This past month I celebrated my birthday; my 46^th, to be exact! Birthdays come whether you want them to or not! One of the things that I have noticed over the last few years is that my perspective on life is changing. I find myself looking at situations through a lens of past experience. If you are over 40 years old, you probably know what I am talking about. If you are under 40, then read this article carefully. Hopefully, it will offer you some perspective that will help to minimize the stress in your life.

One of the lessons I am learning is that God often uses bad times to accomplish good. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised at this; it is exactly what the Bible says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 (NIV)

I was reminded of this important truth as I was preparing to teach my Tuesday night New Testament Literature class for the Real Bible Institute. As I reviewed the history of the end of the Old Testament age I was reminded that God is working.

Captivity in Babylon, an extremely terrifying event, was God chastening His people for disobedience. In a series of poor choices, the nation of Judah was literally wiped out. Their best and brightest were taken to Babylon while the city and temple were destroyed. From a human perspective, the worship of Yahweh was finished; the secular gods of Babylon had conquered. Of course, we know that that was not the case, but the people of that time were not able to skip ahead and read the rest of the story. God certainly did not leave his people without hope: again and again he reminded them that this time of judgment would come to an end and they would be restored to their homeland. Again and again he told them that what would happen would serve a purpose: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

I was impressed by the way that God used Babylonian captivity to set the stage for the coming of Christ and the birth of the church. The dispersion of the Jews around the world is known as the Diaspora. Prior to their exile, the Jewish people were located in Palestine. Even after the exile. When given the opportunity to return to Palestine, many continued to live in other lands. This dispersion of Jews in cities around the Roman world facilitated the spreading of the Gospel and the expansion of the church.

When the temple was destroyed, formal corporate worship as the Jews had known it ceased. A new type of structure for corporate worship sprang into existence, serving as a tangible focal point for worship: the synagogue was born. It has kept Jewish faith alive and provided a place for religious training and education. Amazingly, this captivity-born institution became the launching pad for the gospel and New Testament church hundreds of years later.

The number of scribes also expanded during the exile. The marginalization of the priesthood after the destruction of the temple created a new class of Bible scholars who taught, copied, and interpreted Jewish law for the people. God used their ministry to influence His people. One famous scribe, Ezra, was used along with Nehemiah and others to bring revival to God’s people (Nehemiah 8-9). In fact, many use Ezra as a model for modern day expository preaching (Nehemiah 8:8).

Lastly, God cured His people of the habitual sin of idolatry, which had plagued the nation since its inception in Exodus 32:15.

If you are facing hard times, I encourage you to put aside worry, discouragement, and frustration so that you can embrace God’s direction and turn to Him. Your difficulty may be His way of getting you to focus on Him or preparation for something He wants to do through you. While this may not be easy (it rarely is), God is working!

Growing up as Christians in the 70’s and 80’s, we had our share of immoral things that were thrown our way, but wow what a different world we live in today.  Our children today have so much to try to avoid that it’s scary.  The truth is they won’t be able to avoid it all so they are going to need to be equipped with Biblical ethics showing them what to do when they are faced with decisions they have to make for their lives.

It was never God’s intent for us to expect our church or our Christian school to bring the majority of moral training in our children’s lives.  It was God’s intent, according to Deuteronomy 6:6-7 for parents to play the major role in training their kids.  Check this out from the Message: 6 write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you 7 and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night.

Today’s society is turning to the concept that their really isn’t a right or wrong, it’s different for every person.  The Bible should be our standard and it clearly shows us how we should conduct ourselves as Christians.  It’s full of wisdom for training up our kids.   Here are some training essentials that all parents can do:

Make your marriage the priority relationship of the Family

Why is it we find that special person that we want to spend the rest of our lives with, children enter the picture and then all of the sudden they become the center of the family and we forget about the marriage relationship?  We stop doing all of the things we did as a couple before we got married.   All of our focus and energy go to the kids for the next 18 years and then they move out and we are stuck with this other person we don’t know any longer.  We do this in the name of Love for the children’s sake but it really ends up breeding insecurity in them.  In truth, one of the greatest gifts parents can give their children is the confidence that Mom and Dad love each other.   Child-centered parenting fosters selfishness and independence instead of a humble-‘thinking of others first’ attitude.  Romans 12:10 says Honor one another above yourselves.   Your kids probably won’t tell you this until they are older but what they really want is to know that Mom and Dad love each other and that their relationship is good.  Regarding Mom and Dad’s relationship, when a child perceives more weakness than strength, a low-level anxiety is produced that ultimately affects every other learning discipline.  So how can we practically begin to turn this around?

Here are a few suggestions:

Spend uninterrupted time with your spouse in front of the children each day that it is possible.  Make this a habit.  Tell the kids they are not allowed to interrupt during this time unless it’s an emergency.  This is time you and your spouse can spend talking or reading together.  If you are a single parent, we encourage you to have your personal time with the Lord in front of your children, also telling them they may not interrupt.

Some children might pull on you at first because they have been used to getting all the attention up till now. Just tell them that you will spend time with them after you spend time together. You may be pleasantly surprised at the positive results that follow.

Have a date night on a regular basis.  Get a babysitter and tell the kids Mom and Dad are going out because we love each other. Single parents can go out with a friend or go out to have some alone time.

Find a way to minister as a family with your kids.  Your church will usually have opportunities for you to reach out to the community.  This will cause your kids to start to think of others more and they will be happier for it.

Continue with your other relationships that you had before you had children.  Just because you are now a mother doesn’t mean you stop being a daughter a sister or a friend.

Keeping the marriage the priority of the family will help to protect against child-centered parenting.

One single Mom whose son was having problems in school, after realizing she was a child-centered parent, apologized to her son for making him the center of her universe.  She explained to him how things were going to be different in their family from now on.  Not long after this, his teacher said, what has happened to your son…he is like a different person.

Heart Training

We need to train our children from a very early age on not just how to act morally, but how to think morally.  We do this by placing Godly values in their hearts.  This forces us to go to God’s word and make sure the values are in us first so we can pass them on to our kids.  It’s our job as parents to write these godly values on our children’s hearts…. to fill up their moral warehouse, if you will. This will ensure that they are ready to leave home and face hard situations on their own because they will have these morals stored in their moral warehouse that they can pull from.  Otherwise there is such a danger of bringing up children who are robotic in nature – or they basically don’t know why they even believe what they believe.  It is heart breaking for parents if after raising their children in a Christian home, the children go off to college and 6 months later turn completely away from God.  This is why it is so crucial that we reach the heart of our children.

When situations arise take the time to teach into it and give the reason why behind the what.  Here is a great recent example that a mother shared with us. She was watching something on television with her kids.  She realized that it was not going to be good for them to continue watching.  She said, normally they would have whined about it and thrown a fit.  But instead of just telling them, you can’t watch this; she took the time to get her Bible and sit down and share with them why this particular show would not be good for them.  She said after she did this, they said, oh, o.k.  and when they were watching T.V. later while she was not in the room, but close by, this show came back on and she noticed that they made the decision on their own to turn the channel to something else.

We recently needed to tell one of our daughters who always likes to be first in line at gymnastics that it would be a great way to let her light shine for Jesus if sometimes she would choose to let all the other children go before her.  Well, that very night at gymnastics she cut in line in front of another kid and she immediately looked up at us.  Then, she got out of line and let all the others go first.  That was so interesting that at 5 years old her conscience was telling her she did something wrong.  But, what if we had not taken the time to place the value in her moral warehouse…would her conscience have accused her that she was going in the wrong direction?  Giving the reason why instead of just saying no all the time or you shouldn’t do  that will  help you’re your children make the right decision later on when Mom and Dad are not around to tell them what to do.  The goal is for our children to want to do right not just because Mom and Dad said so and they will be in trouble if they don’t but because of the love of virtue.  And don’t forget to encourage, encourage, encourage your kids when they do choose wisely.  Let them know you are proud of them. Tonight one of our daughters received a consequence for doing something unkind to our other daughter.  After a short time, she came to us to say she was sorry and to get a hug.  We could tell she was truly repentant for making a poor choice. She then went on her own to apologize to her sister and ask for her forgiveness.  We said to each other, now that is when we know we are reaching the heart of our child.

Another reason we see problems show up when our children are older is because Mom and Dad are saying one thing at church but modeling something else at home.   We need to be the role-models for our children and if we are not they just may go looking for their role-models in all the wrong places.

Stay Connected

It is important that we stay in relationship with our children as they grow older.  We should know what’s going on in school, who their friends are, what time will they be home.  Take an interest in what interests them.  Kids so desperately want their parents to be involved in their lives, not in a nagging way, but in a positive way. Sometimes parents of young children try to buy their kids over or spend a lot of  time convincing them as to why they should do what Mom and Dad want and then when their kids are older and parents are not getting the results they expected, they panic and start trying to control their kids behavior.  It should actually be done the opposite way.  When our children are young we should lead them by our authority, but around the middle years an all important transition begins to take place and by the time our kids are teens we should be leading them by the power of our relational influence.  Don’t be afraid of the teen years and resist listening to the negative comments others make about teens.  With biblical parenting, you are doing the hardest part of your parenting when your children are young. Yes, we will have trials all along the way and God will use those to make us better people. Parenting is a process…a long process. We know we don’t control all the variables.  We just do what we can and trust God with it all.

As you can see, Biblical parenting takes time but the rewards are everlasting.  Some day when we stand before God we will want to hear Him speak the words, “Well Done!’

And if you are saying, “well I have already royally messed up.  What do I do now?”  We believe children have such a deep love for their parents that they are willing to forgive more than we adults are many times.  We always go to our children if we have reacted toward them in an ungodly way and immediately apologize and ask them to forgive us.  This just makes them respect us all the more.

The Grace of God

No matter how many tools we have learned for proper parenting, we must always remember that none of it replaces the Grace of God and the wisdom that the Holy Spirit gives if we will just take the time to ask for it.

Sandra McCollom; wife, mom of twins and along with husband Steve lead  GKGW classes in St. Louis, MO area.

Back in the day when gas stations had attendants that pumped your gas for you; a young woman drove in to get a fill up.   Her attendant happened to be a teenager named Phil; a young man who would one day become a pastor.  On this day however he was being a good employee and offered to check under the hood.  She replied in the affirmative and Phil began by checking her oil.  He was surprised to find that the car wasn’t merely low on oil, it had no oil.  He showed the woman the dipstick that was perfectly dry, registering no oil at all.   She went berserk!  “Why do all you gas station attendants try to make me buy things I do not need”.   Phil, with the evidence held in his hand, stood dumbstruck by her reaction.  As she drove off, Phil still speechless, noticed that on her display panel a piece of masking tape was adhered over the oil warning light.  He could see a dim dot of red still shining through the opaque tape, and he wondered how she got so suspicious of others that she would ignore all physical evidence of the truth.

Distrust, suspicion, and skepticism seem to be common attitudes of today’s society.  When was the last time you truly trusted the word of a politician, newsman, advertisement, product claim, car mechanic, fellow employee, or in some cases even a friend or family member.  We expect people to lie to us.  Our society used to operate on the philosophy that a man’s word was his bond.  Now if someone gives his or her word, it has little surety and leaves the hearer wondering if they aren’t trying a bit too hard to convince us of their sincerity, eliciting only more distrust.

When teaching on Greek philosophers who sought absolute truths, I asked my college students what truth is true for all men, through all time.  The discussion that ensues is lively and mirrors the distrust so evident in society.  One semester the students even reasoned that the old adage “taxes and death” were not even certainties.  After the debate has run its course, I end with this statement that “absolute truths do exist and that their belief or disbelief in them doesn’t alter their existence”.  “For instance this desk in front of you is made of wood and metal and whether you believe that or not does not change the fact that it is made of metal and wood”!    A person’s belief does not alter the truth, but their acceptance or rejection does alter the way they live.

The ultimate truth of all time and for all mankind is the person of Jesus Christ.  “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men… this true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man”. Just like light dispels the darkness in a room, the true light of Jesus Christ shows us our lost condition and the way to remedy that position and become reconciled to God.  God promises that to anyone who believes in their heart that Jesus was born fully man and being fully God lived sinless, so He could die and make payment on our behalf, and was raised up on the third day, and confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, shall receive Him and be given the right to become the children of God.  Belief in Christ; this True Light, will dispel the darkness of untruth and set the recipient free.

If you are reading this and driving around in your own life with masking tape covering the truth of your condition, pretending the course of destruction you are on isn’t real, I pray that you will read the gospel of John this Christmas, and that Light of Life will shine into you heart and you will come to personally know the Lord Jesus Christ.  His saving grace has made all the difference in my life, and I care too much to offer you less than the best gift ever given.

For those of you whose hearts are already illumined with the Light of Christ, may your light shine bright in a world wrapped in brightly shaded untruths!

Light a candle; light the dark, light the world

light a heart or two…

As God pleases, dispose the day © 2008 is an electronic devotional by D. A.  Brewer.   All Bible quotations are from  the first chapter of John in the New American Standard Version, © 1993 Lockman Foundation and used by permission.  The title “As God pleases, dispose the day” is a quote from Henry V by William Shakespeare.   The lyrics from Light A Candle are from Avalon’s Christmas CD.  The gas station story comes from Phil Thorne, pastor of West Shore Evangelical Free Church in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Every week I have errands to run. I have a philosophy about running errands that goes something like this: Never do anything alone (unless you need to or want to) if you can do it with someone else. Some errands I have to do alone. Sometimes I just want to be alone. Oftentimes, I enjoy the company. The other week I had to run an errand and I decided to ask one of my children if they wanted to go with me. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “I have to run an errand. Wanna come?”
Child #1: “Where ya going?”
Me: “I’m not telling, do you want to go or not?”
Child #1: “Is it going to be fun?”
Me: “Define fun.”
Child #1: “Ya know, like are we going to do something fun or can I buy something?”
Me: “Nevermind.”

A little dejected but not surprised, I then approached another child.

Me: “I have to run an errand. Wanna come?”
Child #2: “Sure Daddy! I’ll get my shoes!”

Child #2 gets in the car and off we go. We had a wonderful time. As we ran our errands, we talked. We listened. I shared bits of wisdom. We goofed around. We laughed. We enjoyed each other’s company. Our hearts were knitted together. There was bonding and fellowship and fun just by being together.

The errands took a bit longer than I anticipated and while we were out we both got really thirsty. I knew that a Cherry Lime Aide from Sonic could fix that and I knew that a Cherry Lime Aide would be a big deal for this particular child. With errands complete, we came home both drinking our massive Cherry Lime Aides and I knew what was about to happen.

As hydrated Child #2 walked past left behind Child #1, Child #1 became indignant. “You didn’t tell me you were getting a Lime Aide! That’s not fair!” As this child threw a mini-tamtrum, it hit me. This is exactly how we treat God.

Instead of desiring the Giver, we just want His gifts.
Instead of spending time with the Blesser, we simply want His blessings.
We don’t want a relationship with Him, we just want the benefits.

God is not like a vending machine. You don’t spend time with Him to get what you want out. You invest in God and THAT ALONE is the gift, the blessing and the benefit. Anything you receive beyond that, is simply additional grace.

Does God give out spiritual Cherry Lime Aides? Absolutely. But He often gives it to His children who aren’t using Him for one. He desires relationship and fellowship. He has errands to run and He wants some company. You wanna come?

Ephesians 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ…”

Mark 10:15-16 – “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all. And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.”

******* IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE NOTE ********
It is necessary to point out that I am merely sharing a snapshot from a moment in time. Every one of us have been captured in a negative light in various snapshots throughout our life. Though most children (regardless of age) desire the gift over the giver, I am pleased/relieved to say that this is not something either child is characterized by.

“My friend Denise who writes periodic devotionals called As God Pleases – sent the one to follow with a type of apology for the delay on the devotional she had intended for Halloween. Aside from all the other discussion that was taking place during that time period on various Christian websites including those involved with GFI, I believe the timing of this devotional is ‘just right’ – as in truth, the words that Denise will encourage us with has to do with our lifestyle all year round. Hope her words will both admonish and encourage all who read “As God Pleases”. With the holiday season approaching may we be diligent to demonstrate gratitude to our children and all those that the Lord brings across our path, for the great “Gift” Who came to earth over 2000 years ago.” Blessings on your day, Anne Marie

I’m currently studying the book of Ruth from a prophetical viewpoint. In studies like this your mind is drawn to thoughts of the end times. From a Jewish perspective the regathering of the Jews to the Promised Land is an indicator that we are in the end times. A look to our world points to the same conclusion. We have wars and threats of war, famine, an increase in natural disasters, and an increase in lawlessness, which are the birth pangs of what is to follow, given in Matthew 24:5-8.