The Fight Against Lust

By Faith magazine has a great article called, Lust: A Life and Death Matter. I highly recommend that you check it out.

Here is a great excerpt on one of the outcomes lust has:

Second, lust distorts our vision and leads us to see people as objects instead of what they are—unique masterpieces created in God’s image

Read The Rest Here

Resurgence: Masculinity Reclaimed

Over at Resurgence.Com they have just finished a great series about redeeming Biblical masculinity. Here is a good quote from the series.

Ladies in our churches, young and old, are not as horrified by an emphasis on reaching men as one might expect. Ultimately our women don't want to be surrounded by a crowd of wusses or a bunch of bullies. Biblical masculinity is such a rare commodity that women are usually attracted to it rather than repulsed (though this may surprise them at first).

Click Picture to see the whole series (Fellas, DO IT!!)

N.T. Wright Discusses Blogging

N.T. Wright offers some very good and convicting comments concerning blogging and its' power to suck you in and isolate you.

I have been thinking about this recently and am still praying about what limits or fasts I need to take for my own soul's sake, I submit you do likewise.

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

This is NT Wright's response to my question on his opinion of blogging during Imbi Medri-Kinnon's interview shoot with the Bishop of Durham in 2007. Portions of this interview appear in her documentary, Mind the Gap - where she looks at the challenge for church leadership in the 21st Century.

Intellectual Property/Copyright: This video may be embedded on blog posts where this particular topic is being discussed. Permission is NOT given to re-edit this or use it in any other context other than as a standalone video with the MKPL bug, opening and closing.

Props: Thinklings

Man Up!

That is what Jared Wilson is saying, and I totally agree with an AMEN!!

We live in a sick culture that allows people to cheat on their wife, not just cheat, but actually had devised software to help!?!

Then turns it around so they are the victims when all the consequences come down..disgusting!

This post from Jared was so needed and I strongly encourage you fellas to listen up!!

Here is an Excerpt:

Mark Driscoll yells at men and some Christians wring their hands about it. I say "Keep it up."

According to this Time article, traffic tripled to AshleyMadison.com (no, I won't hyperlink it) -- a website that helps men and women commit affairs -- the Monday after Father's Day.

What the heck?

The whiners in the article talk about things being tough in marriage.
Welcome to real life.

Click Here for the Rest, Including a Driscoll Video That Needs Watching By All Men

How To Be A Single Titus 2 Woman

Working with young adults means one thing for sure, relationships. Working on purity, working on a clear Biblical vision of what marriage is, and working on those struggling with singleness. One thing I have told many, is to not wait on the sidelines for that "special someone" but to live a godly life now, to live with reckless, passionate love for Jesus now.

Carolyn McCulley offers some great wisdom from her own personal experience being a single woman, on what it means to be a single Titus 2 woman. How do you be a woman in pursuit of honoring God, when so much of what the Bible talks about for women is linked to marriage and motherhood? Carolyn attempts to show that it can be done.

Here is an excerpt:

One area in where I have struggled is what femininity should look like for a single woman. Because the Lord made the woman to be a helper, the contours of biblical femininity are usually sculpted through relationships with others - as wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt. Though I am definitely a daughter, sister, and aunt, I am not (yet) a wife or mother. But I know that God created me female in his own image, and that he has given me this gift of singleness in this season of my life. These are not mutually exclusive concepts, but sometimes I still wrestle with how to express them both to the glory of God.

In late 1998, I moved to take a job as part of a church-planting ministry and to serve in a local church pastored by the pastor I met in South Africa, C.J. Mahaney. A year later, I attended a series of seminars on Titus 2 taught by his wife, Carolyn Mahaney. Through her teaching, I realized that of the seven qualities Paul urges Titus to have older women teach to younger women, only two are explicitly directed at married women and one to mothers. That leaves at least four for all women, married or single. Despite my marital status, I was to be self-controlled, pure, busy at home, and kind. That is a tall order no matter how you look at it, but it does not mean I can ignore the other three qualities. There are implications for single women in the commands to love husbands and children as well as for wives to be subject to their husbands. Based upon this passage, the following are some ways in which God has given me the grace to apply the Titus 2 virtues in my life and genuinely enjoy my femininity as a single woman.

Click to read the rest

The Driscolls on How Not To Marry a Coward

Mark and Grace Driscoll offer some great wisdom for ladies in trying to avoid marrying a coward.

Ladies, this is something I cannot plead with you enough on, what you may find cute right now will be painful in 5 years.

Men, you are to be the spiritual leader, you are to take the bullets, you are to protect, lead, guide and sacrifice. There are too many boys today, that are lazy, video game players, sports fanatics, gym rats who don't read their Bible, don't know how to sacrifice, neglect prayer and act like whiney little wimps. I am not even talking about physical strength, that's easy.

I am talking about the crap that I have seen, where men do not respect women, they do not see their calling to lead and serve, they actually expect to be led and served. It is disgusting. And God will eventually deal with you, either by breaking you in front of the Cross with repentance and grace. OR by judging you guilty, and unleashing His full wrath upon you for eternity.

In short: Men be Men. Ladies seek Men, not boys, no matter how "hot" they are!!

All Dudes Watch This Now!

Working in college ministry has done one thing for sure, opened my eyes to the amount of little boys there are in their 20's who pretend to be men, Mark Driscoll hits the nail on the head.


Props: K.Moore

C.S. Lewis On Keeping 1st Love 1st

“When, I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.” C.S. Lewis

A Longing For Marriage and Delight In The Lord

At The Well we are currently going through a series dealing with relationships and singleness. One of the topics we will hit on is contentment with your singleness. My boy Z sent me this link to a great "Ask Pastor John" segment dealing with this topic.



Go Here for more from John Piper

To Think About Dating, Start With Marriage

“The approach of this book is to start with the biblical principles of a healthy marriage and to work backwards to describe a healthy biblical dating relationship. Now a marriage proposal does not usually happen on a first date, nor would we advise that it should. But neither does a marriage really begin with a wedding. Whether we know it or not, the patterns we establish in dating continue into marriage. Therefore, the foundations for a healthy and godly marriage begin while we are dating.” Richard and Sharon Phillips, Holding Hands, Holding Hearts, pg. 13

Click Here to Buy This Book

Women are Amazingly Different

I work with a lot of young men who are thinking about marriage or dating. Often times I find that what we have to work past is not a desire to serve, but a desire to be served. Because of sin men are inherently selfish (women too, but for the sake of this post I am focusing on men) and are constantly judging how things affect them. I often hear from the dudes about how they want this or that in a girl and how this supposed “wonder woman” needs to conform to their passions and hobbies. To put it bluntly they want someone like themselves only with breasts. This is not a biblical model for how men should think about women we want to date. Women were made fundamentally different from us, God had intention in this and it is more than just biology. Men we were made to be alone, but we also were not made to be with carbon copies of ourselves. Chapter 1 of “Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating” by Richard and Sharon Phillips, gives some good wisdom pertaining to this:

“God created the woman, who was made of Adam but differently, so that Adam would know a love that was more than self-love.” (pg. 24)

“’The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. Adam lost a rib…but in lieu thereof he had a helpmate for him, which abundantly made up his loss.” (pg. 27, quoting Matthew Henry)

What about a dog being man’s best friend?

“A dog cannot share a man’s dreams, cannot kneel beside him in prayer, cannot exhort and encourage him with God’s Word, and cannot inspire in him the self-sacrificing love that makes him godly…A woman was made to fith with a man: to match his strength with her resilience, to minister to his heart with the power given to her by God. Only a woman is a suitable helper for man.” (pg. 30)

Click Here to order this book

Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating

Working with Young Adults means working with relationships. It means listening to hurting hearts and disappointed expectations. It means being excited for upcoming marriages, and encouraging those that feel that marriage has passed them by. Ultimately it so often means pointing hearts to the Great Doctor of the Soul, King Jesus. It means that when those exciting times come to help each other keep focused on Him. As well as when hurt and pain comes, to point to Him as the only ultimate source of joy and love.

I am currently re-reading, “Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating” by Richard and Sharon Phillips. This is a good book that deals with dating in a gospel centered way. More than likely at The Well in January we are going to spend a few weeks talking about dating, relationships and the Gospel and a lot will come from this book. If you are a young adult wondering about dating I really encourage you to pick this book up.

Here is a great quote found in the introduction that I have sadly seen to ring so true recently:

“More harm comes to many of us through dating than in any other way. According to the world, dating is a way for singles to enjoy the comforts and pleasures of the opposite sex. If marriage is in the picture at all, then dating is a tryout for a potential partner. The idea is to start living as if you were married and see how things go. If one isn’t finding fulfillment in the other person, the you can simply break up and move on. It’s not much different from finding the right pair of shoes. At least you can have some fun along the way, or so it goes.” (“Holding Hands, Holding Hearts: Recovering a Biblical View of Christian Dating” by Richard and Sharon Phillips, pg 14)

Click Here to order this book