For your attention

1. Things nobody tells you about being a dad – Chicago area pastor Daniel Darling, a father of four, provides some insightful reflections -- and funny ones, especially about the awesomeness of minivans – on the wonder and sometimes terror of being a father.

2. How the New Testament books were chosen – Timothy Paul Jones, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, explains what qualified writings to be included in the New Testament.

3. Heavenly mindedness makes a difference on earth – Author Randy Alcorn writes about the importance of Christians having a biblical understanding of Heaven.

4. The seduction of porn and the integrity of Christian marriage (Part 1) – Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, reposts a two-part series that was first published seven years ago. He concludes in this first part about porn’s threat to marriage with this: “Pornography represents one of the most insidious attacks upon the sanctity of marriage and the goodness of sex within the one-flesh relationship. The celebration of debauchery rather than purity, the elevation of genital pleasure over all other considerations, and the corruption of sexual energy through an inversion of the self, corrupts the idea of marriage, leads to incalculable harm, and subverts marriage and the marital bond.”

5. The seduction of porn and the integrity of Christian marriage (Part 2) – Mohler describes what sex should be in marriage – as contrasted with what it is for the porn-consumed – and closes this way: “The deliberate use of pornography is nothing less than the willful invitation of illicit lovers and objectified sex objects and forbidden knowledge into a man’s heart, mind, and soul. The damage to the man’s heart is beyond measure, and the cost in human misery will only be made clear on the Day of Judgment. From the moment a boy reaches puberty until the day he is lowered into the ground, every man will struggle with lust. Let us follow the biblical example and scriptural command that we make a covenant with our eyes lest we sin. In this society, we are called to be nothing less than a corps of the mutually accountable amidst a world that lives as if it will never be called to account.”