The Family Series | Hardback

Looking for a map? These books will help you find your way in the current cultural mess. Now in Hardback!

As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men.

When Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school for a time, a boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting and on the Lord's Day, too. He told the future president that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. TR told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The stodgy vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go. What a loss.

In this book, Douglas Wilson discusses how parents can help their sons cultivate true masculinity and become men who are strong and self-sacrificial, just as Christ was. This book is a part of Douglas Wilson's series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners trying to live under the same roof. This book on raising sons covers issues such as laziness, Christian liberty, school, sports, girls, and proper contempt for the cool.

What does it mean to be a covenantal husband? What does it mean to be a covenantal father?

Federal thinking is foreign to the modern mind. Federal has come to mean nothing more than centralized or big. Because our federal government has become so uncovenantal, it is not surprising that the original meaning of the word is lost. But federal thinking is the backbone of historic Protestant theology, and the Church needs to recover the covenantal understanding of federal headship. Husbands are to lead their families, taking responsibility for them as covenant heads—as federal husbands.

This book is a part of Douglas Wilson's series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners living under the same roof. This book on covenantal headship contains much practical and biblical wisdom that is never more timely than now, but which we will always need to be reminded of again and again.

How would you describe the spiritual aroma of your home?

The source of this aroma is the relationship between husband and wife. Many can fake an attempt at keeping God's standards in some external way. What we cannot fake is the resulting, distinctive aroma of pleasure to God.

Reforming Marriage does what few books on marriage do today: it provides biblical advice. Whether it has to do with respect and love, confession of sin, sexual fidelity, or even the gnarly issues of divorce and remarriage, Douglas Wilson points to the need for obedient hearts on the part of both husbands and wives. This book is part of the Canon Press series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the on the everyday messes that come with sinners living under the same roof. Godly marriages proceed from obedient hearts, and the greatest desire of an obedient heart is the glory of God.

For a Christian woman, motherhood is the subtle art of building a house in grace: "The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands" (Prov. 14:1).

Each day's work is significant, for it contributes toward the long-term plan. Each nail helps a house stand in a storm. But motherhood isn't a simple formula. Building a home—childbirth, education, discipline—requires holy joy and a love of beauty. The mother who fears God does not fear the future. This book is part of the Canon Press series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners trying to live under the same roof.

This book on motherhood by pastor's wife Nancy Wilson covers everything from pregnancy to house rules to education to the differences between raising sons and daughters. Motherhood is a difficult calling, but the Bible has many things to say about how it can be an opportunity for service and love and growth in Christian joy.

Nancy Wilson asks us to imagine what power God would unleash through godly men who were respected in their homes.

Where would the Church be today if the men in it were respected as they ought to be by their wives? Nancy Wilson exhorts wives to stop focusing on their husbands' problems and shortcomings and to look at their own responsibilities and learn the contentment which the Bible continually exhorts us to.

This book is part of the Canon Press series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners living under the same roof. This book on marriage for women reminds us to keep our eyes fixed on what the Bible defines as our duties and not on the modern lies which flatter us. "Give her the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates" (Prov. 31:31).

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Prov. 22:6)

God has designed each family to be a culture—with a language, customs, traditions, and countless unspoken assumptions. The culture of the family intimately shapes the children who grow up in it. It is the duty of the father to ensure that the shaping takes place according to biblical wisdom.

Some fathers establish a rebellious culture for their children and bring upon their children the wrath of God, sometimes for generations. Other fathers fail to establish any distinct culture, and outside cultures rush to fill the void.

Through the Messiah, God promised blessings to His people, "their children, and their children's children forever." The norm for faithful members of the covenant is that their children will follow them in faithfulness. The oddity should be children who fall away. Unless we reestablish faithful Christian culture in countless homes, we will never reestablish it anywhere else.

This book is part of Douglas Wilson's series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners trying to live under the same roof.

"The modern dating system is bankrupt..."

"...It does not train young people to form a relationship but rather to form a series of relationships, hardening themselves to all but the current one. Recreational dating encourages emotional attachments without covenantal fences and makes a joke of a father's authority. The disrespect children have for their fathers in this area is an echo of the disrespect fathers have for their own office."

In this book, Douglas Wilson argues that biblical courtship provides a wonderful freedom. It involves familial wisdom and godly protection. Grounded upon the involved authority of the father, courtship delights in its public connection to the lives of families. Sexual purity is a great inheritance for a newly married couple, and part of a father's job is to guarantee and protect that heritage.

This book is a part of Douglas Wilson's series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners trying to live under the same roof. This book on courtship does not offer so much a surefire method for good marriages as remind us of the scriptural principles governing romance, marriage, and the family.

"There are three things which are too wonderful for me, Yes, four which I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the air, The way of a serpent on a rock, The way of a ship in the midst of the sea, And the way of a man with a virgin" (Prov. 31:18-19)."

How does life in each room of your home manifest the Gospel?

The Gospel should teach us to say "my life for yours." Our desire should be to have this love transform everything we do, room by room. This book works its way through every part of the house, examining each part in light of Scripture. The claims of God are always total, and this should be evident on the doorposts and in a sink full of dishes. Self-centeredness destroys in monotonously similar ways.

Giving up life for another produces a harvest of kindness and mercy. Household questions should always begin with, "Is this my life for yours?" This book is part of Douglas Wilson's series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners trying to live under the same roof. This book on the household covers everything from the living room to the entertainment center to the bathroom, considering the temptations that go with it, and the ways the house can truly be a blessing to those who live in it.

Christian men must protect their own sexual integrity, and the sexual integrity of their sons, with specific biblical teaching on fidelity, self-control, marriage, and sexual temptation.

Sadly, pornography and sexual infidelity can be found in the church. Just because Evangelical Christians hold to a higher standard of sexual integrity does not mean that young men always possess self-control, especially with the internet ready at their fingertips. Leaders are tempted to gloss over sexual issues, but Wilson uses clear language to confront specific sins with specific solutions. He covers a wide array of issues, including pornography, masturbation, rape, divorce, and homosexuality, always bringing to bear the Biblical teaching on the topic.

This recently updated edition is a part of Douglas Wilson's series of books on the family, which has helped many people trying to deal with the everyday messes that come with sinners trying to live under the same roof. This book on masculine self-control hits hard, but also offers encouragement and useful advice to men dealing with the simple day to day work of being a one-woman man.