indycrowe

HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY!

It’s hard to believe it, but today marks one year from when The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks was published by Moody Publishers. Thank you to all of you who have read it (or listened to the audiobook). I’ve been greatly encouraged by the interactions, feedback, comments, and conversations. Once a book releases, you know little about who’s reading it and what they might be gleaning from it, so it’s always nice to hear what people learn from it or find helpful in it.

Your Children Are Arrows

Children are a gift from God. We love and treasure them. Children are also sheep needing shepherded. Parents must know, feed, protect, lead, and care for their kids.

But did you know the Bible also describes children as arrows? “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth” (Psalm 127:4). This metaphor gets at the missional aspect of raising a child. God wants us to love and enjoy them but also to train them so they can be missionaries wherever they go. God doesn’t want us to hoard them or shelter them but to release them. Parents think about their kids in terms of what they mean to us or what we want from them and for them, but we often neglect what God intends to do in them and through them.

Continue reading Your Children Are Arrows

10 Ways to Battle Worry

This isn’t a definitive list by any means, but here are ten ways to fight worry.

Continue reading 10 Ways to Battle Worry

Books for Sale

I’m looking to reduce the amount of books I own and move more toward ebooks (I know, I know). Below is a list of books I”m selling. It includes some great deals on sets, and then $10 for hardback and $5 for paperback. If you’re local, we can maybe find a way to connect, or if you’d like to cover shipping and handling, I can ship books as well. Some books will have penciling or notes inside

A Tale of Two Citizens

History revolves around two people: Adam and Jesus. Whereas Adam is the representative for all of humanity by birth, Jesus is the head of a new humanity through adoption. Paul sets up the individuals Adam and Christ as representative, corporate figures to show we’re all held accountable on behalf of someone. [1] None of us are the autonomous island we imagine. Every person is either still lost in Adam or, by God’s amazing grace, they are now found in Christ (the 2^nd Adam). We are either citizens of this world’s kingdom through Adam or citizens of heaven through Christ (1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45-49).

The Great Exchange: Sorrow for Joy

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)

By taking our sin, Jesus faced the unimaginable sorrow of absorbing the Father’s righteous, just wrath. At the cross, Jesus was rejected for us so that we might be accepted in him. There was also the pain of being betrayed, not just by the creatures he made, or even his own people, but also by one of his disciples. But the Bible (and Isaiah 53:4) also connects the grief and sorrow of Jesus specifically to the sin he bore for us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And then Galatians 3:13, Paul adds, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”

Holy Week Reading Plan & Resources

Today begins what the Church has called Holy Week or Passion Week. The time from Palm Sunday to Easter (Resurrection) Sunday has provided Christians with a week to give special attention to the person and work of Christ. It interrupts our normal rhythms and intentionally puts Jesus before us so we can reflect on the events leading up to and including his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection. Below is a reading plan for the week, as well as activities and resources to help you leverage this significant week in the Church Calendar.

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The Father’s Love in Adoption

This post continues a series on The Love of the Father. Below are the prior posts.
Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love
Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love
God’s Love in Revealing Himself
The Father’s Love in Sending His Son

I’m thankful for the forgiveness of sin, the removal of condemnation and punishment, and the promise of eternal life in a resurrected body. I’m thankful I don’t have to carry guilt and shame because Christ took it away. But of all the blessings we have in Christ, there is none greater than being adopted by God so that we become his beloved sons and daughters. J. I. Packer states that adoption is “the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification…. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves.”[1]

The Father’s Love in Sending His Son

There are many proofs of God’s love scattered throughout the pages of Scripture. We notice further testimony of God’s loving kindness in his mercy and gifts both in creation around us and in our lives every single day. But there is no greater demonstration of God’s love than in the Father sending his only Son to save us. If the evidences of God’s love were a mountain, with new discoveries and greater examples of his love unfolding as we climb higher and higher in the knowledge of God, at the very top would still be the costliest, most needed, and most valuable of all gifts ever given: Jesus. The gift of Jesus includes not just that he was sent (incarnation) but that he was sent with the mission of a dying on the cross in our place, taking the punishment we deserved.

God’s Love in Revealing Himself

This post continues a series on The Love of the Father. Below are the first two posts.
Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love
Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love

One of my favorite things to do with my four-year-old daughter is enjoy a dessert together—or get a treat, as she calls it. Whether it’s ice-cream, a good cookie, or a donut, we bond as we talk, laugh, and savor the sweets. She’s recently been asking me to tell her stories about myself. It’s partly because she just likes to hear stories, and it’s partly because she gets to know me by the things I share. Whether it’s through these stories, in everyday conversation, or over the course of time as she sees what I’m like she desires to know me. All children desire this.