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Consider these two posts from an online bulletin board on parenting:

It's great to be a Christian parent. And I thank God for my children that their parents are not like others - immoral, selfish and lazy. We have such a great time when we start the day with family devotions. We never miss a day - even if we're on the car-ferry or at the airport! Our home is a haven of purity. And we do so much for missions. Our children know the names of every missionary we support. We alternate their names with learning chapters of Romans at bed-time. Must dash. Thank you Lord!

Or:

Lord, I feel useless. Please have mercy on my kids because, with a parent like me, they sure need it.

Which post resonates with you as a parent? With me, it is definitely the second. While my family does regular family worship (perhaps not on the car ferry), I don't always feel like our home is a haven of purity. Why? Because my children's parents are sinners-sinners desperately in need of God's daily grace, desperately in need of mercy to be an effective parent. But even on our best days, I've got to admit that my wife and I aren't all that impressed with our parenting. What do we need? We need the Gospel. Daily.

And I am thankful for a brand-new book that reminds us of this reality and helps point us to that Gospel. Gospel-centered Family: Becoming the Parents God Wants You to be (The Good Book Company) by Tim Chester and Ed Moll provides a welcome balm for frustrated Christian parents. Divided into a dozen easily digestible chapters, the book brings the Gospel to bear on every aspect of family life from the daily grace needed for parents hearts to discipline and missions-centered parenting.

In the chapter titled "Grace for a parent's heart," the authors open with the two online posts shown above and provides hope for those who feel a kinship to the second post (and a healthy dose of biblical reality for those who tend overestimate their parenting skills and family piety). The authors write: "The essence of the gospel is that God accepts us because of what Jesus did, not because of what we have done. We were God's enemies when God demonstrated His love to us on the cross. If He loved you when you were His enemy, then He'll love you when you lose your temper with your children. In Luke 18 it's the tax-collector who goes home accepted by God, not the Pharisee." The authors help liberate parents from the false notion that a Christian family isn't perfect; it isn't homeschooling, daily family devotions or even protecting our kids from the world that makes Christians-it is the grace of God in Christ Jesus.

This book shows how the Gospel should permeate every Christian home and provides a wonderful picture of the liberty found in homes where the refreshing winds of grace blow regularly.   

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Exhausted from moving, I mindlessly unpacked box after box, trying to return my life to some semblance of normalcy. There, among the dishes and linens, I discovered 7 well-worn Barbie Dolls that had somehow managed to survive my rambunctious childhood. I was transported back to those two years of my young life when Barbies occupied a significant amount of my little-girl attention. I loved to dress them up, fix their hair and line them up next to my 3-story Barbie house. Sometimes I played house with them, other times I drove them around in the pink limo... until I got bored. Then I changed their clothes again and redid their hair. Most days, it took no more than a couple of hours before I abandoned the Barbies to go play make-believe with my siblings. The Barbies were far nicer to me, but I chose to play in the woods with my brothers and sisters. Why? Because my siblings were real. As pretty as my dolls were, I consistently chose playmates who played back. When given the choice between plastic and alive, I chose alive.

Years later, sitting among moving boxes, I find myself struggling with the same choice in my walk with the Lord. As a believer, I know what it means to be alive in Christ: full of purpose, overflowing with joy, walking in victory, in intimate contact with my Savior at every moment of the day. Alive in Christ always results in kingdom-focused eyes, listening ears and an obedient heart. There's no experience like it. There are no words than can adequately describe it. Itís the greatest, sweetest and most humbling thing I've ever known - abundant life in Christ.

Yet, more often than I care to admit, I find myself choosing my flesh over my Savior. Whether it's indulging in my favorite sinful habit or forsaking spiritual disciplines for lazy me-time, when I choose sin, I become a plastic shell of who I was when in unhindered fellowship with my Lord. Oh, the sin is still fleetingly enjoyable, but I donít feel alive - I feel fake, shallow, disconnected... plastic.

~ Plastic vs. Alive ~

Plastic is caring more about my clothes, weight or mood than I do about obeying my Savior. Plastic is caring more about what makes me feel good than what honors my holy God. Plastic is caring more about my priorities than investing in what the Bible clearly outlines as important for the Kingdom. What I call plastic, the Apostle Paul calls slavery. "Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey. Either sin, resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness." (Romans 6:15-16)

In Romans 6, Paul confronts believers about returning to their old habits of sin rather than using God's gift of grace to choose life. He makes a shocking claim that we're always slaves to someone, always obeying someone. Either we obey the whims of our flesh, enslaving ourselves to sin. Or we obey the Spirit through the power of Christ, enslaving ourselves to God. There's no middle ground. "Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness." (Romans 6:9-13)

Jesus died that we might have abundant life in Him. Abundant means unchained by sin. Abundant means set free from guilt and shame. Abundant means purposeful. Abundant means confident in our Saviorís love. Abundant means surrendered and obedient to Godís ways, plans and standard of holiness. Abundant means doing things Godís way in Godís power. Abundant means truly alive.

~ Settling for Plastic ~

When we listen to God with surrendered heart, He speaks. When we draw near in humility, He is there. When we confess our sins, He forgives us. Yet we settle with living a plastic life in a plastic world, devoting our lives to outdoing the other cookie-cutter plastic Barbies around us. We, who have tasted of abundant life, resign ourselves to infrequent brushes with truly vibrant existence in Christ. When given the option of abundant life, why do we choose less?

C.S. Lewis theorizes that, "If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased." (The Weight of Glory, pg. 26)

We're satisfied with plastic because it's easier. We're okay with a less-than-abundant-life because it's familiar. We're fine with a shallow existence because it's comfortable. A.W. Tozer says, "Most Christians are satisfied living as common Christians, without an insatiable hunger for the deeper things of God." The reason that plastic is familiar, comfortable and easier is because its what we knew when we were slaves to sin. But we've been freed! Why would we ever go back?

Jesus took our place on the cross, paying the penalty for our sins so that the law would be fulfilled and we could be forgiven. We are no longer slaves to sin, we are no longer condemned - we are free. "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:1-4)

So, don't waste your freedom - paid for by the precious blood of Christ - on plastic things that will pass away. We were freed from sin for God. We are saved from sin to righteousness. We were pardoned from sin that we might have intimate fellowship with a holy God - anything less is merely a plastic imitation.

~ Plastic is Sin ~

A shocking majority of those claiming the name "Christian" are living plastic lives. Why is that? Probably because we don't view a plastic life as sin. After all, we aren't actively sinning, right? We aren't lying, stealing or murdering anybody. But not choosing abundant life, not doing things Godís way, not living in the power of the Holy Spirit - that is sin. It's rejecting God. Choosing a Barbie doll plastic existence over glorious abundant life is sin. Plastic is sin.

In his letter to the believers in Rome, Paul tells them that they have been freed from sin - so don't go back! Don't return to slavery to sin. They have been saved, set free, delivered from sin - now pursue sanctification. Having been given abundant life, don't go back to being plastic. Don't go back! "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey. Either sin, resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness." (Romans 6:15-16)

Every day, every hour, every minute we are faced with the choice: sin or God, death or life. "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" (1 Peter 1:14-16) Don't go back! Choose God, choose holiness, choose obedience, choose life! Turning from sin is hard, but the reward is God himself. As Tozer says, "The pain of sacrificing our old selves is nothing compared to the joy of Christ living in us in our transformed lives."

If you've ever tasted of the Lord, then you know what it is to be alive. You remember that amazing closeness with the Lord, where you cared more about Him and His desires than your own plans or the dayís fleeting temptations. We were saved from sin to experience that kind of vibrant intimacy with our Savior every moment of every day. The only thing standing in our way is our willingness to settle for plastic. "For the death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:9-10)

Each day, when faced with the choice between plastic or alive, choose life. Don't go back!

(Gabrielle Pickle writes for Unlocking Femininity, where this post was first published)

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 When it comes to the nature of man (I have a terrible problem and it is inside of me) and the necessary solution (unilateral grace must come from outside of me), country music usually gets it  right. (For more on this, see Russell D. Moore's excellent new series the Cross and the Jukebox (http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/01/14/introducing-the-cross-and-the-jukebox/)  and/or Gene Veith's insightful book Honky Tonk Gospel)

By country music I do not mean (with some exceptions) the frothy, slickly-packaged pseudo-rock sung by the collection of pretty boy dime-store cowboys that Music Row is peddling in 2011. I have in mind the country music of "Walk the Line," "The Fightin' Side of Me," "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "I Saw the Light." In the aftermath of 9/11, many country artists weighed in on the national tragedy with pathos and emotion perfectly fit for such a solemn occasion. One of my favorites came from Darryl Worley, "Have You Forgotten?" The song's lyrics are call to remember the carnage and the manly response of so many amid the chaos of that dark day:

Have you forgotten how it felt that day? To see your homeland under fire and her people blown away? Have you forgotten all the people killed? Some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field...Have you forgotten when those towers fell? We had neighbors still inside going through a living hell..." (The music video on You Tube is worth a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6yLQRF-cEU)

As the events we now know simply as 9/11 unfolded, courageous manhood was on display in Manhattan, D.C. and over the skies of Pennsylvania for the world to see. Firefighters and law enforcement agents died rescuing others. Businessmen fought off hijackers and crashed their jet, one that targeted the White House. Six weeks after 9/11, Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite columnists, penned an excellent piece for the Wall Street Journal on the return of genuine manhood. It is an article well worth revisiting (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122451174798650085.html#printMode). She celebrated the selfless, unassuming masculinity that typified pre-counter-culture, pre-feminist America:

A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country since Sept. 11. You might say it suddenly emerged from the rubble of the past quarter century, and emerged when a certain kind of man came forth to get our great country out of the fix it was in. I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in a hundred pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be safe. Men who are welders, who do construction, men who are cops and firemen. They are all of them, one way or another, the men who put the fire out, the men who are digging the rubble out, and the men who will build whatever takes its place. And their style is back in style. We are experiencing a new respect for their old-fashioned masculinity, a new respect for physical courage, for strength and for the willingness to use both for the good of others. You didn't have to be a fireman to be one of the manly men of Sept. 11. Those businessmen on flight 93, which was supposed to hit Washington, the businessmen who didn't live by their hands or their backs but who found out what was happening to their country, said goodbye to the people they loved, snapped the cell phone shut and said, "Let's roll." Those were tough men, the ones who forced that plane down in Pennsylvania. They were tough, brave guys.

My favorite sentence in the article comes near the end: "Good men suck it up and remain good-natured, constructive and helpful; less-good men become the kind of men who are spoofed on "The Man Show"--babe-watching, dope-smoking nihilists. (Nihilism is not manly, it is the last refuge of sissies.)" That will preach.

Noonan's delightful assessment came a decade ago and our men were responding to a profound crisis. But the crisis remains. It will remain until Jesus returns and the stakes could not be higher. Families are being stalked by terrorists Scripture calls the world, the flesh and the devil. Wives and children are left at the mercy of ten thousand evils by husbands and fathers who lack the maturity and the intestinal fortitude to lead, provide for and protect them. Churches are devoid of male leaders who are committed to the difficult task of faithfully leading and feeding a local congregation. Instead, far too many men are sitting on the sidelines pre-occupied with Xbox, fit bodies, pants on the ground and Facebook updates. Children without fathers both spiritually and biologically stand in need of God-fearing men to mentor them and raise them as sons and daughters who will live to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Yet our men fiddle while the city burns. It seems men no longer possess the courage to be men.

Perhaps it is because there is a vacuum in understanding both fear and courage. Courage is not a lack of fear, but realizing that there is something far more important than our fears, then acting on it. My father was a World War II veteran who jumped at Normandy as a member of the 101^st Airborne. I once asked him if he was afraid. "Of course," he said. But dad and his fellow Screaming Eagles jumped out of the relative comfort of their C-47 planes and into the shrapnel-filled French sky that famous night because real men do hard things, utterly selfless things, so others won't have to. Is that not the essence of the Gospel?

So Darryl Worley's question arises again in more pointed form: Have our men forgotten what it's like to be a man? Have our manhood lessons from 9/11 transcended the event itself? Have we forgotten that day when our homeland was under fire, our people blown away, and even as the images flashed in front of us via television, we desperately wanted to run to the battle and stand in the gap? Where did that man go? We must summon him back to the front lines. We need to hear Peggy Noonan's assessment of the courage at Ground Zero afresh and then pray down heaven that our sovereign Lord would grant our men the grace to live out the apostle Paul's closing words to the Corinthians: "Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love." (1 Cor. 16:13-14)." Ground Zero still beckons. After all, men, we have neighbors still inside going through a living hell.

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This week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer's disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, "not there" anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore. Most roll their eyes, and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment (for instance, defending China's brutal one-child abortion policy to identifying God's judgment on specific actions in the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake). This is serious, though, because it points to an issue that is much bigger than Robertson.

Marriage, the Scripture tells us, is an icon of something deeper, more ancient, more mysterious. The marriage union is a sign, the Apostle Paul announces, of the mystery of Christ and his church (Eph. 5). The husband, then, is to love his wife "as Christ loved the church" (Eph. 5:25). This love is defined not as the hormonal surge of romance but as a self-sacrificial crucifixion of self. The husband pictures Christ when he loves his wife by giving himself up for her. Read the rest here: http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/09/15/christ-the-church-and-pat-robertson/

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Over several years of ministering to single women, I've heard one question asked repeatedly: "Should I pray for a husband?"  On the surface, it can seem an odd question, but I am sympathetic to the reasons why it is asked. Lurking behind that one question are many others: "What if God doesn't answer this prayer?" "Is this something I should even be focused on?" "Is it selfish of me to want a husband?" "Is God still good if I pray and I remain single?" and so forth.

My short answer is: Yes, you should pray! And don't just pray for yourself. Pray for your other single friends (men and women). Pray for the marriages among your friends and family.

Then open your eyes to the many, many prayers He is answering. Every day, God is bringing people together. So instead of sighing with self-pity when you get that next wedding invitation, rejoice for the evidence of answered prayer!

To be honest, I have not always rejoiced at the weddings of others. At least not initially. But the more I've encountered the faithfulness of God, the easier it has become. Taking note of answered prayers is the best antidote I know for overcoming the forlorn assumption that your own prayers go unanswered. Soon you will see an abundance of prayers are answered every day, which balances out the long wait for other prayer requests.

In fact, these days I typically find it very easy to "rejoice with those who rejoice." Over the years, I've been in many formal and informal prayer groups where women have petitioned the Lord for husbands, asked God to bring more single men to their churches, and interceded for the single men who are already there.  The majority of each group is now married. I can list dozens and dozens of men and women alike who now have spouses-men and women of various ages, ethnicities, sizes, shapes, abilities, and temperaments. And I take great delight in saying that because God is no respecter of our arbitrary standards of who is "marryable" and who is not.

So, praise the Lord! Seriously! I'm not being flip. It's actually quite difficult to take two self-centered people and move them toward making a lifetime commitment to each other. Marriage is an act of grace in action.

Inevitably, though, when I talk about praying for husbands, someone comes in a theological tangle, wondering if God is good to me and to anyone else who is still praying and still single. Should we even pray for husbands? Is that acceptable? What if we pray and we remain single-what then??

My first answer is that of course God is still good if we pray and remain single. Marriage is a gift for this life alone. If we have received forgiveness for our sins and life eternal, we have already received the biggest and best gift and one that is for all eternity. We didn't miss out on God's very best.

Secondly, if we are still alive, the story of God's grace in our lives is still being written. We don't know the future. Only He knows the beginning from the end (Is. 46:10 and Rev. 21:6) and so it is arrogant to assume we can survey our circumstances and conclude we know what God is doing. (See: Naomi. A woman who was so very sure God's hand was against her that she wanted to be called "Bitter." But as she stood complaining, she had no idea that God was already at work to provide food, a kinsman-redeemer, an heir, and even far more unexpectedly, a place in the lineage of her Savior!)

Thirdly, we have no other option, according to Scripture. Philippians 4:4-7 makes this very clear: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." This passage makes it very easy for us to understand that all we can do is pray, be thankful, and avoid anxiousness, which leads to bitterness. We're not in charge of the answers. We're in charge of the petitions. So, petition away!

But be thankful in those petitions. Since we're not the omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, holy, just, and merciful Being in these transactions, we get to be the grateful recipients. All the time. Without ceasing. "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

What circumstances do you find yourself in today? Give thanks and pray without ceasing. For as we keep our eyes on Him and praise Him in all circumstances (the good, the happy, the hard, the confusing, the horrifying), we silence the Accuser, the one who exists to blame God for not being good and blame us for not being good enough.

Of this I am supremely confident: When we see our Savior and Redeemer face to face, we will not regret being thankful for trusting Him, even in circumstances we could not control and would not have chosen. We will see then by the light of His glory all that He was doing in and through those very moments. What seemed like unanswered prayer will be set against the grand tapestry of His grace coursing through history. We will see what He was doing ... and we will eternally praise Him for it.

So pray without ceasing and eagerly await what God does in and through these prayers.

[Carolyn McCulley is an author of Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World and is a women's conference speaker across the nation. She also publishes the Radical Womanhood blog, where the above post first appeared.]