Christian Men, if you've never read Doug Wilson's book, Fidelity - What it means to be a one-woman man, it's got to be on your 'to read' list this year. It's as straight-shooting a book as you'll find on sins that have sunk many a friend. His chapters on fornication, adultery and divorce will sober you up - and quick. Also, his last chapter is a Q & A with biblical answers to a lot of practical questions.

If you love your wife and kids - and, you believe in the concept of insurance - you probably would appreciate a book like this. Just be forewarned - it's direct and doesn't make man-made arguments around biblical absolutes. It's exactly what we need.

Well-tucked deep in a chapter on adultery, Wilson has a very encouraging paragraph on the importance of having a proper understanding on Justification. It follows a paragraph on what brings us to sin and why we must have a new heart:

The solution is regeneration. We must get the doctrine of regeneration straight in our minds. A tremendous amount of mischief has resulted from confusion at this point. We are not born again because we have repented and believed. Rather, we have repented and believed because God has given us the new birth. If the old heart is capable of repentance and belief, then a man does not need a new heart. He simply needs to continue to improve the old one.

What does God promise the prophet?

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you , and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (Ezek. 26:26-27).

If you are repenting of your sin and believe the gospel - take heart: It is God who has brought this about in your life. And the same God who started this good work will be faithful to complete it!

Wilson goes on to write:

Who will do this? God is the only one who can, and that is something He promises to do for His people.

Jesus calls His followers to a genuine submission to the law of God. If we cannot, then we must cry out for a new heart. If we are believers who have drifted into compromise, then we must confess our sin to Him. He is faithful and just to forgive. Our new hearts enable us to look to Him for all our righteousness. True purity is found only there.

Now that's good news!

For $10.20, you can click here and read the whole book for yourself.

Part 4 of J.C. Ryle's sermon: Primary Obligations of Parents

Train with this thought continually before your eyes - that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.

Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes; but if you love them, think often of their souls. No interest should weigh with you so much as their eternal interests. No part of them should be so dear to you as that part that will never die. The world with all its glory shall pass away; the hills shall melt; the heavens shall be wrapped together as a scroll; the sun shall cease to shine. But the spirit that dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so well, shall outlive them all, and whether in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you.

This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children. In every step you take about them, in every plan and scheme and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, "How will this affect their souls?"

Soul love is the soul of all love. To pet, pamper, and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look to and this life the only season for happiness - to do this is not true love, but cruelty. It is treating him like some beast of the earth that has but one world to look to and nothing after death. It is hiding from him that grand truth that he ought to be made to learn from his very infancy - that the chief end of his life is the salvation of his soul.

A true Christian must be no slave to fashion if he would train his child for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world; to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is usual; to allow them to read books of a questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them; to let them form habits of a doubtful tendency, merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye to his children's souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called singular and strange. What if it is? The time is short - the fashion of this world passeth away. He that has trained his children for heaven rather than for earth - for God, rather than for man - is the parent that will be called wise at last. (To be continued....)

Did you read the last two paragraphs? I think I should read those every morning. What an encouragement!