Posted in Special Events, tagged grace church, kempton turner on September 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Pastor Kempton Turner is bringing a special message of hope in God to fathers of children with disabilities on October 17. Call or email to reserve your spot today. Click here for more details.
Pass it on and encourage men to attend!
Kempton’s previous message for dads can be downloaded here.
Posted in News, tagged abortion, al mohler on September 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Al Mohler has been a consistent voice of support for unborn children with disabilities. Yesterday in his blog he also noted how parents of unborn children with Down syndrome are aborting at astonishing rates – over 90%.
Dr. Mohler quotes Dr. Brian Skotko, a clinical genetics fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston who has a sister with Down syndrome: (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abortion, jeff mcnair on September 18, 2009| 1 Comment »
The quote above comes from Jeff McNair, professor at California Baptist University and writer of the blog, disabled Christianity. That provocative quote by Dr. McNair is in response to an opinion piece from the August 2009 edition of the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities journal. That journal is not available online, but Dr. McNair offers this quotation from the opinion piece: (more…)
Posted in Helpful things on September 17, 2009| 3 Comments »
Every church needs at least one couple who have been through long-term, intense suffering and who continue to praise God for his goodness in the midst of their hardships. Families that include a child or children with disabilities benefit greatly from the wisdom of parents who have been there – and are still standing. Just knowing they exist God uses to bring hope to other families! (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized on September 16, 2009| 1 Comment »
You should see a new feature in the right column of The Works of God website: Resource Library.
We are just getting started putting content together in this ‘library’ but decided not to wait any longer to open it up.
There are many resources you can find on the internet regarding disability ministries, so these pages are limited to content created by pastors or members of Bethlehem Baptist Church.
I hope you find it useful. Suggestions for additions to these pages are welcome!
Posted in News on September 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »
There was a horrible story out of England last week about a mother who went into labor at 21 weeks and 5 days. She delivered a very tiny living baby boy – and the doctors refused to provide him treatment because he had not made it to 22 weeks. Adding to her grief, British standards say not to even provide a birth certificate for babies of less than 22 weeks development.
She is now challenging the standards created by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, standards which resulted in her son not receiving any treatment. She is not the first to call their standards into question.
Al Mohler discussed the Nuffield Council in 2006, along with the terrible development that the Church of England was actually endorsing some of the Council’s standards for withholding care from disabled babies. I hope this mom’s efforts attract both attention and change.
But in the several stories I read about this mom and her son, there was never any mention of the father. Her five-year-old daughter is mentioned several times, and pictured at least once. The father never appears.
That boy needed his dad. Even with care he might have only lived a short time, or lived with significant disabilities. The man who fathered him should have been there to be part of it.
And this might be the most shocking fact in the midst of this terrible situation – not one news account even seemed to notice dad was missing.
Posted in Helpful things, Special Events, tagged fathers, grace church, kempton turner on September 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Every man touched by disability in his family who is near the Twin Cities should plan on attending this free event on October 17.
Pastor Kempton Turner, a father with a disabled child, will again be the keynote speaker at a special breakfast event for fathers at Grace Church in Eden Prairie. It will be held on Saturday, October 17 at 9:00 a.m.
Kempton has a powerful personal testimony of God’s sovereign goodness in giving him his child with significant disabilities. And it is good for men to get together to encourage and build each other up! The breakfast is also first-rate.
To register for this free event, contact Chuck Peterson at 952-361-9789 or by e-mail at chukkarn@infinityathome.net. Deadline is October 8, 2009
If you are still not convinced, please consider listening to an earlier presentation he made to fathers that can be found here. After hearing him, you will want to attend!
I look forward to seeing you there!
Posted in Uncategorized on September 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »
For the past year several of us at Bethlehem Baptist Church have sought to express our joy in and dependency on a God who intentionally created some to live with disability. That blog was hosted here. You might find some interesting things there.
This past week we moved the blog here, to improve accessibility for you and also for the sake of those posting. All are welcome to read and to comment. Please do so!
We try to post almost daily, but I recommend using RSS or subscribing to have it sent to you via email (see button at right). Abraham Piper provided a very helpful tutorial on RSS here.
We hope you find this site useful. More importantly, we seek to bring glory to our sovereign, good, righteous, merciful God.
Posted in Scripture on September 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Ok, the title is a little sarcastic, and I actually like the fact that an Israeli doctor took the time to consider what might have physically happened to those three men from the Old Testament.
I was looking up something else and I came across “What Diseases of the Eyes Affected Biblical Men?” in the 2002 edition of the journal Gerontology. Unfortunately I can’t provide a link to that article.
Dr. Ben-Noun’s conclusion:
It is more likely that either mature cataract, or age-related macular degeneration, or asymptomatic open-angle glaucoma, or ischemic optic neuropathy or optic nerve atrophy were associated with visual loss. Corneal ulceration or scarring can also be considered. Hereditary causes of optic nerve atrophy and retinal degeneration can be excluded.
In other words, they were getting older and their eyesight was failing.
As we get older, the opportunity for disability also increases, and increases substantially. God knows that, and even in the lives of those men he used their failing sight to orchestrate very important things. So it is good to hang onto his word:
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26
The Works of God 
Pray for our colleges and seminaries
Posted in commentary, Scripture on September 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »
One of the reasons I’m praying for the Bethlehem College and Seminary is because they are filled with passionate faculty! Please consider subscribing to their weekly prayer email so you can pray with them through the year. Affections for God are important, and should not be assumed. Here’s why:
I’m reading an old Journal of Biblical Literature article from 1970 on Mark 2 and the use of the term ‘son of man’ in the account of Jesus healing the paralytic.
It is very dry.
But that isn’t the problem because the subject is inherently interesting for me.
The problem is that the writer is completely lacking any affections for the scripture, God or Jesus. Or if he has some, those affections are so buried under his academic language I can’t find them! And that leads to a bigger problem.
(more…)
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