked that we may rest. He, in a gathering dusk, exhaling the first note of a blood-bought chorus of infinite rest.

The God who grants us soul-repose commands our worship in the form of bodily rest. The worshiper is blessed in obedience. Restored and ready, he resumes the effort of tilling his corner of the garden. More importantly, he's reminded that both the garden and also the one who tills are contingent and derived, depending every moment on the sustaining breath of the Creator. He is thereby mercifully relieved of his idolatrous, exhaustion-breeding belief that the work of his hands upholds the universe in part or in whole.

This is a good and timely reminder for our family.

Nothing obstructs our ability to fulfill the Great Command like exhaustion. In the daily busyness of life-as-usual, the love of many grows cold. But the rest the Lord ordains for his people is a communal rest, a rest that places them in company with one another, hands emptied of labor, minds emptied of cares. Because emptied hands can deal the next round of spades, or make a dandelion chain, or pass around the popsicles. And emptied minds can join in the conversation bubbling up from the back of the minivan.

Love grows warm once again in the emptied spaces of rest. We remember our love for the One who sustains us, we recall our love for the ones who surround us. Worshipful rest renews our love for God and for others. It is the rest that restores our souls.

Summer is, for our family, a time when the worship of work gives way to the worship of rest. We will not fill these precious days with more ways to be distracted, exhausted, and pulled in a thousand directions. The evensong of the cicadas invites us to join in the worship of loving God and each other with renewed intent, awash with gratitude that our souls find rest in the finished work of Christ.

Well did Shakespeare observe that "summer's lease hath all too short a date." Before we know it, the season of work will return to claim its laborers. So we will heed the invocation of the cicadas to rest, rest, rest—knowing that our rest here is as vital as it is brief, longing for that future rest when our Sabbath-song of worship, once raised, will redouble and reverberate across eternity.

It's Wednesday morning, and I'm sitting at a conference table in the middle of a mega-church cafe. Picture the greatest Starbucks you've ever seen, but for church people, meaning any way they can fit a Biblical word or phrase like He-Brews into something that relates to a coffee drink...they do.

Today I happen to be surrounded by ten or so worship leaders from surrounding communities who were invited to come together to share their trade secrets and insider knowledge about all things related to the ministry of worship arts. It's no surprise that the conversation moves from light chit-chat about media and tech, to horror stories involving computer crashes, bad drummers and why church organs are actually ironic and awesome again. Up to this point, I've admittedly been a quiet, distracted observer, checking my I-Phone in between sips of my Psalted Caramel Mocha when suddenly the conversation shifts to who among us brings in musicians to lead worship who are not, well, saved.

Ok, now they have my attention.

To keep reading visit our new TGC Worship blog.

The Story: At the recent Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) claimed that America has a moral responsibility to project Christian values while Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the United States is effectively funding wars on Christianity by sending money to nations like Egypt and Syria.

The Background: On Thursday, Sen. Paul said, "It's clear that American taxpayer dollars are being used in a war against Christianity." Paul said the U.S. war in Iraq led Christians to flee a secular country that had otherwise been "a relatively safe place for Christians," and that Christians are now being hunted in nearby nations like Syria. "These countries are not our allies, and no amount of money is going to make them so," Paul said. "It makes no sense. Should we be sending F-16s and tanks to Egypt when (President Mohammed) Morsi says Jews are descendants of apes and pigs?"

Sen. Rubio took a different approach, referring to Matthew 5, in which God calls upon his people to be a light in the world. Rubio said, "If America's light is extinguished, there is no other light. We are called not to hide our light but to shine it. If we lose the will ... there is nothing to replace us."

"This call for us to silent ourselves and stop speaking about the values we know work is a big mistake," Rubio said.

"If we're encouraged to be silent ... then who will say it instead of us?" he said. "Who will be the salt if we are not the salt?"

Why It Matters: If our options are these two choices—protecting Christians or promoting Christian values—which should we choose? While Christians may differ on the question—and some will claim we should choose neither—it seems the morally responsible answer is that we should choose both.

Some Christians in America believe, as do most secularists, that religious belief has no role to play in shaping foreign policy. But since all politics is rooted in religious presuppositions, all policies are shaped by some form of religious belief. It hardly seems wise for Christians to adopt the preferences of secularism rather than give credence to the commands of Christ. Foreign policy is merely an extension of the same principles that should drive our domestic policy—a God-impelled love of neighbor.

Sen. Rubio is right that whenever possible we should promote Christian values such as justice, mercy, and religious tolerance. But one of the values that should take precedence is protection of the innocent, particularly when they are members of the institution that commands our primary political allegiance—the body of Christ.

When it comes to actions that affect our brothers and sisters across the globe, a guiding concern should be primum non nocere, "first, do no harm." That can't be our only consideration, of course, but it should be given due weight. We should be particularly wary of allowing some vague "national interest" trump our "familial interest," especially when it leads to the displacement and slaughter of Christians around the globe.

How such policies should be shaped is a difficult question and requires considerable prudence. But one of our duties as American citizens is to lobby for policies we think are moral and just. That duty does not end at our shorelines but extends to the lands of our brothers and sisters who we will not see until we are together in our final home.

We are not strong but weak. How are we weak? Well, how aren't we weak? Brokenness, unmet needs, emptiness, confusion, weariness, unbelief, fear, dullness, depression, bewilderment, sin—we can be so overwhelmed with the crushing weight of this existence that we don't even know how to pray. The very enormity of our struggles silences us. We don't know what to pray for, as Paul says in Romans 8:26. We may be paralyzed in helpless indecision. We may be too distressed to utter a coherent prayer at all. We are weak.

Christians are not always on top of things. Where in the Bible are we taught to expect unruffled composure and unbroken victory? Sometimes life is so troubling, we feel defeated even in prayer. And if we cannot pray, we are really in trouble. At that very moment when we most need to draw upon God's promises through prayer—what if we fail at that vital point of connection, when it really counts? Will our weakness bungle the purpose of God? Under normal conditions we tell ourselves that, when all else fails, we can fall back on prayer. But what if we do come to the end of ourselves and our own devices only to discover we don't even know what to pray, we don't understand how to connect the Bible with our experience, and God himself seems far away? What then? What encouragement can we look to beyond our own radical weakness?

When we're reduced to helplessness, the Holy Spirit will help us. Have you ever thought of the Holy Spirit as a gracious person who steps in with the offer: "May I help? May I bear that burden with you? You're in anguish over your children. You feel forsaken by God. You don't know how to negotiate that important decision. You're lonely. You're tempted. You're sinful. You need to pray. May I help?" The Holy Spirit does not reproach us. In fact, he "gives generously to all without making them feel foolish or guilty" (James 1:5, Phillips).

But how does the Holy Spirit help us? Now we enter into deep mystery. The Spirit helps us, Paul explains, by interceding for us. When we are too defeated and confused to pray, when the familiar phrases just don't seem adequate anymore, when all we can do is groan, the Spirit makes his own appeal on our behalf.

Prayer is more profound than folding our hands and closing our eyes and mouthing well-worn phrases. James Montgomery's (1771-1854) hymn has long recognized this:

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,

unuttered or expressed,

the motion of a hidden fire

that trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

the falling of a tear,

the upward glancing of an eye

when none but God is near.

This, too, is prayer, both urgent and profound. And it's in mo­ments like these, when the heart moves even beyond words, that the "the Spirit himself"—the Spirit personally and directly, in imme­diacy and nearness—helps by interceding for us "with groanings too deep for words."

Ole Kristian Hallesby (1879-1961) was a Norwegian theologian who stood for biblical truth in an age of doctrinal erosion. He also resisted the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II and suffered for it in a concentration camp. He understood the depth of prayer. In his book on the subject he wrote this:

I have witnessed the death-struggle of some of my Christian friends. Pain has coursed through their bodies and souls. But this was not their worst experience. I have seen them gaze at me anxiously and ask, "What will become of me when I am no longer able to think a sustained thought, nor pray to God?"

If they only realized what they were doing, the people who postpone conversion until they become ill! My friend, in the death-struggle your physical and mental energies will all be taxed to their utmost by your suffering and pain. Remember that and repent now, the acceptable time.

When I stand at the bedside of friends who are struggling with death, it is blessed to be able to say to them, "Do not worry about the prayers that you cannot pray. You yourself are a prayer to God at this moment. All that is within you cries out to Him. And He hears all the pleas that your suffering soul and body are making to Him with groanings which cannot be uttered. But if you should have an occasional restful moment, thank God that you already have been reconciled to Him, and that you are now resting in the everlasting arms."¹

Editors' note: This excerpt is adapted from Ortlund's new book, Supernatural Living for Natural People: The Life-Giving Message of Romans 8 (Christian Focus, 2013). 

This Sunday is the day Americans set aside to honor their fathers. Here are 9 things you should know about dads and Father's Day.

1. After listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909, Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash. wanted a special day to honer her father, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm. The first Father's Day celebration, June 17, 1910, was proclaimed by Spokane's mayor because it was the month of Smart's birth.

2. The first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was issued in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Father's Day has been celebrated annually since 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

3. The rose is the official flower for Father's Day. Wearing a red rose signifies a living father, while white one represents a deceased father.

4. Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June in many countries in the world, including Canada, China, France, Greece, India, and Japan.

5. According to a 2012 poll from market-research firm Ipsos, most dads would prefer to either spend quality time with their families on Father's Day (40%) or receive no gift at all (22%). Gift cards were a distant third, at 13%.

6. Based on the unpublished Census data (2008), there are an estimated 70.1 million fathers across the nation. 24.4 million were part of married-couple families with children younger than 18 in 2012. 21 percent were raising three or more children younger than 18 (among married-couple family households only).

7. In the U.S., there are an estimated 189,000 stay-at-home dads (compared to 5 million stay-at-home moms). These married fathers with children younger than 15 have remained out of the labor force for at least one year primarily so they can care for the family while their wife works outside the home. These fathers cared for upward of 369,000 children.

8. There are 1.96 million single fathers (compared to 10.3 million single mothers) living with children younger than 18 in 2012; 16 percent of single parents were men. About 44 percent were divorced, 31 percent were never married, 20 percent were separated, and 5 percent were widowed.

9. Fathers have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend with their children, from 2.5 hours in 1965 to 7.3 hours per week in 2011, according to a Pew Research report that analyzed years of time-use data. Despite that increase, 46% of fathers said they spent too little time with their children, compared with 23% of mothers who said the same; half of dads said they spent the right amount of time.

Recent posts in this series:

9 Things You Should Know About Mothers and Mother's Day

9 Things You Should Know About Pornography and the Brain

9 Things You Should Know About Planned Parenthood

9 Things You Should Know About the Boston Marathon Bombing

9 Things You Should Know About Female Body Image Issues

9 Things You Should Know About the Gosnell Infanticide and Murder Trial

9 Things You Should Know About Edith Schaeffer

9 Things You Should Know About Duck Dynasty

There was no way the crusted blueberry bits were going to come off this cup without some serious work on my part. I started talking to myself aloud. (Do you do this too?) "I don't have time for this," I mumbled. I gritted my teeth and set to scrubbing with vigor, and when my husband, Dave, passed by the kitchen I let out an exasperated sigh and exaggerated my scrubbing efforts. "Gee, I hope I can get this cup clean. You didn't rinse it out."

Dave apologized and said he had simply forgotten.

How rude, I thought. He knows how much work I do. The least he could have done was rinse out the cup. Rude . . . But really, I was the rude one, and I knew it. The Holy Spirit brought to mind the famous love passage in 1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Cor. 13:4-8)

The New International Version translates verse 8 as "love never fails."

I knew I had failed to show love. Again. I fail at this every day. What hope is there for me to sacrificially give away my life as Jesus did, when I can't even love others by doing something so menial like washing dishes? My only hope must be in the God who is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Ex. 34:6).

Does God Rule Your Mundane?

This is such a stereotypical example of my life. I'm the wife of a busy church planter and mother to three kids, four years old and under. We live in the Middle East where sand seeps into every crack in the windows and doors and leaves a gritty film all over the floor for me to sweep. I do eight loads of laundry and clip four sets of fingernails and toenails each week.

My life is all things ordinary.

I need this message of grace and hope every single day. That's because sometimes I launch into full-blown pity parties like the one you just read about. I used to think this sour kind of attitude about homemaking was necessary, acceptable, and even a rite of passage. After all, a common encouragement to someone in the midst of the trenches in homemaking or raising children is to console them with thoughts of "this, too, shall pass." We "grin and bear it" and talk about everything we're going to do "someday" when we "get our real life back."

Those colloquial phrases used to be the summation of my hope. I believed that if I could just get through this awful and seemingly interminable season, then I would come out on the other side bruised and worn down; but at least it would be over. Perhaps then I would be free to serve the Lord with gladness, and I would be content.

But I was wrong.

When I attended a marriage conference taught by Paul Tripp, he said something that devastated me. Tripp said, "If God doesn't rule your mundane, then he doesn't rule you. Because that's where you live." Dramatic, life-altering moments come only a few times during our lifetime—that's why they're dramatic. The rest of our lives are lived in the common, ordinary mundane.

Home managing is my ordinary. Regardless of what your normal is, I'm sure we can agree that that's where we live.

Jesus Died for Me—I Can Trust Him

Grace humbles me. That Jesus would allow himself to be led like a lamb to slaughter and not answer those who reviled him it takes my breath away. That God would send his Son to die for me and purchase for me "an inheritance that is imperishable undefiled, and unfading" (1 Pet. 1:4)—I am undone.

The joy of the Lord motivates and strengthens me to give my time to serve others in washing their dishes while looking forward in faith to hear my Savior say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant." As I joyfully and humbly give my time and energy to do the dirty dishes my husband left behind, I lose nothing and gain everything.

Living in the reality of this gospel and the future promise of glory motivates me to love others as Jesus loves. I have received mercy in Christ Jesus (1 Pet. 2:10). This afternoon at my kitchen sink I must be confident that what he promises for me in the future will come to pass. That's faith.

So here I am at my kitchen sink, scrubbing crusty blueberry bits off the inside of a cup. But instead of grieving over my inadequacies to serve joyfully or gloating with pride that I've restrained my evil tongue from making snide remarks, an entirely different dynamic is at work.

It's faith working through love (Gal. 5:5-6).

God works in me through his Word (1 Thess. 2:13). This gift of grace enables me to praise the Lord and serve others gladly as I confess with tears of joyful relief, "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever" (Rom. 11:36).

Even in my darkest doubts when I do the same thing again the next day, my hope is still built on the righteousness of Christ. The gospel keeps me relating to God on the basis of Jesus' perfections, not on the illusions of my religious achievements. God strengthens me and protects me according to his faithfulness, not mine (2 Thess. 3:3). So I can scrub dried blueberry bits as unto the Lord as my heart is satisfied in God because his kindness to me in Christ leads me to repentance again and again.

Miraculous in the Mundane

Do you see how everyday life presents opportunities for our growth in holiness? God can use the ordinary moments in your life to glorify himself by conforming you into the image of his Son. That is precisely what he intends to do.

Dirty dishes in the sink is not just a worrisome ordeal in your otherwise uneventful day. It's an opportunity to see glimpses of grace.

Excerpt taken from Glimpses of Grace by Gloria Furman copyright ©2013. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

By God's grace, all of our TGC13 conference media—78 talks—are now available, with translations of all plenary sessions and selected workshops in Mandarin, Farsi, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. All of this content is free to be used and shared around the world. As our founding documents state, TGC's desire is "to serve the church we love . . . in an effort to renew the contemporary church in the ancient gospel of Christ." To that end, we hope you will be instructed, edified, and spurred on by this content from our fourth biennial National Conference. May Jesus alone be exalted.

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